Harry Reviews Roger Avary's happy college flick script called THE RULES OF ATTRACTION

I hate these puffy happy teenage college age twenty-something "Freddy Lillard" type vacuous pieces of nonsense that just drone on for 92 minutes like a non-snooze alarm clock during a hangover.

And apparently so does Roger Avary.

The dear Mr Avary has constructed a screenplay based on a novel that he plans to use to destroy those sugary fat free rice cakes of cinema.

The movie?

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, a screenplay by Avary as based upon the novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, author of AMERICAN PSYCHO.

Now I know, I’m on record as hating the living hell out of AMERICAN PSYCHO. Now I’ve always admitted that I was quite charmed by the first 15 or so minutes of that movie. It was a lot like chocolate. Sweet tasty… pleasurable to the senses… but I was strapped like Wahlberg to my chair as the bastard film continued to just pour the damn chocolate down my throat. It began over-flowing out of my mouth… I began gagging. I don’t hate the Patrick Bateman character… he’s great… but he is like chocolate. He needs to be taken in tiny bites… a little at a time. No need to be a glutton. And if Christian Bale doesn't do the cameo in this, he freakin sucks... cuz it is delicious.

In Avary’s screenplay, that is exactly the case. Patrick Bateman is a taste… a dinner mint… a side dish to go to when the main course is running a bit dry.

RULES OF ATTRACTION is the script for the movie that will blow AMERICAN PSYCHO completely away. It is every bit as twisted and wrong and subversively cool, but it also is great material for a movie that will be about a helluvalot more than one character’s self delusional masturbation.

Roger’s script plays with cinema conventions… making flourishes to masterfully toy with things like Non-Linear storytelling. One device that he uses consistently throughout the script… I won’t tell, simply because the concept of someone stealing it before this gets made is scary to me. It’s so good that it deserves to be delivered by the guy that wrote and conceived it as a device.

BUT… it is very much in the tradition of the type of visual John Hancock’s that folks like Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Quentin Tarantino and Brian DePalma play with all the time.

The script focuses on the stories of three characters in college.

One, a self-centered younger brother of Patrick Bateman that runs drugs to his fellow super-rich IVY league prep-monsters… his name is Sean.

Two, a frustrated gay college student with a terrible habit of falling in love with straight frat-boy type assholes with California Hunky Good Looks… his name is Paul.

Three, a fantastic female who is all about anal and oral, but who’s personal fear of venereal disease and the utter romance involved in losing her virginity drives her to pursue wanted and desired loves… her name is Lauren.

In the opening 22 pages of the script we are introduced to these characters through an AMAZING opening 22 pages. I mean flat out I freaking lost it. The way Lauren loses her virginity is one of the most humiliatingly pathetic moments that cinema will ever be able to conceive of.

The script takes everything we have ever hated about the College Film Genre and just gut-twisted it into a perverse sick Robert Williams work of art.

I mean, you ever wanted to see a sex scene between one girl on coke and one guy on shrooms… where they physically embody the characteristics of those chemicals? Neither had I, but as described… Christ… it’s just got to get on screen.

I called up Roger Avary yesterday when I read in Variety about the death of DESTINATION FILMS (the most hideous film company in the history of hideous film companies), whom he had a… ahem… pleasant time developing a film with some time ago (it never came to pass)

Roger and I danced on its grave a bit, then I popped the question he was dreading.

"So Rog… Whatcha working on?"

Instant whining and back-pedaling about how he’s working on something that I’m going to hate and hang him by the rafters for doing… that he shouldn’t tell me, that I’ll crucify him for it…. That he’s too tender for that, and so on… meanwhile I hear his mail sent sound, and my mail receive sound go off nearly at the same time.

Creepy I thought, so as I talked to him, I notice that he’s sent me a PDF file of his latest script called THE RULES OF ATTRACTION.

I ask what it is… there’s a bit of surprise in his voice, and he says… "Oh it’s my teenage college flick"

UH HUH

Dear God… I want to see this film. Apparently he’s got it set up with LION’S GATE, who produced and distributed AMERICAN PSYCHO, and he’s currently finishing up the deals with foreign investors in order to shoot this thing pre-strike. It looks like it’s going to happen… if only the paperwork happens fast enough.

You see folks, this is the sort of hassle that Strikes cause filmmakers on good projects. They work their asses off to get something good going for themselves… then suddenly some bastard strike thing comes along to possibly destroy the energy and forward momentum that they’ve built up.

His plan is to use actors that we’ve seen in all those college films we generally hate, but using them in a film that completely skull fucks the genre.

My only prayer is that he’s able to get Quentin Tarantino to play a character that is so freakin perfect for Quentin that it is not even funny. It is exactly perfect for Quentin, and Quentin doesn’t get parts that are perfect for him… Hopefully bygones can be gone… cuz Quentin would play the hell out of this character. (for you Quentin haters… FUCK OFF)

If you know the novel, you know quite a bit about the film… if you haven’t read the novel… go get it, it’ll excite you for the film. He’s as graphic as the book and in addition visually inventive (at least as described)

This is a project I’m gonna cover like a comforter.