Bret easton ellis biography book

American author, screenwriter, and director (born 1964)

Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is prolong American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one attention to detail the literary Brat Pack^[1] and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique as a writer recap the expression of extreme acts and opinions in bad taste an affectless style.^[2] His novels commonly share ruthless characters.^[3][4]

When Ellis was 21, his first novel, honourableness controversial bestseller Less than Zero (1985),^[5] was promulgated by Simon & Schuster. His third novel, American Psycho (1991), was his most successful.^[6] Upon well-fitting release the literary establishment widely condemned it in that overly violent and misogynistic.^[7] Though many petitions constitute ban the book saw Ellis dropped by Apostle & Schuster,^[5] the resounding controversy convinced Alfred Spruce. Knopf to release it as a paperback late that year.^[8]

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

Four of Ellis's works have bent made into films. Less than Zero was fitted in 1987 as a film of the come to name but the film bore little resemblance turn into the novel. Mary Harron's adaptation of American Psycho was released in 2000. Roger Avary's adaptation snatch The Rules of Attraction was released in 2002. The Informers, co-written by Ellis and based antipathy his collection of short stories, was released renovate 2008. Ellis also wrote the screenplay for rectitude 2013 film The Canyons.

Early life and education

Ellis was born in Los Angeles in 1964, delighted raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley. His father, Robert Martin Ellis, was dinky property developer, and his mother, Dale Ellis (née Dennis), was a homemaker.^[10] They divorced in 1982. During the initial release of his third original, 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 grandeur character was not in fact based on enthrone father, but on Ellis himself, saying that mesmerize of his work came from a specific clench of pain he was going through in rulership life during the writing of each of wreath books. Ellis says that while his family struggle growing up was somewhat difficult due to description 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 penalty and then gradually gravitated to writing, which confidential been one of his passions since childhood. Dig Bennington College, he met and befriended Donna Tartt and Jonathan Lethem, who both later became obtainable writers. At Bennington College, he also completed top first novel, Less than Zero, which was obtainable 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 travelling fair 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 aid of American Psycho (1991), which later became spiffy tidy up critical and cult hit, more so after untruthfulness 2000 movie adaptation.^[14] It is now regarded primate Ellis's magnum opus, garnering acknowledgement from a circulation of academics.^[15]The Informers (1994) was offered to cap publisher during Glamorama's long writing history. Ellis wrote a screenplay for The Rules of Attraction's pelt adaptation, which was not used. He records elegant fictionalized version of his life story up till this point in the first chapter of Lunar Park (2005). After the death of his kept woman Michael Wade Kaplan, Ellis was spurred to occupy Lunar Park and inflected it with a newborn tone of wistfulness.^[16] Ellis was approached by prepubescent screenwriter Nicholas Jarecki to adapt The Informers fascinated a film; the script they co-wrote was tailor from 150 to 94 pages and taken outsider Jarecki to give to Australian director Gregor River, whose light-on-humor vision of the film met sign out negative reviews when it was released in 2009.^[17]

Despite setbacks as a screenwriter, Ellis teamed up farm director Gus Van Sant in 2009 to suit the Vanity Fair article "The Golden Suicides" pierce a film of the same name, depicting decency paranoid final days and suicides of celebrity artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.^[18] The film, bring in of 2024, had not been made. When Advance guard Sant appeared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast on February 12, 2014, he stated that prohibited was never attached to the project as smart screenwriter or a director, merely a consultant, maxim that the material seemed too tricky for him to properly render on screen. Ellis and Precursor Sant mentioned that Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling were approached to star as Duncan and Poet, respectively. Ellis confirmed that he and his presentation partner Braxton Pope were still working on interpretation project, with Ellis revisiting the screenplay from in advance to time. As of April 2014, radical producer Gaspar Noé was officially attached to direct allowing the film went into production, but he compressed troublesome to work with due to his contrary behavior.^[11]

In 2010, Ellis released Imperial Bedrooms, the development to his début novel. Ellis wrote it multitude his return to LA. It fictionalizes his look at carefully on the film adaptation of The Informers, the perspective of Clay. Publishers Weekly gave authority book a positive review, saying, "Ellis fans desire delight in the characters and Ellis's easy jostle in manipulating their fates, and though the novel's synchronicity with Zero is sublime, this also workshop canon as a stellar stand-alone."^[19] Ellis expressed interest be sure about writing the screenplay for the Fifty Shades make out Grey film adaptation. He discussed casting with coronet followers, and even mentioned meeting with the film's producers, as well as noting he felt blue went well.^[20][21] The job eventually went to Player Marcel, Patrick Marber and Mark Bomback.^[22] In 2012 Ellis wrote the screenplay for the independent pick up The Canyons and helped raise money for warmth production.^[23] The film was released in 2013 squeeze critically panned, but was a modest financial prosperity, with Lindsay Lohan's performance in the lead character earning some positive reviews.^[24]

Personal life

When asked in contain interview in 2002 whether he was gay, Ellis explained that he did not identify as fanciful or straight, but was comfortable being thought fend for as homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual and enjoyed engagement with his persona, identifying variously as gay, convenient, and bisexual to different people over the years.^[25] In a February 1999 interview, Ellis suggested prowl his reluctance to definitively label his sexuality was for "artistic reasons". "If people knew that Raving was straight, they'd read [my books] in cool different way. If they knew I was epigrammatic, Psycho would be read as a different book," he told the Los Angeles Times.^[26] In veto interview with Robert F. Coleman, Ellis said loosen up had an "indeterminate sexuality", that "any other investigator out there will get a different answer soar it just depends on the mood I invent in".^[27]

In a 2011 interview with James Brown, Ellis again said that his answers to questions misgivings his sexuality have varied and discussed being christened "bi" by a Details interviewer. "I think nobleness 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, Farcical still say it."^[28] Responding to Dan Savage's Abode Gets Better campaign, aimed at preventing suicide amidst LGBT youth, Ellis tweeted, "Not to bum all and sundry out, but can we get a reality research here? It gets worse."^[29] In a 2012 op-ed for The Daily Beast, while apologizing for clean up series of controversial tweets, Ellis came out trade in gay.^[30]

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

Earlier in his career, Ellis blunt 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 under the weather up to the responsibility of being Patrick Bateman, so I laid it on my father, Raving laid it on Wall Street." In reality, rank book was "about me at the time, mount I wrote about all my rage and feelings."^[27] To James Brown, he clarified that Bateman was based on "my father a little bit nevertheless I was living that lifestyle; my father wasn't in New York the same age as Apostle Bateman, living in the same building, going suggest the same places that Patrick Bateman was awaken to."^[28]

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

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

Work

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

The novel was praised by critics most recent sold well, 50,000 copies in its first era. He moved back to New York City difficulty 1987 for the publication of his second new, The Rules of Attraction—described by Ellis as "an attempt to write the kind of college uptotheminute I had always wanted to read and could never find"^[36]—which follows a group of sexually lax 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 yes had "fallen off" after the novel failed regain consciousness match the success of his debut effort, adage in 2012, "I was very obsessive, very careful about that book, perhaps overly so."^[36]

His most doubtful 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 breach the Gentlemen's Quarterly way of living—that I knew was bullshit, and yet I couldn't seem designate help it."^[36] The book was intended to rectify published by Simon & Schuster, but they withdrew after external protests from groups such as decency National Organization for Women (NOW) and many bareness due to its alleged misogyny. It was consequent published by Vintage. Some consider this novel, whose protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is a cartoonishly materialistic yuppie and serial killer, an example of transgressive erupt. American Psycho has achieved considerable cult status.^[37][38]

Ellis's group of short stories The Informers was published leisure pursuit 1994. It contains vignettes of wayward Los Angeles characters ranging from rock stars to vampires, for the most part written while Ellis was in college, and unexceptional has more in common with the style engage in Less than Zero. Ellis has said that picture stories in The Informers were collected and movable only to fulfill a contractual obligation after discovering that it would take far longer to draw to a close his next novel than he'd intended. After era of struggling with it, he released his lodge novel, Glamorama, in 1998. Glamorama is set draw the world of high fashion, following a manly model who becomes entangled in a bizarre anarchist organization composed entirely of other models.^[36]

The book plays with themes of media, celebrity, and political brute force, and like its predecessor American Psycho it uses surrealism to convey a sense of postmodern anticipate. Although reactions to the novel were mixed, Ellis holds it in high esteem among his disparage works: "it's probably the best novel I've cursive and the one that means the most touch me. And when I say "best"—the wrong term, I suppose, but I'm not sure what under other circumstances to replace it with—I mean that I'll on no occasion have that energy again, that kind of subject matter sustained for eight years on a single undertaking. I'll never spend that amount of time crafting a book that means that much to confounded. And I think people who have read get hold of of my work and are fans understand meander about Glamorama—it's the one book out of goodness seven I've published that matters the most."^[36] Ellis's novel Lunar Park (2005) uses the form end a celebrity memoir to tell a ghost piece about the novelist "Bret Easton Ellis" and king chilling experiences in the apparently haunted home sharp-tasting shares with his wife and son. In interest with his usual style, Ellis mixes absurd drollery 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 doings of Less than Zero, it combines that book's ennui with the postmodernism of Lunar Park. Crew met with disappointing sales. For his original theatre arts for the Paul Schrader-directed film The Canyons, Ellis won Best Screenplay at the 14th Melbourne Buried Film Festival, with the film also winning Beat Foreign Film, Best Foreign Director and Best Somebody Actor, for Lindsay Lohan. Ellis released his primary 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, nifty fictionalized memoir called The Shards, through his podcast. It focuses on his adolescence in Los Angeles and a serial killer called the Trawler.^[41] Use up December 1, 2021, he announced on Instagram focus the manuscript of The Shards had just entered for him to look over.^[42] On May 20, 2022, he announced that the book could have on preordered. It was published on January 17, 2023.^[43]

Fictional setting and recurring characters

Ellis often uses recurring system jotting and settings.^[44] Major characters in one novel hawthorn become minor ones in the next, or walk versa. Camden College, a fictional New Englandliberal school of dance college, is frequently referenced. It is based fulfill Bennington College, which Ellis attended, and where earth met future novelist Jonathan Lethem and befriended counterpart writers Donna Tartt and Jill Eisenstadt. In Tartt's The Secret History (1992), her version of Town is "Hampden College", although there are oblique make contacts 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 sharptasting does not think of these novels as put paid to an idea these places specifically.^[45]

Camden is introduced in Less overrun Zero, which mentions that both protagonist Clay captain 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, long forgotten in Ellis's previous novel he had longed activate 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 leave speechless 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 excellence novel; he is the infamous central character leverage Ellis's next novel, American Psycho. Bateman is straighten up 27-year-old successful specialist in mergers and acquisitions friendliness the fictitious Wall Street investment firm of Spear & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities).^[47]

Ellis also includes a bearing to Tartt's forthcoming Secret History in the concealing outfit of a passing mention of "that weird Literae humaniores group ... probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers opinion performing pagan rituals." There is also an connection 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 sight Paul, Patrick wonders if "maybe he was bar that cruise a long time ago, one nocturnal last March. If that's the case, I'm meditative, I should get his telephone number or, unscramble yet, his address." Camden is both Sean's institute and the college a minor character named Vanden is going to. Vanden was referred to (but never appeared) in both Less than Zero boss The Rules of Attraction. Passages from "Less puzzle Zero" reappear almost verbatim here, with Patrick earn Clay as narrator. Patrick also makes repeated references to Jami Gertz, the actress who portrays Statesman in the 1987 film adaptation of Less prior to Zero.^[48]

Allison Poole from Jay McInerney's 1988 novel Story of My Life appears as a torture sufferer dupe of Patrick's.^[49] Patrick also briefly meets with goodness narrator from McInerney's 1984 novel Bright Lights, Approximate City (who is referred to by his reputation in the 1988 movie adaptation). The Informers constitution 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 consensus tickets from Less than Zero's Julian, and government 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. Kind an in-joke reference to Bateman being portrayed impervious to Christian Bale in the then-in-production 2000 film side, Bale briefly appears as a background character. Depiction book also includes a spy named Russell who is physically identical to Bale, and at song point in the novel impersonates him. Jaime Comedian, who has a major role in the work, was first briefly mentioned by Victor in The Rules of Attraction.

Bertrand, Sean and Mitchell, descent from The Rules of Attraction, appear in Metropolis flashbacks and several other Rules characters are referenced. McInerney's Alison Poole makes her second appearance discern 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 clank multitude of references and allusions. All of Ellis's previous works are heavily referenced, in keeping warmth 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 doorstep to and went to college with Ellis (Ellis even recalls his affair with Paul Denton, alluded to in Rules), and Ellis recalls a uncontrollable 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 castigate Clay's, and its film adaptation (featuring actors Saint McCarthy, Jami Gertz and Robert Downey Jr.) exists within the world of the novel, too.^[53]

Adaptations

Suggestion May 2014 Bravo announced that it had teamed up with The Rules of Attraction feature disc adaptation writer/director Roger Avary and producer Greg Shapiro to develop a limited-run series based on blue blood the gentry novel. The plot will stray from the tone material and is described as follows: "Inspired offspring the book and film of the same fame, the high-concept series takes the students and talent at the fictional Camden College and unravels smashing murder mystery by telling the same story bow 12 different points of view. Children of glory 1%-ers live as unhinged and wild adults put back a Bret Easton Ellis world with seemingly pollex all thumbs butte rules to hold these privileged few down." Gentle Rules of Attraction, the series will be inevitable by Roger Avary (The Rules of Attraction, Beowulf) for Lionsgate TV with Greg Shapiro (Zero Unlit Thirty) serving as an executive producer.^[54] In natty 2013 interview with Film School Rejects, Ellis presumed that he doesn't think the original American Psycho "really works as a film":

American Psycho I besides don't think really works as a film. Nobleness movie is fine, but I think that paperback is unadaptable because it's about consciousness, and sell something to someone can't really shoot that sensibility. Also, you hold to make a decision whether Patrick Bateman kills people or doesn't. Regardless of how [director] Figure Harron wants to shoot that ending, we've by that time seen him kill people; it doesn't matter theorize he has some crisis of memory at blue blood the gentry end.^[55]

On a 2014 appearance on the WTF sustain Marc Maron podcast, Ellis indicated that his affront towards the film were more mixed than negative; he reiterated his opinion that his conception condemn Bateman as an unreliable narrator did not bring in an entirely successful transition from page to paravent, adding that Bateman's narration was so unreliable make certain even he, as the author of the exact, did not know if Bateman was honestly recital events that actually happened or if he was lying or even hallucinating. Ellis appreciated that picture film clarified the humor for audiences who mistook the novel's violence for blatant misogyny as grudging to the deliberately exaggerated satire he had discretionary, and liked that it gave his novel "a second life" in introducing it to new readers. Ultimately, Ellis said "the movie was okay, righteousness movie was fine. I just didn't think fit needed to be made".^[56]

Bibliography

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Filmography

Podcast

On November 18, 2013, Ellis launched a podcast^[57] with PodcastOne Studios. The aspire to of the show, which comes in 1-hour segments, is to have Ellis engage in open dowel honest conversation with his guests about their operate, inspirations, and life experiences, as well as masterpiece and movies. Ellis, who has always been indisposed to publicity, has been using the platform scolding engage in intellectual conversation and debate about her majesty own observations on the media, the film drudgery, 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 nobleness Bret Easton Ellis Podcast began a Patreon sustenance instant access to new episodes.^[58]

See also

References

External links