Michael Cieply‘s 1.13 N.Y. Times piece on Gregor Jordan‘s The Informers, based on Brett Easton Ellis‘s 1994 short-story collection about sex, drugs and depravity in 1983 Los Angeles, is a Sundance attention coup. Here, it says, is the definitive scurvy-pervy Naked Lunch/Alphadog/Less Than Zero-revisited flick of early ’09. Join us! Hey, got a smoke? I can’t find my fucking lighter. Wanna do an eightball in the parking lot?

Or, to go by a Publisher’s Weekly review, here is a cinematic revisiting of Ellis’s “one-dimensional satirical style [that weds] the sensational hedonism characteristic of Danielle Steel [with] the spiritual malaise of Douglas Coupland.”

The only downside is that Sundance programmers have given The Informers a bum’s-rush slot — Thursday night, 1.22 and Friday morning, 1.23, or two days after all the big buyers and journalists tend to bail out. But the Informers Sundance screening and after-party is going to be quite the madmen/party animal/poets’ corner event. Every person involved is an eccentric X factor danger-risker of some sort.

Everyone benefits for the time being — Jordan, the producers (Bret Easton Ellis, Vanessa Coifman, Brian Young, Jere Hausfater, Nicholas Jarecki), the screenwriters (Ellis, Jarecki) and the hot-shot cast — Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Jon Foster and Amber Heard. As well as Chris Isaak, Lou Taylor Pucci, Rhys Ifans and the late Brad Renfro .

The four stand-out quotes in the piece: (1) “You’ve got to be worried when I’m the sanest person on the set,” reportedly said by Thornton to Jordan early on; (2) “If you want to take a shot at it, it’s a full target,” said by Sundance Film Festival honcho Geoff Gilmore; (c) “I know it will be polarizing, it isn’t for everyone,” said by Senator Entertainment’s Marco Weber, and (d) “It’s a guilty pleasure — I think Amber Heard wears a dress once in the entire movie,” spoken by Mark Urman, Senator’s president of distribution.