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 Post subject: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 8:54 pm 
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less than zero was a quick, fun read but no one really cared/cares what happened to those people.
and yeah, he was less haunted by clay than by his empty bank account.
PLUS, the douche rips off an elvis costello album title.

Author Ellis Takes "Less Than Zero" Past The '80s
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:12 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Less Than Zero" author Bret Easton Ellis is sick of being seen as the poster boy for 1980s narcissism.

In 1985, Ellis was propelled to stardom when he was just 21 years-old and still a college student after his crisply-written tale of a spoiled ambivalence and materialism within his generation of kids became a huge hit and spawned a cult-hit movie starring Robert Downey Jr and Andrew McCarthy.

His newest novel "Imperial Bedrooms" has just been published in the United States, and features the same characters at a time when the 1980s are back in vogue.

"I don't feel like I am the '80s spokesperson," Ellis, now 46, told Reuters in an interview.

Critics may have felt his most famous book and others, such as "American Psycho" were about the 1980s, but Ellis insists otherwise. "They were actually about myself."

Still, Ellis noted that a return to the '80s in pop culture -- as evidenced in the current movie remakes of the "A-Team" and "The Karate Kid" to the latest fashion styles -- could bode well for drawing readers back to check out the mid-life events of his "Less Than Zero" characters Clay, Blair and Julian.

"The people who came of age in the '80s are now controlling the culture, and I think that is why you see a lot of '80s influences everywhere," he said.

Nevertheless, the attraction puzzles him. "I don't why that decade seems to resonate with people," he said.

HOLLYWOOD AND HUSTLERS

Like "Less Than Zero," "Imperial Bedrooms" is still minimalist and finds his protagonist Clay, like Ellis, now a screenwriter and in his 40s.

But like the old days, Clay -- not Ellis -- snorts cocaine, enjoys disillusioned sex with both genders and cynically reflects on copious Hollywood parties and an alienated, empty existence.

The book is darker than its predecessor in what Ellis called the "exploitation" of ambitious young actors in Hollywood, and it brings in hustlers and gangland killers who, Ellis said, were inspired by detective writer Raymond Chandler.

"It is exploitation, I do think it is about people using each other," he said. "In Hollywood that is how it works."

The Boston Herald called Ellis' seventh novel "stunning" but "unlikely to generate the attention and controversy of 'Less Than Zero' or Ellis' 'American Psycho,'" about a serial killer in New York.

The Village Voice said "Imperial Bedrooms" was a "quicker, more controlled fire than its predecessor."

Ellis said he was not aiming to capitalize on the success of "Less Than Zero" but after his last novel, "Lunar Park" he went back to read his debut book for the first time in years and, he said, the character of Clay "haunted" him.

But in turning out a sequel, Ellis insisted he is not pandering to his early fans.

"The expectations of readers who love 'Less Than Zero' -- I didn't take them into consideration," he said.


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:08 pm 
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I can't stand Ellis.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:14 pm 
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Well, considering his first oeuvre filched an EC single title, an full album seems a natural progression.

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:24 pm 
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less than zero was one of my favorite movies...im not a fan of his writing, but id be curious to check it out...and a new flick could be cool....i know jami gertz needs the work!

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:26 pm 
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One of my favorite authors, if for American Psycho alone.

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 10:56 pm 
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less than zero wasn't bad...the voice/tone was very numb, which was effective

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 1:10 am 
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I went through a huge B.E.E. phase back when I graduated from college. I've read almost everything by him, save his last 2 books.

On the film front, I still think that The Rules of Attraction is a great film, and got sloughed off because James Van der Beek was in the lead. People thought it was going to be a Dawson's style film, but in actuality, it was probably the closest to a viable dramatization of Ellis' work. I really had high hopes when it was announced Glamorama was being filmed by Avary as well. This was way before he killed someone, so who knows why he dropped it--maybe to focus on Beowulf?

I'll be interested to see The Informers, which in collection form, has been sitting on my shelf staring at me to re-read.

According to his wiki page, he also just wrote a film for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. That could be interesting.

Let's just hope someone doesn't get itchy and decide to make the new book into a film starring Andrew McCarthy and RDJ. Weird, just looked up McCarthy's wiki page. Dude is 47. Time flies.

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:24 am 
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Kingfish Wrote:
I can't stand Ellis.


You would think I'd feel the same way, but I really like most of his stuff. I will probably buy this and not read it -- like the other 65 books I picked up this year.

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:32 am 
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Twilightkid Wrote:
jami gertz needs the work!


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:40 am 
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acting work! ACTING WORK Modem!!!! :cheers: :mrgreen:

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:56 am 
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Senator Lou Garra Wrote:
Kingfish Wrote:
I can't stand Ellis.


You would think I'd feel the same way, but I really like most of his stuff. I will probably buy this and not read it -- like the other 65 books I picked up this year.

What pisses me off the most about him is he talented.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 9:18 pm 
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kill me now.


From ‘Less Than Zero’ to More Anomie
By JANET MASLIN
IMPERIAL BEDROOMS

Bret Easton Ellis’s “Imperial Bedrooms” can be described euphemistically as an extension of, sequel to, meditation on or deliberately cobwebby meta-reworking of “Less Than Zero,” the debut novel that put its disaffected young author on the map 25 years ago. It can also be seen as an act of desperation, and it may be all of the above. Whatever its genesis, what this vacant new book does best is demonstrate that there are more ways to be bored and boring in Los Angeles in 2010 than there were in 1985.

Back in the day Mr. Ellis’s restless, druggy characters had to drift around in expensive cars, leaf through magazines, develop anorexia and watch pornography on Betamax cassettes with the sound turned down. Now, thanks to the iPhone, the Internet and their having grown older, the same people have found new ways to stay unamused.

So Clay, Mr. Ellis’s autobiographical main character in both books, can notice a friend’s grotesquely bad cosmetic surgery. He can snort cocaine and watch “The Hills.” He can check out an aspiring actress’s screen credits on the Internet Movie Database and decide they don’t count for much. He can notice that she’s getting to be past her prime, “and it will not be fun to watch her grow old.” It’s not fun to watch Clay grow old either. As “Imperial Bedrooms” begins, he is whinging that “someone we knew” wrote an unflattering book about Clay and his friends, and that the book was made into a movie. “The writer,” as Clay calls that parasitic author, sounds a lot like Mr. Ellis. Clay resents him for turning Clay into “the handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness.” But Clay, who seems to resemble Mr. Ellis, has no business complaining about any other writers “showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all.” He, Clay, has gotten mileage out of the horror-of-it-all bit too.

“Imperial Bedrooms” barely has time to set up this hall-of-mirrors conceit before abandoning it. The narrative stays with Clay and reintroduces his “Less Than Zero” crew. Clay is now a successful writer himself, having created “The Listeners” (Mr. Ellis wrote “The Informers”), and he has come to Los Angeles to work on the movie adaptation. The film version of “The Informers” was released in 2008.

Anyone with the determination to find cleverness in “Imperial Bedrooms” can spot its in-joke parallels with “Less Than Zero.” Locations are revisited. Events are echoed. Clay’s girlfriend, Blair, told him he looked pale at the start of that first book, and she’s still telling him that at the end of “Imperial Bedrooms.” In between Mr. Ellis has written “The Rules of Attraction,” “American Psycho,” “The Informers,” “Glamorama” and “Lunar Park.” Hit or miss, each of those books had more vigor than this one.

Clay settles into the condominium that he bought from the parents of “a wealthy West Hollywood party boy.” It’s typical of Mr. Ellis to write a very long descriptive sentence about the soft beiges and recessed lighting and white-tiled balcony of the place while making only passing, casual reference to the party boy’s death. It’s also very like him to make the apartment a backdrop for casual cruelty. After all, Los Angeles is full of actors. Actors seem willing to do anything if Clay will help them land roles in “The Listeners.” And a book of Mr. Ellis’s is nowhere without a mean streak.

Clay meets his match in a manipulative actress named Rain, who turns up at a Christmas party. (“Less Than Zero” also took place at Christmastime.) “Do you want to be in a movie?” he asks her. Her reply: “Why? Do you have a movie you want to put me in?” Has Mr. Ellis written that as a self-consciously vapid exchange, a reflection of the film business’s shallow opportunism and Clay’s inability to make real human connections? Or is he just being lazily uninspired? Either way, the same tone persists throughout “Imperial Bedrooms,” as the book develops genre aspirations and sets up a pattern of exaggerated noir menace that is more talk than action. As in: “You don’t even realize how afraid you should be, do you?” Clay is told. And: “It’s much more complicated than you know.” And: “It’s just ... bigger than you think.”

Julian, a “Less Than Zero” holdover (memorably played in the movie by Robert Downey Jr.), has been horribly murdered. Clay thinks someone is following him. Threatening text messages either contemplate the banality of text messaging or embody the multiple possibilities of this new writing form. For whatever reason, Mr. Ellis sees fit to include this: “why are u with him? Why Are You With Him??? WHY ARE YOU WITH HIM???”

Somewhere beyond this posturing there’s an element of real malaise in “Imperial Bedrooms.” The anomie and plot-derived menace may be contrived, but there’s a dread that feels genuine — and not because the book actually includes the line, “Sadness: it’s everywhere.” It’s the sense that options have narrowed for Mr. Ellis, whose most polarizing (“American Psycho”) or wild-eyed books (“Lunar Park”) have turned out to be his most vital ones.

Despite Chip Kidd’s cover art, which features a traffic-stopping Satanic image and Mr. Ellis’s name in the book-jacket equivalent of big red neon letters, “Imperial Bedrooms” is without shock value. It’s a work of limited imagination that all too deftly simulates the effects of having no imagination at all.


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:13 pm 
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excerpt:

http://www.nerve.com/excerpts/imperial-bedrooms-bret-easton-ellis

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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:51 pm 
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This thing is getting absolutely pummeled by critics. Paste gave it a 0.0, which actually kind of made me want to read it.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:57 pm 
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I reluctantly have to give Ellis props for going so far with absolutely zero writing ability and even less to say.


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 Post subject: Re: brett easton ellis: less than zero is not low enough
PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:11 pm 
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Radcliffe Wrote:
I reluctantly have to give Ellis props for going so far with absolutely zero writing ability and even less to say.


i get that.
see thierry in exit through the gift shop.
love that guy.


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