First Look: The Canyons (Official Trailer)

Yeah, we've been talking about The Canyons for awhile now. It finally comes out August 2nd and here is the official trailer:

Bret Easton Ellis: Famed Novelist, Screenwriter, And Nasty Tweeter

Ever since I heard The Canyons was going to be made, I have been out of my skin excited. The idea is pure Bret Easton Ellis, the casting is both genius and ironic, and now it seems the filmmakers are creating a meta-awareness of making a movie about Hollywood. Originally billed to be a dark drama, this current trailer goes the way of a pulp story.

I first read American Psycho in 1998 when I was still in college, and it blew my mind. I was a women's studies major, so I was conflicted with my obsession over this novel. One of the most violent, misogynist, graphic novels ever suddenly made me fall in love with literature. The author, Bret Easton Ellis, became a literary sensation at age twenty-one with the nihilist, depressing Less Than Zero, which established him as the author with the monopoly on writing about the empty, self-loathing of the incredibly wealthy and good-looking. I quickly devoured his four other novels, chastising myself that it took so long for me to discover my literary god.

However, after his 1998 novel Glamorama, there was a stretch of seven years before his next novel, Lunar Park, was published. The late nineties was still at the beginning of the internet, so not much was known about Ellis, and I always wondered how such a person could have such a sick, twisted, but brilliant mind. I mean, if you couldn't find anyone on the internet, they may as well been a recluse.

Fast forward fifteen years and the rise of Twitter, which Ellis seemed to latch onto and has never looked back. His tweets are equal parts bitchy, honest, controversial, intellectual, and sardonic. For a while, he was incessantly tweeting about his desire to adapt the most famous mommy-porn book in the world, Fifty Shades Of Grey, and shared his stream of consciousness and most recently, expressed his annoyance at the selection of writer Kelly Marcel to adapt the screenplay:

The Canyons is Already My Favorite Movie Of All Time

Sometimes I feel like films are made to satisfy the mindless drones of America, who will ingest anything based on a child's toy or breakfast cereal. Once in awhile, a film is produced that seems to be custom made for me. And that film is The Canyons.

Firstly, it is written by Bret Easton Ellis, the '80s Wunderkind who introduced the world to making literature out of the lives of emotionally empty, morally corrupt, disgustingly rich youth with the novels Less Than Zero and American Psycho. Ellis's work is not for the weak of soul or the weak of stomach, but it is brilliant and oft imitated, although not successfully. His later novels have not garnered the same critical success, but Ellis has taken his gift of the word to Twitter, where he shares many of his unpopular opinions and blunt critique of today's culture. He's like a bitchy version of This American Life.

Many have tried to adapt Ellis's novels into films, but it is a nearly impossible feat. (Rules Of Attraction was the most accurate adaptation but completely underrated and misunderstood.) For The Canyons, Ellis is writing the screenplay; this is his first. Instead of going the route of a major studio, he and director Paul Schrader have jumped on the Kickstarter bandwagon to raise funds. According to the Kickstarter, the film "documents five twenty-something's quest for power, love, sex and success in 2012 Hollywood." Sounds like the perfect job for Bret Easton Ellis.

And in one of the most exciting Hollywood casting announcements, he tweeted that Linsday Lohan and James Deen have been cast as two of the leads. To me, this was like Christmas, Hannukah, my birthday, and Labor Day all in one for me.

First of all, I have made it my life's work to defend Lindsay Lohan. I am about two DUIs away from making a YouTube video where I scream "Leave Lindsay alone!" Seriously, don't people realize that she has such a troubled life because the public keeps crapping all over her? She can't win. If she puts herself in rehab, there's scorn. Her every move is criticized, not to mention that her horrible excuses of human beings, her parents, have been exploiting her fame and using her as a pawn in their own pursuits. I know Lindsay has talent; we all loved Mean Girls. She just needs the right role, the right part, and she'll have an indie comeback bigger than Travolta in Pulp Fiction. This role is perfect for her. She's LIVED it. And Ellis wrote the role with her in mind. This is it, guys. You're about to take back all the Lindsay hate.