The Rules of Attraction (film)

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The Rules of Attraction
The Rules of Attraction film poster
Directed by	Roger Avary
Produced by	Greg Shapiro
Written by	Bret Easton Ellis (novel) Roger Avary
Starring	James Van Der Beek Shannyn Sossamon Jessica Biel Kate Bosworth Kip Pardue Ian Somerhalder Clifton Collins Jr. Michael Ralph Thomas Ian Nicholas Russell Sams Faye Dunaway Swoosie Kurtz Eric Stoltz Fred Savage
Music by	tomandandy
Distributed by	Lions Gate Films
Release date(s)	11 October, 2002
Running time	110 mins (US Running Time) 102 mins (Uncut International Version)
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$4,000,000 USD
IMDb profile

The Rules of Attraction (2002) is a dark satire based on the novel The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis. It was directed by Roger Avary and stars James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Biel, and Kip Pardue.

1 Plot
2 Characters
3 Trivia
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film takes place at the fictional Camden College, a liberal arts school somewhere in New England (the film was actually shot at the University of Redlands in California).

The opening sequence introduces the three main characters - Lauren (Sossamon), Paul (Somerhalder), and Sean (Van Der Beek), in turn. They are three college students at an "End of the World" party, and although they don't interact at the party, they share a certain apathy about the situations they end up in. Lauren, previously a virgin, is raped, Paul is gay bashed, and Sean recalls (in the third person), "he couldn't remember the last time he had sex sober". After the introduction of each character, time moves backwards until we meet the next character. Essentially we observe the party from three different points of view.

The story then jumps back in time, and for the remainder of the film we follow the lives of the characters and learn how they came to know each other. Throughout the film, the characters (Sean in particular) exude somewhat of an indifference toward the people and events around them. For example, despite being set at a college, not one of the characters is ever shown attending a class. Sean Bateman is the younger brother of the character Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, although this is only obliquely referenced in the film.

[edit] Characters

Sean Bateman - A drug dealer who decides he is in love with Lauren. He eventually sleeps with her roommate, Lara (Biel), although he doesn't feel that this makes him unfaithful - "I only did it with her because I'm in love with you." Unlike his contemporaries, Sean is aware that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Lauren Hynde - A virgin who is saving herself for Victor (Pardue), her ex-boyfriend, who is traveling through Europe. She develops feelings for Sean which dissipate when she discovers him in bed with her roommate.
Paul Denton - An ex-boyfriend of Lauren's who has since recognized he's bisexual. He falls in love with Sean, who eventually rejects him.
Lara Holleran - Lauren's sexually promiscuous roommate, who, after sleeping with Sean, ends up with Victor. Deliberately insults Sean by pointing out that he "fucked up" with Lauren by sleeping with her, only to receive a punch in retribution.
Victor Johnson - Lauren's promiscuous ex-boyfriend who, upon returning to school from his trip to Europe, cannot remember who she is.
Rupert - A high strung, hotheaded drug dealer in business with Sean, who owes the unstable Rupert (the result of much drug taking) a serious debt.
Mitchell Allen - A weaselly cohort who seems to idolize brutish Victor. He sponges off Sean for the drugs.

[edit] Trivia

Plushies teaser poster for The Rules of Attraction.

Sean Bateman's brother Patrick Bateman, the main character of American Psycho, appears in the Rules of Attraction novel, but not in the film. Bret Easton Ellis, the novel's author, revealed in an interview that director Roger Avary asked Christian Bale (who portrayed Patrick in the film adaptation of American Psycho) to reprise his role as Patrick Bateman. Bale turned down the offer, and Avary asked Ellis himself to portray Bateman. Ellis refused, stating that he "thought it was such a terrible and gimmicky idea", and Avary eventually shot the scenes with Casper Van Dien as Patrick. The scenes, however, despite being Avary's favorites, were ultimately cut from the final version of the film for reasons of length. A snippet of this scene can be seen in one of the "iTeasers" that Avary cut and released onto the Internet during the film's initial theatrical release.

The film was one of the first studio motion pictures to be edited using Final Cut Pro. Using a beta version of FCP 3, it proved to the film industry that successful 3:2 pulldown matchback to 24fps could be achieved with a consumer off-the-shelf product and that high-priced Avids were no longer necessary. Roger Avary, the film's director became the spokesperson for FCP, appearing in print ads worldwide. His advocacy of the product gave confidence to mainstream editors like Walter Murch that the product was ready for "prime time."

Eric Stoltz's character, Lance Lawson, is named for the former owner of Video Archives, the Manhattan Beach video rental store where director Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino both worked during the 1980s. This marked the second time that Stoltz had played a character named for Lawson, following his turn as the drug dealer "Lance" in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino also worked Lawson's name into the script for True Romance, as the name of Clarence's boss at the comic book store who paid Patricia Arquette's prostitute character Alabama to sleep with Clarence (played by Christian Slater) as a birthday gift.

Jessica Biel's line "Rusty Pipes" while snorting cocaine is identical to the one another girl speaks in the exact same situation in another adaptaion of Ellis's novels (Less Than Zero).

The film contains a number of palindromes encoded into it, from the palindromic music compositions of tomandandy, to the year of the films release, 2002, to its very structure.