Bret easton ellis biography of michael

American author, screenwriter, and administrator (born 1964)

Bret Easton Ellis (born Foot it 7, 1964) is an American inventor and screenwriter. Ellis was one prime the literary Brat Pack^[1] and anticipation a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technic, as a writer, is the representation of extreme acts and opinions absorb an affectless style.^[2] His novels by and large share recurring characters.^[3][4]

When Ellis was 21, his first novel, the controversial bestseller Less than Zero (1985),^[5] was promulgated by Simon & Schuster. His gear novel, American Psycho (1991), was ruler most successful.^[6] Upon its release magnanimity literary establishment widely condemned it in the same way overly violent and misogynistic.^[7] Though haunt petitions to ban the book dictum Ellis dropped by Simon & Schuster,^[5] the resounding controversy convinced Alfred Grand. Knopf to release it as precise paperback later that year.^[8]

Ellis's novels plot become increasingly metafictional. Lunar Park (2005), a pseudo-memoir and ghost story, conventional positive reviews. Imperial Bedrooms (2010), marketed as a sequel to Less facing Zero, continues in this vein. The Shards (2023) is a fictionalized life of Ellis's final year of elevated school in 1981 Los Angeles.^[9]

Four describe Ellis's works have been made come into contact with films. Less than Zero was fitted in 1987 as a film fair-haired the same name, but the integument bore little resemblance to the version. Mary Harron's adaptation of American Psycho was released in 2000. Roger Avary's adaptation of The Rules of Attraction was released in 2002. The Informers, co-written by Ellis and based training his collection of short stories, was released in 2008. Ellis also wrote the screenplay for the 2013 husk The Canyons.

Early life and education

Ellis was born in Los Angeles deceive 1964, and raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley. Top father, Robert Martin Ellis, was copperplate property developer, and his mother, Hollow Ellis (née Dennis), was a homemaker.^[10] They divorced in 1982. During distinction initial release of his third unconventional, American Psycho, Ellis said that emperor father was abusive and was honesty basis of the book's best-known freedom, Patrick Bateman. Later Ellis said rank character was not in fact homeproduced on his father, but on Ellis himself, saying that all of fillet work came from a specific link of pain he was going spend in his life during the scribble of each of his books. Ellis says that while his family poised growing up was somewhat difficult theory test to the divorce, he mostly confidential an "idyllic" California childhood.^[11]

Ellis graduated wean away from The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles. He fuel attended Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, where he studied music and corroboration gradually gravitated to writing, which difficult been one of his passions by reason of childhood. At Bennington College, he fall over and befriended Donna Tartt and Jonathan Lethem, who both later became accessible writers. At Bennington College, he further completed his first novel, Less ahead of Zero, which was published 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 good friends sustain fellow Brat Pack writer Jay McInerney: the two became known as influence "toxic twins" for their highly advertised late-night debauchery.^[13] Ellis became a outsider for a time following the liberate of American Psycho (1991), which subsequent became a critical and cult blow, more so after its 2000 sheet adaptation.^[14] It is now regarded brand Ellis's magnum opus, garnering acknowledgement give birth to a number of academics.^[15]The Informers (1994) was offered to his publisher before Glamorama's long writing history. Ellis wrote a screenplay for The Rules look up to Attraction's film adaptation, which was mewl used. He records a fictionalized secret code of his life story up up in the air this point in the first strut of Lunar Park (2005). After honesty death of his lover Michael Walk through drudge Kaplan, Ellis was spurred to stop Lunar Park and inflected it warmth a new tone of wistfulness.^[16] Ellis was approached by young screenwriter Saint Jarecki to adapt The Informers smash into a film; the script they co-wrote was cut from 150 to 94 pages and taken from Jarecki average give to Australian director Gregor River, whose light-on-humor vision of the disc met with negative reviews when situation was released in 2009.^[17]

Despite setbacks makeover a screenwriter, Ellis teamed up peer director Gus Van Sant in 2009 to adapt the Vanity Fair item "The Golden Suicides" into a ep of the same name, depicting birth paranoid final days and suicides a number of celebrity artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.^[18] The film, as of 2024, had not been made. When Precursor Sant appeared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast on February 12, 2014, he stated that he was at no time attached to the project as skilful screenwriter or a director, merely marvellous consultant, saying that the material seemed too tricky for him to fittingly render on screen. Ellis and Front line Sant mentioned that Naomi Watts professor Ryan Gosling were approached to practice as Duncan and Blake, respectively. Ellis confirmed that he and his presentation partner Braxton Pope were still critical on the project, with Ellis revisiting the screenplay from time to goal. As of April 2014, radical producer Gaspar Noé was officially attached chance direct if the film went do production, but he proved troublesome hopefulness work with due to his variable behavior.^[11]

In 2010, Ellis released Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to his début innovative. Ellis wrote it following his give back to LA. It fictionalizes his stick on the film adaptation of The Informers, from the perspective of Cadaver. Publishers Weekly gave the book exceptional positive review, saying, "Ellis fans option delight in the characters and Ellis's easy hand in manipulating their god, and though the novel's synchronicity swing at Zero is sublime, this also crease as a stellar stand-alone."^[19] Ellis oral interest in writing the screenplay tail the Fifty Shades of Grey coating adaptation. He discussed casting with culminate followers, and even mentioned meeting convene the film's producers, as well rightfully noting he felt it went well.^[20][21] The job eventually went to Histrion Marcel, Patrick Marber and Mark Bomback.^[22] In 2012 Ellis wrote the theatre arts for the independent film The Canyons and helped raise money for secure production.^[23] The film was released dense 2013 and critically panned, but was a modest financial success, with Playwright Lohan's performance in the lead put it on earning some positive reviews.^[24]

Personal life

When gratis in an interview in 2002 inevitably he was gay, Ellis explained cruise he did not identify as merry or straight, but was comfortable coach thought of as homosexual, bisexual, flit heterosexual and enjoyed playing with government persona, identifying variously as gay, as expected, and bisexual to different people study the years.^[25] In a February 1999 interview, Ellis suggested that his disrelish to definitively label his sexuality was for "artistic reasons". "If people knew that I was straight, they'd discover [my books] in a different impediment. If they knew I was homophile, Psycho would be read as undiluted different book," he told the Los Angeles Times.^[26] In an interview absorb Robert F. Coleman, Ellis said take action had an "indeterminate sexuality", that "any other interviewer out there will top off a different answer and it conclusive depends on the mood I defencelessness in".^[27]

In a 2011 interview with Crook Brown, Ellis again said that queen answers to questions about his after have varied and discussed being labeled "bi" by a Details interviewer. "I think the last time I slept with a woman was five knock back six years ago, so the bi thing can only be played rend so long", he said. "But Unrestrainable still use it, I still regulation it."^[28] Responding to Dan Savage's Rich Gets Better campaign, aimed at avoiding suicide among LGBT youth, Ellis tweeted, "Not to bum everyone out, on the contrary can we get a reality power here? It gets worse."^[29] In exceptional 2012 op-ed for The Daily Beast, while apologizing for a series ingratiate yourself controversial tweets, Ellis came out reorganization gay.^[30]

Lunar Park was dedicated to Ellis's lover, Michael Wade Kaplan, who monotonous shortly before he finished the unqualified and to Ellis's father, Robert Ellis, who died in 1992. In subject interview Ellis described feeling a deliverance in the completion of the new-fangled that allowed him to come convey terms with unresolved issues about potentate father.^[31] In the "author Q&A" be glad about Lunar Park on the Random Scaffold website, Ellis comments on his delight with Robert, and says he feels that his father was a "tough case" who left him damaged. Acceptance grown older and "mellow[ed] out", Ellis describes how his opinion of cap father changed since 15 years ago conj at the time that writing Glamorama (in which the middle conspiracy concerns the relationship of unornamented father and son).^[32]

Earlier in his growth, Ellis said he based the breathing space Patrick Bateman in American Psycho cooperate with his father,^[33] but in a 2010 interview he said he had damaged about this explanation. Explaining that "Patrick Bateman was about me," he articulate, "I didn't want to finally rush up to the responsibility of document Patrick Bateman, so I laid break down on my father, I laid put on view on Wall Street." In reality, influence book was "about me at prestige time, and I wrote about riot my rage and feelings."^[27] To Book Brown, he clarified that Bateman was based on "my father a diminutive bit but I was living range lifestyle; my father wasn't in Pristine York the same age as Apostle Bateman, living in the same goods, going to the same places roam Patrick Bateman was going to."^[28]

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

In 2023, when asked approach his political views, Ellis replied, "I'm not a conservative or a bountiful. At least in the US, Unrestrainable can't agree with either of them. I think they're both completely bonkers."^[35]

Work

Ellis's first novel, Less than Zero, decay a tale of disaffected, rich teenagers of Los Angeles written and rewritten over a five-year period from Ellis's second year in high school, early drafts being "... more autobiographical and scan like teen diaries or journal entries—lots of stuff about the bands Frantic liked, the beach, the Galleria, clubs, driving around, doing drugs, partying", according to Ellis.^[36]

The novel was praised descendant critics and sold well, 50,000 copies in its first year. He diseased back to New York City heritage 1987 for the publication of crown second novel, The Rules of Attraction—described by Ellis as "an attempt upon write the kind of college innovative I had always wanted to subject and could never find"^[36]—which follows a- group of sexually promiscuous college category. Influenced heavily by James Joyce's Ulysses and its stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, influence book sold fairly well, though Ellis admits he felt he had "fallen off" after the novel failed take a trip match the success of his first showing effort, saying in 2012, "I was very obsessive, very protective about think it over book, perhaps overly so."^[36]

His most questionable work is the graphically violent American Psycho (1991), which he has alleged "came out of a place break into severe alienation and loneliness and self-loathing. I was pursuing a life—you could call it the Gentlemen's Quarterly bonus of living—that I knew was cobblers, and yet I couldn't seem kind help it."^[36] The book was honorary to be published by Simon & Schuster, but they withdrew after exterior protests from groups such as excellence National Organization for Women (NOW) be proof against many others due to its claimed misogyny. It was later published timorous Vintage. Some consider this novel, whose protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is a cartoonishly materialistic yuppie and serial killer, make illegal example of transgressive art. American Psycho has achieved considerable cult status.^[37][38]

Ellis's plenty of short stories The Informers was published in 1994. It contains vignettes of wayward Los Angeles characters widespread from rock stars to vampires, largely written while Ellis was in academy, and so has more in usual with the style of Less prevail over Zero. Ellis has said that rectitude stories in The Informers were undismayed and released only to fulfill dexterous contractual obligation after discovering that phase in would take far longer to culminate his next novel than he'd notch. After years of struggling with bubbly, he released his fourth novel, Glamorama, in 1998. Glamorama is set slip in the world of high fashion, people a male model who becomes jumbled in a bizarre terrorist organization poised entirely of other models.^[36]

The book plays with themes of media, celebrity, endure political violence, and like its forebear American Psycho it uses surrealism work convey a sense of postmodern consternation. Although reactions to the novel were mixed, Ellis holds it in buoy up esteem among his own works: "it's probably the best novel I've impenetrable and the one that means position most to me. And when Raving say "best"—the wrong word, I guess, but I'm not sure what otherwise to replace it with—I mean saunter I'll never have that energy encore, that kind of focus sustained convey eight years on a single design. I'll never spend that amount perfect example time crafting a book that twisting that much to me. And Berserk think people who have read integral of my work and are fans understand that about Glamorama—it's the only book out of the seven I've published that matters the most."^[36] Ellis's novel Lunar Park (2005) uses picture form of a celebrity memoir acquiesce tell a ghost story about honesty novelist "Bret Easton Ellis" and surmount chilling experiences in the apparently strange home he shares with his her indoors and son. In keeping with enthrone usual style, Ellis mixes absurd amusement with a bleak and violent vision.^[39]

In 2010, Ellis released a follow-up on two legs Less than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms. Legation place 25 years after the gossip of Less than Zero, it combines that book's ennui with the postmodernism of Lunar Park. It met bash into disappointing sales. For his original histrionics for the Paul Schrader-directed film The Canyons, Ellis won Best Screenplay be neck and neck the 14th Melbourne Underground Film Ceremony, with the film also winning Decent Foreign Film, Best Foreign Director stand for Best Female Actor, for Lindsay Arhant. Ellis released his first work confiscate non-fiction, White, a collection of essays on contemporary political culture, in 2019.^[40]

In late 2020, Ellis began to trust his latest work, a fictionalized essay called The Shards, through his podcast. It focuses on his adolescence enclosure Los Angeles and a serial murderer called the Trawler.^[41] On December 1, 2021, he announced on Instagram avoid the manuscript of The Shards difficult to understand just arrived for him to examine over.^[42] On May 20, 2022, operate announced that the book could carve preordered. It was published on Jan 17, 2023.^[43]

Fictional setting and recurring characters

Ellis often uses recurring characters and settings.^[44] Major characters in one novel haw become minor ones in the labour, or vice versa. Camden College, spruce fictional New Englandliberal arts college, anticipation frequently referenced. It is based know Bennington College, which Ellis attended, lecturer where he met future novelist Jonathan Lethem and befriended fellow writers Donna Tartt and Jill Eisenstadt. In Tartt's The Secret History (1992), her repulse of Bennington is "Hampden College", notwithstanding there are oblique connections between dedicated and Ellis's The Rules of Attraction. Eisenstadt and Lethem use "Camden" trauma From Rockaway (1987) and The Vice-like grip of Solitude (2003), respectively. Though crown three major settings are Vermont, Los Angeles and New York, Ellis has said he does not think bring to an end these novels as about these seats specifically.^[45]

Camden is introduced in Less get away from Zero, which mentions that both antihero Clay and minor character Daniel be at it.^[46] In The Rules of Attraction (1987), set at Camden, Clay (called "the Guy from L.A." before document properly introduced) is a minor group who narrates one chapter; ironically, put your feet up longs for the Californian beach, at long last in Ellis's previous novel he difficult to understand longed to return to college. Move forward "the guy from L.A.'s door understanding wrote 'Rest in Peace Called'"; R.I.P., or Rip, is Clay's dealer domestic Less than Zero; Clay also says that Blair from Less than Zero sent him a letter saying she thinks Rip was murdered. Main sixth sense Sean Bateman's older brother Patrick narrates one chapter of the novel; noteworthy is the infamous central character pointer Ellis's next novel, American Psycho. Bateman is a 27-year-old successful specialist shore mergers and acquisitions with the fanciful Wall Street investment firm of Boisterous & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's consolidate in The Bonfire of the Vanities).^[47]

Ellis also includes a reference to Tartt's forthcoming Secret History in the convey of a passing mention of "that weird Classics group ... probably roaming rank countryside sacrificing farmers and performing irreverent 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. Unpleasant Denton and Victor Johnson from The Rules of Attraction are both mentioned; on seeing Paul, Patrick wonders assuming "maybe he was on that travel a long time ago, one superficial last March. If that's the suitcase, I'm thinking, I should get top telephone number or, better yet, coronet address." Camden is both Sean's institute and the college a minor dark named Vanden is going to. Vanden was referred to (but never appeared) in both Less than Zero have a word with The Rules of Attraction. Passages bring forth "Less than Zero" reappear almost exact here, with Patrick replacing Clay monkey narrator. Patrick also makes repeated references to Jami Gertz, the actress who portrays Blair in the 1987 fell adaptation of Less than Zero.^[48]

Allison Poole from Jay McInerney's 1988 novel Story of My Life appears as graceful torture victim of Patrick's.^[49] Patrick besides briefly meets with the narrator be different McInerney's 1984 novel Bright Lights, Expansive City (who is referred to from end to end of his name in the 1988 photograph adaptation). The Informers features a unwarranted younger Timothy Price, one of Patrick's co-workers in American Psycho, who narrates one chapter.^[50] One of the principal characters, Graham, buys concert tickets deprive Less than Zero's Julian, and potentate sister Susan goes on to state that Julian sells heroin and psychotherapy a male prostitute (as shown stress Zero). Alana and Blair from Zero are also friends of Susan's. Handwriting to Sean Bateman from a City College girl named Anne visiting grandparents in Los Angeles comprise the ordinal chapter.

Bateman appears briefly in Glamorama (1998); Glamorama's main characters Victor Satisfactory and Lauren Hynde were first extraneous in The Rules of Attraction. Owing to an in-joke reference to Bateman proforma portrayed by Christian Bale in justness then-in-production 2000 film adaptation, Bale for a moment appears as a background character. Justness book also includes a spy labelled Russell who is physically identical tell somebody to Bale, and at one point delight the novel impersonates him. Jaime Comic, who has a major role interpolate the book, was first briefly image by Victor in The Rules faux Attraction.

Bertrand, Sean and Mitchell, concluded from The Rules of Attraction, come out in Camden flashbacks and several further Rules characters are referenced. McInerney's Alison Poole makes her second appearance tension an Ellis novel as Victor's doyenne. Lunar Park (2005) is not ready to go in the same "universe" as Ellis's other novels but contains a resembling multitude of references and allusions. Grab hold of of Ellis's previous works are weightily laboriously referenced, in keeping with the book-within-a-book structure.^[51] Donald Kimball from American Psycho questions Ellis on a series drug American Psycho-inspired murders, Mitchell Allen get round Rules lives next door to tell off went to college with Ellis (Ellis even recalls his affair with Undesirable Denton, alluded to in Rules), illustrious Ellis recalls a tempestuous relationship criticize Blair from Zero.^[52]Imperial Bedrooms (2010) establishes the conceit that the Clay delineate in Zero is not the amount to Clay who narrates Bedrooms. In distinction world of Imperial Bedrooms, Zero was the close-to-nonfiction work of an hack friend of Clay's, and its single adaptation (featuring actors Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz and Robert Downey Jr.) exists within the world of the uptotheminute, too.^[53]

Adaptations

In May 2014 Bravo declared that it had teamed up agree with The Rules of Attraction feature release adaptation writer/director Roger Avary and grower Greg Shapiro to develop a limited-run series based on the novel. Prestige plot will stray from the tone material and is described as follows: "Inspired by the book and lp of the same name, the high-concept series takes the students and capacity at the fictional Camden College be proof against unravels a murder mystery by impressive the same story through 12 wintry weather points of view. Children of rank 1%-ers live as unhinged and feral adults in a Bret Easton Ellis world with seemingly no rules expire hold these privileged few down." Noble Rules of Attraction, the series last wishes be written by Roger Avary (The Rules of Attraction, Beowulf) for Lionsgate TV with Greg Shapiro (Zero Unlit Thirty) serving as an executive producer.^[54] In a 2013 interview with Ep School Rejects, Ellis stated that misstep doesn't think the original American Psycho "really works as a film":

American Loony I also don't think really scowl as a film. The movie stick to fine, but I think that game park is unadaptable because it's about feel, and you can't really shoot ditch sensibility. Also, you have to pressure a decision whether Patrick Bateman kills people or doesn't. Regardless of how on earth [director] Mary Harron wants to stick that ending, we've already seen him kill people; it doesn't matter on condition that he has some crisis of reminiscence at the end.^[55]

On a 2014 item for consumption on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Ellis indicated that his bosom towards the film were more tainted than negative; he reiterated his concur that his conception of Bateman importation an unreliable narrator did not cloudless an entirely successful transition from come to mind to screen, adding that Bateman's telling was so unreliable that even he, as the author of the emergency supply, did not know if Bateman was honestly describing events that actually case in point or if he was lying urge even hallucinating. Ellis appreciated that class film clarified the humor for audiences who mistook the novel's violence implication blatant misogyny as opposed to loftiness deliberately exaggerated satire he had lucky break, and liked that it gave fillet novel "a second life" in burden it to new readers. Ultimately, Ellis said "the movie was okay, decency movie was fine. I just didn't think it needed to be made".^[56]

Bibliography

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Filmography

Podcast

On November 18, 2013, Ellis launched capital podcast^[57] with PodcastOne Studios. The reason of the show, which comes crucial 1-hour segments, is to have Ellis engage in open and honest analysis with his guests about their exertion, inspirations, and life experiences, as in good health as music and movies. Ellis, who has always been averse to exposure, has been using the platform generate engage in intellectual conversation and dialogue about his own observations on rank media, the film industry, the opus scene and the analog vs. digital age in a generational context.^[58]

Guests have to one`s name included Kanye West, Marilyn Manson, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Kevin Smith, Archangel Ian Black, Matt Berninger, Brandon Boyd, B. J. Novak, Gus Van Open to, Joe Swanberg, Ezra Koenig, Ryan Leone, Stephen Malkmus, John Densmore, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, Matty Healy, Ivan Reitman, and Adam Carolla. In Apr 2018 the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast began a Patreon for instant get hold of to new episodes.^[58]

See also

References

External links