I Wish I Was An Eighties Teenager

So, a day later after my "1,920 calories!" freakout I discover that in my food-deprived state I mistook kJ for kcal and got it all wrong. The blog before this one is just an example of my capacity to end the world over nothing. This below is going to be a rant about specific novels and their recent movie adaptations, a stark deviation from my usual emo rants about my life being so terrible, WAH, WAH, WAH.

Finishing The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, I realise I have never had my heart broken and lifted and broken again quite so many times in one day, all in one novel. I suppose this is probably due to seeing myself in the lead, Art Bechstein, to some extent. And to the other character, Arthur Lecomte. It irritates me wholeheartedly that now, the Hollywood adaptation by Rawson Marshall Thurber of Dodgeball fame complete excises Arthur from the film, compresses his character traits into a supporting character who is brought into the foreground and entirely adds a new love interest, as if to create an excuse to cast the much-overused Sienna Miller. In taking the Cleveland character and making him a bisexual biker kid instead of the devil-may-care straight guy, they destroy the film's message about sexless friendship. In removing Arthur, they make EVERYthing that happens in the novel entirely implausible and impossible. In removing the words of the author for those of the arrogant screenwriter, you alienate the fans of the book. Naturally, what would be (as with the adaptation of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys), movie gold has been transformed into a dreck forgettable film that from release day onwards cries out for a remake. I will see it, to watch the train wreck.

Also this month in America, is the movie adaptation of The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis. Due to a combination of backwards American social mores, and (ironically, given Ellis' undeserved controversies) institutionalised Hollywood misogyny, the film we are given is now one about Amber Heard's breasts and soulless debauchery. Thanks to producer mishandling, the film has strayed far from the original premise of the adaptation, while remaining somehow quite similar to the source material. After taking away the director who worked on the script and satirical vision for three years - who had something more like The Rules of Attraction, presumably intended - and replacing him with an Australian director known for boring movies, who has never seen 1980s Los Angeles, they have destroyed this movie beyond recognition. Both movies, while fundamentally very opposed (Ellis' nihilism vs. Chabon's sentimentality), have similarities: pretty American youths fucking around and experimenting in 1980s, and the mutual miscasting of the admittedly delectable Jon Foster. Nevertheless, an Ellis adaptation remains a must-see for me.

I am spurred to read more Michael Chabon by the powerful book, which much like The Informers, has inspired me to no end. Although, I can't imagine the inspirations gained from these two distinct readings as capably coexisting within one attempt at a novel.