The world has been awaiting the musical adaptation of American Psycho for several years now, and in December, it will finally debut—in London. We spoke with author Bret Easton Ellis about his involvement with the play's production, his thoughts on Taylor Swift, some valuable advice from his psychiatrist, and why the hell he left New York for Los Angeles, the city he once ran away from.
When we called Ellis at his home in LA, we caught him in the middle of brushing his teeth.
Bret Easton Ellis: Hey, I think I was just calling you on your other line. Actually, I should have been ready to pick up the phone. And yet I was brushing my teeth, and I told my boyfriend who was sitting in the other room, I said, "Pick up the phone! Pick up the phone!" and he didn't hear me. So that's why I'm calling you back. What are we going to talk about?
I was thinking we could start with the American Psycho musical that will apparently be coming out sometime later this year. I think in December. The premiere is in December in London.
I guess my first question is why London and not New York? This is what's so interesting about talking to you about this. I have no idea. I'm not part of it. I'm really not part of the musical. I have a point in it, because it's based on a book of mine, but I am not part of the creative team of American Psycho. And I'm not a producer on it.
So I don't have a clue as to why they decided to open in London rather than go off-Broadway or however you do it. I'm not that well-versed in the theater world, so I, you know, I imagine it might be because maybe I'm more popular in the UK, maybe that title is more popular in the UK, I don't know. That's a wild guess. That could be totally wrong. I don't know. But yeah, it just somehow landed that it was going to work for that theater group in London. But I don't know why.
I think that American Psycho discusses a very specific type of American materialism. Do you think there's going to be any weirdness translating that to a British audience? Well, you know, I can only talk about the reaction to the book, really. And the reaction to the book in the UK is much the same as it is in the US. I think a little bit better, even. There are critics of the book here, of course. And there always have been. But there are fewer critics of the book over there. And the book was more or less embraced—it's odd to say warmly, but it was probably embraced the most favorably in the UK of anywhere it was published.
The book is published around the world, and in each territory that it's published in, it seems to—and believe me, as a writer, you can't manufacture this, it's just something that weirdly happens—audiences connect with it for whatever reason. And I don't know if it necessarily is its indictment of materialism that captures people. I'm not sure what it is. It seems to be a lot of different things. It could be that you just find Patrick Bateman compelling as a character and want to follow him. So whatever political stuff that's going on in American Psycho—I'm not sure if that's what people are so interested in. I don't know why it travels. I don't have a clue. It's so old! It's so damn old!
This play's been in the works for quite some time. What took so long? Six or seven years ago there was this talk of bringing American Psycho to the theater. And I think because there were so many hands in the pot, so many people connected with the movie, and then getting the rights, and figuring out the rights, and it just took a long time to get everyone together on the same page. That's why it took so long.
Back in 2009, you described the play as a "multimedia rave situation," among other things, and I think that sounds really cool. Is that still the vision for it? Has that changed? Not to my knowledge. That was what it was described to me as initially, and I thought that was extremely cool sounding. It wasn't specific, so it wasn't like they gave me a specific description of what the show was going to be like, but that seemed to be the direction they were going in.
In the interim, Duncan Sheik was hired to write music and lyrics, and so I've heard demos of the songs, I haven't—it's very hard to tell if they really play without an actor singing them, and them being orchestrated, because they're very lo-fi demos. So it's hard to tell how they're going to play in a theatrical setting. So it has moved away a bit from that kind of musical I described in 2009. And seems to be more of a, I don't want to say chamber pop musical, but definitely something more typical of a Broadway show.
I read on Twitter that you're a Taylor Swift fan—are any of your musical tastes going to worm their way into the production? Well, first of all, I do want to say I am a Taylor Swift fan. And I did like "Red." I really did. I liked the songs. Taylor Swift as a person, I don't know. Do I think she's a good songwriter? Yes, I do. Do I like her last two records? Yes, a lot. And I hope that doesn't make me sound too much like Patrick Bateman. That might give you an insight into how I really am. I don't know.
But I'm also a Duncan Sheik fan. I mean, literally, way before I even met Duncan, I liked his music. So it wasn't like they had hired someone so outside the realm of being able to connect with this material. Duncan seemed the right fit, you know? I mean, honestly. I'm not just saying this just because he's part of the show. He's intelligent, and he understood how to approach this. And he had a definite vision of how he wanted to do the music. So we'll just see. We'll just see what happens when it all becomes assembled. It's just hard at this point because I've only heard these lo-fi demos, I don't even know who's been cast yet. It's kind of what's strange about the the Kickstarter thing as well, is that it—I'm not quite sure what the Kickstarter American Psycho thing is about, it seems to be...
I was going to ask you about that. It seems nebulous. I mean, I didn't start it. I have nothing to do with the Kickstarter thing. That's the producer, that's Jessie Singer, I'm not—they wanted me to do a little promo bit for it, which I did, and I was all on with the prizes. But I never was quite sure what it was about.
What so many Kickstarter campaigns are about is to get the word out, to get publicity. It's a free way to get publicity. But since American Psycho's already going to be staged in December at the Almeida Theatre, the purpose of the Kickstarter, I just don't think it resonates in a way with a lot of people. Like, OK, if we don't get this money, we're not going to be able to put the show on. Now if that was the message, then yeah, donate, donate, donate! But the show's already gonna be put on. So that's done. This is just to, I guess they say on the Kickstarter that they make it better? Enhance it? Well, cool, I guess. I don't know if it gives that Kickstarter campaign the kind of drive in the way that it needs. And I think that's kind of why it's flailing a little bit. You know?
It sounds like you're really not too precious about what gets done with your material once it's out of your hands, but you have had quite a bit to do with various film productions. Why is this different, why are you so much less involved with the musical than you have been with some of your movies? Well, the only movie that I really had a lot to do with was The Informers. Which didn't really turn out great, but that was the only one. What happens when you sell your books to the movies, you sell the rights. So once they're out of your hands, I mean, you make that decision once you sign the contract, when you say, alright, a production company is going to make my book into a movie, they're going to buy the rights.
So you own the copyright, but still they own the rights—they can move it around any way they want after you sign the deal. That's why. Lionsgate had the rights to the book, and so when the deal in fact was being done for American Psycho the musical, I was told that this was going to happen, and there was really nothing I could do. I couldn't say no, because the rights were—Pressman had them, and other producers had them. It was connected to Lionsgate. It's as simple as that. And I really wasn't involved with American Psycho the movie, I wasn't involved with Less Than Zero the movie, I wasn't involved with Rules of Attraction the movie. The only movie of mine that I was really involved with was The Informers, which I had written and helped produce.
Do you find it upsetting at all when people refer to American Psycho as a movie as opposed to a book? Because I think a lot of people think of it that way. I think that especially with younger people, it definitely resonates as a movie first. And I don't know if that many people under 20 have read the book. Or know it as a book. I mean, my boyfriend was out—he's considerably younger, he's 26, and he was out with some friends, and he said '"Oh yeah, my boyfriend wrote American Psycho." And the guy said, "Oh, that's one of my favorite movies!" You know, that's a constant thing.
Because it's like a movie, it's not like a book. So you just move with the times. There's nothing you can do about it. You wrote a book and now two generations later people are still reading it, but I think most of the people who are aware of it as something in the culture, really might not realize that it was connected to a novel. That's just the way it is.
American Psycho was received initially with some horror, and went on to be largely embraced. And I've also read that you are very particular about the editing process of your books. How much does the reception matter to you, or does it only matter that you're happy with it? You mean happy with the book once it's done?
I suppose the book, but would you have been terribly broken up if American Psycho the movie hadn't been as well-received as it was? Or Rules of Attraction the movie? Do you feel any personal stake in the reception once it's out of your control? No really. I mean, Less Than Zero didn't do well when it came out. It got bad reviews and didn't do any box office. American Psycho, yes, did okay, and then I think really found a life of its own on home video, on DVD and stuff. And Rules of Attraction was a bomb [laughing].
Let me go through the list! The Informers was a mega-bomb. So it's kind of like—I guess one out of four, that seems to be the odds in Hollywood anyway. Most everything kind of turns out not so good, and kind of loses money. But there's one that did well—and actually I think the reputation of Rules of Attraction is, in some circles, pretty strong. It's a cult movie, and a lot of people like it. But again, I don't feel good or bad about that. Because the book is the book, and I didn't write or direct the movie, so I can't take responsibility for it. I think Roger Avery's vision of Rules of Attraction is pretty fantastic. But it's not the book, you know? It's his interpretation of the book. And this is always a problem with it—we could go on and on about adaptation, and what that means. Personally, I'm not invested in whether the movie is a success or not, because I'm only really the author of the book.
I also grew up in LA, and I'm interested to know what specifically propelled you out of New York and back to Los Angeles. I read Less Than Zero when I was in college at UCLA. I was studying abroad at the time, and it just left me with this feeling of never ever ever wanting to go back to LA. I think that my particular distaste for that city really came from Less Than Zero. How did you wind up going back to the place that you seemed to so potently dislike at the time? Yeah, that's true. I did. And I did run away. You know, I ran away from LA. I knew—I had a plan—I knew in high school that I was going to graduate and go to school in Vermont or Maine or something. I was going to get as far away from LA as possible. For a whole host of reasons—I mean, I wanted to get away from my dad, I wanted to get away from all this kind of weird SoCal groupthink that I was a part of with my male friends who all wanted to go to USC or UCLA and start selling scripts in the 80s. I was interested in music, and I wanted to be a writer, and I was one of the only people in my class to leave California in my graduating class.
So yeah, four years in Vermont, went straight to New York, and spent a long time there. I think—what was it, at least 15, 16 years?—in New York, in Manhattan. And it was fun. And then it was over. The party ends. The party ended. It was just like, "Oh, OK. This was a pretty good run, but I don't want to live here anymore." And you know, you just see the same faces, and the city kind of doesn't work for you in the same way. I also had this problem where the guy I was with at the time, my partner for seven years, suddenly out-of-the-blue had a freak accident and died.
I went back to New York after that had happened and it was just, there were just ghosts everywhere. It was like, ghosts were everywhere. I couldn't handle it, you know? That compounded with my feelings of alienation about the city itself and about the literary scene and whatever, was just compounded by Mike's death. So that is why I kind of fled. And I was also getting work out here in terms of projects that I was interested in. I seemed to be happy. So I was never out here to become a screenwriter for hire. That was never ever the case, and it still isn't. I have a group of independent movies that I wanna make, and I'm not trying to get a screenwriting gig at a studio. It was always about—I have a production company out here, and we did The Canyons, and we're prepping a new movie for the summer, and that's kind of a model we're doing, these microbudget movies. So I always knew that filmmaking was going to be a part of the next step. So that's why I came out here. It's a long answer.
It's certainly not as if you did the typical "trying to hack it in LA," thing. You came back as a fully formed human being. No, I came back to finish up Lunar Park, and I had two movies that seemed to be happening that I had written. And I was working in tandem with the actor and director on that, and it just seemed to be going. And then like so many things out here, they fall apart. Then I went right into the three year process of The Informers, which was such a great experience for about five months.
Actually, you know what? I'll say longer. I'll say through the casting. The casting took a long time. The casting took about a year. And with people falling out, and people signing up, and then falling out. But then it was really a very negative experience, ultimately. A really negative experience that I kept trying to prop up. I kept trying to save it somehow, and I was just outnumbered. So that was a big learning experience.
Speaking of learning experiences—it doesn't sound like you'll ever have a very big part in American Psycho the musical, but what are you working on now? I mean, look. Content is content and I'm talking about movies versus TV versus internet—it seems so—that seems so anachronistic in a way to me. I mean sure, Iron Man 3 is first a movie. OK, but then what is Hemlock Grove? I mean, that's a 13 hour movie that you can get on Netflix. So content is content. So there's a couple of things I'm still involved with—I have a show that I've written the entire series of that Lionsgate has been great about nurturing and overseeing, and hopefully—I mean, that's been going on for three or four years. Actually I finished it last year. I finished the first season last year. It's an hour-long drama. So that's something that I'm passionate about, and I want to get that done. And I'm making notes on another novel.
Oh yeah? Yeah. And we're prepping another, my partner and I—my producing partner and I—have this new movie that we want to start shooting in the summer that I wrote. So there's stuff happening, it's just happening in a different way than it was, let's say, The Informers.
I see. So if you come up with a concept for something, how do you figure out which medium you want to present it in? How do you figure out if it would make a good novel, or if you'd rather put it in movie form? You know, it's weird. It just announces itself. I can't explain it. It just kind of announces itself. You know, a novel is about consciousness. It's about a sensibility, and it's about style. I don't think novels really are purely about story and momentum in the way that a movie is, or a television series is with its forward tempo. A novel can be like anything—it can be digressive. You can talk about this character for about 10-15 pages, and then, now I want to follow this character for a while.
It's just the freedom to do whatever you want with the novel is what separates it from movies, from whatever, film content. And because some content is somewhat pricey to make, even a movie like The Canyons, which we did on a microbudget, really ended up costing us about half a million, $600,000 in terms of deferred costs and deferred fees. It's not cheap. And because it's not cheap you have to follow certain guidelines. Even with a small creative team, as we have on The Canyons, we wanted to make a movie, a real movie. We didn't want to make an experimental film or whatever. We wanted to make a kind of throwback to the noir films of the '40s and '50s, and that was going to cost a little bit of money. You know, night shoots, trying to get permits for various malls, whatever, it's just a little bit expensive. With a novel, there's no cost. You just have your laptop, or your notebook, and you kind of do whatever you want.
Do you write your novels in a notebook? I make a lot of notes in longhand because I'm old, so I sit in bed and I make a lot of notes in longhand. I do find myself much more now—say in the process of making notes for this novel—doing that a little bit less, but still doing it. And then going to my office and typing them up.
Can you divulge any information about the new novel? I said something online—I tweeted something about how I was thinking about a high school serial killer in 1981. Not really what it's about, but I thought for a minute that that was it. And it wasn't. There's some of that kind of remains in this idea I have, but that's not what the novel's about.
You know what? Look, it hasn't really cemented itself yet. I wanted to write about high school, and not like in a Less Than Zero way at all. And not with those characters at all, but just with certain things that happened to me when I was a teenager. I guess I'm at that age where that starts to call out to you, you know? So that might be it.
You have mentioned in the past that it's not that the things you write are autobiographical, exactly, but they do have to do with where you're at in your life at that point. Yes, that is true.
So if you're writing about psychopathic high school killers, what does that say about where you are in your life right now? I'm regressing [Laughter]. I'm regressing. I can't grow up. [Laughs] I have a Peter Pan syndrome. Why am I writing about high school kids? And honestly, it's the same thing with this show that I'm super passionate about, this Lionsgate where I've written like nine hours of series for it. I mean, they're young people. And I don't know why I keep going back to that in a lot of my work. I think it could be because I'm just immature. I haven't grown up yet. I was with my shrink the other day, and my shrink was telling me—I was having some stress or anxiety over the, whatever, the fucking world, and how everything is whatever, kind of a mess right now, and he just said, 'Man up! Just man up! What are all these boy-men coming into my office who are 45 and 50, bitching? Just shut up!'
Sounds like a good therapist. He's a great therapist. Oh, he's awesome. But it was kind of like, whoa. He's right. So I think that's the real answer. Regression.
