I had never been to Boston before, much less just to see a movie. The farthest I had ever traveled for a film was 20 miles, and the little I knew about Bostonians I learned from “Good Will Hunting.” So naturally, I thought most of them were annoying, Irish drunks.

Funny how 24 hours, 2,000 miles and one brief interaction with Mel Gibson can change your perception of a place.

There I sat, in Boston for the first time in my life, at the Ritz Carlton, admiring the compulsively perfect organization of the staff and eyeing the questionably artistic glass tubes of apples that accentuated the lobby tabletops. The hotel smelled of rich oak wood and aerosol spray that imitated the aroma chocolate-chip cookies — the very best way to ruin the ozone. Everyone in the room smacked of aristocracy, from the men with bow ties to the women in black cocktail dresses.

Then in walked Clark Gregg, writer and director of the sex-addict dark comedy “Choke,” wearing vibrantly pastel kicks and blue jeans that truly stood out in a room of formal normalcy, ready to talk to the Wheel about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Gregg spent more than five years working and reworking his directorial debut “Choke,” an adaptation of the novel written by cult-phenom Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame, tiptoeing the line between success and failure during production.

“For a while, we really didn’t know if anyone would be able to see the movie,” Gregg says. “It opened on the last day of Sundance, after no other films were being picked up [by producers]. Who wants to pick up a movie about a Colonial-reenacting sex addict in a romantic comedy?”

But Fox Searchlight did purchase the film at a budget of $4 million, believing it would sell to the college demographic. After all, many American universities, including Emory and nearly 100 colleges throughout the city of Boston, have become breeding grounds for hookups, one-night stands and friends with benefits. In “Choke,” Gregg claims the current generation’s sex fixation is more serious than other culturally common addictions.

“Sex addition is highly prevalent in [the current] generation; more so even than alcohol, gambling and drugs,” he says.

But Gregg argues that the fixation on sex in “Choke” is a vehicle for deeper emotional and comedic episodes surrounding main character Victor Mancini (played aptly by Sam Rockwell).

“In order to be hugged, [Victor] can’t ask for a hug,” Gregg says. “He has to choke himself, hope someone will save and then hold him for a few minutes.”

Gregg was especially influenced by the incredible story of the origins of Palahniuk’s novel of the same name.

“Chuck’s father was a sex addict and was murdered by the husband” of the woman his father was sleeping with, Gregg says. “After the funeral, [Palahniuk] got out of his car and turned on the high beams because he knew a police officer or medical person would come hold him. That’s where he got this idea about fooling people into loving him. So he wrote a book about it.”

As Gregg and I continued to debate about the connections and merits of love and sex, a shadowy figure in a dark overcoat walked up to us from the other side of the hotel.

It was Mel Gibson.

I blinked my eyes a few times, and before I could say “freeeeeedom!” Gregg was standing and chatting it up with the Academy award-winning actor/director/super-Christian.

Apparently — in Gibson’s own words — he was in Boston “shooting a f--king movie, man.” After Gibson and I made our brief introductions, he left and Gregg continued the interview.

“I swear that wasn’t just to impress you,” Gregg says with a laugh. “We were in [‘We Were Soldiers’] together.”

After shaking off the just-saw-“Mad Max” vibes, our interview went in a new direction. Gibson inspired a completely different series of conversations about actors-turned-directors, and what Gregg referred to as “cast brotherhood” and masculinity on screen.

“I mostly directed ... except the scenes where I play the boss,” Gregg adds. “I don’t know how [Mel Gibson] does it. That man is an incredible force of nature.”

“A male character has difficulty asking for love,” Gregg says. He believes that below the many layers of obsessive eroticism, Victor Mancini is still a college male at heart. This is why Gregg chose to target the university crowd with this film, especially in a big college city like Boston.

In conversations about “Choke,” he says, “college students seem to have the strongest grasp on the deeper concepts in the film.”

Before leaving to go to a Q&A screening specifically for Emerson College students, he added: “I’ll be interested in what [college students] have to say … and what Mel has to say, too.”

So this is my first taste of what Boston is like: filled with charismatic indie directors, fancy and aromatic hotels, millions of sexually worked up college kids — and of course, one workaholic anti-Semite.

How ’bout them apples?

— Contact Geoff Schorkopf