I had a split reaction. It didn't leave me floating or enraptured, but I sure as hell felt respect and sometimes awe for the way Avary put it together (particularly for a drop-dead brilliant, four-minute, bacchanalian tour-of-Europe sequence that stars Kip Pardue's Victor character, which Avary is now expanding into a feature-length flick called GLITTERATI ... more on this later). And I was especially taken with James Van Der Beek's DAWSON-shredding performance as an amiable borderline psychopath named Sean Bateman, who happens to be the younger brother of AMERICAN PSYCHO's Patrick Bateman and is a chip off the old block, minus the knives and chain saws.

He's still cute, girls ... only this time he's a GQ Beelzebub with his eyes glazed over (at times aping the demonic mad-dog expression Vincent D'onofrio used in that final scene in FULL METAL JACKET) and his mouth sometimes hanging open and drooling in lustful abandon, and seemingly wearing an expression that begs for a quick death by sledgehammer so he can be relieved of his misery.

The whole thing takes place in and around Camden College, which is supposed to be somewhere back east. It was actually shot near the Redlands area, about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles. Ellis's book is set in the mid '80s; Avary's film happens in the here-and-now.

The other main characters are Lauren Hynde (the Hawaiian-looking Shannyn Sossamon), whom Bateman has the hots for; Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder), a gay guy who goes around hitting on straight guys (doesn't he have gaydar ... or doesn't it work until you're older?) and has a particular thing for Bateman; and Victor Johnson (Kip Pardue), a ladies-man type whom Lauren has a liking for.

BLUE CRUSH's Kate Bosworth has a brief little scene, and there's also Eric Stoltz, Clifton Collins, Jr., Faye Dunaway, Swoozie Kurtz and the great Joel Michaely, who should be given a role one of these days that allows him to say more than five or six lines in succession.

RULES is very closely based on Bret Easton Ellis's 1987 novel of the same name, which I bought and read last weekend. If you know anything about Ellis or have seen AMERICAN PSYCHO or LESS THAN ZERO, you'd be correct in assuming that RULES is another piece of plotless social satire about privileged '80s kids toking, snorting and fucking themselves into oblivion as the more self-conscious critique themselves in a mirror with merciless sartorial precision.

For the various college-age characters in THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, it's all about who they're fucking and where the party is and how high they feel like getting. It's about a kind of madness -- a kind of pernicious spiritual vacancy that Ellis witnessed and avidly participated in during his college days in the early '80s, and then reconfigured. It's a generational portrait from hell -- a dispatch from the land of the spiritually lost or gutted.

Throughout the film, the running dialogue in the head of Bateman/Van Der Beek is something along the lines of, "I'm young and distracted and studly and fucked in the heart. I have no longings, no dreams, no creative designs. Gimme a beer. That girl over there looks hot ... maybe I can stick my half-aroused animal member inside one of her orifices and feel better for a few minutes. Should I leave this party before it totally dies? Sniff ! .... whoa. Gee, now I'm getting soft. Well, there's a remedy for that ... There she is over there, standing by the pool table. Should I take her out to the garage and do her now, or...?"

I almost said the whole movie is on this level, but it isn't ... not quite.

The heart of it belongs to a girl called "Cafeteria Girl," who's played by first-timer Theresa Wayman. It turns out she's got a crush on Bateman and all through the film has been leaving him a series of teasingly written love letters on purple note paper, and these letters are the only element in the film that arouse something close to humanity in Bateman -- they open him up to the notion that there actually may be something besides sex or drug-taking that's worth pursuing.

What you're supposed to do with THE RULES OF ATTRACTION is see it, and then wake up the next morning and say to yourself, "I never want to even remotely resemble this guy, or for that matter any of the other characters in this thing ... please!"

During an interview at his Manhattan Beach home last Monday morning, Avary allowed that he basically sees himself as a social critic or satirist, which we all know isn't as much about entertaining as it is teaching. (Although the best satires, of course, do both at the same time.) He said at one point that "sometimes it's good to teach by example, and sometimes it's good to teach by just showing."

This is pretty much what Paul Schrader does in AUTO FOCUS, I said in response, and Avary said, "Exactly."

Avary told me Ellis has seen RULES and really likes it. I believe this because the film pretty much works the way Ellis's novel works -- it lays the material on the table in all its precise ugliness and blasé dispassion (except for the parts dealing with Wayman's character) and lets the audience sort it out later.

"My impulses as a writer stem from being a satirist, and they stem from looking around and seeing what disgusts me in culture and creating a novel out of that, or creating a character out of that," Ellis told an interviewer during a promotional tour for his last book, GLAMORAMA (which Avary says he'll also be making into a movie, although not necessarily right away).

"I don't mean to glorify anything, and I'm definitely not celebrating the yuppie lifestyle or the lives of serial killers," Ellis continued. "It's so ... thunderingly obvious. I know I'm talking to the wrong person about this, but when I see the spate of reviews that GLAMORAMA has gotten, I wonder if I'm not saying it loud enough.

"The other thing is that, first of all, you don't listen to anybody any more these days," Ellis said. "You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future. You're really alone in your apartment, composing this novel, because you are interested in it. You haven't taken a poll, saying, 'Would you like this to happen, or that to happen? Do you think in the third part of the book I should stress my authorial voice and make it quite clear that I disagree with terrorists blowing down buildings, and soft-pedal the violence a little bit?'"

In short, Ellis declared, "You don't market-research a novel -- you really are writing it for yourself. It's a hobby, in many ways. The problem becomes what you do when you're confronted by criticism like that. You just don't listen to it."

Avary seems a lot like this - a guy who worked for months last spring and summer on his movie in his home, huddled away with his assistant and a lot of great computer equipment (RULES was edited on a Mac with Final Cut Pro), and essentially, it seems to me, made RULES OF ATTRACTION for himself alone, with a hope, of course, that others (many others, preferably) will get it when it opens.

What he's not doing is pandering or trying to seduce or reach out in any conventional, pop-a-Quaalude, Lorenzo di Bonaventura way. And he's not going in the smirky, self-regarding direction of his former video-store comrade and writing partner, Quentin Tarantino, either. He's following his own muse without equivocation, and with a good measure of relish and excitement (it's catching when you're with the guy ... it's like being in a playpen), and I can't help but admire this, as well as enjoy it from a certain journalistic distance.

La Dolce Victor

Roger Avary's GLITTERATI is a kind of dramatic documentary about a European debauch enjoyed last September and October by RULES OF ATTRACTION costar Kip Pardue. Or rather, technically speaking, by Pardue's character, Victor Johnson, since Pardue stayed more or less in character during filming.

The footage was initially intended to be used for a brief episode in RULES. It became that and, for my money, is easily the single coolest portion.

Now, however, Avary has decided to expand the 70 hours of footage he captured of Pardue running around Europe and getting down with various women into a feature-length docudrama. Avary is about halfway into the editing, and is hoping to put the finished product into theatres before it goes to DVD sometime next year. I was shown two or three clips and found them ... well, a lot more than fascinating.

Avary followed the 26-year-old actor around in all these cities with two video cameras -- the larger and more professional-level Sony DP 150 and a smaller Sony PC 9.

Every woman Pardue met and hooked up with signed a release obtained by producer Greg Shapiro with an understanding the footage being shot was for inclusion in a feature film. And according to Avary, they all went for it hook, line and sinker, even to the point of making out with Pardue and, to some extent (I'm not sure how explicit the footage will be in the end), having sex with him on camera.

There's a great moment, for example, inside a car in Paris when a dishy Romanian model is talking with her New York City boyfriend on her cell phone, with Pardue sitting next to her and stroking her hair. The boyfriend is apparently feeling jealous and anxiety-ridden about the 9.11 tragedy (which had happened only recently when this sequence was taped), and wants her to join him as soon as she can. She tells him not to be so intense and possessive, that she's feeling "a little suffocated," but assures him he has nothing to worry about, fidelity-wise.

"She was just totally lying," says Avary. "She gave Kip a blowjob right after this."

I didn't see enough footage to be able to tell if Avary pays as much attention to the European scenery and tourist sights as he did the women, but the thing captures the way Europe can look and smell and sound to a touring, hang-it-all youth who's constantly distracted or on the move.

The look of GLITTERATI on Avary's Macintosh flat-panel screen was awesome as well. The video footage seemed to have the texture of film, except for those odd moments when sunlight would hit somebody's face and that portion of the image would briefly white-out. The footage seemed more textured than what video usually delivers, and yet like something other than film --it's some kind of hybrid. If only digital video could look this good on a big screen (pixellation is always visible when you blow things up), the whole video-to-film thing would be a much more tantalizing option.

Beware of Greeks

I finally saw MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING Monday night. I was pretty certain it wouldn't be to my particular liking, as I made clear in last Friday's piece, but the thing has made so much money over the past five months, I figured there had to be something special about it. But it's not that great and is actually amateurish, with a trite, third-rate script and some truly awful acting. If I had been a buyer and seen it early on, I would have definitely recommended a pass.

Does it make it anyway on a current of family emotion? It does, I suppose, if you find a total lack of refinement among cousins and in-laws to be a wonderful, effervescent thing, and a celebration of primitive tribal emotions to be a heartfelt tonic.

What's happened, I think, is that a lot of people are recognizing how similar the coarse behavior in this film is to shenanigans they've personally observed among their own family members, and that's understandable. But if people in your family are this primitive and offensive, isn't it better to repress all recollections of them and live in total denial, even to the point of taking drugs or alcohol to suppress their memory? If my father was anything like Michael Constantine I would have moved to Burma at age 15 and never come back ... but that's me.

I'm not saying this out of snobbery, and I'm not made of cardboard. I think it's great to be Greek and feel things openly and be supported by family members who love you through thick and thin, blah, blah. But all the emotional wholesomeness in the world can't remove those yellow plastic tags that have been stapled through the ears of the people who make up Nia Vardalos's on-screen family. None of them seem to have any education or worldliness, or much in the way of insight or emotional delicacy, even.

If these people are charmingly Greek, then Bill Dana's Jose Jimenez character, a crude ethnic parody that goes back some 40 or 45 years, is charmingly Mexican.

When I think of cool Greek people I'd like to hang with, I think of director Constantin Costa-Gavras (Z, MISSING) or Irene Pappas or the real-life politician who got assassinated in Z and was played by Yves Montand ... educated, cultivated X-factor types who've written a book or made a movie or something. Why are the peons in this film representing Greeks to so many millions of Americans these days, and not their more illustrious cousins? Think of Euripedes, Sophocles, Plato, Themistocles, etc., and ask ourselves, what have we come to?

The scenes between Vardalos and her boyfriend, played by John Corbett, are the best things in the film. Corbett, a perfectly likable actor with a nice smile, was my comfort zone. But then Vardalos started to get on my nerves. She uses the same expression over and over in scene after scene -- an expression that says, "Uhm ... I'm stunned. I can't believe I'm hearing what I'm hearing, or feeling what I'm feeling. And so my overly made-up eyes are glazing over again."

You know a movie is second-rate whenever soft, sensitive harp music starts playing when a character says something earnest and meaningful. It happens twice here -- when Nia's brother tells her he wants to express himself as a painter, and when her mom (Lainie Kazan) tells her to live her own life her own way, blah, blah.

Then there's the father character, played by the withered Michael Constantine. (His IMDB biography says he's 75 but he looks older -- he played a character named "Big John" in Robert Rossen's THE HUSTLER, which was released in '61, and clearly seemed at least 40 years old at the time.) He has a bit in which he constantly sprays Windex on any and all wounds or irritations. It's repeated about eight or nine times, at least, and isn't funny to begin with. But the combination of Constantine's character -- a boorish borderline idiot -- and his habit style of crooning his lines instead of saying them proves even more fatal.

What were Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson thinking? Why didn't they develop this thing?

I don't want to beat a dead horse, so I'm going to let New York screenwriter Dan Cohen take it from here:

"What attracted me to [seeing this film] was the prospect of discovering salient, and hopefully humorous, facts about Greek culture," he wrote in an e-mail that arrived Monday. "Instead the film reveals that Greeks perpetuate xenophobic stereotypes, gorge themselves at mealtimes, and grow up with overprotective siblings -- non-specific details that apply to dozens of ethnic groups.

"Vardalos' script is simplistic, unsatisfying and derivative. We witness John Corbett fall for the Ugly Duckling but we never understand why his character would be willing to endure such humiliation to marry her. His unconditional love functions as a plot device and nothing more. Maybe I'm a more discerning critic than the average moviegoer, but I found the film flawed and unfunny.

"However, I know four Ph.D.s over the age of 55 who laughed throughout the film. Were their expectations lower? Possibly. But clearly some segment of the audience is connecting with or otherwise responding to this hackneyed tale. It's a mystery to me."

Too Much Ouzo

"If you go into MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING with the attitude that's it's an overhyped, cliche-ridden family outing movie, you'll dislike it as you wish. If you watch with the eye for what it is, a tiny little indie limited-release love story involving Greek ethnicity that miraculously grew, something I've never seen before, then it's a pleasant warm comedy. And my friend with Greek in-laws said it was the funniest thing he's seen in several months." -- John English, Provo, Utah

"GREEK WEDDING is definitely the type of movie that reflects cynicism of the reviewer. I grew up in Connecticut with the Italian culture and found none of the movie any different from the realities of my childhood memory. This movie obviously is the type that strikes people on a personal level. So the reviews seem to reflect this which I find interesting in and of itself." -- Hank Goud reault

"I usually hate this type of film, but I enjoyed GREEK WEDDING quite a bit. Maybe this is because I married a Greek and the stereotypes the movie brings out were eerily similar to our experiences. I know a very broad spectrum of people who have seen it, from all ages (e.g. 20's to 70's), and they all seem to love it. For some reason people really seem to enjoy talking about this movie, more than any other movie.

"David Edelstein at Slate magazine hit it right on the head regarding its appeal -- it's really a communal experience, like movies should be, where you can revisit favorite lines/scenes with others who've seen it. When my wife and I went to Greece last month we did just that with her cousins who live in Athens, so it actually has played in parts of Europe. They also found the movie hysterical, but then Greeks have their own beliefs about Greek-Americans.

"It's always odd to see someone pan a movie they haven't seen, like you did last week, but at least you're upfront about your biases." -- Jon Korfmacher , Chicago

"I'm a guy in my early 30s and I loved MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. I didn't want to see it at first, but I saw the girl from the movie (can't remember her name) on several talk shows, and she just seemed so funny and loveable, and she seemed so genuinely excited about this movie, that I decided to see it. I thought it was hilarious, I suppose I can see the point about some of it being sitcomish, but in a good way I think, like a really exceptional episode of Friends (or whatever sitcom you happen to like). I've seen it twice now, and laughed almost as hard on the second viewing." -- Morris Crisp

"I'm guessing that most of the money coming into IFC Films from MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING has already disappeared. Since it's had a long run in numerous indie theaters, the sliding scale of box-office take has tipped onto theaters owners favor. And after all the numerous indie films that have been box-office dogs, the owners need something that pays the rent."

"Why is MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING a hit? It's about happy people. The people around here who have seen and enjoyed the film speak about how much fun it was to experience the film. They felt like guests at a goofy wedding. It's like those dinner theaters that have 'Tony and Tina's Wedding.'" -- Joe Corey

Proud Endurance

"I've read the book of THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD and seen the movie, and the former was definitely the superior work. The performances in the film were all flat except Margot Kidder's -- she was good. But the director failed to make it suspenseful and eerie. I liked the book version a lot so maybe that's why I was disappointed but doubt it. I think in the right hands this could be a fairly good film." -- Slobodan Milosevic

"I remember seeing PETER PROUD on television -- terrible. I think the ending was what made it so bad. I somewhat liked the atmosphere of the film, but the end was predictible and somewhat illogical, whatever your views on reincarnation may be." -- Chris Eason

"PETER PROUD is a terrible film. I've seen it twice, once in the theaters and once when it came out on laserdisc. The problem starts with the title -- Peter Proud is the name of the hero, not the person being reincarnated. Essentially, he starts having dreams about a murder that occurred shortly before he was born, but the conclusion contains no surprise and the whole movie is flacid, except for the nude scenes of Margot Kidder and Corniela Sharpe, and Jerry Goldsmith's let's-wake-people-up-here musical score." -- Doug Pratt

Role Playing

I forgot to provide a cast last Friday. Here's one for today:

Peter Boyle, Jack Warden, Peter Gallagher, Bill Pullman, Glynis Johns, Jason Bernard, Michael Rispoli and a certain relentlessly perky actress in the lead role.

What's That Line?

Halya Slobodniuk of Australia was first to identify Friday's dialogue. It's from AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999), directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. The dialogue was spoken by Kevin Spacey, in the course of playing Lester Burnham.

A Naval officer is recalling his early days in the U.S. military service.

"I was always a little embarrassed by my job as a [job description] and I wanted to do something redeeming. Have you noticed noticed that war is the only chance that men get to do something redeeming? That's why war is so attractive.

"At any rate, I enlisted in the Marines as a private. I even applied for combat service. My wife, by all appearances a perfectly sensible woman, encouraged me in this perfectly idiotic decision. Seven months later, I found myself invading the Solomon Islands. There I was, splashing away in the shoals of Guadalcanal - and it suddenly occurred to me, a man could get killed doing this kind of thing. Fact is, most of the men splashing along with me were screaming in agony and dying like flies.

"Those were brave men dying, which was all the more striking that in peacetime they were normal decent cowards -- frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified of the passing of the years. But war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men -- now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish -- now they were generous. War isn't hell at all. It's man at his best. The highest morality he's capable of."