Something 4 The Weekend # 81

Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Trust: "Strict Time" [mp3]

S0 here's what's gonna happen, circa 2012 or 2013...

Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis' sequel to his 1985 debut novel, Less Than Zero, is gonna be made into a movie, starring the same cast as the film adaptation of his debut, because his new book, slated for release in 2010, follows the same characters from Less Than Zero as they hit middle age...That means the film version of Imperial Bedrooms is gonna star Robert Downey Jr., James Spader, Jami Gertz, and Andrew McCarthy, which is a pretty outstanding cast, a rock solid representation of Gen X, each of them 1980's film icons in their own way...

Back in 1987, when Less Than Zero was released, Andrew McCarthy and Robert Downey, Jr., had both starred opposite Molly Ringwald, McCarthy in Pretty In Pink, RDJ in The Pick-Up Artist, and if that title sounds like some arbritrary film that you never would have guessed starred RDJ and Molly, that might help explain why Mr. McCarthy played the film's male lead, the protagonist and narrator, Clay...

On the other hand, RDJ got to play Julian, a fucked-up young man who had a story with plenty of meat...Plenty of ham, as it were, and Downey carved it up all over the place, as I recall...Although I must admit, I haven't seen the film in probably 15 years...

Now, considering that Andrew McCarthy is currently co-starring in the middling, nearly cancelled NBC dramady, Lipstick Jungle, and Robert Downey Jr. is now and forever officially fucking Iron Man, not to mention a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude in Tropic Thunder, I believe it's safe to say that Imperial Bedrooms will be Downey's chance to chew his way through the film on his way to an Oscar nomination...

And who knows what Ellis is going to do with the Julian character. Will Downey get to fatten himself up to play a middle-aged booze-bloated barfly, somewhere in downtown L.A? Shades of a Bukowski character, shades of Bukowski himself...Or will Julian keep to the harder stuff, the coke and heroin that forced him into prostitution and worse? Could a man, even a fictional man, somehow survive 20+ years of those addictions? Well, it would be an opportunity for RDJ to lose 50 pounds in his quest for Awards...

Anyways...

In the novel, Less Than Zero, Clay has a huge poster of Elvis Costello's Trust album cover on his bedroom wall, and Ellis occasionally writes about the poster, the image, and what it means to Clay, and what it means in ways Clay never even considers...

Elvis Costello is peering over his rose-colored glasses, upwards towards someone or something bigger than himself...If he trusted this person, this thing, I suppose he'd be looking directly through those glasses, because where there is trust, there is a belief that all is good and lovely and rosy and true between Elvis and this other...

But no, he's looking past that rose-colored fiction, all that blind faith and happy denial, he's looking directly into the hard light of truth...He's looking directly at that other, no matter how risky, how potentially painful and crushing it might be...

In the story, Clay comes home to L.A. for winter break from college in New Hampshire, and at first he's happy to see his old friend Julian, but over the course of the next month, he starts seeing the real Julian, and not even the bonds of their deep and long friendship is enough to keep Clay blind and in denial...At the end of the winter break, at the end of the novel, Clay goes back to school on the other side of the country, vowing to never come back...

Continuing to trust Julian would have fucked up Clay's own life sooner or later, would have grabbed and pulled Clay down into the same muck Julian was stuck in...And trusting his girlfriend, Blair, proved to be another big mistake...

Trust...Raised eyebrows and the uncertain smile of someone who is daring to look at the cold, hard truth for the very first time, and maybe trust himself, at least at this time, and for awhile...

Within the story that is Less Than Zero, Elvis is peering over the foggy notions of those tinted glasses, and he's looking directly at Clay from the bedroom wall, challenging Clay to trust himself enough to leave hopeless Julian to an unknown future, and leave Blair because, well, the girl just can't be trusted, you know? Leave behind all the "sex as a weapon" bullshit and all the drugs to treat the wounds of betrayal...

Blather...

The Trust album came out in 1981, and for all I know, Clay's winter break in Less Than Zero happens in 1981...and this is #81 in our ongoing series, Something 4 The Weekend...

And sometimes that's the way I do it, you know? Sinistral mathematics...

There's a hand on a wire that leads to my mouth...
I can hear you knocking but I'm not coming out...
Don't want to be a puppet or a ventriloquist...
'Cause there's no ventilation on a critical list...
Fingers creeping up my spine are not mine to resist...
Strict time...

Toughen up, toughen up...
Keep your lip buttoned up...
Strict time...

Oh the muscles flex and the fingers curl...
And a cold sweat breaks out on the sweater girl...
Strict time...
Oh he's all hands, don't touch that dial...
The courting cold wars weekend witch trial...
Strict time...
All the boys are straight laced and the girls are frigid...
The talk is two-faced and the rules are rigid...
'cause it's strict time...
Strict time...

Toughen up, toughen up...
keep your lip buttoned up...
Strict time...

You talk in hushed tones, I talk in lush tones...
Try to look Italian through the musical Valium...
Strict time...
Thinking of grand larceny...
Smoking the everlasting cigarette of chastity...
Cute assistants staying alive...
More like a hand job than the hand jive...
Strict time...

Toughen up, toughen up...
Keep your lip buttoned up...
Strict Time...

"Strict Time": Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Hotcha! Hank