YouSaid · the spoken record

Bret Easton Ellis

lines on the record: 28
first: 2023-02-10
most recent: 2023-02-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Trying to artfully compose this thing so that it works on an oral level. Again, it's not a book either. We're not writing a book and we're not writing a movie. It is a written podcast. So yes, that is called The Reckonings, and we are almost done with it, and I don't, it needs to be cast and it needs to be produced, but we are in nearing the completion of it”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I can. Irvine and I are working on a true crime podcast that is fictionalized. We've come up with a story and what we are going to do and what we are in the middle of doing is writing a podcast that the listener will presume to be true about a crime that happened in Atlanta in 2022 and the cast of characters that were involved in these murders. And it's quite difficult to do because it's not a screenplay. It's not a screenplay because in a screenplay you can show things and you don't have to have dialogue and you don't have to have a narrator. And so we have been rather artfully”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Traumatic stress syndrome? No, we don't. None of us did. It was fun. We wanted to be shocked. We wanted to be offended. I mean, it was not the world that we live in now.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talking about the adult world and about Terry Schaefer and the predatory nature of the adult world back then that was largely just accepted in a lot of ways. And it's true. I mean, I don't want to name names, but at a certain age, we went to parties for adults and got hit on by adults. And we were perhaps underage. And, you know, we'd either laugh about it or in some cases with girls I knew, they went with it. Certainly there are famous actors around and stuff. And I don't know. I mean, we just didn't have these laws, I guess, where it was considered so terrible. I mean, we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun doing things that I think now kids look at as being horrific and that we were all somehow traumatized and we have”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, when you're watching a movie and having to replace the love object in the pop song or in the movie or in the novel or whatever, and also realizing that out of the pool of men that were available to you, there was only about 3%. So you were in love a lot of the times and you developed crushes on men you can never have that were never going to be there unlike my straight counterparts who had 97% of women open to them, et cetera, et cetera. So I had to work through all of that. And I did. I mean, believe me, being gay was not my trauma story at all. I dealt with it quite easily and at 17 and in the shards was really the moment where I had to come to grips with it. And after that, I kind of did, you know, I went, but I'm getting off point again.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty sad. Pretty sad, huh? That's too bad. You know, look, there were problems in 1981 and certainly I am one of them to a degree was the fact that you had to be closeted. You didn't have to be, but it made life so much easier in a way. I wonder how different my life would have been if I didn't feel I had to be. And also how the world would have opened itself up to me if I'd been heterosexual. That was something that I did have to work through at 16 or 17 when I heard every pop song, when I watched every movie, when I had to reprocess everything and think, oh no, that's not Julia. That to me is Michael.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“urge and need to move toward adulthood and that in a lot of ways our parents helped us by doing that not by being neglectful but just by being adults and we use that as an example to a degree look there were Terry Schaefers and if you read the book you'll know what I mean when I say there were Terry Schaefers but Jesus you're going to call the police you're going to have a nervous breakdown You're going to like, you know, it was like, okay, these things happen to me and it's part of the adult world and I learned a lesson and I'm going to move on. So anyway, I know this is kind of a rambling answer.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's good and bad. Okay, there's a lot of good to that. There is something about independence and finding your independence at a young age that's very, very positive. Extremely positive. And when I look back, I do not see parental neglect as much as I see children who wanted to be adults and be left alone and also in a culture where you're dying to get your car at 15 and a half, which you did get your driver's license in LA at 15 and a half, at least a learner's permit. So by the time you're 16, you're gone. You are gone. And you just didn't have the kind of relationship with your parents that you did when you were a child and where your parents were there for you. And they were there for all of my friends as well. Now, so I think it's more a child.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And mature, we were in so many ways compared to, I think, you know, adolescents today. I mean, of course, we both grew up in separate times, but I mean, I didn't know any 42-year-old men who dressed up as Thor and went to Comic-Con. I mean, and that was the highlight of their year. And we certainly didn't have a new, you know, an entire vast array of thousands upon thousands of Disney shows and anime to stream from or whatever. So the drugs, forget the drugs to me, it seemed to me to be kids that seemed a lot more adult then than they are.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We all were how fucking adult we were in dealing with stuff and we're talking to each other and how pragmatic in so many ways we were and how we were really striving to become adults. We were living in a world made by adults for adults. There was no child culture, let's say, during that time. I mean, I think there was a new Disney movie open. I don't know, every two months, maybe that. No one ever asked a child, oh, honey, what do you want for dinner? Oh, what can I get for you? Talk about being coddled. Are you no, not at all. We were left to our own devices and we were left to become adults. And when I was remembering certain scenes from my life that I wrote down in the shards, I was just remarkable to me to see how kind of adult.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is into weed and to Quailus, and he drains his parents' liquor shelf. But no one else does Robert Mallory doesn't. Susan doesn't. Tom Wright doesn't. Ryan Vaughn took very good care of himself. He gets drunk in some coronas and he leaves a party after Margarita. So I think there's the myth of Brett Eastonellis that maybe infuses this book and makes it look a lot druggier than it actually is. We actually, if I want to look at me and my friends, we became a lot druggier after that first or second year of college. And yes, less than zero, which is about a year further along the shards, much more druggy book. But I am kind of digressing in terms of what you were hinting at. What I noticed about these characters, looking back, that's so different from today, is how adult”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I really think this is one of the least druggiest novels that I've written. I don't think Susan does any drugs except a bit of cocaine at one point at her own party. That's where a lot of the cocaine is at Susan Reynolds party. And of course Debbie carries little packets with her all over the place. Brett does it, I think, once at Susan's party. Again, Susan's party is the Coke party, but there really isn't. I don't think anyone else is doing any other drugs. Brett takes Valium and then as the book keeps ratcheting up with more and more horrific events, there was a time that I like quailudes. I thought quails were fun. I don't really see, and I mean, I think some weed is smoked by the Brett character. And as the Brett character begins to collapse, he certainly...”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vulnerable in describing myself because now and going back and riding about that Brett in a very honest, very vulnerable way that there is absolutely no way at 18 or 19 I would have done it. 18 or 19 when I started this book it was being written in that very flat clipped present tense minimalism by the 17 year old Brett. So there's no backstory. There is no you know there was no historical fictional LA stuff being presented as there is now in this one and it was just it just wasn't working it just wasn't working at all because I think I was too young. So yes it was age was the”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of your youth in a different way than you do when you're younger. I was thinking a lot about how different my sex life was at seventeen and eighteen, how my horniness skyrocketed into the stratosphere most days, every day. And that lust played such a big part of my life and my focus in ways that it just doesn't now, you know, it just simply doesn't. And I was thinking about the availability of bodies, of people to me and being young and this energy and also just this overwhelming passion to express myself through writing that then bled into making up shit about friends or starting gossip about a teacher or whatever it was. So yes, definitely and also being much more I think”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're absolutely right. I think that all of the missed opportunities to write the shards, which was a book I've always wanted to write, had to do with not being old enough and not having enough time pass. And this story really did need to be told by a much older man by looking back at the events of his past from 40 years ago. And that had to be the key because my nostalgia for that period, my longing for that period was more intense at 56 or 57 than it certainly was at 37 or 47. That was the perfect age for me to write this book. And also I was just thinking of, you know, you just start thinking.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have been the best school for me, and I didn't really want to be in high school. I knew very at a very young age I wanted to be a writer. And I just had to get through high school in a way. And I did think, as I write about it in charge, what's the easiest way to get through my senior year? Well, hang out with the popular clique, I guess. You know, lose some weight, work out, look good, get a hot girlfriend, and just be the tangible participant. And that'll make it so much easier. And it really blew up in my face. It was a facade. I couldn't maintain. And I think I wanted to address that in the book as well.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I don't think I made it awful at all. I thought it was wonderful. I thought Buckley was fantastic. It was paradise. You know, the problem was me and 1981 in a way, but Buckley itself, I feel so privileged to have gone there. It was the most beautiful high school in Los Angeles in the LA area. Just a stunning campus, which I don't really think I did justice to in my descriptions of it. I don't think necessarily the Brett Ellis of 17 or 18 cared that much about how nice it looked, though I was hoping that the 56-57-year-old Brett Ellis was trying to get across the beautiful stucco buildings with the Spanish tile, the koi ponds, the walnut trees that were everywhere, that beautiful pavilion and the courtyard. No, Buckley was a great school and I feel very lucky to have gone there. It just really might not have been.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Else was in that outline I wrote at 18. And I didn't particularly have any feelings of sadness while writing the book. I know that's not what you're asking me. I'm in a state of bliss and happiness when I'm writing a book. I loved writing the shards just as I loved writing every single book I've written. I had an eight-year-long love affair with glamorama. I loved writing that book and I loved writing every book that I write. So I'm not really feeling a sense of sadness or trying to convey a sense of sadness. I'm really not even sure what I'm trying to convey. I'm really just working on a book that I want to work on and that I'm feeling in that moment. But I can understand how a reader would read this book and say, God, this is a sad book. I think it's also, what's interesting to me.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think all of my novels are sad novels. I mean, if you want to look at them from a certain angle, I would think they're all sad. I would say, I would argue and say Imperial Bedroom is my saddest novel in a way. You know, look, I don't know if I look at the shards as a sad novel as much as I look at it as a wistful one in a way. And also slightly scary and at times horrific. So much of it I realize as I was writing it, even though I had the entire outline from 1982 down, it didn't change at all except for that added scene at the end at the book signing between Tom Wright and Brett. That was added.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Understand that it's a novel, but it was also in many ways so much of it was my memories of high school and my memories of the boys and the girls I knew and things that happened to me that I thought it just would have been disingenuous to not call the character Bright Ellis. That's all.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In April of 2020, and finally said, write me, here I am. Are you in the mood? And I was in the mood and I was connecting with all of this material. I couldn't quite connect with or avoided or just wasn't within my grasp. I thought, you know, God, I am going to write so much about me, that time, my friends, my girlfriend, a lot of things that happened to me. Why would I not, why would I call this guy Joseph or Paul? Why would I do that? Obviously, I just call him Brett. You know, what does it matter? And so that's how I work. I felt in so many ways for so much of the novel I was writing a memoir, even though this is a novel. And of course, when you read it, you will.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. When I first started thinking about this novel and it started announcing itself to me when I was in fact the Brett Ellis of 18, I don't think I got very far. I had an outline. I knew exactly what the story beats were. I don't think the character was called Brett. I really don't, and I don't remember what I called him. It might have been Alex. It might have been Alex. I don't know. It certainly wasn't Clay because I was already working on less than zero before the shards announced itself. If I started working on less than zero, I think when I was about 16 and Clay was always the name of that narrator. And so I don't know what the name of the character in the shards was then. But by the time the shards had come around,”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, really, the serial killer aspect was always there. I mean, when I first thought up this book in 1982, when I wanted to write it as the events were happening to me, the serial killer was always an object there, a metaphor for me for a lot of things. And also because serial killers were everywhere in California in 1982 and 81, and so it seemed like why not have one in this book. But, you know, yes, you are correct. Using the novel as a way in the way that Stephen King uses the novel totally legit. I agree exactly with what you're saying. I don't know if that was so heavily on my mind when I was writing the shards. I have to be, if I have to be completely honest.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember I cried a bit when I got that. When I read that interview, when I read his review, I was in an airport in Miami, at a newsstand. That's how I got it. And I was teared up a little bit. He was such a big influence on me. Yes, Stephen King had the ability to change the face of modern horror by setting it in a realistic and recognizable world, something that I had never before seen in horror fiction. I was a big horror fiction reader, sci-fi, and fantasy. And what was so surprising and frightening about King, especially in those novels, is that the haunted house and the vampires and the girl with telekinesis, they were all grounded in a recognizable world with songs that you knew and cultural events of the day were the wallpaper in the background. People talked about what movies they just saw, whatever.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's quite interesting that you mentioned Stephen King because, of course, I wrote an homage to Stephen King called Lunar Park, a novel published in 2005. And he was a writer that was probably my first big influence because when he was publishing his initial novels in 1973, 74, 75, I was a child, a precocious child who read Stephen King as he was being published. So I was nine or ten when I read Carrie, and I was eleven when I read Salem's lot, a book I had become completely obsessed with for many years and the shining, of course, which was a huge influence on many aspects of Lunar Park. And Stephen King reviewed Lunar Park actually and gave it a fantastic review in a now-defunct magazine, or maybe it's still around called Entertainment Weekly, where he had a car.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Feeling something. I'm going through some kind of pain, some confusion, something, and my life isn't working out. I'm having problems with my dad, unrequited love, whatever, the absurdity of fame, working in Hollywood, going to university, whatever. Things that are happening in my life that I want to write about and that I'm feeling and that are emotional. And then I write the novel. But I'm not necessarily thinking of any of those things that you mentioned in the question. I'm just really thinking about basically myself, what I'm going through, and how am I going to navigate this period in my life and how am I going to exorcise some of the pain and come to a moment of understanding and acceptance as to where I am?”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I think I've just been influenced by novels my entire life. I just was an early reader. I was an avid reader. I was obsessed with books, all kinds of books, mostly novels throughout my adolescence, into my adulthood, and even now. So books and novels were always a part of my life. And I think they were a reason as to why I wanted to write them. I enjoyed them immensely and they gave me a lot of pleasure. And I think that's why I became a writer. I wanted to emulate these things that I read that gave me so much pleasure. But the books that I've written have also come from a very emotional place. They are not overthought, I guess, or over intellectualized.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to Intelligence Squad. I'm producer Catherine Hughes. Today on the podcast, we're joined by one of the most polarizing voices in contemporary literature, Bright East and Alice. His lengthy career, including novels Less than Zero and American Psycho, has weathered the storm of controversy time and time again, and he has now cemented his place as cultural icon and provocateur. To speak about his latest novel, The Shards, Part Autofiction, Part Horror, He's joined by award-winning author and journalist, Alex Preston. Let's go to Alex now to hear more.”
2023-02-10 · Intelligence Squared · Bret Easton Ellis on Teenage Nihilism and Nostalgia · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT