Please pass the existential angst and the mirror and a line of 80's optimism. . .
Just watched Rules of Attraction on DVD. Sort of shot some promo for it, which supposedly their PR people loved, so I figured I should see the actual flick sooner or later. I really liked the book when I read it, which was while I was attending a small New England university. I liked the book so much that I kept reading other books by Bret Easton Ellis with the notion that it was conceivable I would like another one. Generally, his characters have such ennui that I get bored and distracted part way through and am as unmotivated as his characters to finish their lives. Yes, there are a few hilarious moments in American Psycho, but they are early on and I finally got too bored to read every long-ass description of male cosmetic products and sex murders. And I was reading American Psycho on a really dull contract assignment, which I was grotesquely overqualified for, or I probably would have gotten less far into the book.
Still I loved Rules of Attraction. The movie didn't feel that related to the book. One of my favorite scenes in the book involves the main character trying dispiritedly to jerk off to Playboy and realizing that these women who once seemed sophisticated, older, and out of reach were now younger than he is. In the movie, he just makes a quick reference to jerking off to internet porn which didn't exist at the time the book was written. But either way it was an entertaining movie. Eric Stoltz gets a "hummer" and I've never seen Ian Somerhalder before, but damn is he fucking hot.
I think they should make a Scarface consummables game for Rules of Attraction the movie. Gotta drink Jack when the characters do, masturbate when they do, videotape fucking, abstain from meaningful sex, complain about the essential loneliness of the human condition when they do, do lines until you nose bleeds, and tell your game playing companions to act out the following scene from the movie:
Rupert: Ya want some coke?
Sean Bateman: Um. Sure.
Rupert: Then get some of your own, bitch!
