Harry here... Suddenly I have a new project that I'm dying to see come to the screen. Neil LaBute, a wonderfully twisted director, has a new project based on one of the most deliciously twistedly surreal romantic comedy fantasy novels that it has ever been my pleasure to read. Last summer, whilst suffering a terrible bout of passionate love for another, a local female friend of mine plopped down VAPOR: A NOVEL and said that given my agonizing preoccupation with matters of the heart that I should read this book by Amanda Filipacchi. Typically I'm not the sort to read romantic novels... I sort of blanketly refer to them as wet finger reads and dismiss the pulpy butter spread genre as a whole, though I am a terrible romantic and love romantic films and situations... Somehow reading an entire novel about them, just feels like a mindfuck with a dildo... artificial and completely unreal and unsatisfying. Of course this was just my point of view having never actually read a 'so-called' romantic novel.
I guess it helps that Filipacchi's book has no Fabio wannabe covers, though I was put off by the new age non-offensiveness of the door and clouds motif of the cover... I trusted this friend and was in a terrible romantic yearning state (basically I needed that psychic dildo bad). This was not a wet finger read, nor was it a lotion motion inspirer. This was simply a great story that was romance based in genre but so surreal, so twisted in a deliciously sick manner, that I simply fell in love.
If you want the 'book report on the Vapor : A Novel, then click on that link.... but trust me, Renee Zellweger will OWN ALL in this role. She will just be a fantastic Anna. Given Neil's brilliance with NURSE BETTY.... (insert Homer Slobber sounds) he's gonna nail this. If you read Variety's weak ass story summation... good, go into seeing this movie believing it is just a story about an interior cloud maker and a wannabe actress... (coughing from the thought of that being the basic thought for the book) The story has all the beautiful trancendent potential of a FISHER KING or a NURSE BETTY type of romantic film. This is closer to a LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE meets TIE ME UP TIE ME DOWN type of thing than the fluff romance of your typical Ephron dealings. OOooooOOooOohhh man, this will make a great friggin movie. Just wait and see.... hehehehe, can't wait!
