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Bret Easton Ellis: You have to understand that I'm coming to these things as a member of the most pessimistic and ironic generation that has ever roamed the earth. When I hear millennials getting hurt by "cyber bullying," or it being a gateway to suicide, it's difficult for me to process. A little less so for my boyfriend, who happens to be a millennial of that age, but even he somewhat agrees with the sensitivity of Generation Wuss. It's very difficult for them to take criticism, and because of that a lot of the content produced is kind of shitty. And when someone is criticized for their content, they seem to collapse, or the person criticizing them is called a hater, a contrarian, a troll.
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Not to reference the 27-year-old [Bret's boyfriend] too often, but he would completely agree with you. American Psycho is about a world that is as alien to him as Saturn.I think it was a world we were promised, though.
There was a certain point where we realized the promises were lies and that we were going to be economically adrift. It's the fault of the baby-boomer generation for raising their kids at the highest peak of the empire, in a complete fantasy world. My generation, Gen X, realized that, like most fantasies, it was somewhat dissatisfying, and we rebelled with irony, negativity, and attitude because we had the luxury to do that. Our reality wasn't an economic hardship.Right—which is what The Wolf of Wall Street is all about. Is that why you like it so much?
I never like a movie because of its subject matter. I liked it because it wasn't an op-ed piece and it wasn't concerned with another thing that so many movies are concerned with today, which is decency: decent people under stress or hardship.
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I was really not involved in the making of that movie. All I know was that it was an offer made to Leo after Christian Bale. It would have been the start of erasing something that was probably quite embarrassing for him, being known for the rest of his life as Jack from Titanic. I don't know exactly what happened. I also didn't know how far along Christian was in preparing for American Psycho, so my endorsing Leo might have looked insensitive. But yes—in answer to your question, I would have liked to see him in the role. But it was probably a lot better at that time and less distracting to have a relatively unknown actor.You said Terrence Malick was a big inspiration.
One of the key moments in my young movie-going life was watching Days of Heaven and realizing that film was an art form. I'd been leading up to that epiphany, growing up in LA and being very aware of the film industry. But in 1978, that's when I got it. That's why I have such a tie to that film and why I watch it every two years. It takes me back.
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I don't know about that. Part of the problem I had with The Canyons was that I would have directed it faster. I don't have the Asian mindset that Paul Schrader does, which is steeped in [Yasujiro] Ozu and the great Japanese directors from the 50s and 60s. That's his way of pacing a movie.That sounds like a pretty massive disparity in your vision for the film.
It seems more massive than it really was. The Canyons was guerrilla film making. We were going to make it for no money and put it on iTunes. We didn't think it was going to turn into this notorious cultural event in the US.Surely you knew that casting Lindsay Lohan would have that kind of effect?
No, but it was a $150,000 movie. We were sitting in friends' bedrooms; we weren't trying to create The Godfather. I wrote the script—I think it was one of only two scripts in Schrader's career that he didn't touch, the other being a script written by Harold Pinter for a film called The Comfort of Strangers, which is a movie that influenced The Canyons—and Schrader wanted it shot the way he shoots. And I thought, 'You know, this will be faster after we've edited it.' And it did [get faster], to a degree.Look, 20 percent of people I know like the movie; 80 percent don't like the movie. But the sketchiness of it—the sleazy, cold aspect of it—what can I say? It speaks to me.The sinister portrait of LA that you paint in Less Than Zero—with howling coyotes and dead bodies littering alleyways—is that a realistic depiction of the place? Or has your view of it changed as you've grown older?
I think it's a bit of both. I do think my southern California childhood was very idyllic. Yes, there was a bad marriage going down in the house, and I suffered from a little bit of depression, but there was the beach, there were the malls, and a lot of my friends drove around in convertibles. I mean, how bad is it?
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Yes, although I wouldn't say it's about the Manson murders. It's about the two years surrounding the Manson murders in LA. The show starts about a year before the Manson murders. I'm just beginning to plan it. It's in the beginning stages.
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Yes, but I wish it wasn't important to people that I am. I had a bit of a breakdown in January of 2013. I did more writing in 2012 than I'd ever done in my life—a series of movies, two of which got made, and countless television pilots. By January of 2013 I was exhausted. I found myself hungry to write prose, so I started working on this book. Every now and then it comes alive and I work on it until I get distracted by something else. It's on my desk, along with a play that I'm writing.What made you want to do the podcast?
I published a very long, 4,000-word piece for Out magazine. It got a lot of attention here in the US, and reading articles written in response to it, I realized people had stopped reading halfway through.That's the internet.
Well, there's a positive myth that the internet is great for writing long-form pieces and you can publish 11,000 words, but it doesn't mean people will necessarily read the whole thing. So I thought, if I had a podcast, I could have my say over it. I wasn't into the idea of a talk-radio show at first, but it's been really interesting. I don't understand this idea of the novelist being locked in the top of a tower. I've seen people respond negatively to the fact I'm on Twitter and have opinions about pop culture. I like it. It fucks with people's idea of what I'm really like.
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I think David Foster Wallace is a complete fraud. I'm really shocked that people take him seriously. People say the same thing about me, of course, and I've been criticized for saying these things about Wallace due to the very sentimental narrative attached to him since he killed himself.But it all ties into Generation Wuss and its wussy influence on social media to a degree; if you have a snarky opinion about anything, you're a douche. To me, that's problematic. It limits discourse. If you just like everything, what are we going to talk about? How great everything is? How often I've pushed the Like button on my Facebook page?Is it BuzzFeed who said they're not going to run any negative reviews any more? Really, guys? What's going to happen to culture then? What's going to happen to conversation? It's going to die.Yeah. But I suppose now, in place of money, we have a currency of popularity, and the main pay-off is thousands of people liking your shit on Facebook. In that climate, how do you create vital work?
I agree with you, and it's kind of touching to me that there isn't an economic way of elevating yourself, and the only way to do that is through your brand, your profile, and your social media presence. I think I might be too old to consciously use Instagram or Tumblr to my advantage. I don't even use Twitter correctly. But living with someone who's 27, I think the way you described it is perfectly accurate: Online presence is the currency.
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You need to feel that, though. I got shit for American Psycho, with people saying it was calculated to offend people. If that was true, I wouldn't have spent three to four years on it, and I would have just filled every page with horrible descriptions. I was writing about my life. I was writing about being Patrick Bateman—a young man in New York during that era—and being lost in that yuppie culture, which is really just consumerist culture. Feeling that I had to have all of the things that a young man had at that time and hating myself for not having them and hating society and not wanting to grow up. That's really what American Psycho was. It was a very personal novel.Also, like a lot of men, I had a pretty tawdry fantasy world, and if any man really wants to admit that, they're going to be attacked for it.
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Well, look. [Laughs.] This is exactly the kind of thing a misogynist would say, but I've never felt like a misogynist. Yet it has been interesting to look back at myself when I've been accused of that and to understand why someone would say it. For example, I don't think American Psycho is a misogynist text at all; I think misogyny is part of the picture. But, like I said in the Wolf of Wall Street podcast, a depiction is not an endorsement.
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Well, every now and then someone comes along who changes your perception. Before Didion, it was Hemingway—that was when I was 12 or 13. Didion was later, in high school, and it was more personal because she was writing about southern California and referencing streets I had driven on. She was describing a sensibility about women that jived with what I was noticing in my mom's friends. I tried writing Less Than Zero maybe two times before what was ultimately published, and Joan Didion played a big part in shaping it.Do you ever feel as though feminism is slipping into a blame culture?
Years ago, I found Jezebel.com very ominous and worrying. I mean, not that I care that much, but now it really has come full circle. I think the Lena Dunham bullying thing—and I don't want to toe the party line and say, "Oh, it was so shitty of Jezebel to do that"—but it was indicative of where a kind of feminism is right now.
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No, they're not fucked up by it. James Deen's girlfriend [VICE columnist Stoya] is a huge performer and, like James, doesn't look like a traditional porn star. She also has a blog where she writes about feminist porn and how she's in control.Can you tell me about the Kanye film collaboration?
You know what, I can't. It's in Kanye Land, and that's subject to a whole other time frame. He came and asked me to write the film. I didn't want to at first. Then I listened to Yeezus. It was early summer last year and I was driving in my car. He'd given me an advance copy, and I thought, regardless of whether I'm right for this project, I want to work with whoever made this. So fuck it, I said yes. And that's how it happened. That was seven or eight months ago. We'll see what happens.I really like him as a person. I know he comes off in this performance-art way in the press, but if you're just alone with him in a room talking for three hours, it's kind of mind-blowing.I think he just broke the golden rule of admitting to being a narcissist, and that's what people can't handle.
Why is that rule there, though?Right, because if you're working in the media or entertainment industry, chances are, you're a narcissist.
Yeah, you're right. We all are. We're all here. And he's one of the few people who will admit it, and I like him for that and I wish more people would follow suit. I think that's what makes Jennifer Lawrence so appealing. She's the future of Hollywood personas. I don't know where the "old rules" of the empire—about showing your best self on the red carpet—gets anyone. It suggests an unfree society.Can you explain this empire and post-empire distinction? Because you refer to it a lot.
Empire is the US from roughly WWII to a little after 9/11. It was at the height of its power, its prestige, and its economic worth. Then it lost a lot of those things. In the face of technology and social media, the mask of pride has been slowly eradicated. That empirical attitude of believing you're better than everyone—that you're above everything—and trying to give the impression that you have no problems. Post-empire is just about being yourself. It's showing the reality rather than obscuring things in reams and reams of meaning.But can you ever present a "real" version of yourself online?
Well, turning yourself into an avatar, at least, is post-empire. That's a new kind of mask. It's more playful than hiding your feelings, presenting your best self, and lying if you have to. Unless, of course, you argue that that's just a whole new form of empire in itself.Download the Bret Easton Ellis podcast featuring Marilyn Manson, Kanye West, and Judd Apatow here.Bret is launching his own YouTube channel in the coming months.Follow Nathalie (@NROLAH) and Bret (@BretEastonEllis) on Twitter.