In an exclusive interview, Matthew Turner talked to director Roger Avary directing The Rules of Attraction, adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’ seminal novel.

Have you had much time to enjoy London?
Not really but I've been here before with my other movies and I really like London. I did manage to see 28 Days Later in the cinema last night though - it was so weird to see the empty streets of London in the film and then walk out of the cinema into the 'real' London. I'm glad I saw it here and not in the States.

Apparently one reviewer walked out after 15 minutes of The Rules of Attraction. Did you have much trouble with the American censors?
Really? Ha ha! That's great. I had the usual, expected problems, really. I had to cut 23 seconds of the film for American censor to avoid the NC-17 rating, although I understand the film will be shown without the cut here in the UK. They made me cut some of the opening sex scene, which surprised me because I thought they'd have more problems with the suicide scene. But I'm ambivalent towards the censors, really - I guess they do what they have to do.

James Van Der Beek is excellent in the film. I gather he had played a similar character in Storytelling, which was then cut out. Do you know why?
Well, I knew he was in Storytelling, but I don't know what his section contained or why it was cut. And I have to say that Storytelling's loss was very much our gain because it definitely affected his decision to do our movie. He said he was very keen to shake off his clean-cut Dawson's Creek image and he really threw himself into the part, as you can see. In fact, he was wonderful to work with in every respect. They all were.

The speeded-up European section of the film got a spontaneous round of applause at the screening last night. Can you say a little about how you filmed that?
Oh man, that was great fun to do. In fact, we shot over 70 hours of footage altogether, so I'm thinking about turning it into a proper feature. I know Kip (Pardue) is keen to do it. Basically, he stayed in character the whole time and we just went everywhere with him and if he started chatting to a girl or whatever, we'd ask if they wanted to be in the movie. It's amazing what people will do when you point a camera at them.

Has Bret Easton Ellis seen the film? What does he think of it?
He hasn't seen it yet. I'm a big fan of his novels and I loved what they did with American Psycho, so I hope he likes it. He liked the script, anyway. I'm a little bit nervous as to what he'll say, but yeah, I think he'll like it.

What's your next project?
Well, I've got a few things coming up, but nothing's in place yet. I might do Glamorama (another Bret Easton Ellis novel) and I'm also meeting (comics author) Neil Gaiman later to discuss the possibility of doing one of his books. There are some other possibilities too, but I don't want to jinx them, you know?

What's your relationship with Tarantino like these days?
We're still in touch, we're still good friends. I haven't seen too much of him lately though, because I've been busy with Rules and he's really busy with Kill Bill, which I think is going to be great. But I'm sure we'll see each other soon.