The Informers (Gregor Jordan, 2009)

[DrewReiber]

Interesting cast, I just hope it lives up to the better adaptations.

First one-sheet.

[kaujot]

I'm an enormous Bret Easton Ellis fan, so any further adaptations of his work are welcome.

Though, I'm not familiar with Gregor Jordan at all.

And of course, where's Roger Avary's adaptation of Glamorama? I know he owns the rights (according to Ellis, forever and ever).

[DrewReiber]

And of course, where's Roger Avary's adaptation of Glamorama? I know he owns the rights (according to Ellis, forever and ever).

Rules of Attraction was a bomb and Avary hasn't had a directing career ever since. He produced a feature called Glitteratti from the improvised material he shot with Kip Pardue while in Europe, but he's unwilling to show the movie outside of private screenings. My wild guess would be that he probably doesn't have the rights to show the people Pardue met while in character.

Meanwhile, writing video game movies seems to be working out for Avary and I thought Silent Hill was one of the better, recent horror films. He just announced that he'll be writing and directing the feature film version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein for the his long-time collaborating producer, Samuel Hadida (check him out, he's interesting to say the least).

My guess is he'll do what he can to rebuild his credibility through his screenwriting collaborations with Neil Gaiman and his writing/directing work in genre. Maybe if The Informers is successful and he gets Wolfenstein off the ground (strike is messing with it), then he can move quickly into Glamorama. Let's hope.

[kaujot]

And of course, where's Roger Avary's adaptation of Glamorama? I know he owns the rights (according to Ellis, forever and ever).

Rules of Attraction was a bomb and Avary hasn't had a directing career ever since.

I've always been bummed at how badly The Rules of Attraction did in the theaters. It's one of the better novel/film adaptations.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Trailer

[John Cope]

The movie finally has its premiere at Sundance. The Times brings us up to date.

Too bad about the vampire thing.

[conspirator12]

I just can't see this movie being interesting at all without vampires.

[Antoine Doinel]

Here's the NSFW red-band trailer.

[Cold Bishop]

While that snobbish icy detachment works well for Eliis's characters in the film, the vocal delivery on the trailer's voice-over is completely amateur hour.

[kaujot]

I agree about the delivery. Hopefully he was just tired that day. I didn't get any awful vibes from any of the dialog in the trailer itself, however.

[John Cope]

Wow. Word out of Sundance is brutal. Still, not entirely unexpected. I'm infinitely more troubled by the tonal change between that latest trailer (pretty blah-inspiring) and the much more kinetic, unsettling and astringent original, now, apparently, removed.

As to the vampire thing, maybe somebody thought it would play too much like mid-period Gregg Araki (which wouldn't have been a bad thing in my book).

[kaujot]

Seems to me that he hates Ellis' writing style more than anything, which is not surprising at all.

[Ruby]

I'm a recovering Ellis addict but I don't think his work has been well adapted on film- so far anyway.

The simplicity of his diction works so effectively because he largely deals with environments that we are familiar with from TV/Film representations: spoiled LA rich kids, the US college campus, high-finance, and the hotel rooms of jaded rock stars. This is what makes his work so attractive to film producers and no doubt the Informers is primed to tap into the new vampire market.

However, the filmmakers fail to find a form that achieves what Ellis's literary form does. American Psycho was good on the hedonism and insecure vanity but fell apart on the delusions. The interiority of the first-person narrative just didn't make it on screen to the end.
Rules of Attraction would probably have been better if it departed from the novel more - no one I know that hadn't read the book liked this film - or tried to recreate the different perspectives more faithfully - VO being a lazy largely ineffective way to achieve the latter. As for Less Than Zero... well, Downey Jr. is always watchable.

I can't stand literary types decrying filmmakers for 'ruining' books BUT filmmakers have a responsibility to think about what they are adapting and how they can deal with the shift in form. Most adaptations simply translate the story-plot onto the screen and ignore formal issues completely.

[Antoine Doinel]

New trailer.

[John Cope]

For the first time in a long time a typically elegantly written Ebert review that seems to really nail it (or at least what it should be). I don't know for sure; I'm going to try and finally catch this one tonight.

[Tom Hagen]

I don't know for sure; I'm going to try and finally catch this one tonight.

Hopefully I am not too late, but THIS MOVIE IS A DEBACLE. Watch at your own peril.

[kaujot]

Can't wait.

[John Cope]

First of all, Tom, you'll be pleased to know that I used a pass when I went to see this so I ended up only paying a dollar. Having said that I will admit to more mixed feelings than general disdain. I ended up appreciating and admiring what I think Jordan or somebody was trying to do here even when it ultimately absolutely does not come off.

I was actually with the picture for the first twenty minutes or so and felt like I was on its wavelength. Certainly it's a different way to approach Ellis but that is not inherently a bad idea, at least not to me. Still, the steady, careful tone at the start began to waver and oscillate pretty noticeably and pretty quickly in I'm afraid. I have no idea where the blame for that must rest but I'll affix it to Jordan as, whether it's an editing problem or something else, it does finally land at his doorstep (unless of course the whole picture has been mercilessly fucked with by the producers which is possible but the tonal inconsistencies and imbalance seem much more organic and ingrained than that; if anything any attempts to "fix" those kind of problem often only results in exacerbating and emphasizing them).

What Jordan certainly gets right is the 80's atmosphere; it's exaggerated of course but the scenes don't read as just blown up caricature lampooning a stereotype but rather something based in truth but elevated from the immediately recognizable. Given my own pre-dispositions it's no surprise that I responded favorably to the opening sequence, for instance, which nails perfectly a very particular sort of lived role playing which is fascinating stuff for the very reason that it is not purely play acting. It is lived and, though the environment is period, it accurately mirrors a deterministic sensibility that never vanishes but merely fluctuates, subject as much to what we may see as positive influences as negative ones.

Beyond that capably handled stuff (and there is much of it) Jordan seems to be aspiring to an approach which, no, does not ultimately work but does register as admirably ambitious. Rather than simply giving us the amped up hysterics we are familiar with from the more "successful" Ellis adaptations or what is presumed to be the ill conceived melodramatic reimaginings of Less Than Zero, he chooses instead to attempt a more thoroughly integrated and balanced perspective, a kind of clinical remove, isolating the schizophrenic comedy and drama within a broader context of distanced observation. This does tend to undercut the aforementioned successful bits however. And the film as a whole is not integrated and therefore not coherent. Its greatest fault lies in its inability to manage this precarious balance; what results is an often severe tedium, though some individual scenes are strong on their own. The real problem seems to be that the point of the project is self defeating and as an experiment it simply doesn't yield profitable results. At best you get the impression of a TV movie made by the people it is documenting; one which takes the inherent melodrama very seriously but cannot or does not recognize any of the absurdity, humor or larger implications of the world it is representing. This is, to me at least, a fascinating idea, but it falls flat here.

I actually like the melodrama though and see it just as legitimate and viable as the effective but superior tone of removed satire prevalent in, say, American Psycho which always seemed as potentially problematic to me. After all, Ellis is a moralist anyway and in more ways than are first obvious a conservative and a traditionalist (he may not recognize the extent of his debt here himself). This marks his own authorial voice and attitude and the melodramatic tendencies and sympathies observable here and in LTZ are buried consequences of this; buried because they go mainly unevoked and unexplored in terms of potential in the books themselves. That these two films should desire in some sense to bring that angle out more does not trouble me at all because it feels like the natural result of Ellis' project and endemic to his art regardless of whether he chose to directly confront it (the fact that I'm sympathetic to it helps). The pall of loss, whether individual or social or cultural, hangs over his prose, implying a potentiality squandered or dismissed. A genuine sorrow is not inappropriate, though Ellis clearly would refrain in his text from directing us out of his usually first person nihilist rambles. A recognition of context and what to do with it are left to us.

Nonetheless, The Informers does not work as a whole because Jordan can't commit to the approach he wants to invest in and is unable to balance a panoply of alternatives. He's just not good enough to do what I think he's trying to do here and it's too bad. Still, any chance to hear New Gold Dream blasting through good stereo speakers is a rare treat so I thank him for that.

Did you get a chance to see it yet, kaujot?

[kaujot]

Not yet. I haven't seen it available at any local theaters (though I haven't checked in a while). It should come to Austin, but every now and then we miss out.