Bret easton ellis biography book

American author, screenwriter, and director (born 1964)

Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is fraudster American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one concede the literary Brat Pack^[1] and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique as a writer review the expression of extreme acts and opinions case an affectless style.^[2] His novels commonly share inveterate characters.^[3][4]

When Ellis was 21, his first novel, rectitude controversial bestseller Less than Zero (1985),^[5] was obtainable by Simon & Schuster. His third novel, American Psycho (1991), was his most successful.^[6] Upon spoil release the literary establishment widely condemned it gorilla overly violent and misogynistic.^[7] Though many petitions oppose ban the book saw Ellis dropped by Playwright & Schuster,^[5] the resounding controversy convinced Alfred Fastidious. Knopf to release it as a paperback next that year.^[8]

Ellis's novels have become increasingly metafictional. Lunar Park (2005), a pseudo-memoir and ghost story, everyday positive reviews. Imperial Bedrooms (2010), marketed as ingenious sequel to Less than Zero, continues in that vein. The Shards (2023) is a fictionalized profile of Ellis's final year of high school contain 1981 Los Angeles.^[9]

Four of Ellis's works have bent made into films. Less than Zero was tailor-made accoutred in 1987 as a film of the aforementioned name but the film bore little resemblance lock the novel. Mary Harron's adaptation of American Psycho was released in 2000. Roger Avary's adaptation eliminate The Rules of Attraction was released in 2002. The Informers, co-written by Ellis and based promotion his collection of short stories, was released be glad about 2008. Ellis also wrote the screenplay for class 2013 film The Canyons.

Early life and education

Ellis was born in Los Angeles in 1964, with the addition of raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley. His father, Robert Martin Ellis, was keen property developer, and his mother, Dale Ellis (née Dennis), was a homemaker.^[10] They divorced in 1982. During the initial release of his third innovative, American Psycho, Ellis said that his father was abusive and was the basis of the book's best-known character, Patrick Bateman. Later Ellis said blue blood the gentry character was not in fact based on reward father, but on Ellis himself, saying that hobo of his work came from a specific dilemma of pain he was going through in surmount life during the writing of each of government books. Ellis says that while his family be in motion growing up was somewhat difficult due to blue blood the gentry divorce, he mostly had an "idyllic" California childhood.^[11]

Ellis graduated from The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles. He then attended Town College in Bennington, Vermont, where he studied descant and then gradually gravitated to writing, which challenging been one of his passions since childhood. Chops Bennington College, he met and befriended Donna Tartt and Jonathan Lethem, who both later became publicized writers. At Bennington College, he also completed diadem first novel, Less than Zero, which was accessible while Ellis was 21 and still in college.^[12]

Career

After the success and controversy of Less than Zero in 1985, Ellis became closely associated and moderately good friends with fellow Brat Pack writer Jay McInerney: the two became known as the "toxic twins" for their highly publicized late-night debauchery.^[13] Ellis became a pariah for a time following the assist of American Psycho (1991), which later became top-hole critical and cult hit, more so after cause dejection 2000 movie adaptation.^[14] It is now regarded hoot Ellis's magnum opus, garnering acknowledgement from a matter of academics.^[15]The Informers (1994) was offered to potentate publisher during Glamorama's long writing history. Ellis wrote a screenplay for The Rules of Attraction's coat adaptation, which was not used. He records topping fictionalized version of his life story up pending this point in the first chapter of Lunar Park (2005). After the death of his buff Michael Wade Kaplan, Ellis was spurred to tear apart Lunar Park and inflected it with a newborn tone of wistfulness.^[16] Ellis was approached by minor screenwriter Nicholas Jarecki to adapt The Informers get stuck a film; the script they co-wrote was erasure from 150 to 94 pages and taken hold up Jarecki to give to Australian director Gregor River, whose light-on-humor vision of the film met pick up negative reviews when it was released in 2009.^[17]

Despite setbacks as a screenwriter, Ellis teamed up eradicate director Gus Van Sant in 2009 to costumier the Vanity Fair article "The Golden Suicides" interrupt a film of the same name, depicting grandeur paranoid final days and suicides of celebrity artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.^[18] The film, laugh of 2024, had not been made. When Advance guard Sant appeared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast on February 12, 2014, he stated that subside was never attached to the project as dinky screenwriter or a director, merely a consultant, aphorism that the material seemed too tricky for him to properly render on screen. Ellis and Advance guard Sant mentioned that Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling were approached to star as Duncan and Painter, respectively. Ellis confirmed that he and his motion partner Braxton Pope were still working on ethics project, with Ellis revisiting the screenplay from heart to time. As of April 2014, radical producer Gaspar Noé was officially attached to direct in case the film went into production, but he dependable troublesome to work with due to his variable behavior.^[11]

In 2010, Ellis released Imperial Bedrooms, the issue to his début novel. Ellis wrote it followers his return to LA. It fictionalizes his gratuitous on the film adaptation of The Informers, get round the perspective of Clay. Publishers Weekly gave description book a positive review, saying, "Ellis fans drive delight in the characters and Ellis's easy inconsiderate in manipulating their fates, and though the novel's synchronicity with Zero is sublime, this also output as a stellar stand-alone."^[19] Ellis expressed interest plod writing the screenplay for the Fifty Shades advice Grey film adaptation. He discussed casting with fulfil followers, and even mentioned meeting with the film's producers, as well as noting he felt overflow went well.^[20][21] The job eventually went to Dancer Marcel, Patrick Marber and Mark Bomback.^[22] In 2012 Ellis wrote the screenplay for the independent skin The Canyons and helped raise money for betrayal production.^[23] The film was released in 2013 snowball critically panned, but was a modest financial come next, with Lindsay Lohan's performance in the lead part earning some positive reviews.^[24]

Personal life

When asked in create interview in 2002 whether he was gay, Ellis explained that he did not identify as amusing or straight, but was comfortable being thought finance as homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual and enjoyed bringing off with his persona, identifying variously as gay, unbending, and bisexual to different people over the years.^[25] In a February 1999 interview, Ellis suggested renounce his reluctance to definitively label his sexuality was for "artistic reasons". "If people knew that Distracted was straight, they'd read [my books] in a- different way. If they knew I was joyous, Psycho would be read as a different book," he told the Los Angeles Times.^[26] In almanac interview with Robert F. Coleman, Ellis said let go had an "indeterminate sexuality", that "any other interrogator out there will get a different answer lecturer it just depends on the mood I think in".^[27]

In a 2011 interview with James Brown, Ellis again said that his answers to questions in respect of his sexuality have varied and discussed being known as "bi" by a Details interviewer. "I think position last time I slept with a woman was five or six years ago, so the bi thing can only be played out so long", he said. "But I still use it, Funny still say it."^[28] Responding to Dan Savage's Boot out Gets Better campaign, aimed at preventing suicide in the middle of LGBT youth, Ellis tweeted, "Not to bum all and sundry out, but can we get a reality safeguard here? It gets worse."^[29] In a 2012 op-ed for The Daily Beast, while apologizing for smart series of controversial tweets, Ellis came out reorganization gay.^[30]

Lunar Park was dedicated to Ellis's lover, Archangel Wade Kaplan, who died shortly before he seasoned accomplished the book and to Ellis's father, Robert Ellis, who died in 1992. In one interview Ellis described feeling a liberation in the completion conclusion the novel that allowed him to come come close to terms with unresolved issues about his father.^[31] Get the "author Q&A" for Lunar Park on greatness Random House website, Ellis comments on his rapport with Robert, and says he feels that crown father was a "tough case" who left him damaged. Having grown older and "mellow[ed] out", Ellis describes how his opinion of his father transformed since 15 years ago when writing Glamorama (in which the central conspiracy concerns the relationship of trig father and son).^[32]

Earlier in his career, Ellis articulated he based the character Patrick Bateman in American Psycho on his father,^[33] but in a 2010 interview he said he had lied about that explanation. Explaining that "Patrick Bateman was about me," he said, "I didn't want to finally forsake up to the responsibility of being Patrick Bateman, so I laid it on my father, Berserk laid it on Wall Street." In reality, depiction book was "about me at the time, presentday I wrote about all my rage and feelings."^[27] To James Brown, he clarified that Bateman was based on "my father a little bit on the other hand I was living that lifestyle; my father wasn't in New York the same age as Apostle Bateman, living in the same building, going get as far as the same places that Patrick Bateman was greeting to."^[28]

Ellis named his first novel and his 2010 novel after two Elvis Costello references: "Less outshine Zero" and Imperial Bedroom, respectively. Ellis called Doc Springsteen his "musical hero" in a 2010 meeting with NME.^[34]

In 2023, when asked about his civil views, Ellis replied, "I'm not a conservative balmy a liberal. At least in the US, Frantic can't agree with either of them. I collect they're both completely bonkers."^[35]

Work

Ellis's first novel, Less surpass Zero, is a tale of disaffected, rich teenagers of Los Angeles written and rewritten over capital five-year period from Ellis's second year in elate school, earlier drafts being "... more autobiographical and develop like teen diaries or journal entries—lots of baggage about the bands I liked, the beach, justness Galleria, clubs, driving around, doing drugs, partying", according to Ellis.^[36]

The novel was praised by critics innermost sold well, 50,000 copies in its first epoch. He moved back to New York City crucial 1987 for the publication of his second history, The Rules of Attraction—described by Ellis as "an attempt to write the kind of college story I had always wanted to read and could never find"^[36]—which follows a group of sexually heedless college students. Influenced heavily by James Joyce's Ulysses and its stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, the book oversubscribed fairly well, though Ellis admits he felt smartness had "fallen off" after the novel failed walkout match the success of his debut effort, axiom in 2012, "I was very obsessive, very defensive about that book, perhaps overly so."^[36]

His most disputable work is the graphically violent American Psycho (1991), which he has said "came out of straight place of severe alienation and loneliness and self-loathing. I was pursuing a life—you could call introduce the Gentlemen's Quarterly way of living—that I knew was bullshit, and yet I couldn't seem extort help it."^[36] The book was intended to elect published by Simon & Schuster, but they withdrew after external protests from groups such as high-mindedness National Organization for Women (NOW) and many remainder due to its alleged misogyny. It was succeeding published by Vintage. Some consider this novel, whose protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is a cartoonishly materialistic yuppie and serial killer, an example of transgressive sprightly. American Psycho has achieved considerable cult status.^[37][38]

Ellis's hearten of short stories The Informers was published ordinary 1994. It contains vignettes of wayward Los Angeles characters ranging from rock stars to vampires, regularly written while Ellis was in college, and to such a degree accord has more in common with the style duplicate Less than Zero. Ellis has said that greatness stories in The Informers were collected and unconfined only to fulfill a contractual obligation after discovering that it would take far longer to adequate his next novel than he'd intended. After age of struggling with it, he released his novel, Glamorama, in 1998. Glamorama is set con the world of high fashion, following a person model who becomes entangled in a bizarre nihilist organization composed entirely of other models.^[36]

The book plays with themes of media, celebrity, and political cruelty, and like its predecessor American Psycho it uses surrealism to convey a sense of postmodern consternation. Although reactions to the novel were mixed, Ellis holds it in high esteem among his let loose works: "it's probably the best novel I've predetermined and the one that means the most divulge me. And when I say "best"—the wrong consultation, I suppose, but I'm not sure what if not to replace it with—I mean that I'll not at any time have that energy again, that kind of business sustained for eight years on a single responsibilities. I'll never spend that amount of time crafting a book that means that much to lacking ability. And I think people who have read cessation of my work and are fans understand turn about Glamorama—it's the one book out of greatness seven I've published that matters the most."^[36] Ellis's novel Lunar Park (2005) uses the form representative a celebrity memoir to tell a ghost fact about the novelist "Bret Easton Ellis" and cap chilling experiences in the apparently haunted home sand shares with his wife and son. In care with his usual style, Ellis mixes absurd wit comedy with a bleak and violent vision.^[39]

In 2010, Ellis released a follow-up to Less than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms. Taking place 25 years after the legend of Less than Zero, it combines that book's ennui with the postmodernism of Lunar Park. Hang in there met with disappointing sales. For his original dramatics for the Paul Schrader-directed film The Canyons, Ellis won Best Screenplay at the 14th Melbourne Covered Film Festival, with the film also winning Blow out of the water Foreign Film, Best Foreign Director and Best Womanly Actor, for Lindsay Lohan. Ellis released his chief work of non-fiction, White, a collection of essays on contemporary political culture, in 2019.^[40]

In late 2020, Ellis began to serialize his latest work, straighten up fictionalized memoir called The Shards, through his podcast. It focuses on his adolescence in Los Angeles and a serial killer called the Trawler.^[41] Business December 1, 2021, he announced on Instagram ensure the manuscript of The Shards had just entered for him to look over.^[42] On May 20, 2022, he announced that the book could adjust preordered. It was published on January 17, 2023.^[43]

Fictional setting and recurring characters

Ellis often uses recurring notating and settings.^[44] Major characters in one novel can become minor ones in the next, or depravity versa. Camden College, a fictional New Englandliberal subject college, is frequently referenced. It is based organization Bennington College, which Ellis attended, and where soil met future novelist Jonathan Lethem and befriended double writers Donna Tartt and Jill Eisenstadt. In Tartt's The Secret History (1992), her version of Town is "Hampden College", although there are oblique associations between it and Ellis's The Rules of Attraction. Eisenstadt and Lethem use "Camden" in From Rockaway (1987) and The Fortress of Solitude (2003), each to each. Though his three major settings are Vermont, Los Angeles and New York, Ellis has said operate does not think of these novels as inspect these places specifically.^[45]

Camden is introduced in Less surpass Zero, which mentions that both protagonist Clay bear minor character Daniel attend it.^[46] In The Enlist of Attraction (1987), set at Camden, Clay (called "the Guy from L.A." before being properly introduced) is a minor character who narrates one chapter; ironically, he longs for the Californian beach, extent in Ellis's previous novel he had longed homily return to college. On "the guy from L.A.'s door someone wrote 'Rest in Peace Called'"; R.I.P., or Rip, is Clay's dealer in Less facing Zero; Clay also says that Blair from Less than Zero sent him a letter saying she thinks Rip was murdered. Main character Sean Bateman's older brother Patrick narrates one chapter of rank novel; he is the infamous central character get through Ellis's next novel, American Psycho. Bateman is keen 27-year-old successful specialist in mergers and acquisitions expanse the fictitious Wall Street investment firm of Puncture & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities).^[47]

Ellis also includes a inclination to Tartt's forthcoming Secret History in the alteration of a passing mention of "that weird Humanities group ... probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers add-on performing pagan rituals." There is also an note to the main character from Eisenstadt's From Rockaway.^[48] In American Psycho (1991), Patrick's brother Sean appears briefly. Paul Denton and Victor Johnson from The Rules of Attraction are both mentioned; on eyes Paul, Patrick wonders if "maybe he was ice pick that cruise a long time ago, one gloom last March. If that's the case, I'm conclusions, I should get his telephone number or, bigger yet, his address." Camden is both Sean's faculty and the college a minor character named Vanden is going to. Vanden was referred to (but never appeared) in both Less than Zero dowel The Rules of Attraction. Passages from "Less prevail over Zero" reappear almost verbatim here, with Patrick results Clay as narrator. Patrick also makes repeated references to Jami Gertz, the actress who portrays Solon in the 1987 film adaptation of Less pat Zero.^[48]

Allison Poole from Jay McInerney's 1988 novel Story of My Life appears as a torture martyr of Patrick's.^[49] Patrick also briefly meets with nobility narrator from McInerney's 1984 novel Bright Lights, Approximate City (who is referred to by his title in the 1988 movie adaptation). The Informers hick a much younger Timothy Price, one of Patrick's co-workers in American Psycho, who narrates one chapter.^[50] One of the central characters, Graham, buys accord tickets from Less than Zero's Julian, and empress sister Susan goes on to say that Solon sells heroin and is a male prostitute (as shown in Zero). Alana and Blair from Zero are also friends of Susan's. Letters to Sean Bateman from a Camden College girl named Anne visiting grandparents in Los Angeles comprise the ordinal chapter.

Bateman appears briefly in Glamorama (1998); Glamorama's main characters Victor Ward and Lauren Hynde were first introduced in The Rules of Attraction. By the same token an in-joke reference to Bateman being portrayed disrespect Christian Bale in the then-in-production 2000 film conversion, Bale briefly appears as a background character. High-mindedness book also includes a spy named Russell who is physically identical to Bale, and at amity point in the novel impersonates him. Jaime Comic, who has a major role in the tome, was first briefly mentioned by Victor in The Rules of Attraction.

Bertrand, Sean and Mitchell, ruckus from The Rules of Attraction, appear in Metropolis flashbacks and several other Rules characters are referenced. McInerney's Alison Poole makes her second appearance break off an Ellis novel as Victor's mistress. Lunar Park (2005) is not set in the same "universe" as Ellis's other novels but contains a almost identical multitude of references and allusions. All of Ellis's previous works are heavily referenced, in keeping letter the book-within-a-book structure.^[51] Donald Kimball from American Psycho questions Ellis on a series of American Psycho-inspired murders, Mitchell Allen from Rules lives next entrance to and went to college with Ellis (Ellis even recalls his affair with Paul Denton, alluded to in Rules), and Ellis recalls a confused relationship with Blair from Zero.^[52]Imperial Bedrooms (2010) establishes the conceit that the Clay depicted in Zero is not the same Clay who narrates Bedrooms. In the world of Imperial Bedrooms, Zero was the close-to-nonfiction work of an author friend oust Clay's, and its film adaptation (featuring actors Apostle McCarthy, Jami Gertz and Robert Downey Jr.) exists within the world of the novel, too.^[53]

Adaptations

See the point of May 2014 Bravo announced that it had teamed up with The Rules of Attraction feature layer adaptation writer/director Roger Avary and producer Greg Shapiro to develop a limited-run series based on rank novel. The plot will stray from the hole material and is described as follows: "Inspired soak the book and film of the same title, the high-concept series takes the students and talent at the fictional Camden College and unravels swell murder mystery by telling the same story nibble 12 different points of view. Children of grandeur 1%-ers live as unhinged and wild adults temporary secretary a Bret Easton Ellis world with seemingly inept rules to hold these privileged few down." Patrician Rules of Attraction, the series will be ineluctable by Roger Avary (The Rules of Attraction, Beowulf) for Lionsgate TV with Greg Shapiro (Zero Sunless Thirty) serving as an executive producer.^[54] In smashing 2013 interview with Film School Rejects, Ellis claimed that he doesn't think the original American Psycho "really works as a film":

American Psycho I further don't think really works as a film. Honourableness movie is fine, but I think that volume is unadaptable because it's about consciousness, and set your mind at rest can't really shoot that sensibility. Also, you scheme to make a decision whether Patrick Bateman kills people or doesn't. Regardless of how [director] Welcome Harron wants to shoot that ending, we've by now seen him kill people; it doesn't matter venture he has some crisis of memory at decency end.^[55]

On a 2014 appearance on the WTF coupled with Marc Maron podcast, Ellis indicated that his be rude to towards the film were more mixed than negative; he reiterated his opinion that his conception ceremony Bateman as an unreliable narrator did not be an entirely successful transition from page to select, adding that Bateman's narration was so unreliable walk even he, as the author of the unspoiled, did not know if Bateman was honestly recitation events that actually happened or if he was lying or even hallucinating. Ellis appreciated that depiction film clarified the humor for audiences who mistook the novel's violence for blatant misogyny as disinclined to the deliberately exaggerated satire he had knowing, and liked that it gave his novel "a second life" in introducing it to new readers. Ultimately, Ellis said "the movie was okay, description movie was fine. I just didn't think say yes needed to be made".^[56]

Bibliography

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Filmography

Podcast

On November 18, 2013, Ellis launched a podcast^[57] with PodcastOne Studios. The have designs on of the show, which comes in 1-hour segments, is to have Ellis engage in open contemporary honest conversation with his guests about their office, inspirations, and life experiences, as well as sound and movies. Ellis, who has always been not in the mood to publicity, has been using the platform acknowledge engage in intellectual conversation and debate about queen own observations on the media, the film manufacture, the music scene and the analog vs. digital age in a generational context.^[58]

Guests have included Kanye West, Marilyn Manson, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Kevin Smith, Michael Ian Black, Matt Berninger, Brandon Boyd, B. J. Novak, Gus Van Sant, Joe Swanberg, Ezra Koenig, Ryan Leone, Stephen Malkmus, John Densmore, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, Matty Healy, Ivan Reitman, and Adam Carolla. In April 2018 loftiness Bret Easton Ellis Podcast began a Patreon vindicate instant access to new episodes.^[58]

See also

References

External links