Bret Easton Ellis | |
|---|---|
 Ellis in 2010 | |
| Born | (1964-03-07)March 7, 1964 (age 61) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Bennington College (BA) |
| Period | 1985–present |
| Genre | Satire,black comedy,transgressive fiction |
| Literary movement | Postmodernism |
| Notable works | American Psycho (1991) Less than Zero (1985) The Shards (2023) |
| Signature | |
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| Website | |
| breteastonellis | |
Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one of theLiterary Brat Pack[1] and is a self-proclaimedsatirist whose trademark technique as a writer is the expression of extreme acts and opinions in anaffectless style.[2] His novels often share recurring characters.[3][4]
When Ellis was 21, his first novel, the controversial bestsellerLess than Zero (1985),[5] was published bySimon & Schuster. His third novel,American Psycho (1991), was his most successful.[6] Upon its release the literary establishment widely condemned it as overly violent andmisogynistic.[7] Though many petitions to ban the book saw Ellis dropped by Simon & Schuster,[5] the resounding controversy convincedAlfred A. Knopf to release it as a paperback later that year.[8]
Ellis's novels have become increasinglymetafictional.Lunar Park (2005), a pseudo-memoir and ghost story, received positive reviews.Imperial Bedrooms (2010), marketed as a sequel toLess than Zero, continues in this vein.The Shards (2023) is a fictionalized memoir of Ellis's final year of high school in 1981 Los Angeles.[9]
Four of Ellis's works have been made into films.Less than Zero was adapted in 1987 as afilm of the same name but the film bore little resemblance to the novel.Mary Harron'sadaptation ofAmerican Psycho was released in 2000.Roger Avary's adaptation ofThe Rules of Attraction was released in 2002.The Informers, co-written by Ellis and based on his collection of short stories, was released in 2008. Ellis also wrote the screenplay for the 2013 filmThe Canyons. Other screenwriting credits include the 2020 slasher filmSmiley Face Killers.
Ellis is the host ofThe Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, available onPatreon. Originally he launched the podcast withPodcastOne Studios in 2013. The switch to Patreon happened in 2018.
Ellis was born inLos Angeles (L.A.) in 1964. He was raised in L.A.'sSherman Oaks neighborhood, located in theSan Fernando Valley. His father, Robert Martin Ellis, was a property developer, and his mother, Dale Ellis (née Dennis), was a homemaker.[10] They divorced in 1982. During the initial release of his third novel,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 the character was not in fact based on his father, but on Ellis himself, saying that all of his work came from a specific place of pain he was going through in his life during the writing of each of his books. Ellis says that while his family life growing up was somewhat difficult due to the divorce, he mostly had an "idyllic" California childhood.[11]
Ellis graduated fromThe Buckley School inSherman Oaks section of Los Angeles. He then attendedBennington College inBennington, Vermont, where he studied music and then gradually gravitated to writing, which had been one of his passions since childhood. Ellis was in a band called "Line One" withJohn Shanks.[12]
At Bennington College, he met and befriendedDonna Tartt andJonathan Lethem, who both later became published writers. At Bennington College, he also completed his first novel,Less than Zero, which was published while Ellis was 21 and still in college.[13]
After the success and controversy ofLess than Zero in 1985, Ellis became closely associated and good friends with fellow Brat Pack writerJay McInerney: the two became known as the "toxic twins" for their highly publicized late-night debauchery.[14] Ellis became a pariah for a time following the release ofAmerican Psycho (1991), which later became a critical and cult hit, more so after its2000 movie adaptation.[15] It is now regarded as Ellis'smagnum opus, garnering acknowledgement from a number of academics.[16]The Informers (1994) was offered to his publisher duringGlamorama's long writing history. Ellis wrote a screenplay forThe Rules of Attraction's film adaptation, which was not used. He records a fictionalized version of his life story up until this point in the first chapter ofLunar Park (2005). After the death of his lover Michael Wade Kaplan, Ellis was spurred to finishLunar Park and inflected it with a new tone of wistfulness.[17] Ellis was approached by young screenwriterNicholas Jarecki to adaptThe Informers into a film; the script they co-wrote was cut from 150 to 94 pages and taken from Jarecki to give to Australian directorGregor Jordan, whose light-on-humor vision of the film met with negative reviews when it was released in 2009.[18]
Despite setbacks as a screenwriter, Ellis teamed up with directorGus Van Sant in 2009 to adapt theVanity Fair article "The Golden Suicides" into a film of the same name, depicting the paranoid final days and suicides of celebrity artistsTheresa Duncan andJeremy Blake.[19] The film, as of 2024, had not been made. When Van Sant appeared onThe Bret Easton Ellis Podcast on February 12, 2014, he stated that he was never attached to the project as a screenwriter or a director, merely a consultant, saying that the material seemed too tricky for him to properly render on screen. Ellis and Van Sant mentioned thatNaomi Watts andRyan Gosling were approached to star as Duncan and Blake, respectively. Ellis confirmed that he and his producing partnerBraxton Pope were still working on the project, with Ellis revisiting the screenplay from time to time. As of April 2014, radical filmmakerGaspar Noé was officially attached to direct if the film went into production, but he proved troublesome to work with due to his erratic behavior.[11]
In 2010, Ellis releasedImperial Bedrooms, the sequel to his début novel. Ellis wrote it following his return to LA. It fictionalizes his work on the film adaptation ofThe Informers, from the perspective of Clay.Publishers Weekly gave the book a positive review, saying, "Ellis fans will delight in the characters and Ellis's easy hand in manipulating their fates, and though the novel's synchronicity with Zero is sublime, this also works as a stellar stand-alone."[20] Ellis expressed interest in writing the screenplay for theFifty Shades of Grey film adaptation. He discussed casting with his followers, and even mentioned meeting with the film's producers, as well as noting he felt it went well.[21][22] The job eventually went toKelly Marcel,Patrick Marber andMark Bomback.[23] In 2012 Ellis wrote the screenplay for the independent filmThe Canyons and helped raise money for its production.[24] The film was released in 2013 and critically panned, but was a modest financial success, withLindsay Lohan's performance in the lead role earning some positive reviews.[25]
In a 2012 op-ed forThe Daily Beast, Ellis publicly identified as homosexual.[26] Before this, Ellis had often declined to label his sexuality, rather choosing to "play around with his persona", identifying variously as homosexual, straight, and bisexual to different people over the years.[27] In 1999, Ellis suggested that his reluctance to define his sexuality was partly artistic, arguing that readers’ perceptions of his work might change if his orientation was known.[28]
Lunar Park (2005) was dedicated to Ellis’s boyfriend, Michael Wade Kaplan, who died shortly before the novel was completed. The novel was also dedicated to Ellis’s father, who died in 1992. Ellis described feeling a liberation in the completion of the novel that allowed him to come to terms with unresolved issues about his father.[29] Earlier in his career, Ellis said he based the character Patrick Bateman inAmerican Psycho (1991) on his father.[30] However, in a 2010 interview, Ellis said he had lied about this explanation; "Patrick Bateman was about me. I didn't want to finally own up to the responsibility of being Patrick Bateman, so I laid it on my father, I laid it on Wall Street. The book was about me at the time, and I wrote about all my rage and feelings".[31]
Ellis named his first novel and his 2010 novel after twoElvis Costello references: "Less than Zero" andImperial Bedroom, respectively. Ellis calledBruce Springsteen his "musical hero" in a 2010 interview withNME.[32]
In 2023, when asked about his political views, Ellis replied, "I'm not aconservative or aliberal. At least in the US, I can't agree with either of them. I think they're both completely bonkers."[33]
Ellis's first novel,Less than Zero, is a tale of disaffected, rich teenagers ofLos Angeles written and rewritten over a five-year period from Ellis's second year in high school, earlier drafts being "... more autobiographical and read like teen diaries or journal entries—lots of stuff about the bands I liked, the beach, the Galleria, clubs, driving around, doing drugs, partying", according to Ellis.[34]
The novel was praised by critics and sold well, 50,000 copies in its first year. He moved back to New York City in 1987 for the publication of his second novel,The Rules of Attraction—described by Ellis as "an attempt to write the kind of college novel I had always wanted to read and could never find"[34]—which follows a group of sexually promiscuous college students. Influenced heavily byJames Joyce'sUlysses and itsstream-of-consciousness narrative technique, the book sold fairly well, though Ellis admits he felt he had "fallen off" after the novel failed to match the success of his debut effort, saying in 2012, "I was very obsessive, very protective about that book, perhaps overly so."[34]
His most controversial work is the graphically violentAmerican Psycho (1991), which he has said "came out of a place of severe alienation and loneliness and self-loathing. I was pursuing a life—you could call it theGentlemen's Quarterly way of living—that I knew was bullshit, and yet I couldn't seem to help it."[34] The book was intended to be published bySimon & Schuster, but they withdrew after external protests from groups such as theNational Organization for Women (NOW) and many others due to its alleged misogyny. It was later published byVintage. Some consider this novel, whose protagonist,Patrick Bateman, is a cartoonishly materialisticyuppie and serial killer, an example oftransgressive art.American Psycho has achieved considerable cult status.[35][36]
Ellis' collection of short storiesThe Informers was published in 1994. It contains vignettes of wayward Los Angeles characters ranging from rock stars to vampires, mostly written while Ellis was in college, and so has more in common with the style ofLess than Zero. Ellis has said that the stories inThe Informers were collected and released only to fulfill a contractual obligation after discovering that it would take far longer to complete his next novel than he had intended. After years of struggling with it, he released his fourth novel,Glamorama, in 1998.Glamorama is set in the world of high fashion, following a male model who becomes entangled in a bizarre terrorist organization composed entirely of other models.[34]
The book plays with themes of media, celebrity, and political violence, and like its predecessorAmerican Psycho it uses surrealism to convey a sense of postmodern dread. Although reactions to the novel were mixed, Ellis holds it in high esteem among his own works: "it's probably the best novel I've written and the one that means the most to me. And when I say "best"—the wrong word, I suppose, but I'm not sure what else to replace it with—I mean that I'll never have that energy again, that kind of focus sustained for eight years on a single project. I'll never spend that amount of time crafting a book that means that much to me. And I think people who have read all of my work and are fans understand that about Glamorama—it's the one book out of the seven I've published that matters the most."[34] Ellis' novelLunar Park (2005) uses the form of a celebrity memoir to tell a ghost story about the novelist "Bret Easton Ellis" and his chilling experiences in the apparently haunted home he shares with his wife and son. In keeping with his usual style, Ellis mixes absurd comedy with a bleak and violent vision.[37]
In 2010, Ellis released a follow-up toLess than Zero,Imperial Bedrooms. Taking place 25 years after the events ofLess than Zero, it combines that book's ennui with thepostmodernism ofLunar Park. It met with disappointing sales. For his original screenplay for thePaul Schrader-directed filmThe Canyons, Ellis won Best Screenplay at the 14thMelbourne Underground Film Festival, with the film also winning Best Foreign Film, Best Foreign Director and Best Female Actor, forLindsay Lohan. Ellis released his first work of non-fiction,White, a collection of essays on contemporary political culture, in 2019.[38]
In late 2020, Ellis began to serialize his latest work, afictionalized memoir calledThe Shards, through his podcast. It focuses on his adolescence in Los Angeles and a serial killer called the Trawler.[39] On December 1, 2021, he announced on Instagram that the manuscript ofThe Shards had just arrived for him to look over.[40] On May 20, 2022, he announced that the book could be preordered. It was published on January 17, 2023.[41]
Ellis often uses recurring characters and settings.[42] Major characters in one novel may become minor ones in the next, or vice versa. Camden College, a fictionalNew Englandliberal arts college, is frequently referenced. It is based onBennington College, which Ellis attended, and where he met future novelistJonathan Lethem and befriended fellow writersDonna Tartt andJill Eisenstadt. In Tartt'sThe Secret History (1992), her version of Bennington is "Hampden College", although there are oblique connections between it and Ellis'The Rules of Attraction. Eisenstadt and Lethem use "Camden" inFrom Rockaway (1987) andThe Fortress of Solitude (2003), respectively. Though his three major settings are Vermont, Los Angeles and New York, Ellis has said he does not think of these novels as about these places specifically.[43]
Camden is introduced inLess than Zero, which mentions that both protagonist Clay and minor character Daniel attend it.[44] InThe Rules 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, while in Ellis' previous novel he had longed to 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 inLess than Zero; Clay also says that Blair fromLess than Zero sent him a letter saying she thinks Rip was murdered. Main characterSean Bateman's older brotherPatrick narrates one chapter of the novel; he is the infamous central character of Ellis's next novel,American Psycho. Bateman is a wealthy 27-year-old specialist inmergers and acquisitions with the fictitiousWall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm inThe Bonfire of the Vanities).[45]
Ellis also includes a reference to Tartt's forthcomingSecret History in the form of a passing mention of "that weird Classics group ... probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals." There is also an allusion to the main character from Eisenstadt'sFrom Rockaway.[46] InAmerican Psycho (1991), Patrick's brother Sean appears briefly. Paul Denton and Victor Johnson fromThe Rules of Attraction are both mentioned; on seeing Paul, Patrick wonders if "maybe he was on that cruise a long time ago, one night last March. If that's the case, I'm thinking, I should get his telephone number or, better yet, his address." Camden is both Sean's college and the college a minor character named Vanden is going to. Vanden was referred to (but never appeared) in bothLess than Zero andThe Rules of Attraction. Passages from "Less than Zero" reappear almost verbatim here, with Patrick replacing Clay as narrator. Patrick also makes repeated references toJami Gertz, the actress who portrays Blair in the 1987 film adaptation ofLess than Zero.[46]
Allison Poole fromJay McInerney's 1988 novelStory of My Life appears as a torture victim of Patrick's.[47] Patrick also briefly meets with the narrator from McInerney's 1984 novelBright Lights, Big City (who is referred to by his name in the 1988 movie adaptation).The Informers features a much younger Timothy Price, one of Patrick's co-workers inAmerican Psycho, who narrates one chapter.[48] One of the central characters, Graham, buys concert tickets fromLess than Zero's Julian, and his sister Susan goes on to say that Julian sells heroin and is a male prostitute (as shown inZero). Alana and Blair fromZero are also friends of Susan's. Letters to Sean Bateman from a Camden College girl named Anne visiting grandparents inLos Angeles comprise the eighth chapter.
Bateman appears briefly inGlamorama (1998);Glamorama's main characters Victor Ward and Lauren Hynde were first introduced inThe Rules of Attraction. As an in-joke reference to Bateman being portrayed byChristian Bale in the then-in-production 2000 film adaptation, Bale briefly appears as a background character. The book also includes a spy named Russell who is physically identical to Bale, and at one point in the novel impersonates him. Jaime Fields, who has a major role in the book, was first briefly mentioned by Victor inThe Rules of Attraction.
Bertrand, Sean and Mitchell, all fromThe Rules of Attraction, appear in Camdenflashbacks and several otherRules characters are referenced. McInerney's Alison Poole makes her second appearance in 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 similar multitude of references and allusions. All of Ellis's previous works are heavily referenced, in keeping with the book-within-a-book structure.[49] Donald Kimball fromAmerican Psycho questions Ellis on a series ofAmerican Psycho-inspired murders, Mitchell Allen fromRules lives next door to and went to college with Ellis (Ellis even recalls his affair with Paul Denton, alluded to inRules), and Ellis recalls a tempestuous relationship with Blair fromZero.[50]Imperial Bedrooms (2010) establishes the conceit that the Clay depicted inZero is not the same Clay who narratesBedrooms. In the world ofImperial Bedrooms,Zero was the close-to-nonfiction work of an author friend of Clay's, and its film adaptation (featuring actorsAndrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz andRobert Downey Jr.) exists within the world of the novel, too.[51]
In May 2014Bravo announced that it had teamed up withThe Rules of Attraction feature film adaptation writer/director Roger Avary and producer Greg Shapiro to develop a limited-run series based on the novel. The plot will stray from the source material and is described as follows: "Inspired by the book and film of the same name, the high-concept series takes the students and faculty at the fictional Camden College and unravels a murder mystery by telling the same story through 12 different points of view. Children of the 1%-ers live as unhinged and wild adults in a Bret Easton Ellis world with seemingly no rules to hold these privileged few down." TitledRules of Attraction, the series will be written by Roger Avary (The Rules of Attraction,Beowulf) for Lionsgate TV with Greg Shapiro (Zero Dark Thirty) serving as an executive producer.[52] In a 2013 interview withFilm School Rejects, Ellis stated that he doesn't think the originalAmerican Psycho "really works as a film":
American Psycho I also don't think really works as a film. The movie is fine, but I think that book is unadaptable because it's about consciousness, and you can't really shoot that sensibility. Also, you have to make a decision whether Patrick Bateman kills people or doesn't. Regardless of how [director]Mary Harron wants to shoot that ending, we've already seen him kill people; it doesn't matter if he has some crisis of memory at the end.[53]
On a 2014 appearance on theWTF with Marc Maron podcast, Ellis indicated that his feelings towards the film were more mixed than negative; he reiterated his opinion that his conception of Bateman as an unreliable narrator did not make an entirely successful transition from page to screen, adding that Bateman's narration was so unreliable that evenhe, as the author of the book, did not know if Bateman was honestly describing events that actually happened or if he was lying or even hallucinating. Ellis appreciated that the film clarified the humor for audiences who mistook the novel's violence for blatant misogyny as opposed to the deliberately exaggerated satire he had intended, and liked that it gave his novel "a second life" in introducing it to new readers. Ultimately, Ellis said "the movie was okay, the movie was fine. I just didn't think it needed to be made".[54]
Fiction
Non-Fiction
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Actor | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | This Is Not An Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis | No | No | No | Yes | Appeared as himself |
| 2001 | Fernanda Pivano: A Farewell to Beat | No | No | No | Yes | Appeared as himself |
| 2008 | The Informers | No | Yes | Yes | No | Co-written withNicholas Jarecki |
| 2013 | The Canyons | No | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2016 | The Curse of Downers Grove | No | Yes | No | No | |
| The Deleted | Yes | Yes | No | No | Webseries | |
| 2020 | Smiley Face Killers | No | Yes | Yes | No |
On November 18, 2013, Ellis launched apodcast[55] withPodcastOne Studios. The aim of the show, which comes in 1-hour segments, is to have Ellis engage in open and honest conversation with his guests about their work, inspirations, and life experiences, as well as music and movies. Ellis, who has always been averse to publicity, has been using the platform to engage in intellectual conversation and debate about his own observations on the media, the film industry, the music scene and the analog vs. digital age in a generational context.[56]
Guests have includedKanye 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 andCarrie Brownstein,Matty Healy,Ivan Reitman, andAdam Carolla.In April 2018 the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast began a Patreon for instant access to new episodes.[56]
Quentin Tarantino has been a guest on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast multiple times.[57][58][59] In his December 2025 appearance on the podcast, Tarantino expressed negative views towards actorsPaul Dano,Owen Wilson andMatthew Lillard, causing controversy online, especially regarding Dano.[60] Afterwards Ellis said that he thought the reaction to Tarantino’s comments was overblown; "It’s just one mans opinion. Are people really so upset about this or are they just kind of virtue signaling?”.[61]
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