A 'Rant' to Hollywood: Hire Chuck Palahniuk now!
Posted Monday, April 30, 2007 at 1:43 PM Central
by John Couture
Now here is something that at first glance might seem like a departure from our usual movie related coverage. I mean sure, we don't review books every day, but this isn't just any old book and the author isn't just any old author.
I'm sure many of you remember 1999's Fight Club for its distinct visual style or its post-modern message convoluted by the consumerism that has overtaken our lives. Of course, some of you simply remember a bare-chested Brad Pitt and/or Edward Norton beating the crap out of each other.
For me, it was an introduction to Chuck Palahniuk, perhaps the most unique and raw voices of my generation. I've read every book since then and the opportunity to review his latest offering Rant came as an honor that I jumped at immediately.
For, you see, this is exactly what Hollywood is missing.
Hollywood has become exactly the type of society that Chuck pokes fun of in his novels and desperately tries to rebel from. Hollywood has become safe. Hollywood has become vanilla. I am Jack Valenti's experiment gone horribly wrong.
As enamored as I am with Chuck, you would think that I would have gone back and read Fight Club, the book that many consider his best work. But alas, I haven't gone there yet. As much as I know that Chuck's words will outperform the visuals of the movie, there's a sick part of me that wants to keep my memory of Fight Club precisely the way it is now.
You could say that I want to preserve Hollywood in that pre-9/11 state where studios were more willing to take risks and put something on the screen that isn't prepackaged as the ultimate Happy Meal companion piece. I bring up 9/11 because it's probably most responsible for Hollywood stunting the growth of Chuck Palahniuk as writer to the stars.
I blame 9/11 because shortly before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, Chuck's book Survivor (my personal fave) was on the fast track to Hollyood celluloid. Big names such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Trent Reznor were circulating the project for Twentieth Century Fox, but then the unthinkable happened.
Survivor is a story told in a countdown of sorts. The pages actually number in reverse because the main protagonist is the last surviving member of a suicide cult who, after gaining worldwide fame and acclaim, decides to end his life by hijacking a plane and going down with it as it runs out of fuel over Australia's Outback.
Hollywood in a post-9/11 world would barely touch any movies set on a plane and when you combine the words hijacker and plane together, it is a surefire ticket back to development hell. It's too bad because the hijacking and the plane crash aspect, while certainly integral to the pulse of the plot, merely serve a means to an end that would benefit all of us as human beings.
For therein lies Chuck's greatest strength. He can shock us with the fringe of human existence, but in the end it all comes back to the central state of our current society.
Which brings us to his latest novel Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. Chuck again plays with the conventions of a novel and completely throws away the concept of exposition. The entire book is nothing more than a compilation of people's remembrances and experiences with this devious character Rant Casey, who is dead at the beginning of the book.
Despite his early demise in a blaze of glory that every living rock legend would be envious of, Rant really earns his celebrity in death. Just like Morrison, Hendrix, Dean and Monroe. Rant joins this eerie group of talented individuals that die way too soon.
Of course, Rant's talent seemingly had more to do with his ability to kill people without laying a hand on them than exploits on the big screen or the radio.
But then again, what do we really know about Rant? By choosing this form of discourse, Chuck Palahniuk presents the reader with conflicting and often contradictory reports about most of the crucial pieces of the puzzle.
In some ways, you can think of The Bible as one of the first oral historys. The New Testament in particular is basically a gathering of the experiences of Jesus' friends and followers after his dead. Rant is no Jesus Christ that's for sure, but at least his oral history is complete and balanced. It's not like The Bible presents the Roman or Sanhedrin oral historys of Jesus.
This style of dialog, which does take some getting used to, forces the reader to think and decipher the clues in such a way that is absent from the majority of our spoon-fed entertainment. Sure, Chuck could have delivered a straight-forward and compelling novel about the life and times of Rant Casey, but what fun would that be?
How good would Memento have been had it been told in chronological order? Would The Sixth Sense hold the same mystique if the movie opened with a scene set in front of Bruce Willis' headstone? Would Citizen Kane still be considered arguably the greatest American movie ever made had they started out by telling you that "Rosebud" was a sled?
Rant shares the same cinematic quality of its predecessors. When I read one of Chuck Palahniuk's novel, I can see them playing out on the big screen. Sure, Chuck has a knack for writing things that spark the imagination, but it's bigger than that.
He understands what people want and need to see on the silver screen. He strikes a chord in the restless nature of the human condition. Much like his protagonist Rant, Chuck wants each and every one of us to feel something real.
His books are real. And they'd make for some real movies too.
Listen up Hollywood, this Rant's for you. Hire Chuck before it's too late and we all suffer for it.
