Tuesday, April 3, 2012

My Favorite Scene: The Rules of Attraction

Stuck in the middle of Roger Avary’s faithful, amusing, absurd, and brilliant The Rules of Attraction is a four-minute sequence that rivals any consecutive four minutes of film released in the 2000s.

After we’ve met the narcissistic, lost Sean Bateman (younger brother of Patrick), the longing, lost Lauren, the explosive, lost Lara, and the repressed, lost Paul, we cut to a framed picture of the self-indulgent, lost Victor before cross dissolving to a plane flying through the air.

Then all hell breaks loose.

What follows is a gritty and hilariously precise montage of scenes tracking a spoiled college student as he tours Europe by himself. There’s no sound from the scenarios on the soundtrack, only Victor’s spot-on narration describing the debaucherous events we see. Music plays underneath, sound effects sparsely break through, the camera speeds up, then pauses, then plays in real time – and when the sequence is done, we realize that it’s possible to hold our breath for four full minutes.
What’s so damn cool about this scene is that we are thrown headfirst into a world we did not anticipate. We’ve heard about the character Victor (mostly from Lauren, who is obsessed with him), but we’ve never actually met him. The first time we see his face is in this groundbreaking sequence.

And I use the word groundbreaking very deliberately, because what Avary and Kip Pardue, the actor playing Victor, did to pull this scene off is just as amusing as the scene itself.

After principle photography wrapped, Avary, Pardue and producer Paul Oakenfold headed to Europe for two weeks while Avary shot 70 hours of Pardue in character getting into all sorts of shit. Women were screwed, drugs were consumed, violence was threatened – what we see on the screen was, in effect, exactly what happened. Oakenfold (who later won an Oscar for producing The Hurt Locker) had people sign waivers as best he could, but mostly, what was captured was unprecedented footage of an actor so in character that virtually every rule was broken. Hell, the rules weren’t even considered.
And while we watch Victor roam from London to Paris to Amsterdam to Dublin to wherever the hell, the scene is fueled by a catchy tomandandy song, and propelled by Victor’s laborious monologue, most of which is taken word-for-word from Bret Easton Ellis’ source novel.

(Favorite soundbites include, but are not limited to: “The wife turns out to be a freak. The guy starts to wig out on me. It's like a Polanski film...” “Ended up in Rome, which is big and hot and dirty. It was just like L.A., but with ruins.” “The next day, I drop some acid and get lost in the subway for a full day and can't find my way out.” And, arguably my favorite written line of contemporary literature: “I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger.”)

There’s an amusing anecdote around Hollywood that Avary cut an extended edition of Victor’s journey into a 90-minute film called Glitterati. However, because the film is said to contain real sex, real drug use and very little waiver-signing, Avary just shows it to his closest friends. I’d kill to see Glitterati in full, but I have a feeling it’d lose steam rather quickly. If it managed to keep the same pace as this Rules of Attraction scene, then I might just pass out, because really, who can hold their breath for 90 minutes?


Read Ellis’ thoughts on Glitterati here. (Jump to directly after the picture of a half naked Pardue.)


Previous installments of My Favorite Scene include:

14 comments:

  1. I'm with you 100%. Love this scene and have defended this film to many a detractor on the basis of how great these few minutes are alone. Good call!

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  2. @Wilde.Dash Thanks! And me too - I've definitely spent many a conversation attempting to convince people how good (and accurate to the material) this film is. There's a reason it's Ellis' favorite movie adaptation of his work.

    Thanks for stopping by!

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  3. That's my second favorite scene in an otherwise mediocre film.

    My favorite scene involved a guy named Dick in any scene he's in including being an asshole in front of Faye Dunaway and Swoozie Kurtz.

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  4. We fully agree on this. I love that entire movie, but the Europe montage is definitely the highlight. And I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who would kill for a chance to see Glitterati...

    Great write-up!

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  5. Great choice of scene... I love the style of this film, the reversing footage, the split screen, this montage! It's pretty strong stuff but a lot of fun considering the characters are such a bunch of assholes!

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  6. @thevoid99 DRUNK! I'm... drunk!

    That dude is hilarious.

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  7. @Emil Thanks! I love finding other people who dig this flick so much. Glitterati... what a wild ride that'd be. Thanks for stopping by!

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  8. @Pete And assholes are they ever. Love it. I too dig the film's caffeinated style, I particularly love when the pool balls are racked in reverse, and when we cut to real time, the balls break the exact second they would've in reverse. Hard to explain in print, but it's a little detail that let's you know that the filmmakers are perfectly aware of what they're doing.

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  9. That is incredible scene and definetly the most memorable part of the film, though I liked the movie very much. I'm still struggling to finish the novel, so I can't say how it is as an adaptation but I thought it was funny, quirky and very well acted film.

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  10. @Sati. Nice! Glad you like the scene and the flick as a whole. You know, Ellis is the only author I've ever re-read. Ever. His books are magical to me. He's said multiple times that the Rules of Attraction film is by far his favorite adaption of his own work, so that's gotta count for something. Let me know what you think of it!

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  11. Yes its a breathtaking scene. I've always felt that travel is the closest way us "Civilians" can get to capturing what the Celebrity life is like in terms of attention and fastpaced, jetsetting lifestyle.

    A Glitterati following the debaucherous exploits of a celebrity would be captivating viewing - Reality TV 3.0

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    1. Nice, glad to hear you dig the scene. "Reality TV 3.0"... that's awesome. Thanks for reading!

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  12. I loved this movie. I had no idea the shit that happened was real. That's very intense.

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    1. Ha yeah, isn't that wild? Had him stay in character for days and they just... did it. Crazy shit indeed.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

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