Bret Easton Ellis on American Psycho, Christian Bale, and His Problem with Women Directors
Bret Easton Ellis has written six books (his seventh, Imperial Bedrooms, comes out next month), and all six have been optioned by Hollywood. Of those six, four were made into movies, and they run the gamut from iconic to underseen, acclaimed to lambasted. Each day this week, Ellis will tackle a different adaptation of his books for Movieline, giving his take on what worked, what didn't, and what went on behind the scenes.
American Psycho is by far the most controversial work that Bret Easton Ellis has written, and yet when it comes to the adaptations of his novels, Mary Harron's 2000 film is the most critically acclaimed and well-regarded. It went through a bumpy production process that attracted directors like Oliver Stone and David Cronenberg and actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp, but the final result eventually became a calling card for both Harron and its star, Christian Bale, and it's only grown in public esteem since its release.
Still, is Ellis happy with it? Not quite. Yesterday, he shared his thoughts on the compromised movie adaptation of Less Than Zero, and today, he delves into the tortured backstory of American Psycho and how he feels about female directors in general.
In many ways, American Psycho is an extremely faithful adaptation. A lot of the dialogue and scenes are taken straight from the book. And yet, when I saw you last, you were sort of implying that you thought Mary Harron was hamstrung by it.
Oh yeah, I do. I think any director would have been.
How so?
Well, the book has this reputation and it has its following, and if you're going to take that material from one medium to another, you're just going to have to make some decisions about it. The book itself doesn't really answer a lot of the questions it poses, but by the very nature of the medium of a movie, you kind of have to answer those questions.
What questions do you think she answered that she shouldn't have? Whether or not this was all in Patrick Bateman's head?
Right. And a movie automatically says, "It's real." Then, at the end, it tries to have it both ways by suggesting that it wasn't. Which you could argue is interesting, but I think it basically confused a lot of people, and I think even Mary would admit that.
I feel like the film has become almost more iconic in the years since it's come out.
Oh, it totally has. Completely. It's insane.
Did you see the Miles Fisher video that drew from it?
Loved it. Love Miles Fisher.
Did you expect American Psycho to become so iconic?
Not at all. I mean, I did not think that was going to be a particularly popular book. I thought it was going to be very pretentious. No, I didn't have any idea.
At this point, it's probably the most well-known of the films adapted from your novels.
Totally, totally.
Are you OK with that?
I've gotta be.
It went through a lot of director-actor combinations before it eventually got made. The earliest one I could find was Stuart Gordon intending to direct Johnny Depp. What did you think of that?
Well, I don't know about Johnny Depp's feelings about it, but I talked to Stuart Gordon a lot, and I thought he was the wrong director for it. I expressed that, but I don't think [producer] Ed Pressman was necessarily listening to me.
And then David Cronenberg attached himself. Is that the point where you actually wrote a draft of the screenplay yourself?
I did write a draft. David told me, "I want to make this movie, but I don't want any scenes in restaurants, I don't want any scenes in clubs, I don't want to shoot any of the violence..."
Why no scenes in restaurants or clubs? That's half the movie!
Because he said they're very difficult to shoot. "They're static, they're boring, people are at a table, and you can't really do a lot with it." He said, "I don't want to shoot in restaurants and clubs, and I want the script to be about 65 to 70 pages long, because it takes me about two minutes to shoot a page. I don't do a minute a page, I do two minutes a page."
Wow.
I mean, these directions were insane. I just went off and wrote a script that I thought would be best for the movie. It did veer off a lot from the book, because I was kind of bored with the book. I'd been living with it for, like, three and a half years, four years. I invented some scenes.
Like a musical sequence?
There was a musical sequence at the end, yes.
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Comments
Is it really SO shocking that the man who gave us "American Psycho" in the first place would also make demeaning remarks against women? Easton Ellis wrote about is what he knows and feels....and that book and film depicted disgusting violence against women. I think he damn well knows that he hired a woman to direct that film to make it all okay but it will never be okay for any self respecting woman.
And isn't it interesting that the woman director Ellis hired decided to make it all just a dream in the end, suggesting -- hey, folks, I know that we just portrayed about the sickest thing you can possibly do with to women but, it's really okay because it didn't really happen -- it was just one sick man's fantasy. And that sick man would be Ellis, which is why he is now recanting the ending because he knows he wrote it to be real.
He needs a wakeup call.
Agreed. Bale is awesome both professionally and personally.
*yawn* another clueless, pompous, misogynistic douche.
Does he honestly believe the remarkably ignorant, painfully stupid shit he says?
Snore.
What a f*ing bigot! Could it get more blatant and shameless than this? Why would we be interested in the opinions of such a person?
What's the likelihood that this ass-clown Ellis will be able to get laid after this interview?
I'm guessing "Less than Zero"
Who the hell is this guy? I IMDB'd him up. Nothing much there...
I offer that many of these commentators would be better off worrying less about the opinions of a man they dislike (some claim to have disliked him long before this interview) & focus more on the attitudes of the men around them.
Have you spent time in a town more than 50 miles outside a major metropolitan area? The metropolitan men I know tend to be fairer in their assessment of the intellect & creativity of women than their countryfolk brethren. Try working in a factory in a city of 200,000; do you know the *jokes* about being monthly, or about two black eyes? There are countless men who are serious when they say these things, & they've never cracked heavier literature than an Archie comic, let alone read Ellis or Mailer.
Like many intelligent men before him, Ellis has made an assumption based on a combination of his life experience & his view of the culture. Men used *logic* when they declared the Earth revolved around the Sun, that bleeding the sick was a good idea, that smaller penises indicated intellectual superiority.
Assumptions are the worst form of reasoning; at least Ellis claims to be rethinking things, based on new life experiences, where the filter is Ellis himself. Besides, if he's talentless & has failed as a novelist since his first book, his words shouldn't resonate in the culture's consciousness, & so shouldn't be thought of as an influential spokesperson.
The Earth does rotate around the Sun.
(the only html I used was the italics on *serious* - I have no idea why *jokes* & *logic* are bold)
Hahaha - I do * now *
Try reading the book. The novel "American Psycho" makes the movie version look like a Disney film. The book had him turn one of his victims into sausages, which he proceeded to eat. He kills more than women in the book too.
Isn't it funny how no one ever complains that Billy Wilder and George Cukor lacked visual style, even though their movies were about script first and foremost? Or that no one talks about Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow being visual directors, even though they are? (Btw, B.E.E., that comment about Lance Acord underscores your ignorance about filmmaking. The look of the film depends far more on the director than the DP--which is why Vilmos Zsigmond wasn't able to do anything for the look of Kevin Smith's work.)
If women directors aren't making the next "Lawrence of Arabia," the fault lies entirely with the studios. Face it, men get the big-budget epics. We get the little-budget indie films that are necessarily limited in scope. Then misogynistic assholes like Ellis tell us we're not visual enough to direct big budget films. And the cycle repeats.
He's gay.
Years from now, people will understand that indignation is not an argument.
Trust in science or throw away your cell phone.
http://www.newhorizons.org/neuro/diamond_male_female.htm
Seriously. He gets off on being inflammatory. It breaks my heart that we even have to engage in his ignorant POV. I'm totally disgusted.
Well said, my thoughts exactly. It's just sad that this guy would never dare say that cinema needs a "white" gaze or a "christian" gaze but feels quite safe in being a sexist pig. Seems like being anti-woman is a "safe" and acceptable prejudice in our society. He acts as if this is a reasonable thing to say - what do we have to do to treat such idocy the way racism would be treated?
bret is the hottest man. he can say whatever he wants. i met him. he's a dish.
Um, Sofia Coppola is ALL visual. Has Ellis even seen Marie Antoinette? How about The Virgin Suicides? There's basically no dialogue whatsoever. The movie is all a series of tableau. This man is deluded if he thinks that women aren't visual. It's an affront to every single female artist, interior designer, fashion designer, etc. Fuck off, Ellis.
Some of the comments here mirror Elllis in terms of making fatuous, blanket generalisations...
Bottom line: Even if many people said that Creation is only for smart persons, no matter who you're, go see it. You may leave the motion picture theater with so lots of issues and so a lot of thoughts. It may be really a thinker at some details, but stay with it. Inform your close friends.
Tend not to be fooled, in spite of this, into considering you'll find authentic suggestions at do the job the following. Just as "The Matrix" was a clever mish-mash of a dozen excellent, but outdated, suggestions, so as well is "Inception." The suggestions present here are already a component of discipline fiction for sixty years. The kind you study, not view.
The most beneficial cinema we have observed in many years! This a person will stay with you extensive soon after it is around. To the teen dorks that said they did not appreciate it, go see twilight once again! Much better still, put down the cell phones and essentially pay attention!
Yeah, weird, right? An AUTHOR not being on the Internet MOVIE Database? What a topsy-turvy world we live in, my God.
Woman couldn't vote up until 1920? Speilberg directed in the 70's and 80's. Woman did have a voice then. Ever heard of Margarate Thatcher?
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