Chuck Palahniuk needs little by way of introduction on SuicideGirls, our very name being an hommage to the author of Fight Club, Choke and Snuff. We caught up with him by phone to talk about his latest novel, Tell-All. It's a fictional gossip-laced memoir told in the voice of Hazie Coogan, the female assistant to "the glorious film actress" Miss Katherine Kenton who resides in Hollywood's very real past - a glamorous world populated by the likes of Lillian Hellman, Darryl Zanuck, David O. Selznick, Clark Gable and Bette Davis, who are all names Tell-All's characters love to drop. During our conversation with Palahniuk, we spoke about society's need for the culture of celebrity, the nature of name-dropping, and the ultimate name to drop.
NP: I watched
All About Eve last night to get some of the flavor of the era since
Tell-All is described in the press release as "a dark re-imagining of
All About Eve."
CP: It's also a re-imagining of
Sunset Boulevard.
NP: I can see that.
CP: I always loved that story, that Max is the one who orchestrates so much of that story, and Max the butler, Erich von Stroheim, is the one that's left at the end, not dead and not insane. In a way, part of me always thought Max set all of this up so that it would happen. It could easily have been done.
NP: Ah, so Hazie Coogan is your version of Max.
CP: Exactly.
NP: Tell-All explores the concept of celebrity. Why do you think as a society we're so celebrity obsessed?
CP: My crackpot theory is that people are losing their skill to express themselves, and they're, in a way, farming that task out. If they want to express themselves they buy a song or they buy a greeting card that's already processed by someone who's kept that skill. We can't express our own feelings anymore so we have to hire someone to do that. To a large extent movies take that on, they're our therapy and our expression.
NP: I would concur with that. There's even a movie series called
Cinematherapy on WE TV.
CP: Right, movie therapy and movie community, where we may not have friends but there's a show called
Friends. It gives us that sense of having a community of people. It functions on every level.
NP: Also there's that line from
All About Eve where they talk about how the theater is tantamount to religion, with actors and actresses being the gods and goddesses.
CP: When you think about polytheism, where you have any number of gods, each one kind of personified a different type of character. Then that went by the way and was replaced by the system of saints, where each saint typified a different person, a different archetype or a platonic ideal of what someone should be at this point in their life. In a way, actors have become those archetypes. There's always going to be one blonde Brad Pitt. He succeeded the blonde Robert Redford, who succeeded the blonde I can't remember. There's so often just one of these archetypes that really last until they're replaced by the next of that perfect archetype, that perfect saint that personifies that type of person.
NP: And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the golden idols people worship right now.
CP: And that they measure themselves against. They say, I'm not a Brad Pitt type, I'm more of a...George Clooney type. And so we look to George Clooney for how to behave. We looked at Cary Grant for what to wear, how to conduct ourselves in public. We find the type that we feel best represents us, and then we model our behavior on the behavior of that type, of that role model person, of that saint.
NP: And people model their relationships on those of their idols too.
CP: And that goes back to people not knowing how to express themselves. So-and-so bought this type of ring for so-and-so, so everyone will rush out to buy that ring that's suddenly mass marketed because it's what you do. It has to be dictated every year.
NP: Going back to
Tell-All, obviously it's that golden era of Hollywood that fascinates you. Even in
Snuff, your central character, porn queen Cassie Wright, was obsessed with movie stars from that era - you threw in those amazing Hollywood factoids as recalled by her.
CP: I'm always looking for something that books can do that movies cannot do. It's perfectly OK for me to write a book that depicts all of these famous people as characters. I can make them do whatever I want as long as they're dead. That way they can't sue me. In a movie you never could. You could not create a movie that would literally be a tell-all, because you couldn't get the rights to the images of all those famous people, much less doctor the film, to search vintage footage so those people were recreated. So that's something a book can do very easily, but a movie can't touch, and I love doing stuff like that.
And in
Snuff, the factoids played a whole different role. They were a means of depicting Cassie's inner strivings. She didn't set out to be a porn star. She had set out to be an actual golden age movie star. Her body of knowledge, all these little things that she knew about those people, had really been [an indication of] her original aspirations without stating them overtly.
NP: Can you talk about some of the underlying themes that you were thinking about as you wrote
Tell-All.
CP: One was just the nature of name-dropping. How names function in language by creating these instant networks of associations the moment the name is said - kind of bestowing or claiming part of the status of that famous person and adding it to the speaker's present. The moment you say, "Oh, Juliette Lewis said the funniest thing yesterday," you're kind of claiming an association with her that gives you a greater status in your current context. I love how name-dropping works that way - especially when people say God. I think that's the ultimate form of name-dropping. [People] are always citing God, and it's wonderful to listen [to]. We don't think of it as name-dropping, but it's the biggest form of name-dropping, and it instantly places them on the moral high ground. It places them in a position of greater status.
NP: And it makes it hard to challenge what that person says without also, by implication, challenging God, which is socially a very difficult thing to do.
CP: Exactly. You could always say, "Juliette Lewis, I don't like her," and lessen the impact of the name-drop. You really are not allowed to say that about God.
NP: That's one of things that Richard Dawkins gets very upset about in his writing - that it's hard to win an argument once people bring God into it because essentially society and politeness dictates that one has to respect God unreservedly.
CP: [laughs] Right, the freedom to worship as you desire.
NP: But the freedom not to worship doesn't really exist - in this country at least. In America, a political candidate is unelectable if they're not God-fearing. I often wonder how many politicians lie about their beliefs in order to attain office. Because, statistically speaking, there has to be more atheists in Congress than those that admit to it.
CP: I would agree.
NP: Getting back to
Tell-All, were there any other themes and ideas that you were exploring?
CP: I was at Sundance when they were marketing the movie
Choke, made from my fourth book, and I was really fascinated to see these incredible groomed and styled movie stars that would just wander freely, unencumbered through the snowy landscape. They wouldn't have a coat, they wouldn't have a purse, they wouldn't have anything in their hands. They would just be these beautiful things that were like animals that had wandered out of the forest. They'd be surrounded by people, flashlights, paparazzi, just this kind of nimbus, this halo of flashing beautiful light.
I was always fascinated because maybe twenty steps away would always be this dowdy woman who'd be carrying all their crap. Their tote bag, their coat, their purse, the make-up cases, thermoses, everything that went into making the beautiful woman beautiful was being lugged around by this dumpy woman who was always far enough away that she would never get caught in the photograph. I thought it was fascinating to have that kind of Jungian separation between the ideal perfect-seeming woman and then the other woman who had to carry the burden of that perfection.
And that when the beautiful woman had a moment to herself, the only kind of intimacy she had was to go to the imperfect woman, and they'd kind of put their heads together and whisper. That other woman seemed to be the only person that she was safe taking to. So that relationship between the woman who looks beautiful and the woman who creates that beauty I thought was absolutely fascinating. I just followed these people all around Park City.
NP: The assistants are cast as much as the stars are, because the assistant has to be non-threatening in appearance.
CP: And they have to be loyal, and they have to be organized, and they have to be aware - constantly watching for the effect, for that stray hair, constantly present.
NP: One of the things I find interesting about your writing is that conventional wisdom dictates that a writer should find a voice and a style, and then stick with it. But what you tend to do with each book is actually create a unique voice for that book, and also a unique way of telling the story, be it non-linear, or, in the case of
Snuff, the way you told it through many different voices. It's not like you're just telling the story, you're creating a new style of writing specifically to tell that story. How do you set about that?
CP: I really am looking for a style of writing that will, in a way, work against the content. In
Tell-All, I wanted to use the style of writing of the conventions based on gossip columns, those Walter Winchell or Louella Parsons / Hedda Hopper columns from the 1930s and '40s. Because they're a non-fiction form, and a non-fiction form will always lend greater credibility to a really outlandish, wild fictional story. My favorite examples of that are how in
Citizen Kane, the story itself is pretty melodramatic, it really is a kind of a soap opera of a story, but they placed it within the context of newsreel photographers seeking out the true story for the production of a newsreel. They put this whole context of journalists in it, and that lent this melodramatic story a gravity, a profundity that it would not have had otherwise.
And then when the Coen brothers did
Fargo, they'd just come off of
Raising Arizona, which was this over-the-top, wild, outlandish comedy, and
Fargo was going to be another one of those kind of violent, fast-paced comedies. But on the front end of
Fargo they put that very black, single card opening that said: "This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred." That's shown against this very sad harp music, almost like angelic mournful music. It creates this sense of mournful, profound sadness at the beginning - and truth - that keeps that story from landing like too much of a
Raising Arizona comedy. So I'm always looking for a non-fiction journalistic form that will allow me to tell an even crazier story without the story seeming too crazy.
NP: I would love to see
Tell-All turned into a movie. And, given the era it's set in, I would love to see it made as a black & white movie. Have you thought in those terms?
CP: I was last told that Pedro Almodóvar had first look at it. He was between projects and looking for something, and this seemed really appropriate for him. Because it does deal with glamorous women of a certain age, and the male romantic lead is very young and good-looking. It just seems like a Pedro Almodóvar movie. But the biggest hurdle is going to be, how do you fill it with movie stars without having those movie stars? The movie has to make the story so literal that it's going to be a real challenge for this one.
NP: But I can see audiences suspending their disbelief and enjoying watching one celebrity take on the role of another.
CP: That might work. The only time I've ever seen it done was in
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a movie they made about Dorothy Parker. Even in that movie they had all of these really awkward lines when people would walk into a room and a character already present would say, "Oh, look! If it isn't Mr. and Mrs. Roger S. Hart." People had to be called out in this kind of pointless expository way because otherwise we would have had no idea who they were supposed to be...It makes it really awkward, the idea of trying to convince us that so-and-so walking in is going to be Cary Grant without saying, "Look! It's Cary Grant." There's place cards and all these cheats, but it would be difficult.
NP: So are you already working on your next novel?
CP: Yeah. I've got one for next year. It looks like it'll be for next fall, so it'll be a year from this fall. It's called
Damned.
NP: Are you willing to reveal any of its themes, or details of the world it's set in?
CP: There is an existing form of story where an innocent party finds themselves placed in horrific circumstances and they're not quite sure how they got there. Examples include
The Shawshank Redmption, where Tim Robbins' character finds himself in prison, and he's not entirely sure whether he deserves to be there but he has to make the best of it. And in Great Britain there was a very popular book called
Cold Comfort Farm that was made into a movie. Again, the young woman's parents have died just before the movie begins and we're not sure of anything about them other than the fact that she's being sent off to live on this filthy farm. And in the U.S., another very popular version of that story is
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, where a little girl comes back from camp and she finds her parents have moved from New York City to Long Island, and she has to start a new life out in the suburbs.
So
Damned is about an eleven-year old girl who wakes up basically and finds that she is in hell and that she's dead, and that she's going to be eleven-years old and dead in hell for the rest of eternity. So she has to, number one, make friends and figure out how hell works and make the best of it. But she's also got to figure out why she's in hell and how she died, and then ultimately whether or not she wants to petition to go to heaven, to try and uncover some mistake that might have been made. So it's about an eleven-year old, a very optimistic, cheerful, pushy little girl who finds herself in hell.
NP: Hell is an interesting concept in itself, because everyone has a different definition and their own vision of hell. I think my idea of hell would be having to work in a grey photocopy center for all eternity. What would your idea of hell be?
CP: Hmnn. That's a tough one. I have had some just terrible jobs and I always find some way - even in the most horrific, boring, stressful job - to have fun, and to kind of make the situation fun for other people, so that is a tough one for me.
NP: So if you ended up in hell, you'd find a way of making it fun.
CP: Oh my gosh, yes, definitely.
NP: They always say that all the interesting people will go to hell.
CP: And that's part of the paradox in Margaret is her realizing that most-likely the parents she loves and misses most in the world, they will end up in hell. And so if she's successful in getting to heaven she will most likely lose them once again, but lose them for eternity. How many of us would choose heaven if we knew the people we loved would be in hell? That's the paradox.
NP: It must be hard, because you're immersed in the new book and yet you're currently doing a book tour to promote
Tell-All, which means you have to revisit something that you turned the last page on when you finished writing it several months ago.
CP: That's why for tour I always write a short story that is not related to the next book or not related to the current book. It's a short story that I can read that's self-contained and fairly short and works well out loud and has a really strong effect - like the
Guts story. It's that story that I really make the event around. Here it's a little story called
Knock, Knock that's been getting a really strong reaction.
NP: Is that something that people can read on your website?
CP: It'll be in the December
Playboy. In the meantime, Random House had the event in New York videotaped by a documentary company and they were going to cut that together and make that available.
NP: Can you talk a little about what it's about?
CP: It's about a man whose father is dying of late-stage cancer. This man is determined that he is going to heal his father in the hospice by telling his father every joke his father has ever taught him. So he goes into the hospice as his father is dying and starts to tell these jokes and then slowly realizes that these jokes are horrific and racist and sexist and anti-Semitic, and that really the legacy his father has left him is this mind full of completely despicable, disgusting jokes that he will never be able to forget. So it's got some laughs, but by the end people are crying.
NP: People get away with expressing terrible opinions by making jokes out of them.
CP: Also there's a wonderful energy when people say something that is supposed to be funny and no one laughs. There's this stress that builds when you say one thing after another that's supposed to be released with laughter, and no laughter happens. Eventually the room is just electric with unexpressed tension. That's just an incredible feeling.
NP: So this story is very much meant to be read out loud, and in reading it you're trying to create that energy.
CP: Yes. Because the man who taught me writing, Tom Spanbauer, came from a theater background as well as writing. In workshop he made everyone read their work out loud. So every week I still meet with friends and we have to read our work out loud to find out where the laughs land and where the energy lags, and so everything has to work out loud.
NP: And you did that with
Tell-All too?
CP: Yeah, definitely. Every book. That's why I use so many timing devices like the "bark, squeal, bray, Sigourney Weaver," those odd choruses of animal sounds that come in. They're just a device to pace information, so that gestures and things don't butt together too closely. In a way, it's slowing down the reader for a moment so that the next thing that they land on, lands in a better place.
Tell-All is available from Amazon.com and all fine bookstores. For more information and for details of upcoming events go to ChuckPalahniuk.net/. 
i just had to take this offer! traveling is so expensive dude, like really. rent on the road was about 2g'z a month. thats just crazy talk. and on top of that not having many friends made it hard on me. 
