Let me start from the beginning... So I was thinking of something to do about 2:00 in the morning about 2 days ago and I thought hmm... I'll read a book... I look around and see Less Than Zero, I bought it from a thrift store about a year ago for a quarter, I'ts short I'll read it. I read and I loved it.
I went up to Best Buy and bought the movie for $6.99 on DVD. I thought, I could rent it or I could buy it for not too much more.
I watched it last night, and I'm pretty excited before I watch it because I liked the book so much.
To cut the story a little shorter I am now very angry and It's an anger I don't think I have ever felt before. The movie was nothing like the book. I know, I know... I knew there were going to be differences and I was even prepared for some big ones but not a completely different story and by completely I mean COMPLETELY... Is there anyone else out there that feels what I am feeling right now... Please don't let me be the only one, though I have a feeling that I'm not.
Julie Walker
06-17-05, 12:37 AM
I felt the same way after seeing American Psycho:)
Meanwhile I actually saw Less Than Zero before reading the book. But I have to say after reading the book,the film was even more laughable than previouslly(which was still laughable!).
The big things wrong with the film are as you said,they completely changed the plot around. To make things even worse, it's too preachy and made for tv like with every cliche in the book(no not the 'book'...figuratively speaking here;)),and just feels forced and dryly inoffensive as possible.
Also Clay has been turned into a pathetic goodie two shoes clean cut straight guy,compared to the bisexual depressed/introspective person he was in the novel. This leads to some serious laughs in the film!
Oh yeah,the studio imposed happy ending was really lame.
The only good things I can say about the film is Robert Downeys performance,and a few sporadically good sequences here and there in the film.
It is mostly best viewed as a 'what not to do' adaption,and offers some amusing moments from how play it safe the material is handled. So for $6,it's not a bad buy, and I am thinking of picking it up sometime myself.
I actually own two posters for the film. Why? Well I liked the artwork:D
Julie Walker
06-17-05, 12:39 AM
Oh yeah and this and American Psycho definitely need to be remade....the right way:)
Nosebleed
06-17-05, 10:06 AM
Yeah, American Psycho needs inner monologues via voiceover every five minutes of Christian Bale discussing how the room he's in is decorated, and what everyone around him is wearing.
andicus
06-17-05, 02:57 PM
I haven't read LTZ, but I have hated the movie ever since I first saw it. I don't remember much about it now, other than hoping that Downey Jr.'s character would just die, already.
Presumably in the book, you actually felt some sympathy for that character?
RagingBull80
06-17-05, 05:58 PM
Presumably in the book, you actually felt some sympathy for that character?
In the book you did feel sorry for him because you didn't really see what he was into and it made you think and not knowing what was going on was a lot scarier than actually knowing, he really isn't in the book very much, maybe 10 pages or so, he's talked about mostly. The only time he is really heard from in the book is when he wants Clay to give him money and towards the end when you find the most out about him. You really do feel sorry for him because it doesn't make him look like a screw up, like the movie does, the movie just makes it look like he threw his life away and doesn't care too much about how he's screwed up.
NatrlBornThrllr
06-17-05, 09:58 PM
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: though not completely different, it also wasn't anwhere near as faithful to the novel as it should've been (and I'm not even referring to the "unfilmable" philosophical and political commentary, but to the chunks of the fundamental storyline and the entire linear structure that was toyed with). The movie was still very good, but in a way wholly different from the novel (which was superior in every way).
-JP
Julie Walker
06-18-05, 01:01 AM
Yeah, American Psycho needs inner monologues via voiceover every five minutes of Christian Bale discussing how the room he's in is decorated, and what everyone around him is wearing.
No we don't,but there were some other great inner monologues which truly paint a larger scope of the world it takes place in and Batemans thoughts on things(some were pretty thought provoking..and others immensely disturbing!). But the film practically omits it all along with many other things.
The stuff with the overflowing of bums on the streets would have made for some great haunting visuals. Along with the charecters attitudes towards the bums(which is highly offensive..but important in the satire of it all). But in the film,we get one bum,hardly seeing the scope of 'excessive 80's culture' and the affects on the less fortunate.
I would say the film is jusy barely slightly better than the Less Than Zero adaption,but still pretty damn mediocre.
It's not even on the level with Kubricks The Shining which while a completely different animal to the novel. It is at least atmospheric with enough positives to make me like it as it's own terms. I can not say the same for the AP adaption at all(besides praising Bale for a good performance).
Meanwhile I did like The Rules of Attraction immensely despite being very different from the novel. It at least affected me in almost the same way as I react to Ellis novels once I really get into them and sucked into this bleak world until the bitter end.
phraseturner
06-18-05, 02:17 AM
I disagree with the slams of the film version of LTZ. This is one of my favorite films from that era. Although I enjoyed the book, its structure doesn't lend itself to being filmed. I think you could open the book to any random page, read to the end, then start at the beginning and read to where you originally began, and the experience would be the same as reading from cover to cover. There's no real beginnning, middle or end to the book. People come and go, mentioned and disappear, a random, shiftlessness, and blurring of events, parties, sexual encounters, and with no real through line or arc to hang a screenplay on.
As for cleaning up the character Clay: I think audiences want to have some character that they can identify with, who can lead them through the story. To make every character completely unredeeming just disengages the audience. I saw this film over winter break from my freshman year at college in L.A., and remember thinking even then that a story like this would only play in smalltown America if there was an "outsider" character that the audience could identify with. Clay gets some distance form the partying HS crowd with his trip east to school, and comes back seeing his HS friends with different eyes.
I guess I saw this film at a particular time in my life that resonated with me in some way. A guy from rural TN attending college in L.A.--quite an eye-opener. I suppose if I didn't have that L.A. experience, I might not have believed that people behaved and lived that way. But my college experience exposed me to quite a few people similar to those in LTZ, unfortunately.
Robert Downey, Jr., next to CHAPLIN, did his best work in this film, and Jamie Gertz & Andrew McCarthy had more weight to their performances than just about any other work I've seem from them. And Spader? Is there anyone else so slimy?
Oh, and The Bangles cover of Hazy Shade of Winter.... as much as I admire the original Simon & Garfunkel version, the remake is terrific. And Roy Orbison's contribution played over the end credits ain't bad, either.
As with many things of the late '80's, this film may be more style than substance, but I remember it more clearly than almost any other film of that time in my life (Say Anything is lodged in my mind for all time, too.)
I need to re-read the book and see if my opinion of it has changed. But I honestly don't see how it could have been filmed in a way that faithfully retained it structure...
Buy: