Trivia / The Rules of Attraction

• Cast the Runner-Up: Jessica Biel originally wanted to play Lauren Hynde, but she had a problem with the scene where Laura is raped and vomited upon. She was instead cast as Lara Holleran.
• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: Bret Easton Ellis named this as his favourite adaptation of any of his books:
  I thought it was the only one that captured the sensibility of the novel in a cinematic way. I know I'm sounding like a film critic on that, but I'm talking about that in an emotional way - as the writer of the novel. I watched that movie and thought they got it in a way that Mary Harron didn't and Less Than Zero didn't.
• Deleted Role: Casper Van Dien shot two scenes on the phone to James Van Der Beek as Patrick Bateman. They were edited out due to content and film time. The footage featuring Van Dien as Patrick was eventually made publicly available in 2018, when Roger Avary uploaded it to YouTube.
• Deleted Scene:
  • A lengthy scene set in the cafeteria was cut for time. All characters were to be present, but segregated to various tables e.g. the slut table, jock table, nerd table, etc. According to Ian Somerhalder, Roger Avary said it would be great if, during his scene at "the fag table", his erect nipples were visible through his shirt. Somerhalder says he spent the shooting day constantly closing his eyes and twisting his nipples between takes, to the bewilderment of the rest of the cast and crew.
  • There is an image floating around the net, from a deleted scene, showing Shannyn Sossamon sitting on a couch with Ian Somerhalder, while she holds a pink dildo and laughs. It's unknown what this scene was about or how it would fit into the film, though the image has gained minor notoriety.
• DVD Commentary: The film features an unusual example of this. In addition to three commentary tracks created by several of the cast members (who had their remarks spliced together), the DVD also features a "surprise guest" commentary — Carrot Top, who admits that he hasn't seen the movie before and is only doing a track for it because the filmmakers had no budget left for extras. His shock when the film quickly cuts into a rape scene in the opening, and his subsequent attempts to lighten the otherwise dour mood in the film, is often seen as the most unintentionally funny part of the whole DVD.
• Enforced Method Acting: According to a reporter from Ain't It Cool News, Roger Avary got a reaction out of Shannyn Sossamon by having Jessica Biel flash her off-camera.
  Due to its placement, the camera didn't see Biel's surprise...But I did. Good God almighty I love this job!
• Fake Irish: Eric Stoltz appears to be adopting an Irish accent, although the nationality of his character Lance Lawson is never specified.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The home release of the film was supposed to include a commentary from Bret Easton Ellis. The author recalled on his podcast how he had been up late doing drugs the night before the recording session and had forgotten about it. He attended the session anyway, but gave a rambling commentary that, to this day, has never been made public.
  • Nice story, but if was never actually made public this means there was no point circulating the tapes!
• The Other Darrin: Christian Bale declined to return as Patrick Bateman, so Casper Van Dien replaced him for a cameo that ended up on the cutting room floor.
• Playing Against Type: Everyone in the movie except Ian Somerhalder, simply because he didn't have a type yet. Best example is Fred Savage, who turns up for one scene as an almost-naked clarinet-playing heroin addict. Special prize goes to James Van Der Beek, who was mostly known as all-the-positive Dawson Leery at the time of the movie's release.
• Referenced by...: Disgraceland adapted the "Victor takes a trip" sequence to describe the exploits of Brian Jones.
• Throw It In!: The George Michael dancing scene (involving Paul and Dick) was done in the hotel the pair were staying in; apparently, after doing it for fun, it was decided it was too good to leave out of the movie.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Roger Avary and actor Kip Purdue, the pair shot so much footage for the sequence where Purdue's character (Victor) travels around Europe that they actually cut it into a 90-minute film called Glitterati, which was intended to be an Interquel before the release of a proposed sequel film (and another Ellis book adaptation) called Glamorama. Due to lower-than-expected returns for Attraction, the sequel never got off the ground, although a TV adaptation of Attraction was later claimed to be in development by Ellis.
  • James Franco was the original choice to play Sean Bateman. Avary later decided that he played it "too much like the book," and recast the role with James Van Der Beek.
  • Christina Ricci turned down an offer to play Lauren Hynde.
  • Wil Wheaton was very interested in acting in this movie and was even promised a role in it by Roger Avary, but eventually he was dropped from the casting list.
  • Ellis stated the studio had wanted to include a serial killer plot line in the film, but after the filmmakers turned down the idea it was repurposed into American Psycho 2: All American Girl.
  • Avary told Ain't It Cool News that he considered having Clay and Blaire from Less Than Zero make an appearance:
  During the writing stage I toyed with the idea of Clay and Blaire returning to campus (and I would have used Andrew McCarthy and Jamie Gertz). My notion was that Clay was now a studio executive and they were visiting his magna alumni for nostalgia. I wrote several variations on scenes with Clay and Blaire, but they always seemed extraneous to the story I was telling. And my script was already long by Hollywood standards - so I cut them.
• Write What You Know:
  • The novel was inspired by Ellis's time at Bennington College in Vermont. Ellis led a very promiscuous bisexual lifestyle, not unlike Paul Denton's.
  • For the screenplay, Victor's voice-overs about Europe were based on several journals kept by Roger Avary during his own European travels after college. They had to be rewritten to match the footage spontaneously shot with Kip Pardue.
• Write Who You Know: Lauren was based on Donna Tartt, who was a college friend of Ellis's at Bennington College: Ellis and Tartt read initial drafts of each other's novels. The fictional Camden College in Rules of Attraction and the fictional Hampden College in Tartt's novel The Secret History are both based on Bennington and implied to be one and the same, and characters from each novel are mentioned in passing in the other.

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