The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with a Slate spoiler special podcast on the movie Choke, the recent Clark Gregg written and directed movie based on a novel by Chuck Palliniac.

Joining me in the studio is Dan Cois, a contributing writer to New York magazine.

Hi, Dan.

Hi.

So let's take it away with a quick, quick plot description of choke. Then we have a major spoiler, which will kick off a discussion, I think a good

discussion of the movie and how twists tend to work in these Polaniac stories, right? Always a big

twist at the end. Okay, so we start off in choke with the key choker, the protagonist, what's his

name? Victor McSaney, played by Sam Rockwell, who has a

bunch of things going on in his life at the same time. He's a, he's a sex addict enrolled in a 12-step

program for sex addiction. Unsuccessfully enrolled. It must be added as he spends most of his time at

the 12-step meetings having sex. Right. He ducks out with the young lady he sponsors for a quick, quick grope in the hallway.

He also has two jobs. He works days at a kind of colonial theme park. It's not quite clear where this is,

but it sort of seems like a Williamsburg, Virginia-type theme park with people in faux 18th century garb.

Right. It's some kind of low-rent Williamsburg that is nonetheless within reach of the Metropolitan Transit

Authority's bus service. Right. That's right, because they are in the general New York area,

I suppose. So that's his day job. And his sort of sideline is that he pretends to choke,

this is where the title comes from, pretends to choke in upscale restaurants in the hope that

some benevolent patron will come along, perform the Heimlich maneuver,

and then feel sorry for him and give him money for the rest of his life. Right. And in fact, he actually literally does choke. There are numerous gruesome scenes of him

shoving enormous wads of food down as the road. Is the idea supposed to be that he is actually

risking his own life each time he fakes choking? So they're really performing the Heimlich maneuver. He's not just spitting out the food.

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