The best Bret Easton Ellis movie adaptation, according to Bret Easton Ellis
To read American Psycho is to say, at one point or another, ‘how on earth did they think of adapting this into a movie?’ The prose is so vividly grotesque that you wonder whether Bret Easton Ellis has broken some kind of law. You picture the moment his friends first started to read their buddy’s latest novel, and questioned whether they should still hang around with him.
In truth, that’s the brilliance of his work. It is bold, uncompromising, and beyond the pale. But in print, there is also a sense that it is a little too literary for the confines of film. Although Mary Harron’s famed adaptation of American Psycho is certainly a great watch, it is also largely responsible for a widespread misreading of its anti-capitalist message.
Nevertheless, his work has been adapted multiple times over the years. So, what is the stern writer’s favourite? “My favourite movie out of the four was The Rules of Attraction,” he once asserted. The 2002 film of the same name was directed by Roger Avary, best known as the near-mystical co-writer of Pulp Fiction, and it starred James Van Der Beek as Sean in a rather grittier role than the Dawson’s Creek performance that launched his career.
In Ellis’ view, the film faithfully portrayed the essence of his bludgeoning book. “I thought it was the only one that captured the sensibility of the novel in a cinematic way,” he said. “I know I’m sounding like a film critic on that, but I’m talking about that in an emotional way — as the writer of the novel.”
Meanwhile, other cinematic adaptations have perhaps missed the mark. There is so much bloody surface to Eliis’ novels that it is a difficult job to convey that thrilling front and the surly subtexts at the same time. As he added, “I watched that movie and thought they got it in a way that Mary Harron didn’t and Less Than Zero didn’t.”
The book follows a strange university love triangle that offers a gripping enough narrative that a movie adaptation could well gloss over everything else and still provide an entertaining ride. However, Avary still managed to augment his stylish movie with the engrossing venture into 1980s nihilistic excesses that make the novel a masterful satire.
The portrayals perfectly capture the pampered nature of the students, which hints at how their selfishness is tied to the wider social circle that they are part of beyond the plush campus. The subdued humour might not be quite as potent in the adaptation, but it certainly hits enough of the mark for Ellis, a notoriously harsh critic, to doff his cap.
Like Ellis’ own writing, it’s sexy, sleek, and just the right side of irritating. But perhaps the highest compliment you could give it, is that it is literary. As Ellis said himself, “I think my sensibility is very literary; all my books were built as books, and I wasn’t thinking about them being movies.”
