Ellis Rant

I read about Glamorama being turned into a script by Bret Easton Ellis himself. Here are my opinions about it and about his movies in general. I get ranty especially in the summer...

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• bret easton ellis
• glamorama
• the informers
• less than zero
• the rules of attraction
• lunar park
• imperial bedrooms
• american psycho

[star999nine]

as for IMPERIAL BEDROOMS being too short of a book to be adapted into film, tons of novellas and short stories have been made into exceptional films (e.g. SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, MINORITY REPORT). the problem with adapting an ellis novel into film (esp. his earlier works) is that one of the major themes of his books is "emptiness." although there r films that have attempted to portray this, i feel it will always be a failure on the screen (e.g. LOST IN TRANSLATION).

[angiezilla1980]

@star999nine Also I don't think that Lost in Translation and Ellis novel are on the same page at all. I don't know why you mention that. His books are very relevant to anytime, they capture a good feeling that people feel and can relate to, and they are brilliantly written. His word is brilliant. His novels need to be looked at as a whole world. The movies don't tell the story right. They create feeling that characters don't actually have and they create situations that don't apply.

[angiezilla1980]

@star999nine (continued) That don't apply to the characters. The movies are fine on their own, mostly, but the don't at all fit in with what the novels are supposed to be.

[star999nine]

the reason the film LESS THAN ZERO appeared to be a horrible adaptation is because the novel is a non-novel. it's just a collection of numbingly homogeneous diary entries that luckily happened to capture the zeitgeist of that period. even ellis admitted that the "novel" was meant to be an inside joke, and was surprised by its publication (due primarily to the surprise success of another bad book, BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY). outside of AMERICAN PSYCHO, ellis is not a particularly good writer.

[angiezilla1980]

@star999nine Cunt. And I can say that because this is my video and I love him.

[star999nine]

@angiezilla1980 @angiezilla1980 it's clear u adore ellis, but please try ur best to be as objective as possible. ur claim that ellis's novels r relevant to any historical period is profoundly absurd. his novels r highly cultural and therefore dated. he doesn't deal with the human condition, but rather specific vices, which he caricaturizes. i enjoyed AMERICAN PSYCHO, but overall ellis is not a profound writer. granted i only read 4 of his novels, but i feel this is enough for a fair assessment.

[angiezilla1980]

@star999nine I am just going to say that Victor wasn't necessarily dumb...

[star999nine]

@GoReds10FuckOff no i wasn't incorrect because, again, i wasn't talking about conception. i was responding to someone claiming that zoolander was copied from ellis's novel. i was stating that it was NOT copied as zoolander was on VH1 prior to the novel being published. unless ben stiller somehow got a hold of the manuscript years before its publication, there's no controversy, only coincidence.

[GoReds10FuckOff]

@star999nine I'm saying I don't know and your facts are incorrect regarding which character was first conceived. It's not just the fact that he's a dumb model. He's a dumb model who becomes a pawn in an international terror plot run by supermodels. That's pretty coincidental I'd say.

[star999nine]

@GoReds10FuckOff so ur saying ben stiller ripped off ellis while the book was being written?! when most people speak of one thing preceding another, they're referring to the concrete form, not the conceptual form. zoolander was seen on tv a couple years before GLAMORAMA was published. it doesn't matter if ellis started "conceiving" the novel before then. plus, since when is the idea of dumb model new? and what striking similarities r there between the novel and zoolander other than this element?

[GoReds10FuckOff]

@star999nine The character Victor Ward was created far before Zoolander was conceptualized. It took Bret Easton Ellis 8 years to write Glamorama.