Less Than Zero
directed by Marek Kanievska
screenplay by Harley Peyton
based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis
20th Century Fox

Tom Waits recently suggested to Musician magazine that if John Lennon knew that Michael Jackson would control The Beatles’ music, Lennon would “kick his ass—and kick it really good.” As I watched the film version of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel Less Than Zero, whose title is taken from Elvis Costello, it occurred to me that Mr. Costello might want to follow Waits’ suggestion.

In a way, Elvis escaped unscathed. In the novel version, a poster of Costello adorns a bedroom wall of the protagonist, Clay, and the glasses worn by the musician prominently figure on the dust jacket of the novel. The film, naturally, has an abundance of rock in the sound track: the Bangles, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, David Lee Roth . . . even Roy Orbison. But no Elvis Costello. No poster. No glasses. Perhaps the producers felt safer by leaving him out.

Those who plunked down $4.50 or more to watch the film probably wouldn’t mind lining up to execute a few kicks on the responsible parties. However, they may be too numb from the soporific examination of life among the teenage parasites in L.A.

The few book reviewers who didn’t sing Ellis’ praises through highly amplified, extra bass response, nonreflective speakers pointed out, however timidly, not only that the characters have freeze-dried cerebral cortices but also that the writing style has a certain distanced quality. Turned right side up, that’s a nice way of saying shallow. But Ellis’ failing is overshadowed by the virtues of his subject: deceit, deception, dirty dealing, drugs, death, disease—and that’s only a partial list of a single consonant. Screenwriter Harley Peyton tones down the level of abuse: it’s there, but less intense.

Whereas Clay in the novel is more or less another brick in the wall of a Sadean ruin, the porcine-faced Andrew McCarthy gives a bit more life to the part. Clay goes East to college, and when his buddy Julian’s recording company, which his daddy bankrolled as a graduation gift, sucks wind, Julian begins to suck coke. When he’s not wired, he’s sick. Clay’s girlfriend, Blair, feels so sorry for Julian that she simply must minister to his “needs” when she isn’t being a fashion model. Jami Certz, who plays Blair, used to be the straitlaced student council president type on Square Pegs. Now she looks like she could sliver diamonds with her fingernails. Robert Downey Jr. plays Julian like an Alex Keaton gone bad. Throughout the film, Downey has what appears at various times to be Maalox, spittle, and a herpes sore on the edge of his mouth. It was either a sloppy makeup person or a statement. I’m afraid it may be the latter, but what it means I can’t figure.

Film is more effective than TV is, because in a theater your attention tends to be entirely focused on the image projected onto a screen that is measured in square feet. Sound, especially in auditoriums equipped with Dolby, is all-encompassing. With TV, a minor shift in eye orientation takes you away from the scene, and the audio emerges from a single speaker that could have been stolen from a Philco radio. The movie can absorb the viewer; the viewer is distanced from the glass screen.

The video screen figures prominently in Less Than Zero. The intent, no doubt, was to parallel MTV; the effect is far different. There are two main scenes in the movie: Clay’s return from the East and the denouement, when Clay saves his friends from themselves: Blair pours a vial of cocaine down a sink; Julian is taken out of a room where he is performing as a homosexual prostitute. In both cases the setting is a party; multiple video screens throb with the digitized images of, among the stainless steel wastes of a postmoral society, the three friends. The effect is cold, distant, sterile. Characters are simply fashions. You are as sorry for these forms as you are for a pair of Guess jeans.

The movie doesn’t fail in spite of itself but because of itself. Although Clay, who goes only so far as an occasional cigarette and drink, seems to be well-meaning, the seeming isn’t very much. It’s more a matter of mechanical motions, not deliberate acts. The biggest risk he takes is asking his father for $5 OK, which is meant to pay off Julian’s bill to the heavies. For most of us, the sum is extraordinary, but in Less Than Zero it’s like bumming a smoke on a visit to the R.J. Reynolds headquarters. For Clay, it is hardly heroic.

Blair’s moment of salvation is motivated not by any question about the error of drug abuse but by a fear that continued abuse of her nasal passages will lead to a bloody nose, which is hell on a model’s makeup. The death of Julian, seated between his best friends on the butter-soft leather seats of a vintage Corvette, is figured beatifically; but it is less moving than the coyote that was run over earlier in the film.

It’s a rare case of a film that is as good as the book.