Saw it at the Arclight last night. I had eagerly anticipated it, as the book literally changed my life 21 years ago. I was “turned on” to it in summer school at Otis School of Design by a fellow teen student. At the impressionable age of 16, I found my dream life in the pages of that book. All I wanted to be was Edie. I thought she was the coolest chick ever. I never made it to NYC until long after I’d stopped partying, but I did my best to emulate her and crashed/burned pretty damn quickly. Fast forward 21 years, and the movie version had quite the opposite effect. I left the theater grateful I hadn’t wound up like that, getting raped and robbed by dealers, rejected and abandoned by “friends,” scaring off the one true love, etc. It was a long and brutal end to a briefly fabulous life. My freind was really upset to have seen it, not knowing anything about Edie. But she said it strengthened her resolve to not end up like that, so perhaps it was a way of being of service.