Less Than Zero is obviously bad, and we don’t need to talk about why that didn’t work. And American Psycho—that is, I think, an impossible book to adapt. But whatever, it was the greatest hits from the book, more or less. Mary did a very good job of keeping that movie together, as did Christian Bale, and I think Roger did a terrific job. And with The Informers, I think there is really an outstanding movie floating out there somewhere, and I hope one day people might be able to see it. But it’s very interesting. I am not comparing The Informers to The Godfather on any level, but there’s that famous story where Paramount asked Coppola to cut like an hour out of the movie, because they didn’t want to release a three-hour movie. And Coppola did, and showed it to the executive, and it was terrible. It moved very slowly at two hours. And then when he put the other hour back in, it moved very quickly. And that’s all I want to say about The Informers.
Scott Tobias has a very interesting interview with Bret Easton Ellis at the A.V. Club, in which the author/screenwriter of this week’s The Informers admits to not liking the cut of that film that’s being released, and assesses the other filmic adaptations of his work, concluding that Roger Avary’s The Rules of Attraction is the only one that “fully works.” He also describes the upcoming American Psycho musical as “like a multimedia rave situation,” so take that for what you will…
In better news for the legacies of Andrew McCarthy and James Spader, there’s a new Pretty in Pink video game, and it’s apparently awesome. Or, at least, better than a Clueless video game made by the same people. It also allows complete lunatics with a thing against upward mobility to rewrite history by having Andie end up with Duckie instead of Blaine. Insert mid-80s version of “FAIL” here.
Earlier this month, Production Weekly reported that Alex Cox and David Lynch would begin shooting their Repo Man sequel, titled Repo Chick, next month. Fifteen 25 years after the release of the first movie, Cox revealed that it’s a timely revisit, as the new movie will “unfold against the background of the credit crunch and the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, where repossessions of homes, cars and other forms of property is at a new high.”
Coupled with the recent announcement that John Carpenter is producing a remake of his own They Live, the news of a second Repo Man film has us wondering what other ‘80s cult classics should appropriately be remade or revisited now that the economy is shit again. Depending on your definition of “cult film” (many people call Ghostbusters a cult classic), some of the selected films may not be fitting for that term. Regardless, the following ten movies, if redone today, would have definite relevance to these troubled times.
Here’s something I thought I’d never see, though I guess it is inevitable that all major actors will direct at least one film in their lives: the words “A Film by Bruce Willis” shall feature in the credits for the indie Three Stories About Joan, which will star Camilla Belle. In addition to making his directorial debut, Willis will also co-star as Belle’s father.
Initially, I also was surprised to read that American Psycho is getting the Broadway musical treatment. Then, I realized it’s basically just Sweeney Todd with ’80s music. Still, I have to wonder about all the sex and vulgarities. Also: will it be as much a laugh riot as “Oh Africa, Brave Africa”?
A producer in India is ignoring the rules of the Foreign Language Oscar and independently submitting his film, Tingya, to the Academy, separate of his country’s official entry. The film may not be good enough to receive a nomination even if it were eligible, but at least the guy is protesting the unfair process. Meanwhile, THR’s Risky Biz Blog is excited about the foreign film race following Israel’s submission this week of Waltz With Bashir.
UPDATE: The trailer has been removed under request by the copyright holder.
I can’t explain what attracts me so much to the highly unlikable characters of Bret Easton Ellis’ fiction — or, in my case, since I’ve never actually read his books, of movies based on Bret Easton Ellis’ fiction — but I absolutely love Less Than Zero, American Psycho, and especially The Rules of Attraction. However, I have to give more credit to the filmmakers behind each of these films, because all three adaptations have their own appreciable style that helps me to enjoy the stories of these horrible people.
The Informers may look like it fits in with the rest of the filmed versions of Ellis, but I’m skeptical. I was quite bored with director Gregor Jordan’s war satire Buffalo Soldiers, and I fear that he’s going to fail again at holding my attention here. I am eager to watch Brad Renfro in his final, posthumous role (maybe it’s Oscar-worthy!). I am anxious to see if Winona Ryder can regain my favor (she’s fallen pretty far in my mind since her days as my celebrity crush in the early ’90s). And I’m interested to see an Ellis film that the author actually co-adapted. Yet I’m maintaining low expectations after watching the new trailer, because it just looks like a dark movie about vacuous people without anything extra like the era-defining production design, the iconic performance by Christian Bale and the clever post-production tricks featured respectively in Less Than Zero, American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction.
With an almost completely dead, holiday hungover RSS, I spent the morning leisurely slogging through this LA Times profile of 80s it-boy novelist Bret Easton Ellis. Much of the story’s 3,000 words are devoted to defenses of Ellis’ literary reputation, most notably for our purposes from New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, who praises Ellis as “a much more radical writer than he seems.” The rest of it details the oft-adapted novelist’s own attempts to break into screenwriting.
Ellis’ published work has so far formed the basis of three released films: the gloriously trashy Less Than Zero, in which Robert Downey Jr. essentially plays a future version of himself; Mary Harron’s American Psycho, which broke with Ellis’ trademark moral passivity in order to turn the material into obvious satire; and Roger Avery’s Rules of Attraction, which seemed to be kind of more about Roger Avery learning how to use Final Cut Pro than anything else. Somewhere along the way, Ellis apparently “realized he’s not very good at script doctoring” and started concentrating on crafting scripts from scratch. The first of these efforts to see the light of day will be the upcoming The Informers, for which Ellis adapted his own shot story collection in collaboration with Nicholas Jarecki. But to say that Ellis’ outlook on his new career is less than rosy would be an understatement. After the jump, an excerpt from the end of the article, in which Ellis semi-bitterly acknowledges that he’s in a “lost period.”
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
