Rules of Attraction

[Rudie Obias]

bad movie!!!  die!!

[snaporaz]

tubgirl?! sickkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

Actually, the poster is kinda hot.  If I had a digital camera, I'd take a snap of it.  Sadly, I do not.

haha. not to be too vulgar or anything, but i think he was talking about tubgirl. the tubgirl.


EDITED FOR VULGARITY BY ADMIN:

http://www.thugs.biz/tubgirl.jpg

[kotte]

What the fuck!

Just link to it, asshole.

[snaporaz]

prudes!

[MacGuffin]

Roger Avary is probably one of the most popular cult filmmakers in America. After winning an Oscar for co-writing Pulp Fiction, Avary made the cult film Killing Zoe and a TV pilot called Mr. Stitch; many people were wondering if he was just a flash in the pan. That is until he exploded the neutron bomb known as The Rules of Attraction on the world. Starring a myriad of WB network stars including James Van Der Beek, Avary finally captured the true essence of Bret Easton Ellis' novel.

Roger is a major cult personality in outsider culture and stays in close contact with his fans due to his constantly updated website.

Daniel Robert Epstein: How did you first discover Suicide Girls?

Roger Avary: Wired magazine a while back did a thing on the site and a couple of other similar sites. I immediately checked it out and was delighted at the discovery.

DRE: So it wasn't just searching for porn on the net?

RA: No I was definitely searching for porn on the net. Searching for interesting and artful porn. I'm very heavily into the combination of arthouse films and exploitation films and finding a connection between the two. That naturally extends into my normal life and I completely appreciate gestalt of taking exploitation and making it artful.

DRE: Well I found it because I was searching for naked Goth girls.

RA: [laughs] Naked Goth girls. If only I had the wherewithal I would have saved myself a year.

DRE: So you see them as artful?

RA: I've had this vampire movie I've long wanted to do. Part of it is because I love Goth culture. I'm not Goth at all. I couldn't fit it with that culture if I wanted. But I love the subculture. Its fantastic and Goth girls are smoking hot. What's not to like? As far as style goes its both artful, romantic, a little dangerous, interesting, maybe a little nasty and theatrical. It's the theatrical part that gets me and I happen to be more attracted to those girls.

DRE: The kinds of art you've been involved with definitely put you outside the mainstream.

RA: A little left off center definitely. I wander around in the mainstream mostly because of Pulp Fiction. I do all sorts of stuff.

DRE: But originally Pulp Fiction wasn't even mainstream.

RA: It sort of became that way. When we did it, it was this $8 million movie and we did because we thought it was cool. All the early indicators were that no one was going to care.

DRE: At that time John Travolta didn't make anyone care.

RA: Quite literally. It was like John Travolta's new movie, eh. It became as a surprise.

DRE: So you must like being on the fringe. When one goes to adapt a Bret Easton Ellis novel it definitely is a choice.

RA: Well when I adapted this novel [Rules of Attraction] in particular I didn't own the rights to it. I had read the book in college and it was so true to my experiences and observations that I knew I had to make it. I went to a small liberal arts college in northern California which is sort of the west coast equivalent to Bennington which Bret Easton Ellis went and the place that the college in Rules is based on. So I'm reading the book and I look up and a character from the book walks by. I knew I had to make this one day. 13 years went by and it suddenly struck me how to do it because the book has an intensely complicated structure. It feels like it has no form although it has a very tight form. It's told from 15 or 20 first person narratives all streams of consciousness. You have little chapters each told from another person's personal narrative. The things they are reflecting on are often in conflict with other people's remembrances are. It's a little like a Rashomon story. Bret Easton Ellis tends to write in a kind of code. It took me years of thinking to figure out how to translate it and convert his fantastic literary devices into appropriate cinematic devices and remain true stylistically.

My problem with the other two films based on his books [American Psycho & Less Than Zero] is that they stripped away his literary devices and his themes are integrated into them. So if you strip them away and you have very little left. I just wanted to keep that intact so that you have the Bret Easton Ellis when watching the movie. It was just a matter of coming up with cinematic devices which complimented what he was doing.

DRE: The Goth culture has certainly embraced your work. How does that feel?

RA: I did this TV pilot years ago called Mr. Stitch which was something of a disaster [laughs]. It was a difficult production; it got cut pretty badly and in general had a bad history. It was sort of a sore spot for me. I have an online presence with my website and I started getting all this email from mostly people in Goth culture who were totally in love with the movie and the character. There was this Swedish Goth girl in particular who did a tribute page to the film. Goth culture completely embraced the ideals and the look behind the film. As well as, oddly enough, transvestite and transsexual culture. I have more transsexual fans I think because of that TV pilot than your average filmmaker. I thought that was kind of weird.

DRE: So you now realize that anything you do no matter how much you don't like it will always be embraced by a certain part of the audience. Once you have a cult following you do no wrong in some people's eyes.

RA: Maybe it's just my sensibilities of how, mostly when and where I grew up, I grew up in the very sexually ambiguous 80's, though I am intensely heterosexual, married and have two kids; the 80's fashions, haircuts and everything were sexually ambiguous. It was all about this mockery of uniformity which I completely embraced in my youth. The ideals and attraction to those things of what is now known as Goth culture has stayed with me and finds itself into my work. I try very desperately to make normal movies.

DRE: No you don't.

RA: [laughs] I do. I try very hard but I can't. This is just what I do. I just have a way of thinking that is a little more attuned to the left of center.

DRE: Rules of Attraction just recently hit DVD.

RA: I know and I can't seem to find it anywhere because it's been sold out. I'm told by the studio that it's done so well.

DRE: I felt there was so much for anticipation for the movie when it was coming out and then it hit theaters and it opened so badly.

RA: There were several mistakes made in the release. They are so easy to see in hindsight.

DRE: Well I live in New York City so maybe the promotion looks more wide to me.

RA: We totally did well in the big cities where we were selling out constantly. Lion's Gate put it out on 1400 screens. A movie like this to go out wide on the scale of Van Wilder or something like that is kind of crazy. Every other movie of this tone like One Hour Photo or Punch Drunk Love had small platform releases to build audiences. It was a fantastic experiment to take this weird movie throwing it out there and selling it largely as American Pie. In the Midwest, kids would go into the theatre and leave crying. It was bringing the party down. You can imagine the people that would wander into the theatre because they want to see Road Trip and they end up with a treatise on nihilism and the luxurious debauchery of the ruling class. That's not what people thought they were getting. That kind of worked against us to say the least. Though Lion's Gate heroically stood behind the movie there really wasn't enough money to go wide like that with the advertising budget they had. Having said that the movie generated such interest that the movie comes out on DVD and a lot of people have heard of it. Its notorious in some ways. It could be argued that the movie industry is now a DVD industry and theatrical releases are just designed to push DVDs. It's been like gangbusters.

It's great because I designed the DVD. On the new DVD we got [college favorite] Carrot Top to do a commentary track. I know that sounds like a major disappointment to most of my Goth fans. To me it's the ultimate way to understand what people were thinking in the Midwest when they wandered into this movie. I don't know Carrot Top at all. I'm not even a fan of Carrot Top.

DRE: Did you see Chairman of the Board?

RA: Oddly enough I have it because Lion's Gate sent it to me.

Carrot Top had never seen Rules of Attraction or even knew anything about it. I just put him down in front of it and recorded his stream of consciousness as he watched it. Its one of the most hilarious things I've ever heard because he thinks he's going to see Road Trip or at most American Psycho. He sits down, watches it and to watch the way his thought patterns work to me was the greatest gift of all time. It will be the ultimate dorm room companion. It completely defuses any pretension I may have as a filmmaker. There's nothing anyone can say to me about this movie that Carrot Top hasn't perfectly matched. If you take your work too seriously then you're setting yourself for disappointment.

DRE: With the cast it seemed like you watched a lot of the WB network and then cast them against type. It seems too obvious that you would do something like that.

RA: I met with James Van Der Beek. He had done a Todd Solondz film and Todd clearly saw what I saw in him. I had the initial reaction anyone would have ìYou think we should put Dawson in this movie.î I haven't watched a single episode of Dawson's Creek. I met with James and he took off his sunglasses. I look in his eyes and I see the capacity for cold dark emptiness. He's got shark eyes. It's completely contrary enigmatic puppy dog charisma that he has on the outside. That is exactly the kind of juxtaposition of qualities I needed for the Sean Bateman character. I needed somebody who had this mask on the outside but was vacuous on the inside. There's plenty of young actors in Hollywood who could have played that dark gloomy evil Sean Bateman. I had been meeting with all of them. They all think they're Marlon Brando or James Dean. When I met with James I realized that he was the one. It crystallized that since I was already assassinating the teen film genre because there is nothing in this film you haven't seen before in another teen film but its just how you see it. Since I was doing that it just made sense to use the actors and tools of teen cinema against itself.

DRE: Do you think James Van Der Beek has a big head physically?

RA: Yes he has a physically big head. I have a relatively large head as well. Its not to his proportion. I think he has the most interesting head. Its so fascinating, interesting looking, not normal and unusual. It's so beautiful to frame with a spherical lens because I was designing the movie with many close-ups. When I got really close to James and framed it from the middle of his forehead to just the bottom of his chin the proportions within the frame were perfect. He was so cool looking and he's an amazing actor. People forget that he started on Broadway doing Edward Albee when he was 17 and then he got Dawson's Creek. It's a testament to how good he was on Broadway.

DRE: He and I went to the same high school and I had seen him in many plays.

RA: Really how was in the high school plays?

DRE: Good, I wouldn't say they were best plays.

RA: The guy is tireless. He was a joy to work with and he's got an amazing stamina and control. I could work all day and night. He was doing Dawson's while doing the movie and would fly back and forth. He would sleep on the plane.

What he has that other young actors don't have is 200 to 220 days a year in front of the camera. Most people don't have that luxury. He knows how to do everything you need him to do. They just don't seem to do anything too daring.

DRE: I've talked with the other actors from Dawson's Creek and they don't seem to like the show very much.

RA: Well you never love that which makes you great. Its like the way everyone wants to do something other than which brings them great success. I think that's silliness. I've had this talk with James who like anybody would show a little frustrating when the show wouldn't reach for something different. But that's not the nature of TV. People tune into TV to see something familiar and comfortable.

DRE: I think my favorite sequence in Rules was the trip to Europe.

RA: That was a wild experience. What I did was that I told Kip Pardue that I don't want to go to Europe with Kip I want to go with [his character of] Victor. From the moment we got on the plane to the moment we land you're Victor. I just followed him with a video camera and he just did his thing. We would go to a Ford model party and I'd follow him in. One time the guy from Simply Red looked at me and said ìFucking Paparazziî. I shot Kip's conversation with this model from every angle and she called me the ultimate tourist. At that point I would stop, introduce myself and show her some footage from the movie since we had finished shooting. Then Greg Shapiro [the producer] who was following me would step in and get them to sign release forms. Invariably at the end of the night I'd be at the foot of the bed shooting Kip stripping the clothes off this model. I shot about 70 hours of footage. It was an extraordinary experience. Kip and I actually do an audio commentary on that sequence.

DRE: Just when you think its going to end it keeps going. Thank god.

RA: I had traveled through Europe when I got out of college. I remember I did this whirlwind trip where you're in a city for a couple of days then you move on. I kept a journal and when I wrote the screenplay I was looking at Victor's journal in the book and it was exactly like my journal not in the things he did but in the tone. I do this, I do that, I fuck her, I climb the Eiffel tour, I buy this. It was all done with this mundane tone no matter if I was describing my sexual conquests or if I was describing how much eggs cost. It was al the exact same tone. I wanted to capture that. You kind of become disconnected from your life. I figured the only way to recapture it was to do it. I'm actually cutting it now into its own feature.

DRE: The movie is obviously confusing at times. How did you keep on track during shooting?

RA: Just intense planning. I had 8 months before shooting to plan everything. Naturally everything changed. Four days before we shot the end of the world party we got our location and it was all different so I had to completely rechoreograph the entire sequence. It was intensely difficult. It was how people relate to each other while everything is rewinding backwards and forwards. While shooting other scenes I had to refigure from scratch the entire opening of the movie.

DRE: Is it true you cut it on Final Cut Pro [a nonlinear editing system that can be used at home]?

RA: Absolutely. I wanted to prove that it could be done. To prove that any kid in the Midwest with enough money to buy a Macintosh and the software essentially has the same tool set I had to make this movie. The proof of concept being is when they start releasing 24p camera with 2K resolution or more then you are going to see a real revolution in cinema.

DRE: It's going to be amazing in a few years when kids get to film school when they are 18 and they've already completed five feature length films.

RA: Exactly. I think about its not too unlike what happened with the film revolution known as the French New Wave. Suddenly you had film cameras that were light and small. You could actually take them out of the studio. Then you had film stocks that were very sensitive to light so you didn't many lights. I believe another revolution is coming. People talk about The Blair Witch Project and digital video but to me it's not the same.

DRE: I think it's the Dogme movement and the digital video.

RA: I think those Dogme guys are fags.

DRE: [laughs] Well the films can be a little faggy for sure.

RA: Why would you ever take a vow of chastity of any kind? That's what they publicly say they do. ìI take my vow of chastity and refuse to create an artificial world of filmî. Iits like come on, give me a bucket.

They make restrictive films. I think it's more of a stunt they pulled. I don't see why you shouldn't put every ounce of your being into the making of a project. You should still be allowed to create a reality from scratch.

DRE: They're definitely not interested in making entertainment. It can be very masturbatory.

RA: Well its show business. I believe that movies are the most powerful mechanism for delivering your messages. It's the closest thing to dreaming in real life there is. I just don't see the point in taking any kind of vow of chastity. It's sort of like to vow to be a lover of women but not to use my penis. It's ridiculous.

DRE: The critics seemed to rip apart Rules because it was shallow. The point was to be shallow.

RA: That was American critics. I think it touched them a little too close to home. Two phenomenons that happen as you get older is people don't want their young to go through what they went through. So they go into denial about everything they did when they were young. I wanted to make this movie before that happened to me. I think it's a natural thing. Every seven years the cells in your body have completely changed you are effectively a different person. So much of what happened in this movie is real and true. I just applied a very hyperreal lens on top of them. I know what I made and what I feel in this film. It's the closest artistic success that I've ever had. I know how good it is. There is nothing a critic can say that will affect me. Usually when somebody freaks out on the film that there is something within them that they don't agree with. What they're not realizing is that I myself by making this film which is condemnation of the luxurious debauchery of the ruling class.

Lets be honest I really shot it so I could film Kate Bosworth and Jessica Biel getting fucked.

DRE: I've been looking through your website and I'm reading all sorts of stuff about you, something about a day job?

RA: I'm rewriting a screenplay for David Fincher called Lords of Dogtown which is about skateboarding in the 1970's. It's a more fictionalized version of the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys [directed by Stacey Peralta]. I do all sorts of day jobs. When I won the Academy Award for Pulp Fiction my writing rate went through the roof. I make enough money doing one writing job to afford me two years of experimentation for weird movies.

DRE: Where do you keep your Oscar?

RA: In my tool drawer. It's kind of a tool. I've had a lot of women ask me to fuck them with my Oscar. Coincidentally 10 and æ inches long, which is the exact length of Ron Jeremy.

DRE: Neil Gaiman mentioned that you wanted to do a movie of Beowulf with him.

RA: Yes we adapted Beowulf, Neil and I were trying to get that off the ground. I was also attached to the Sandman movie for a while which would be the big Goth movie. The reason I left it is because the studio wanted to make Sandman into something he isn't. He's a passive observer more than anything. He's very introspective and they wanted him throwing punches. I said fuck that I don't want legions of fans coming after me for ruining Sandman. That's my fanbase. probably because of that I got very close to Neil and we decided to work on Beowulf. We wrote it together and I'm attached to direct. It was at DreamWorks for a while but they decided not to do it. The rights then came back to us.

Neil just directed a short film from a short story he wrote. He's still in post and I can't wait to see it.

DRE: Do you read other comics?

RA: Yeah I'm a huge comic fanatic. Nothing has hit me like Sandman. I like Nocturnals by Dan Brereton. We got to be friends because of that. I would love to make Nocturnals into a movie of modern comics. Lately I've reading a lot of Italian and Spanish comic books. I can read some Spanish.

DRE: The [Alejandro] Jodorowsky books?

RA: Yeah Jodorowsky. He's always been one of the greats. His imagination is so large that it almost can't be contained within a film. For him to do comic books makes perfect sense.

DRE: He's supposedly making another movie.

RA: Yeah Marilyn Manson is a good friend of mine and he's been working with Jodorowsky.

DRE: Someone has to give him some money.

RA: That's my feeling and Marilyn's also.

DRE: You've adapted Ellis' Glamorama to a screenplay as well.

RA: Yeah whether I make it next I can't decide at the moment. I've been inside the world of Bret for a while now.

DRE: It would be unusual for a filmmaker to do two movies in a row from the same author's books.

RA: I'm trying to decide.

DRE: Would it be with Lion's Gate?

RA: They would be invited to. I don't know that they would. I had a fantastic experience with them. They squeezed my balls when it came to the budget. It was not easy to make this movie on the budget they gave me.

DRE: Was it about $5 million?

RA: It was about that, it should have cost $15 million. I managed to pull it together. It was not an easy process. What they gave me for staying on budget and on schedule was complete and total freedom. They let me do whatever I wanted to. They never visited the set and left me alone. It was magic. Everyone should be so lucky.

[SiliasRuby]

I really was disapointed in rules of attraction but I didn't think it was that terrible. but I'm looking forward to glamorama

[Cecil]

EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP! ITS A GREAT FILM!

[diggler]

i enjoy the fuck out of rules.  where else can you see fred savage play clarinet with a cigarette in his belly button?

[tpfkabi]

i thought about it yesterday when i saw the dvd in the 5.50 bin at Wal-Mart.

[socketlevel]

too flashy, not great but not horrible.  has anyone heard any recent info on the feature that avery was supposed to release of the european trip?  this was going to be the connection between glammorama and rules.  i remember he talked about it a while ago and it's listed on imdb.  mac you heard anything?

-sl-

[rustinglass]

I like this movie. it has a lot of interesting stylistic choices, I love the details avary uses to create an order of events.  It's great directing, in my opinion. plus it's very very very funny.

[Pubrick]

the video diary of the trip to europe is worth watching it for. and owning for that matter.

the commentaries were alrite too.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I really liked the ending, some of the backwards stuff ran a little long, but otherwise, I enjoyed the film.

[SiliasRuby]

I have to rewatch this and seee what is so compelling about it. Maybe I jumped the Gun when I said I was disapointed. I did like James Van Der Beek's performance though, so if I see it at Wallmart for 5.40 I'll probably get it.

[clerkguy23]

Everyone is talking about how one-dimensional the characters are, but what about Paul? I thought he had a really interesting character. And the actor that played him did it really well. then again, I enjoy this movie a lot... even with its many flaws.