Less Than Zero (Film vs Book)

Less Than Zero is Brett Easton Ellis' debut novel. It features his trademark stream of conciousness style writing and his music, fashion and pop culture references. The film is a bit of a clumsy mess. The book is bleak in tone with the main character, Clay being the outsider looking in; feeling slowly alienated from his friends and the party scene.

The film came out in 1987. It is very much a product of the time. During the time there was a lot of anti-drugs campaigning, some would class it as propaganda. Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign was prevalent at the time, which lead to many TV special episodes including a now laughable attempt by Disney and Warner Bros. The film seems to almost cash-in on this trend and seems archaic as a result. Clay is an anti-drugs campaigner in the film and tries to save his heroin addicted friend, Robert Downey Jr. (Julian). Some method acting in the casting there. In the book, the character Clay was much more complex and harder to define; I think he did  the whole "drugs thing", but was never really into it. The ending involves Clay witnessing his drug-dealer "friend", Rip showing off his latest acquisition: a 12-year-old sex slave. The final scene is omitted from the film and instead shows his friend, Julian dying of a drug overdose in his car. Clay viewing a snuff film at a party is also missing from the film. The scenes mentioned might be missing from the film due to censorship reasons. Nobody was sure if snuff films were real or not and it was a debate which was still raging into the 90s and while the snuff film being missing from the scene is non-contentious; the sex slave scene was a pivotal moment in the book. It tested Clay's moral compass and was left fairly ambiguous. It also showed that Clay was drifting further apart from his friends and maybe didn't want to be a part of their lives any more.

The film is a period piece and it definitely captured the downtrodden glamour and excess of the 80s well. The casting is good with all characters looking the part. Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor, but in this film he gave a B-, maybe even a C performance and was a bit clichéd. Andrew McCarthy as lead character Clay is just right. Jami Gertz as Blair, looks the part, but was a bit hammy in places. The soundtrack is also largely shit and for some reason Clay's Elvis Costello poster (a key point of the novel) is replaced with an obvious Jim Morrison one (yawn) and a Hüsker Dü one (why?).

To be honest it isn't a bad film, just a fairly average one. As mentioned before the politics of the film date it terribly and with a better script and a director willing to take a risk by showing some of the more controversial aspects it could have been a superb film. In the 21st century, Less Than Zero is rarely seen, talked about or shown on TV, at least in the UK. There was rumours of a remake with Quentin Tarrantino as director and Roger Avery scripting; I would love to see it materialise.

More TVs than a drag queen convention