Trivia for
The Rules of Attraction (2002)

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• Sean Bateman, the character played by James Van Der Beek, is the younger brother of the infamous Patrick Bateman, the main character of American Psycho (2000), a film also based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis.
  
  
• Bret Easton Ellis, author of the novel on which the film is based, revealed in an interview that director Roger Avary asked him to play the role of Patrick Bateman in the film after Christian Bale, who portrayed Patrick in the film adaptation of American Psycho (2000), turned down Avary's offer to return as Patrick. Ellis also turned him down, saying that he thought it was "such a terrible and gimmicky idea". The scenes with Patrick were eventually shot with Casper Van Dien playing the role, but they were cut from the film.
  
  
• Christina Ricci turned down an offer to play the character of Lauren Hynde.
  
  

• Christian Bale turned down an offer to reprise the role of Patrick Bateman.
  
  
• The trailer for the movie bears a striking resemblance to the theatrical trailer for Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). Both trailers feature short clips from the movie being intermixed with nouns and adjectives describing the movie (printed as big bold white text on black background), while classical music plays in the background.
  
  
• The movie that the film student refers to when talking to Lauren at the beginning of the film is Killing Zoe (1994), directed by Roger Avary; it also stars Eric Stoltz, who plays Mr. Lawson in this movie.
  
  
• This film was edited using Apple's (relatively) inexpensive "Final Cut Pro" software on Macintosh computers to reduce costs.
  
  
• The radio station that awakens Sean is "WTNA". The music supervisors of the movie are Tom Hajdu and Andy Milburn (tomandandy); the radio DJ's are also named "Tom" and "Andy"
  
  
• At the Edge of the world party, Candace is wearing a "Tomandandy" T-Shirt, the name of the music supervisors.
  
  
• In the hospital, a "Dr. Shapiro" is paged over the intercom. Greg Shapiro is the movie's producer.
  
  
• The song which Sean sings that "segues into Counting Crows" is "Anna Begins", from the 1993 album "August And Everything After".
  
  
• 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 marker board on Victor's door when Lauren goes to see him reads, "Victor, Tests came back positive. Be careful."
  
  
• "The End of the World" party scene was filmed on 11 September 2001.
  
  
• The film on mute in Fred Savage's room is Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das (1920).
  
  
• Credits are rolled backwards.
  
  
• Filmed at the University of Redlands in Southern California. The crew added fake snow for the winter shots. They filmed three different dorms: Bekins, Grossmont, and Fairmont. Each dorm was given a different name in the film. In the opening credits, the students all run out of two huge double doors as if they just left class. In reality, the double doors are those of the Chapel.
  
  
• When Lara suffers a bloody nose after snorting cocaine, she exclaims in a jovial voice; "Rusty pipes!" This is the second movie character, based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel to say this. The first was in Less Than Zero (1987).
  
  
• When Victor is walking through London in the Europe flashback, a gentleman with a hooded face walks past and you hear the name "Palakon" whispered -- a reference to the character Palakon in the Ellis book 'Glamorama', which also features Victor.
  
  

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