I haven’t read the book, and never heard of it until i saw the confusing trailer. IMDB lists this fact
which threw me off. I really don’t know what to make of this movie. Anyone heard anything?
I read the book back when it came out in '87. I had fallen for the whole “Less Than Zero” thing and was convinced Ellis was a good writer.
Man, did “The Rules of Attraction” cure THAT.
The book is awful. If you thought LTZ was a bunch of whiney brats complaining that their cocaine vials are out of style, you need to read TROA. Awful, awful crap. Not overly funny, no plot, just a meandering mishmash of characters you care nothign about wondering if they’ll get laid.
Now, as to whether or not it’d make a decent movie, who knows? But I wouldn’t waste much time with the book.
I really, really liked it. The most accurate depiction of shallow, unlikeable student-life angst I’ve read (and I’ve been a uni student). I read it as a book about just how self-obsessed people can be (kind of taking the opposite attitude to Legomancer, no offence meant).
All of Ellis’ books feature inter-related characters. Doesn’t mean anything at all in terms of plots. The Batemans meet once in the book, with a vague hint as to Patrick’s habits, but nothing more. Having said that, the character Clay ties LTZ with ROA, the characters Scott & Anne and Sean tie ROA with AP, the character Victor ties ROA with Glamorama (and so on). Quite neat.
I’ll have to agree with Crusoe in that I enjoyed the book. I didn’t think you were supposed to like the people in the book. I’m intersted in seeing it, but I don’t think I’ll pay full price for it, I’ll wait til it comes out on video.
Crusoe, were there also cameo appearances in The Informers? I can’t remember off the top of my head, probably because the book sort of stank.
And how can we forget Lauren Hynde, or Alison Poole (stolen from Jay McInerney’s Story of My Life)?
I liked Rules of Attraction, particularly because I knew some people who went to Bennington and were able to put Camden College in perspective for me. According to them, it was a pretty accurate representation. I especially liked how vapidly Victor is written, and Sean’s interactions with his friends. The female characters didn’t do that much for me, but they became more interesting as I read other Ellis books and learned more about them.
Apparently Roger Avary wrote a scene in the movie where Sean and Patrick are on the phone, and Patrick’s standing there on his end holding a severed head in his hand. But I can’t find where I read that, so it may simply be rumor.
Best Patrick Bateman reference in Glamorama? When Victor Ward notices the strange stains on his Armani suit and he or some status-obsessed hanger-on says, “I hear he has a coat of arms.”
brondicon: there were, but I can’t remember them (I really didn’t like The Informers; I thought it was a very poor attempt). I vaguely recall the first story involving a minor character from ROA.
I should have added - I really hope that this film version is at least vaguely faithful to the era. I have nightmare visions of an “updated” version set in the present.
Is it Paul Denton? Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. The soundtrack unfortunately offers little to no indications as to era-faithfulness, as it includes everything from a score by tomandandy (who did a great job with Killing Zoe), Donovan, The Cure, and Milla Jovovich.
I still want the plushie poster, but I think my mother would freak if she saw it on my wall. Framed.
LTZ was sort of “eh” for me and I loathed the movie. American Psycho: great book, lousy movie. This does not bode well for Rules of Attraction for me. I liked the book; it ranks 2nd behind AP with the rest of Ellis’ work all tied for last. I just don’t see it lending itself well to adaptation. Still, there’s male FFN and that’s always a good thing.
I’ve told a friend of mine who’s given me the last couple of BEE books that if he writes another one and she gives it to me I’m tearing it up in front of her and throwing it in her face. Same goes Candace Bushnell. So far I guess they haven’t written anything new so she hasn’t tested me.
Haven’t seen the movie, but I do not get, from the trailers and reviews, the impression that it’s in any way related to the novel beyond the setting and character names.
For one thing, I saw a clip from a scene set in someone’s neat and tidy dorm room. BEE makes up in description what he lacks in character development, and I loved the impressions he gave of Camden. Everyone was either drugged out, or had never learned to pick up after themselves, or both, so the whole place was a shambles. Not just the rooms, but the hallways and the common areas as well. The time to film this would have been in the good old days of SFW and Slacker, when set dressers were told simply: “Make everything look like shit”.
And I can’t imagine that the filmmakers have been bold enough to explore any of the homosexual, hard-core drug use, or suicide themes in the novel. (If they had, we would have been hearing about it already.)
Basically, I liked the novel, but it was very grating, and it was about a mood, not a plot. Trying to make it cohesive is a bad idea. As Edward the Head says, you are not supposed to like the characters. Trying to make them appealing is another bad idea. And there are a lot of musical references in the novel: characters are always saying “[Song] by [group/artist] was playing and I stopped listening to whoever was talking to me and focused on the lyrics”. The soundtrack listing is right there in the text: disregarding it is yet another bad idea.
Not every book has to be a movie.
I haven’t read the book, but I am interested in doing so now that I have seen the movie. I just saw it earlier this evening, so it’s relatively fresh in my mind.
(FWIW, I’ve read American Psycho and have seen the movie. I have not read any other Bret Easton Ellis’ novels nor seen other movies based on them.)
Short review: Bleak, somewhat traumatizing, innovative, and requires a second viewing.
Longer review:
Rilchiam, I don’t know exactly what homosexual themes were in the novel, but the movie shows two men kissing, as well as loads of homosexual innuendo and sexual situations. I was shocked and pleased at how the movie didn’t shy away from this subject.
I read a couple reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, and I can’t believe how incredibly negative the reviews are. One even called the film “misogynistic”. The female lead is the most sympathetic character portrayed, by far! (Aside from one crucial but non-focal character who is also female.) One could more easily describe the film as misandrous than misogynistic.
Neither label applies in my opinion, though. The movie is rough, in-your-face, and unrelentingly bleak. Most of the characters are at least somewhat hateful, especially Sean Bateman, but they are never boring. The movie paints a rather depressing and empty view of life.
The story-telling is innovative. Some might dismiss this as the mere use of gimmicks. That might be true, but I think they are effective gimmicks. At the start of the film, much use is made of backwards effects. We get to see billiard balls comming together into a neat triangle, notes on purple paper get un-torn, and sundry other visually interesting bits. The end of the movie is also a bit of a gimmick, but I liked it. The introduction of Victor’s character is very well done, and not only because it mentions visiting the Guinness factory. 
It seems true to BEE’s style of stream-of-consciousness.
There are, scattered throughout the film, notes and messages about love and attraction. A couple of these are written on black boards. I’m pretty sure I missed some of these. Overall, they paint a very bleak picture of love. They are, if nothing else, usually funny or thought provoking.
I’m not a music man myself, so I can’t really comment on the soundtrack. The music seemed, to my untrained ear, to fit the scenes rather well, if sometimes in an ironic manner.
The acting, while perhaps not at the level where actors get knighted, was quite good. I’ve never seen Dawson’s Creek, so I suppose I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been to see James Van Der Beek convincingly play a sociopath. I didn’t spot any particularly bad acting in the film.
This is not a happy movie. There are humorous parts. There are parts that are humorous in spite of how wicked they are. There are frightening parts, and loads of depressing parts. Many people will probably dislike the movie because it seems so empty. I think that’s the point of the film: to show this emptiness unflinchingly from several viewpoints and show how pervasive it is.
It is not a happy or a pretty movie, but in many ways I think it is an accurate movie. Not literally accurate, but accurate in the way certain caricatures are. The exact characters in the movie are not real, but the overall themes of the movie have the ring of truth to them. Many of the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes complained that the movie was “disgusting” or “unattractive”. I disagree. I think it’s a good movie that shows disgusting and unattractive people (if they can be called that) and things.
FROM NOW ON, SPOILERS ARE ACCEPTABLE!!!
I saw it Saturday (after the Anime festival in the theater.) i liked the gimmicks, but i like it when movies do neat visual things (as long as they don’t use them as a crutch). James Van Der Beek plays a good jerk, i remember him being a good jerk in Angus. The girl from 40 days and 40 nights looked like Wynnona’s little sister in this movie, The only really likeable character killed herself halfway through. The other characters were the type i avoided like the plague through my college career. I actually liked the film, but mostly because i went in expecting not to like the people in it thanks to this thread.
As for homosexual themes, it is supposed to be about a bisexual love triangle, so I’m not surprised.
** possible American Psycho spoiler **
Another here who loved American Psycho, but thought the film was a big stinking pile of doo-doo. Some books just don’t translate to film - there are so many factors (director, screenplay etc) that can go wrong. Also, most of the scenes later on in the book, where Bateman starts to go completely insane, could not be portrayed in the film - it would never be released.
I personally liked ROA. I thought the book captures well a mood of apathy and dissolusion of a bunch of rich kids at college. The story is well told, and is quite thought provoking, if a little sad, in my opinion.
I will await reviews before I consider seeing the film version.