Two things:
Houston is having a couple of days of winter. It’s snowing/sleeting and we can’t go very far due to the icy roads. The kids are home from school and so is the husband. But don’t worry, it will be 62° on Thursday.
The other thing: “Hazy Shade of Winter” is a superfantastic cover by the Bangles on the Less Than Zero soundtrack. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
We’re going to back all the way back to around 1988. I was 14, watching TV with my parents and a movie called Less Than Zero (with my pretend boyfriend Andrew McCartney) was coming on HBO. We got to maybe the second scene, which had nudity, and my parents kicked me out of the room. That movie stuck with me for years because I was determined to see if it was good or bad or bad-bad. Then, in my senior year of high school, I found the book Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis and boom goes the dynamite.
Bret Easton Ellis wrote Less Than Zero and American Psycho, both brilliant novels. The former is what grabbed me and I’ve read all of his novels since. I tend to think the two I’ve mentioned are his best. He borrowed to title Less Than Zero from the Elvis Costello song and pretty much threw in every 80s teen/college thing you can imagine. And a few things you can’t imagine. The book was much more graphic and at least one scene was pretty disturbing than the film. The novel was rich in every way — you could see the scenes jump off the pages and the characters were real. You knew these people. Except for the coke. Ok, maybe some of you knew people on coke.
Clay, Blair, Julian, and Rip are the main characters. You should watch the movie for Robert Downey, Jr.’s performance alone. He plays a Clay’s best friend and Downey was taking drugs at the time. It was 1987 — you probably remember his drug addiction.
Anyway, Andrew McCarthy said of the film that there probably wasn’t a sentence from the book in the film. I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe a couple of sentences, but that’s all. I read somewhere that there was a first draft of the script that was much more faithful to the novel, but to be more faithful, I don’t believe it would have received an R rating. But it’s a decent movie. The soundtrack is pretty good too. Besides “Hazy Shade of Winter,” there’s “Going Back to Cali” and “She’s Lost You” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. I had the soundtrack before I saw the movie (of course).
Reading the novel also has something interesting: characters and settings reappear through his body of work. Characters are usually mentioned or a brother will show up or they will attend the same college. It’s fun. Fun in very dark comedic novels. Warning: don’t go in thinking any of Ellis’ novels are a laugh riot, but you will laugh. There are bright spots.
So, let’s listen to a bright spot in winter.
kerryfaler.blog 