MovieChat Forums > The Informers (2009) Discussion > Worst Ellis Adaptation Ever?

Worst Ellis Adaptation Ever?

posted 15 years ago by firstwinsgop
23 replies | jump to latest

Boy, did this director really butcher this story. For those that never read the book, let me give you a little background in how this hack ruined what could have been a pretty cool film.

-In the novel, the death of "Bruce" (he's called Jamie in the novel) occurs off sceen. Tim, Graham, Raymond, and Dirk (the jerk whose dialogue is taken by Martin in the film scene) are having dinner on the one year anniversary of his death. Dirk responds to Raymond's observation that it "has been exactly one year" by pretending not to know what he's talking about and badgering Raymond in to leaving the table in tears. Making it one year later works because it is recent enough that Dirk's pretense to not knowing is clearly untrue, but long enough that it isn't completely farcical. When he says "it was a long time ago" it's wickedly funny. Moving things up to a week ago makes his comment completely absurd. The dialogue Ellis wrote for that scene is probably the best of the entire novel. It should have been followed nearly word for word. Instead, they took maybe 10% of it and added a bunch of crap that turned that scene in to a joke.

-In the novel, Cheryl is a hot babe in her 20's. Ryder was way too old to play the part and changes the entire dynamic of that storyline.

-In the novel, Renfro's character isn't a patehtic, overweight loser. He's a jaded, nihilistic loser. And he brutally (and quite clumsily) murders the little boy in the end.

-There is no stupid AIDS storyline. Significant that Ellis was smart enough to avoid such a hackneyed and ridiculous storyline even though he wrote this novel at a time when AIDS paranoia was such that it wouldn't even have seemed as ridiculous as it comes across in the film. The girl dying on the beach at the end of the novel has terminal cancer. It isn't Christie, and her boyfriend isn't Graham.

-Last, and most importantly, THE NOVEL HAS VAMPIRES!!!! Bruce (Jaime in the novel) returns towards the end of the novel. Excluding his character killed the film because he is by far the funniest character from the novel. He's constantly cracking corny Ethiopian jokes that the women he picks up never get. His personality type is a cocky, playful, self confident, Vampire version of Patrick Bateman. He has a hilarious scene in the novel between him and his psychiatrist. He's also friends with Dirk (the guy from the first scene whose dialogue is taken by Martin in the film) who is also a Vampire, which ties up some lose ends from the earlier dinner scene.

[–] Suburbanenemy52 15 years ago

You bring up some good arguments but regardless it's still one of my favorite Ellis adaptations. I don't care that Renfro died. He was really annoying and his performance was below the others. Although the aids story line is kinda silly I felt it needed to be in there because the beach scene at the end is important. And yeah the Vampires should have been in there.

[–] youvegotyale 15 years ago

Yeah, I was disappointed by this one. American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction were much better adaptations.

[–] i_khan89 15 years ago

Brad Renfro was the best actor in this movie, i really thought it would be simillar to american psycho..i was wrong..the shallowness of grahams friends were kinda same to AM..but i guess its just the eighties!

why so serious?

[–] firstwinsgop 15 years ago

I don't really see what the 80's have to do with anything. As Ellis himself has pointed out, the 90's were probably even more decadent and self absorbed than the 80's. The characters in Less Than Zero and American Psycho (80's books) are no different than the characters in his 1990's masterpiece, Glamorama.

[–] smithmr 15 years ago

here here! Glamorama needs to be made into a movie by an actual genius and not put together like it means nothing like the Informers was.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] th1a90 15 years ago

I agree that Less than Zero was the worst adaptation. the book is essentially what this movie was (the informers) but the movie Less than Zero ends up being an anti-drug ad of sorts. Downey Jr. was great in it tho, but I couldn't get over how they movie makes Clay seem like a self-righteous saint.

[–] smithmr 15 years ago

I agree. I hate what they did with Less Than Zero and hope to God someone can remake it one day. I feel like they got the mood down for the movie version of The Informers they just took too much of the humor and ambiguous connective tissue (and the vampires to boot!) out so it ended feeling a little flat, but it was not godawful like LTZ was.

[–] firstwinsgop 15 years ago

the book is essentially what this movie was (the informers)

Really???!!! No Vampires! No Dirk! Little kid gets saved instead of brutally murdered. Christie gets sick because she's too promiscuous (a disturbingly similar moralistic addition similar to the anti-drug nonsense of the Less than Zero adaptation). The only aspect of the film which was remotely faithful to the original source was the Price trip to Hawaii, and that ended up being ruined by Isaak's dreadful acting.

[–] th1a90 15 years ago

sorry for the ambiguity. what i meant was that this movie, the informers, was essentially, less than zero, the book.

[–] bowery_boy 15 years ago

firstwinsgop, you make good points.

Ellis co-wrote the screenplay and made some of the minor changes you mentioned to create a greater connection between the characters.

However, I would use the term "novel" very loosely when referring to the book. It isn't a novel per se but rather a collection of disjointed short stories (some better than others) that imo don't really come together as a whole. This seems to be the common complaint from most who have seen the movie so in that regard, they got it right.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm hard pressed to believe this adaptation will be worse than the Less Than Zero adaptation.

[–] smithmr 15 years ago

and you would be right bowery boy. this adaptation is no where near as crappy and horrendous as the film version of Less Than Zero (please someone remake this movie before I die.) the changes made by BEE did not bother me, it was the way the movie was organized and everything that was taken out that bothers me. The book created a strange ambiguous mood (imo) that connected from story to story, even if the characters, settings, and events did not always connect in the book. The film tried too hard at times to connect everything together and at times it did not try at all - which makes it amount to almost nothing b/c it never comes together in the end. It had many great sequences and some good acting (some not so good too) and it is always awesome to see BEE's world appear on the big screen, but it just cold have been so much better.

I would rank the films based on BEE books as:
1. American Psycho
2. Rules of Attraction
3. The Informers
4. Less than Zero

[–] michael-kovacs 15 years ago

American Psycho, while a good movie and does visit some of the themes in the book, is not a good representaion of the book.

[–] smithmr 15 years ago

I agree with you there, I would probably correct my ranking to say that I liked American Psycho better as a film, but I thought Roger Avary did a better job adapting Rules of Attraction which really did feel closest to representing the world of BEE onscreen. The Informers suffered from not having any sense of humor (which is one of BEE's greatest strengths, that dark humor can be found in the most depressing moments) and from being poorly organized. But it is 100x better than Less Than Zero could ever hope to be.

[–] megArnold 14 years ago

It's not a good representation of the book, but it's a good film adaptation of the book.

[–] fridaynight-1 15 years ago

I'm not Ellis's fan, but it's the best adaptation so far. IMHO.
American Psycho is simply boring, The Rules of Attraction is better but still not my cup of tea.

[–] andcirclegetsthesquare 15 years ago

Less Than Zero was the worst. I've never seen a movie adaptation that missed the tone of a book so much.

[–] gangstahippie 14 years ago

Nah it's not the worst adaptation. Less Than Zero was because of the fact that the only similarities between the book and movie were the character names and the fact that Julian was a drug addict.

[–] james-1448 14 years ago

American Psycho was the best translation Ellis to film. I felt they got the gist of the book and translated even some of the more complex thematic material quite well. The soundtrack, the cast, the dialogue, all seemed pretty faithful to the novel. LTZ was a horrible translation of the book, but I think it still stands on its own as a film somehow, probably because the awesome cast and cool visuals. I was actually impressed with TROA, and thought it was a good job considering obtuseness of the novel. The Informers is probably the worst.

Last Movies seen:

INLAND EMPIRE:9.55/10
Shooter:6.73/10
The Good Shepherd:7.89/10

[–] Moogle80 14 years ago

Although American Psycho is entertaining, I don't think it's a very good adaptation of the book. The film seems really shallow in comparison to the book and the thing I hated the most was, probably, how Jean was wasted as a character. I thought the focus was too much on the gruesome acts Bateman commits, while those acts only take up, what, 10% or 12% of the entire book. There's more to Bateman than just being an 'American Psyhco'.

Didn't like this Informers adaptation at all, what a way to muck things up, thought TROA was well done and enjoyed LTZ because of Spader and Downey Jr, not because it was a great adaptation. Andrew McCarthy has said he's in if they want to do Imperial Bedrooms... don't think they should though..

[–] RomeoInDespair 12 years ago

That honor goes to LTZ which I think is also a easy contender for worst adaptaion of all time.

[–] jonnnk 12 years ago

Wow, I thought Less than Zero was all right.. That's only because I haven't read the book. Now I'm going to have to read it.
The rules of attraction just beats American Psycho in the movie world for me, I thought the Informers was pretty bad..

[–] RomeoInDespair 12 years ago

Yeah the books basicaly about the emptiness of L.A. life that bret felt growing up there.The film instead decided to turn it into a message against drug abuse