The Adderall Diaries

In 2001, Stephen Elliott published a semi-autobiographical novel called A Life Without Consequences that told the story of Paul who, like the author, "left home at the age of 13 and after a year sleeping on the roof of a convenience store on Chicago's north side, was made a ward of the court and channeled through various large and small group homes and institutional learning facilities."

It was a book very much like other books young writers have produced -- in some ways it was Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, in some ways it was like Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries, but mostly it was the sort of literary throat clearing that some young writers need to go through before getting on with their real work. Since it was presented as a novel and not a memoir -- as a work of imagination rather than a product of memory -- it didn't engender the same sort of controversy that James Frey's Oprah-approved (and later thoroughly debunked) alleged autobiography did when it appeared in 2003.

But if Elliott didn't become the white-hot media sensation that Frey did, apparently he did experience some backlash from the book, and he wrote about it (and a lot more) in his 2010 book The Adderall Diaries, a meditation on the strangeness of life and the ways we manufacture stories. Nominally, the book was an account of Elliott's coverage of a high-profile murder trial, but it was also a story about family and the dark capacities of alpha males.

In Pamela Romanowsky's film version of Adderall, James Franco plays Stephen, a swaggering, addictive poseur who affects biker gang tattoos and leathers even as he prepares to accept a teaching gig at Columbia, readies a book of short stories and begins to embark on a new memoir. ("I got twice what you asked for," his pushy agent, played by Cynthia Nixon, positively chirps.)

In the film, Stephen's first book is called A Part rather than A Life Without Consequences, and it was apparently presented as a genuinely true story. So when that abusive "dead" father (Ed Harris) Stephen wrote about in A Part shows up at one of his book signings, grittily authentic Stephen suddenly has a credibility problem.

It's not difficult to see what first-time director Romanowsky is trying to get at in this kinetically edited, stunningly shallow movie -- it's all about the unreliability of memory and the lies we tell ourselves. But it feels like a lie itself, with Franco -- unsurprisingly quite convincing as a hipster manque of a writer -- delivering a Stephen who is all flash and superficial charm. It's a cruel portrayal, and one that doesn't completely jibe with the idea we may have formed of the real-life Stephen from reading his work.

In an effort to re-establish himself as a serious person, Stephen latches on to the murder trial of Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) -- the real name of the murderer the real Stephen Elliott really wrote about, though Romanowsky transposes the crime from San Francisco to the East Coast to fit the film's Manhattan and Brooklyn locations -- and encounters a suspiciously louche New York Times reporter (Amber Heard, in a dark wig) with whom he embarks on a sadomasochistic affair.

While Romanowsky gamely tries to negotiate the same structural tricks as the book, which employed the Reiser case as a base camp from which the author could depart and return, in the film it feels more like a subplot despite the cinematic tricks -- the cross-cutting and slo-mo flashbacks -- that the director uses to try to connect the stories. At times it feels flat, other times risible, and only occasionally do the stories resonate in any kind of harmony.

That said, you can do a lot worse than The Adderall Diaries. It feels a little self-impressed and student-filmy, yet it allows its cast a few highlight reel moments. Particularly good are the scenes between Franco and Harris, who plays the revenant dad as a hard man who's still capable of having his feelings injured. And it positively zips along. With an 87-minute running time, you'll be asking "What the heck was that all about?" before you know it.

MovieStyle on 04/22/2016