Less Than Zero vs American Psycho

one was made into a pretty good movie, so that one.

This came to my mind today, which I found unbearably edgy as a child
http://i68.tinypic.com/11r6ste.jpg

In my mind the other one's good too, I'll keep it that way by not rescreening I guess xp

(Oh I do mean the film adaptations btw)

I watched it awhile ago, sometime in the last decade. Tonally it's a mess, and the RDJ character's homosexual escapades are handled in a strange way. Is he just hustling gay guys cuz that's how out of it/addicted he is? Or is he in the closet/ashamed? Are the other characters sympathetic to this sexual confusion, or are they just judgmental/"concerned" for his wellbeing? Is Spader's character supposed to be gay? Plus everyone seems to have a lot of sex with their clothes on.

Compared to the sleek, black humor of the AP film it's really no contest. That film was made with clear intentions and is well executed, LTZ seems compromised and muddled.

I feel like w LTZ we're supposed to judge RDJ harshly for having "fallen" so far that's sucking dicks for coke money, it has this air of puritanism about it.

It reminds me of how in Traffic when Julia Styles' characters' ultimate "degradation" is to fuck a black guy, the way it's portrayed like the very nature of the act is something the audience is supposed to automatically feel revulsion at.

er not Julia Styles, Erika Christensen

less than zero was just too far ahead of its time

Cinematographer Edward Lachman remembers that originally the film was a lot "edgier" and that the studio took it away from Kanievska.[4] He also recalled a scene he shot with the music group Red Hot Chili Peppers: "The Red Hot Chili Peppers were in that film and the studio became very conservative and they said, 'Oh the band, they're sweaty and they don't have their shirts on.' They destroyed an incredible Steadicam shot, all because they had to cut around them being bare-chested".

Bright lights big city (I know, wrong author)

lol @ RHCP anecdote - studio really concerned about people keepin all their clothes on in between all the sexin and druggin

you forgot "The Rules of Attraction"

which i would rate below AP but way way above Less than Zero

God I hated that movie. Hated it, ebert style

(RoA)

I know I saw that and yet I cannot remember a single thing about it

And then there's The Informers which exists

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/American_Psycho_2.jpg

jjj OTM

Lunar Park is his best book by a longshot.

Lunar Park, The Rules of Attraction, and Glamorama are all better than <0 or AP.

LTZ has RD Jr's first good performance, but the parties look like MTV choreography instead of El Lay affairs.

AP is funnier and fleeter than the atrocious novel.

in the LTZ novel the main character has sex with a friend, recounted in that fourth-rate anomic Didion voice as if to say, His soul is so dead that he's fucking a dude.

If this poll is just about the movies then AP takes it. If it's about the books then it's a little bit more of a contest and I'm likely to vote LTZ (though I'd rank his whole catalog Glamorama, LTZ, AP, The Informers, Rules of Attraction, Lunar Park).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

glamorama!

I don't get to vote here since I never saw LTZ the movie. Rules of Attraction was a great adaptation, never bothered with the Informers movie.

If we're gonna rank the books it's probably

Glamorama
American Psycho
Rules
Lunar Park
Informers
LTZ

you forgot "The Rules of Attraction"

― a strawman stuffed with their collection of 12 cds (jjjusten), Monday, December 14, 2015 6:41 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which i would rate below AP but way way above Less than Zero

― a strawman stuffed with their collection of 12 cds (jjjusten), Monday, December 14, 2015 6:42 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm though I'll always love LtZ

I saw Rules of Attraction in the theater with a friend and the friend's mom. That was pretty mortifying.

the first and last 30 pages of Lunar Park are the best thing he's ever done

glamorama > american psycho >= rules of attraction > informers > less than zero

never read lunar park

well shucks this should have been a B.E.E. book poll. it was pre-xmas and i was thinking that LTZ was kind of an unheralded 'movie that takes place at xmas but isn't an xmas movie', and how i like LTZ (for sentimental reasons mostly) and wondering how bad AP would kick its ass in a poll of the films.

i liked ltz when i read it, for what it was at least. haven't felt the urge to read much else though i occasionally think "man, i should read lunar park."

i had no idea glamorama was considered his best work (as i gather from this thread). i remember reading some reviews when it came out and it seemed like total self-caricature/shark jump. now i want to check it out.

the bits at the beginning of LP in which he reviews his drinking and partying in mid '80s Manhattan are poignant. Three hundred pages left though.

I've never read anything after American Psycho (which is one of my favorite books) and I had no idea ppl liked Glam or Lunar Park so much either. I am going to have to read them.

xps he's often said his favorite is Glamorama. still haven't read it. we should do a BEE books poll soon. excited for whenever Tranquil Reflections comes out

i think that basically my attitude towards gimmicky fiction went from "actively searching it out" to "actively avoiding" at a certain point. "oh, you blend fiction and reality do you? good job. the character disappears and this makes me question narrative convention? do tell."

deleting vampires from the informers -- gimmick or reverse-gimmick?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Dale Peck's review of Imperial Bedrooms is pretty great BEE analysis.

I started trying to read the Dale Peck piece, but I don't have enough patience today for this kind of thing

(And I'm sure this rambling TMI style is probably intentional, but, nah. Is there an actual critique of the book in there somewhere?)

just reads like pastiche to me?

This part of the essay stood out to me, because it always seemed weird to me to hear people talk about Ellis's characters in any traditional sense rather than just the author's voice:

To say that an Ellis novel is an indictment of the modern world is pretty much beside the point: the modern world is its own indictment, and doesn't need any help from novelists to communicate its moral, historical, and psychological vacuity. No, an Ellis novel is an indictment of the notion that literature can do anything about that situation. It's an indictment of us, in other words -- of readers and writers and reviewers and editors and all the other people sustaining fiction's greatest fiction: that fiction matters. Most critics of fame-obsessed money culture, or money-obsessed fame culture, or however you want to parse it'Kathy Griffin and Jon Stewart and the various bloggers and whatnot'are a party to the entity they make fun of. Their humor functions as a relief valve so we can continue tolerating the intolerable even as we strive to become a part of it, or at least reap its benefits. But Ellis's books are singular in their ability to make us feel genuinely uncomfortable. If you're not frustrated by an Ellis book, if you don't feel it's too long, too self-conscious, too complicit, and, often, too stupid for words -- if you actually enjoy reading it, I mean, from start to finish, and spend hours surfing wikipedia looking to see which characters recur in which novels, and think it's worthwhile to debate whether Patrick Bateman is really a murderer or just a modern Walter Mitty, then, far from being sympathetic to Ellis's point of view, you're actually part of the problem he's describing: just one more person using a consumer product (in this case, art) to distract yourself from the fact that the world is hopelessly and irretrievably lost, and there's nothing we can do about it except watch.

(And I'm sure this rambling TMI style is probably intentional, but, nah. Is there an actual critique of the book in there somewhere?)

no