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Copernicus corrects the info from the Chuck Palahniuk signing! Updated info on HAUNTED, CHOKE and SURVIVOR!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our resident scientific genius, Copernicus who came out of his own personal Wonderland to inform us lowly souls about the status of Chuck Palahniuk. He was awakened by a report I posted a couple days ago from another attendee who got some of his facts mixed up. This attendee had emailed me around this same time with his own clarifications, but Copernicus' eyes are fresh and his detail is more exact, so here you go. Some good stuff here! And it's no exaggeration about Harry's disgusting phrases and rants. He once invented (with the help of Tom Joad if memory serves) a sexual term specifically for my (outtie) belly button and that's Harry at his tamest. Anyway, enjoy the report!
Hey Harry, Quint, Moriarty!
I was also at the Toronto book signing by Chuck Palahniuk, and I agree with your spy that it was a really great time. There were about 500 people crammed into that bookstore!
Chuck P. is maybe the best person I've ever seen at telling a story to
a crowd. He had the whole audience captivated for almost two hours between telling stories, reading from his new book HAUNTED (he read the "Guts" story), and answering questions. So far on this tour, legend has it that 68 people have fainted at these signings. Before I went to this reading I thought that was all hype -- how can someone make people faint using only words? But now I believe it (though no one fainted at our signing). "Guts" is the most disgusting, horrifying, and humiliating story I've ever heard someone tell (and that is saying something given that I've listened to Harry
pontificate on disgusting themes for years). And the most disturbing part about it is that each of the 3 sub-stories in "Guts" is that Palahniuk claims that they are based on true stories that have happened to people he has known.
Anyway, to correct and add to a few things your spy said:
- The possible, and he emphasized possible, book to be serialized by HBO is his current one, HAUNTED, not DIARY. That makes sense when you think about the structures of the two books. The part about David Fincher possibly directing seemed very uncertain, like they wanted him to do it, but I don't know if they are seriously in talks.
- SURVIVOR had been optioned before, but that lapsed, and it has recently been reoptioned to this CONSTANTINE team. I believe his
exact words were, "Hey, their check cleared!" In other words he didn't necessarily sell it to the highest bidder as the other spy's version of the quote implied.
- For CHOKE, the only casting rumor he passed on was that
they think Meryl Streep is going to play the mother.
- He mentioned that all of his books have been optioned, except for LULLABY, which is too bad because it is one of my favorites.
Don't fuck with a scientist when it comes to getting the facts straight!
-Copernicus
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....i think they're even better than Fight Club. Lullaby would be the best as a television show.
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BULLSHIT. 68 people have fainted this tour? I doubt more than 10 people have fainted since he began reading Guts period. (exclamation point)
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ass holes are gonna ruin survivor and i know it
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Lullaby was mismarketed as a horror novel, and Survivor I started reading after a suicide attempt. It was a good book.
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Even though his public readings of GUTS have become so exagerated to the point of urban legend, I have to admit that that story was the most disturbing story I've ever read. I'm a fan of Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis, but GUTS caused a physiological response in me; mostly it induced repulsion.
Also, Lullaby was probably his weakest book yet. I really don't think an adaptation is necessary. If he sell the rights though, all the power to him. -
Bill Murray=BEST CHAPPEL SPEAKER EVER
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I've read Guts. I've heard Chuck read Guts. The most reaction it got from me is a sneeze, and that was because there was a cat nearby. You are all vaginas.
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Ok, I
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Apparently, people have been having seizures and fainting at his readings for years, but I don't know. The Guts story is from his newest book, 'Haunted'.. I haven't read it yet, but want to, .. I would recommend all of his other ones except Diary, because I basically thought it sucked and i love all the other ones.
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were hired by the publisher. it's called PR. thank you.
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[spolier]The parts I read involved the protagonist inserting a stick of wax into his pee hole to increase the pleasure of masturbation, only to have it slide into his bladder. The other story had the guy lining his ass pipe to a pool intake vacuum, only to have it suck out his large intestines, peanuts and shit and all. Great storytelling. I can't believe the same guy wrote Fight Club, although the narrative style is similar.
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No, they weren't hired by the PR company... BUT read this from Bookslut.com:
"It's amazing that these reports of 'faintings' at Chuck Palahniuk readings never mention the fact that Palahniuk himself instructs the listeners to hold their breath for the duration of the story 'Guts' (now available in the awful Haunted. 'I'll tell it fast.' As if we're supposed to believe the story is just so gory the world can't take it. We know you're hardcore, Chuck, but you're not that hardcore." -
The brilliant adaptation of Fight Club is a one in a thousand shot. They nailed it, but will other filmmakers nail Chuck's vision and content as Finch and Uhls did with Fight Club? I doubt it. I'd love to see books like Survivor and Lullaby and Choke on the big screen, but only if there is true love for the material and not because Fight Club was a awesome movie.
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Untrue. Chuck is reading the story Guts when the line about holding your breath comes up. Look: "Inhale. Take in as much air as you can. This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can." It ties in with the rest of the story having to do with being underwater, dying from lack of air... and then is completed with the final line of the story: " Now, you can take a good, deep breath. Because I still have not."
I went to one of his reading and he made it pretty clear when he was starting to read from the story, so the people listening to a first/second person perspective hybrid story are idiots for trying to do what it tells you. Did they go home and try to sit on the pump in their swimming pool afterwards? Fuckers deserve fainting, if they are that dumb. -
ALL of his books are optioned? That sounds just too good to be true! Still...I hope it is (because all includes Invisible Monster and Lullaby). Don't really care about Survivor (didn't like it), and haven't read Haunted yet (I need to get to that), but Choke would be awesome to see, that is if they can get it right.
About Guts, I read it and was suitably disgusted (but in that good way), but I highly doubt some of the things in it are true. Meaning...all of them. Also, I could understand someone getting a bit light-headed because of it. I was shocked and I'm not someone who's easily so (none of his other books have ever shocked me in that offensive way). -
Jun 19, 2005 6:47:51 PM CDT
"In other words he didn't necessarily sell it to the highest
by neosamurai85
In the words of Lonestar, "we aren't doing this for money! We're doing this for a SHIT LOAD OF MONEY!" Peace.
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Somebody up there claimed that those "fainters" were hired by PR people to faint. You know, to generate interest in Chuck, his "Guts" and "Haunted." Well, if that was true (which I'm not saying it is) that falls right in line with what the Earl of Slander writes about in his short story in the book "Haunted." You know, all the people that camp out in line waiting for the next "PG-13 blockbuster to open." You know, how these people are paid by movie studios and producers. The whole connection just made me smile. I've always thought that some of the people that passed on during "Guts" we legit. Yet some of the, well, were just posing.
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This is just a "by the way" story, but when I was in junior high, the teacher for one class period was describing for a few minutes how he'd cut his thumb severely with a kitchen knife and watched blood stream out of his thumb for awhile without bothering to apply pressure, and one of the students (male) fainted. *BAM* his head hit his desk hard and he collapsed.
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