Miller's Crossing

Clooney Wows DeGeneres With Long Overdue Appearance

Complete NY Times article here.

"[Bret Easton] Ellis is credited with the script for “The Informers,” along with Nicholas Jarecki, brother of the filmmakers Andrew Jarecki (“Capturing the Friedmans”) and Eugene Jarecki (“Why We Fight”). (Mr. Ellis had written other scripts based on his books, but none were ultimately used, he said.)

In Mr. Ellis’s account, Mr. Jarecki first conceived the idea of carving a movie from “The Informers,” a book of interlocking stories that was largely written in the early 1980s, but first published in 1994. The two eventually wrote a screenplay of 150 pages — much too long, by Hollywood standards — that included among its subplots a tale about vampires who appear, in the stories, to be quite real.

Marco Weber, president of Senator Entertainment and a producer whose credits include “The Thirteenth Floor” and “Igby Goes Down,” adopted the project, but urged Mr. Jarecki — who wanted to direct — to let it go to the more experienced Mr. Jordan.

The vampires were dropped. The resulting film, set to be the first release from Senator, next April, now centers on a pair of fractured families, of the sort that once met for dinner at Spago."

I'm re-reading Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and almost 20 years after the fact, I'm enjoying it more than I ever have.

For one, it's funny, something I'm not sure I grasped during my first stints with it.  I have pages of notes that I don't have with me at the moment but a paraphrase of something I read on the way here:

I come upon a juggler in the park and immediately smell a target.  But although he is worthy of my wrath, there are too many people around and I keep walking.  Although if he were a mime, he would no doubt be dead.

Until I can write about this subject again properly, I've posted below my first impressions of the film adaptation and my general defense of the novel all those many years ago.

And as for the violence, yeah it's still extreme but when you call something American Psycho and your name is Bret Easton Ellis, including anything less would have had all of us crying Foul and complaining how another work didn't live up to it's hype.

There's also less of it than I remember; the first murder doesn't even happen until page 120 or so.

And it's as easy to skip as the pages of name-dropping designer descriptions, if you are so inclined.

What's a nice girl like Becky wanting to see a film like American Psycho for?

(And why is she reading the novels of Bret Easton Ellis anyway?)

          My devouring of Bret Easton Ellis' fiction is something I refer to as a guilty pleasure, i.e., I do it when no one's looking and will deny it if anyone inquires.  My embarrassment at this fetish of mine can be traced directly to two factors:

1)  After eventually buying American Psycho a full year after it came out (I went back and fourth on this issue: Reading something like this, part of me reasoned, is below you.  But yes, I shot back, I should be throwing my two-cents into the anti-censorship ring; no one should be telling anyone what they should or should not read.  True, I argued, but the book just sounds so. . . dirty.  It was a true Chinatown moment: "She's my sister.  She's my daughter.  She's my sister.  She's my daughter.") After the purchase, I went straight to the Sandwich Pub to meet some friends.  At the bar waiting for them, an unknown woman walked by, saw me leafing through the unholy text, stopped cold, gave me the most disgusted look I've ever seen and asked "How could you buy such shit?"  I learned something that day that I'll never forget:  leave Ellis at home when next you go cruising for chicks.

2)  Critics, all critics, absolutely loathe his writing.  They think him 100% devoid of talent and tasteless.  Just some of their many major beefs with him are that none of his "unmemorable" characters have any  personality whatsoever.  That they are totally devoid of any feeling, emotion or anything that even comes close to separating us humans from the primeval ooze that we supposedly crawled out of.  They say his stories lack anything close to a plot and that his endings are, well... they complain his books have no endings.  Finally, they say that he makes up for these weaknesses by filling in the aforementioned blanks with nothing but gratuitous violence, vomit-inducing gore, hateful misogyny, uncaring painful sex and other hedonistic habits and tendencies that I can't even begin to get into here. 

          The flip side to those criticisms may be that Ellis is simply calling it as he sees it.  He may be suggesting that most individuals (or at least the monsters featured in his books) aren't worth knowing.  That people, deep down at their core, don't care about anything but satisfying their own needs and seeing their own agendas straight through to the bitter end.  Maybe he's speculating that real life has no understandable narrative and that never in life will any of us be able to actually see the true "big picture."  Either they are exactly right or Ellis is the be-all-to-end-all existentialist of our time.  Haven't quite figured that one out yet...

          The film was directed by Mary Harron and she was the exact right choice to do the adaption.  She'd already proven she could do an almost-current period piece with I Shot Andy Warhol, so asking her to capture Psycho's late eighties feel was a no-brainer.  Co-writing the screenplay with Guinivere Turner, an admitted lesbian, also has to be dispelling any misogynistic residue left from the novel and Turner's indie-honed talents bode well for the deliverance of a quality product.  If anything, I'd be suspecting an anti-male film out of all this but the women are far too classy to stoop to something like that.  Besides, could you imagine what at-one-time-attached Oliver Stone would have done with this novel and the uproar it would have caused?  There'd been rioting in the streets!  Plus, his version would have, quite frankly, sucked.  Bombastic and overproduced, the result would have been headache-inducing.

          The novel American Psycho was almost not even published.  Due to attacks from almost every angle (feminists, humanists, just about everyone on this planet), Ellis' original publishing house (Simon & Schuster) caved and dropped it at the last minute, thereby giving the very small company Vintage Contemporaries first dibs, bragging rights and infinite coin.  Important note to any company interested in making a statement by not publicly releasing something they feel may damage us: Don't let the word get out.  Nothing gets our asses in the stores faster than us hearing about something we shouldn't be allowed to have.

          The novel American Psycho is an indictment of the greedy '80's, not a glorification of a good-looking serial killer.  Through the whole novel, madman Patrick Bateman thinks so little of the people and the law around him that he continually blurts out confessions of his crimes to anyone that will listen and lazily leaves incriminating evidence wherever he goes.  The fact that either no one notices those two things or that they don't care is irrelevant; our indifference is what's really killing us, is what Ellis, I think, is saying.

          The novel American Psycho was always intended as ironic satire.  Amidst it's carnage and through every monstrous act he commits, Patrick cares more about fashion, looking good, brand-name designer labels and Rolling Stone song reviews than anything else in the world (anti-consumerism, anyone?  This book gets a +5 coolness quotient for predating Fight Club's anti-materialistic sentiments by almost 15 years).  Just one example of Ellis' tongue being firmly in cheek is when Bateman stops the narrative cold no less than three times to expunge on the merits of mainstream artists Phil Collins, Huey Lewis and Whitney Houston (critiquing her Greatest Love of All hit, no less!).  The fact that I've heard that at least two of these asides made it into the film (Bateman, with axe in hand, giving a very detailed opinion on Lewis' Hip to be Square while coming up behind a drunk co-worker, Collins' Susudio playing during a rough sex session between Bateman and two prostitutes) tells me the filmmakers are hip to this.

          Say what you will about his prose, but Ellis is nothing if not clever.  His fans have a field day identifying the same characters throughout all his novels.  In Psycho, killer Patrick gives brother Sean a tie for Christmas, causing Sean to recall how he had tried to hang himself with one two novels before in The Rules of Attraction.  And in Rules, a strange character wearing sunglasses and possessing a "low I.Q." shows up out of nowhere muttering something about "people being afraid to eat sushi in L.A."  This, obviously, is the lead character Clay from Ellis' first novel Less Than Zero,  parodying that book's major theme of "People are afraid to merge [on the freeways] in L.A."  The occurrences of this are many, causing his readers to read his books one right after the other.  Would be very cool if an actor or two from that film showed up in this one (I bet Andrew McCarthy could spare a couple of hours) but I haven't heard anything suggesting someone's thought of that.

          Whatever the outcome, I'm confident this film won't be some exploitative slasher flick.  At it's best, it may just be one of the top films of the year.  At it's worst, it'll at least be interesting.  Regardless, I'm there opening day.  I'll let you know...

            While I knew years ago that director Mary Harron's film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho would be no more a slasher film than Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (a film it's lately been compared to), even I was not prepared for the depths to which Ms. Harron and her crew would delve into from Ellis' much maligned, somewhat shaky springboard of a novel.  A black comedy on the materialism of the greedy '80's was what I expected upon entering the theater.  An intelligent mediation on the very nature of individuality and our sometimes murderous desire to simply stick out from the crowd is what I got.  Sometimes you just get lucky . . .

            It's 1987 (something I'm not sure the film makes exactly clear) and Patrick Bateman, 27 years old, seems to be living the American Dream.  Working on Wall Street and possessed of more wealth than can be imagined, Bateman spends his time in the office watching game shows, his time alone primping and watching porno and horror films.  His nights he spends in ways in which we can't even begin to fathom.  I think one only has to list the contents of his drawers and cabinets (duct tape, bent wire hangers, dental picks, nail-gun, assorted limbs and extremities) for you to get the idea.  And after the violence, yet another mad rush to make that reservation at this weeks flavor-of-the-moment restaurant . . .

            Ellis' 1991 novel was nothing but surface, surface, surface and I'm not talking about the characters contained within.  What he claimed was a satire of the greed-is-good 80's was vilified by every inhabitant on this planet as misogynistic, violent, putrid trash that critics claimed they wouldn't line their birdcages with.  But even worse than that (can we really call something published as art any of those things?), it was boring and unreadable.  Plot-less with characters not even a Mensa graduate could tell apart and disgusting beyond belief (ask anyone whose read it about the rat, the Habi-trail and the jumper cables hooked up to a car battery to get some sense of its depravity; better yet: don't), the book seemed to defy any brave soul whom stood to defend it.  What Ms. Harron (co-writing with Guinevere Turner) has done with this hot potato is simple and miraculous: pared down Ellis' 399 pages to it's few, but very important (I think), supposed points and cut out all the crap that simultaneously inflamed those who'd never read such a thing and us brave souls who tried.  Yes, we still can't tell the robotic characters apart but that's now been worked into the story (it's impeding the police's investigation into Patrick's secret night life).  Yes, the film, like the book, has no real resolution; Patrick still walks away unpunished (but does he really?).  Yes, we still get the rampant materialistic obsession with ridiculous worries like whose business card is best but that's now used for comedic effect.  And Ms. Harron goes Ellis one step further by introducing a possible explanation for Patrick's serial killing: the simple desire to stand out from the crowd.  In the novel, Patrick's constant confessions to all who'd listen signaled to me just another level of his disgust at those surrounding him and the overall indifference of our society.  But here, it represents his aching for even just one soul to for once get his name right, to be seen for whom he really is (even if it's a reprehensible monster).  And the more his associates don't do that, the madder he gets.  And we all know what he does when he gets mad.  After 10+ years, Mary Harron has finally given a point to the mess known as American Psycho and it's exhilarating.  Forget the awards, someone get me this woman's phone number!

            Christian Bale is excellent and if I thought this film was going to make any money, I'd call it a star-making performance.  He reminded me of a young, lanky Jeff Bridges.  They both posses a burning gaze that's impossible to look away from despite however deadly it may very well be.

            Reese Witherspoon and Chloe Sevigny, as two of the unfortunate women in Patrick's life, both continue their ascension into the stars from last years Election and Boys Don't Cry, respectively.  Patrick letting Sevigny, playing his secretary, leave his apartment alive is as close as this film comes to a romantic moment.

            The aforementioned scene in which Patrick and his co-workers compare business cards that look as similar as the men boasting of them is destined to become a comedy classic as will the scene in which he gives a gleefully drawn-out rave review of Huey Lewis' Hip to be Square while preparing to plant an axe in a hated co-workers skull.  Faithful readers of Ellis' fiction will be happy with all the little in-jokes, too; references to the character of Allison Poole and the sign stating "This is not an exit" are both intact as are many others.

            The film isn't perfect.  I personally thought Patrick's use of a firearm late in the film was boldly against character.  And also, towards the end, there is a 15 minute span between the time where we've see Patrick at his worst (something involving him running naked through a public building wielding a chainsaw) and film's end where nothing much happens.  I wish the filmmakers had spiced up that short time with something.

            I'm sure the ending will infuriate many.  While I refuse to go into detail, I found its possible twist rendered Patrick even more pathetic.  While some may accuse Harron of wanting her cake and eating it, too, I suspect the film's resolution will only accent it's intelligence the longer I mull it over.

            I can honestly recommend this film to anyone with a healthy sense of humor and an open mind.  It's well-shot, well-acted, hip and clever.  And there's not a rat in sight.  Thank you, Mary Harron, for showing us such a bloody good time!

The man in 119 takes his tea all alone.
Mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries.
I'm hearing opera through the door.
The souls of men and women, impassioned all.
Their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call.
I fill the bath and climb inside, singing.

He will not touch their pastry
but every day they bring him more.
Gold from the breakfast tray, I steal them all away
and then go and eat them on the shore.

I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand,
sing of a lover's fate sealed by jealous hate
then wash my hand in the sea.
With just three days more I'd have just about learned the entire score to Aida.

Holidays must end as you know.
All is memory taken home with me:
the opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago.