WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 552 - Bret Easton Ellis

Episode Date: November 19, 2014

Bret Easton Ellis is still the guy who wrote Less Than Zero, American Psycho and Lunar Park, but he's also way different than that guy from decades ago. Bret and Marc compare notes on evolving with age and trying to keep it all together. Plus, Marc's old buddy Mick Foley drops by to talk about his new life as Santa Claus, as documented in the new movie I Am Santa Claus. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuckers? Spaniels? Yeah, I think I made that one up. I think I did that one

hi i'm mark maron this is wtf welcome to the show i feel like every word is going to be my last word i don't know why i'm not breathing properly right now perhaps it's because i'm holding my breath it was weird i i sang last night in public again uh for i don't know i've done it a few times now but i i went out after the uh trep House show, rushed out, went over to the Baked Potato where Brendan Small of Metalocalypse fame, he and Steve Agee do a little show there like monthly where comedians play some, you know, come up, do some jokes and then do a song. so of course i go there you know and brendan and i are in touch he's been on the show a couple times i've helped him sell his signature guitar with epiphone and now he's got a gibson explorer but pretty soon this is just gonna be a music podcast not really oh by the way the guest today who's on the show today brett easton ellis uh-huh i think there's a weird connection today because uh i'm gonna do a little piece of a mick foley interview in a minute too i'll explain to you in a second let's talk about my future career as a musician

what was funny was that you go do a rehearsal with brendan and the boys and dean delray was also on the show my buddy dean delray let there be talk is his podcast he's a character he's a rocker real deal rocker he did let there be rock and he's saying it exactly like bon scott exactly and i walk into that and i get a little intimidated you know because these guys can really play but i plug in and as a you know a bedroom guitar player or a living room guitar player or a garage guitar player i.e a guitar player that does not generally play with other people especially not professional musicians you know i kind of want to jam so i'm there i'm cranking it up getting a little feedback noodling around tuning my guitar brendan's like you know you

don't have to have the volume up to tune it with the tuner i'm like wow buzzkill buzzkill brendan how about we just jam a little bit well we really don't know how long we have this space we've got a couple songs a couple more songs to work out. Where's the fucking rock and roll heart? Let's waste four hours playing the same song over and over again. Come on. Maybe we'll get a couple of girls to hang out and listen to us play the same song over and over again. You know when you're in bands in high school, there'll always be a few friends hanging around,

maybe a couple of girls smoking cigarettes, drinking a beer, friends hanging around maybe a couple girls smoking cigarettes drinking a beer and they just sit there and watch you stop and start and do the same song over and over again every band that i was in high school none of them ever played out we only knew four songs but i gotta say i had a great time and i'm not a guy that has a great time in general the trippany show was great audience had a nice time nice you know ran over there with a gal i ran over with the gal i'm dating all right it's out it's out no names dating a gal and she paints she's a painter she's a real deal painter she makes a living painting whole other world man the art world whole other world i go to her studio i look at what she's doing i'm like holy fuck that's inside of you there's a

balance to it man real artists that really do it i mean she makes a living selling paintings for reals to know somebody or be with somebody and and to be intimate with somebody who can paint she's an abstract painter and it's sort of like you look at that fucking thing and it's like that is finished man you know how to finish something and it looks finished and in that form that's not easy to do that's some solid craft to to to hang out with somebody that does a completely different thing than me that just like is fucking great at it it's a little daunting it's a little daunting it's uh we're trying the uh she has her life I have my life. And when we're together, we just have some nice time trying that as opposed to I'm up her ass. She's up my ass.

And there's constant drama all the fucking time. And I'm yelling and apologizing more than doing anything else. Anyway, so she goes with me over to the baked potato. And I don't know. I just like it. I don't think I'm going to change careers or anything, but I think it's the hobby I need to engage in and just do it, man. It's like I always talk about playing.

So I get some guys together and just go play. I got a drummer. There's a rehearsal space down the street. Brendan was good, too. It was cool. We had a moment where we were actually trading licks and then we were playing licks at the same time and i'm like next time around next time i do this almond brothers skinnered but see there's part of me that doesn't

want to be that guy like am i that guy am i the 50 year old guy who's like let's do some oldies maybe i am but if you go real old then you just make it your own. Hard to make Skinner your own. You can, but it's going to be ironic. There's no way around it. You're going to play Ernest Skinner. It's got to be the right room. I can play Ernest Skinner, but I don't know if I would. But I don't know.

You go back to the blues, though. It's like, I'm going to own this fucking Jimmy Reed song. I'm going to own this Howlin' Wolf song. They made it to be worn. The blues were made to be worn. God damn it. Sometimes I like what I say. So occasionally I'll drink some tea with the artist lady.

I'll sip some tea. Pow! Look out. Just shit my pants. Haven't done that in a while just coffee.coop interesting comedian conversation today occasionally ask comics you know you do a bit and you're like i know that someone somebody else is doing a bit on that but is it like my bit so uh i had to text whitney cummings today to uh clear up a a discrepancy there might be between our squirting

bits yeah uh i've been uh sort sort of discussing squirting a bit on stage occasionally. It's not a centerpiece bit. I don't do it all the time. I've been playing around with it for a while, but I remember that she did a piece on squirting at the Oddball Fest dates we had. So I had to text Whitney. I'm like, hey man, I need to talk to you about a joke. What's your squirting bit? And she texted me her squirting bit. And I texted her my squirting bit. And they were not the same at all. And I felt great.

I'm like, so we're not crossing streams. Yeah, look at this kind of a pee joke with the squirting. All right, look, you guys. Here's what's weird. I used to host a morning show on Air America Radio back in 2004, 2005. And we did a live broadcast from a soul food restaurant in Harlem once. And Bret Easton Ellis was on that broadcast. And oddly, the other guest was Mick Foley.

This is completely coincidental. Completely coincidental. Mick Foley, who's a friend of the show in a way because he used to do my radio show i've guest hosted with mick back in the day we did some bits on the radio he's a great guy one of the great professional wrestlers he stopped by because he's making the rounds promoting a new documentary he's in called i am santa claus and he's he's actually santa claus in the documentary which is now available on dvd blu-ray and itunes we'll have a full episode with mick in the documentary, which is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and iTunes. We'll have a full episode with Mick in the near future. So here's a snippet of me and mankind.

The movie's a Christmas movie. Well, I mean, it's a Santa Claus movie following Santa's year round. So it could be suitable. It's for anyone who likes movies. It's a year round Santa movie. It's really for anyone who likes, you know, stories about complex characters. But, you know, I'll go, I think people will go back

after they watch it the first time and they'll probably re-watch like the last 20 minutes every year. Because it makes you feel good. Who directed it? Tommy Avellone. Yeah. He got in touch with me three years ago.

Yeah. Seeing if I just want to be one of the, you know, a good documentary has like some subplots going on. And he wanted to know if I would be the guy who wanted to give it a shot. Right.

Like really want to give, and I dressed up before. Yeah. Sure you have. You've done a lot of dressing Right. Like, really want to give it. And I dressed up before. Yeah. You know. Sure you have. You've done a lot of dressing up. Specifically, like, I'd been Santa Mick, like, for Dee Snider, who's a friend of mine. Sure. And I'd done it for the.

You never wrestled as Santa. I did wrestle as Santa once. You did? And the funny thing is, I wrestled in Afghanistan as Santa. The idea was a good Santa versus bad Santa match with the good Santa wearing the fatigues. What was the bad Santa wearing? The bad Santa was supposed to be wearing like a grungy Santa outfit.

The problem was I couldn't actually, oh, camo, they don't wear fatigues anymore. I couldn't fit into the camo. So we inexplicably had the bad Santa. They're not letting you in. No, he dressed as one of the troops. Right. I was the good Santa with the huge outfit, and we just cleaned it up a little bit, and

we had ourselves a ridiculous Santa match for the troops. So you're familiar with the Santa outfit. Oh, I love the Santa outfit, but I'd never even thought about being the guy. So Avalon calls you up, and he wants you to do this thing. He wants to know if I'll try. Not just try it, but follow my progress. What was the pitch? He said he knew I'd, he was a director.

He'd always had a wrestler in one of his projects. It was just a cameo. Right. He started this Santa thing. Because he grew up with wrestling? He's a wrestling guy? Yeah, huge, huge wrestling fan. Yeah.

And he was wondering, how am I going to get a Santa? I mean, how am I going to get a wrestler in the Santa project? One of the guys pointed out, you know, Mick Foley's like a year-round Christmas guy. He's got a room dedicated to Christmas year-round. Do you? Yeah, I do. Okay. I mean, when I moved back to Long Island in 2000,

I moved into a house that needed a lot of work. He could have started anywhere, like bathroom, kitchen, bedroom. And I was like no i want a christmas room like i want my own room and so so he'd heard about that and he and you were like that that that that's enough to compel the film he thought it would be a nice little offshoot you know where he's following four guys you know who who you know some of them you know live for this six week period uh one of the guys needs it desperately, not only emotionally, but financially. Yeah.

And one of the guys who's turned out to be a good friend of mine after filming, who appears in the, I don't want to give away too much, but he appears at my house on Christmas Eve and creates Christmas magic. Oh, yeah? Hollywood couldn't duplicate him he he legally changed his name to santa claus yeah giving you some indication of his commitment and so i was just going to be the guy they follow to see you know it wasn't until the night before i uh i did my appearance as santa at santa's village in jefferson new hampshire which is a place my mom

and dad had taken me to in the late 60s. Really? Three and four, yeah. And I revisited it in 96 with my kids. We've been going every year since 96. Even when we lived in Florida, we would take our vacations to the White Mountains in New Hampshire

for whatever deep hidden psychological meaning someone wants to read into. Let's do it right now. All right. For closure. You got your kids. You grew up with it. Here you go.

It's a tradition. There you go, yeah. And I imagine that it was a way for me to escape to the best and happiest moments of my childhood. With your parents. It's like that suspension of disbelief. So even though somebody's buying a ticket, hopefully appreciating what wrestling is

instead of doubting it for what it's not it's the same way with santa like we say santa's for the kids but it's really about bringing the adults back to a place where they were happiest and when a guy looks good enough you know and when he embodies that spirit and there are guys out there who believe they are touched by the spirit of the original saint nicholas and they're not crazy. They feel like they've become that guy. And then for adults, in my case, in the movie, I'm Santa Claus. You see me,

it would be impossible to script a bigger smile than the one that I have at the end of this movie. It's like, when we did the extra commentary track, the director was like, your face looks like it's hurting your smiling so big. looks like it's hurting you're smiling so big yeah it's a it's a nice piece of that's it's good you you for years you provided uh

adolescent mostly men with the outlet for their rage and frustration in a healthy way and now you're bringing pure joy to the children you're covering all your bases mick doing what i can mark you're covering all your bases so when the when time comes, you'll just be a big yin-yang up there at the gate of whatever. I'm hoping so. I'm hoping so. Do you still go to New Hampshire with your family? Every year, yeah. Do all of them go?

Not every year. But my daughter's 20. She still likes going. And then I'll reach out to the owner. This year, I'll be like, can I do it? And so they'll let me. Are you going to be Santa? They'll let me do it for a few hours, yeah.

You're not going into a ring acting crazy. Now you want to go into the ring and be Santa. I do, man. When you have that kid on your lap and he tugs on the beard and his eyes light up. Oh, really? When I'm in that role, my kids are little, they go to Santa's Village and they say, that's Santa's helper. Right.

But I mean, I go out on a limb and say, I'm going to bleach the beard on the 24th. Yeah. And then I have a yak hair wig. I did try bleaching the hair and it just looked ridiculous, just orange and yellow. And then when I'm that guy you know like and i have a couple good interactions like i feel it the same way i used to feel the wrestling characters so no one could tell me i'm not the real santa when i'm in that chair oh well i i congratulate you on this new less risky role this new less risky character thank you mark

all right that was mick look forward to the full episode go grab that movie it's a cute movie a lot of heart oh mick's got a lot of heart so ready cnellis what can i tell you about that intense dude smart dude the first time i read less than zero i had graduated college and i decided i was going to take a train across country i got on on that train with Less Than Zero, Blue Movie by Terry Southern, Legs by William Kennedy. I'm like, going to do some reading, going to do some drinking, going to get a sweeper car. I'm going to be on the rails. Sweeper car, at the level I got the sweeper car, is basically a bathroom with a bed in it that's moving. And you can look at usually the worst part of a town traveling cross-country.

So I was on the train. I went from Boston to Chicago. Got a shoeshine. Went from Chicago to Memphis. Saw the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. Went from Memphis to Austin. Met two girls on the train. Decided I had enough of this shit.

I'm getting off in Austin and I'm flying to Albuquerque. Fuck the train. I did read Lesson Zero, though. It's a fine memory. All right, let's talk to Brett Easton. It's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats.

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Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5pm start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in

attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com Now us. You make your own sandwich? Good for you.

You made your own sandwich, brought did. Good for you. Yeah. You made your own sandwich, brought it over. I don't know what people expect from me. What kind of person do they think I am? I do. I'm dying at a French restaurant for lunch, and I have a monocle and a cigarette holder. No, I made my own sandwich. Well, I mean, that's the idea that you landed on. So you must know that some people think that. I think there was a period in your life where you were living quite the urbane intellectual running about the town existence.

Right. Wasn't that your image at some point? Has it started? Sure. Are we doing this? Why not? Yeah, that was the image of me, wasn't it? Yeah.

I mean, I see image. That's what what happened when I would be photographed or whatever and i never felt that that my life was like that i was a kid living in new york but it was calculated right i mean you you know you decided that you were going to appear this way the look was calculated to a degree there was the kind of idea that I had, this kind of empire idea I had of the American male writer that I came of age. The New York version? You were guys that are coming off the tail

of Plimpton Mailer, Roth, the warriors of literature. Exactly. And they all dressed a certain way. I would see them at cocktail parties in the 50s or the 60s wearing suits and ties. And, you know, we wanted to emulate that look. And so, yes, to a degree, that was calculated until I could not hold the pose for any longer.

You and Jay and who else? Basically, that was it. If we want to be real about it, they tried to turn it into this big group of people. And it just wasn't. It was a calculated thing that the media came up with. It didn't really exist. Jay was about 10 years older than me, and so I was really hanging out when I first moved to New York with my college friends.

I mean, the people we had just graduated from, we were all living in New York together. Where'd you go to school? I went to a very small college in Vermont called Bennington College. Everyone goes to Bennington! Do you know Mark Spitz, the writer for Spin? I know of him, yeah. Tracy Katsky. That's a different generation, but everyone goes there.

You were talking about Jonathan Latham. Donna Tartt. Yeah. They were your contemporaries. They were my contemporaries, right. So these people that go to Bennington, they're already intellectual. It's a groovy school it's an you know it's intellectual but it's also when i went it was it there was two uh classes that was basically the new wave kids who were very sophisticated and then there were the hippie kids a lot of

hippies at bennington in the 80s. Sure. It was a very hippie school. And it's a really, really small school. So you had the avant-garde and the earthy people. Yeah, basically. The people that thought they were avant-garde and then the freaks. Yeah. And everyone's stoned. Yeah. Everyone's on drugs. That's the one thing they had in common. Everyone's high. Yeah. My roommate was a complete hippie guy, and our one bonding experience was over drugs. It's so funny because I had that too. My roommates, there was like three or four deadheads and me who had come out of Albuquerque thinking I was an arty guy. It was very interesting.

There was something relaxing about them, wasn't there? Not necessarily for me. And you have to understand, I wasn't a relaxed guy anyway. So I really wasn't relaxed. It was hard for me. And I have to understand, I wasn't a relaxed guy anyway. So I really wasn't relaxed. It was hard for me to get relaxed. And my hippie roommate, who I had for about a year, I don't know. We kind of got on each other's nerves. And I can completely understand why, looking back. But no, so Bennington is this tiny college, and it's in the middle of nowhere.

You only got 600 kids going there. 600 kids go to this one college. And the freshman class is the biggest. The sophomore class is the smallest because Bennington has the highest attrition rate between freshman year and sophomore year. About half the class flees. Drugs are a bad thing. It's not drugs. What is it?

It's the idea that bennington wants you to create your own curriculum it wants you to propose tutorials for yourself yeah and so and a lot of kids can't handle that they want to be told what to do sure and bennington basically says okay we're gonna you're here we're giving you all these faculties uh you can have all these these great uh writing spaces uh painting spaces music spaces go to it you're here and a lot of kids just they think it's going to be okay and they freeze so they transfer out to more structured college much more structured college well what did you put yourself what did you put together for yourself as your curriculum uh a novel writing tutorial, a couple of music classes

because I was a musician and I thought I was going to be a double major, a music major and a creative writing major. What did you play? I played keyboards, I played piano, I played guitar, I played bass.

Yeah. You do all that stuff? I did do all that stuff. I really don't play that much anymore. You let it all go? Kind of let it go. Not even as a hobby? No, not even as a hobby, really.

What kind of music were you into then? What was the big idea musically? Avant-garde art music? No, no, pop songs. Garage pop. Uh-huh. That's what it was. And so I was actually in a band with John Shanks,

who's a huge music producer now, who's won a Grammy for being the producer of the year, I think, three years ago, like has produced everybody. And he was, when I was in high school, he and I had a band. In high school? I was 17 or 18.

Where was this? Here in LA. Where, in the Valley? Yeah, in the Valley. So you're a music guy. I was a music guy, yeah. And so I thought the band was going to, we got it together in 81, 82. And I thought I wasn't going to go to college.

I thought I was going to stick with this band. I think it was called Line One. That's a good name. And I really thought, okay, screw college. I know what I want to do do i want to be a writer and i want to be a musician and um ultimately it just wasn't going to work that way it wasn't going to fly with my parents wasn't going to fly with my grandfather who was you know one was footing the bill for bennington and so i kind of like that you know prevailed and i shut the music dream down

were you guys gigging were you out there there playing? Were you laying tracks down? No, we were just, we were laying tracks down, but we were not, we never played live anywhere. We just didn't know really how to do that. I did that with my parents too. Like, I don't want to go to college. And then, you know, ultimately they didn't hardline me, but they were like, you want to think about this. I mean, you want to stay in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You want to be, what are you going to do? And I kind of freaked out. And I didn't have the grades to get into a good school. So I ended up going to a small kind of not great school. Well, how do you think I ended up at Bennington? Bennington doesn't even look at your grades. Seriously? Yeah, you don't even have to give SAT scores.

So it's just a money thing. I think it's two things. I think it's a money thing. And I think it's you submit samples. I submitted samples of my writing. Not the music? No, not the music. I just submitted writing samples. And my grades were bad in high school, and my SAT scores weren't great.

I had no interest in high school in anything other than writing and then music. I just had no patience for anything else that I was doing. When did you graduate high school? 82. So I graduated in 81. I'm a little older than you. We already established that on your show. I don't even remember. I think we did. So that's how you get in. And I think basically, I mean, I'm still very connected to the school now after a long time of like, I disagreed with some of the stuff they did in the 90s. Like what?

You know, they have these sexual harassment things going on that were, and they fired a bunch of teachers and a large population of my graduating class just like shut down on the campus and didn't like the direction it was heading in and it's and so recently i've been um much uh much happier with the direction the college so you're and you're involved somehow i'm involved really after many years of not being involved i'm seriously involved with bennington i just think it's a great place and there i think it's ultimately going to be the kind of school that is representative of where kids want to go i think it's crazy now where you in in order to get into a really good school yeah you've got to be like a rocket scientist a chef a poet you've got to have a 4.0 you've got to have all of these or some family connections yeah or family connections but you still i mean i don't even think that's going to help you at stanford But also, like, you know, how are you involved? Isn't that something that, like, the alum writer does?

Do you go back? Do you teach for a few weeks? Or are you on the board? I'm not on the board. You just call a guy and say, what's going on over there? They keep me posted. And sometimes they want me to tweet something. And they, I mean, I gradually got in the last two or three years back into, you know,

being very pro Bennington. And they have a new president who was just out here in LA. And I, I hosted a couple of parties, fundraiser or whatever it was. And how were those parties? How's your Rolodex? Pretty good still? Yeah, sure. mean i'm i'm just not that social anymore i'm just not i'm i just don't feel it i mean i i prefer you know staying in and we're middle-aged men right and i just don't feel the need to i mean you really it really has to be enticing for me to go out at night right to call up an uber x and like get someplace. It's just the idea of just staying at home and choosing a movie on Apple is pleasant. So you grew up here in the valley.

In the valley. What town? Sherman Oaks. Are your folks still here? My dad is dead. My mom is still here in the house that I grew up in with my stepfather. So you go there?

Went there last night. And the relationship is good? The relationship is really good, yeah. So how did you grow up? I mean, what was your dad, what was his story? He was a real estate investment analyst, and he worked at Colwell Banker, and then he had his own company, which was the Robert Ellis Company. Commercial real estate?

Commercial real estate. But he also would, I guess, sell buildings. I mean, his big sale was the U.S. Steel Building, I think, in 82 or 83. And what his job basically was is that if someone wanted to buy a building, he would go in and check it out say this is what you should get this is what it's worth and he was kind of an agent in a way so you know if the building sold for this much then he would get like a 10 right sure sure and so he really made the bulk of his money in the early 80s mid 80s um and yeah that's what he did and but when i was a kid he was just he was in kind of like high-end real estate. And you got siblings?

I have two younger sisters. So, like, now, how complicated was that family thing? I mean, do you, like, I say this because, you know, I know that I just get a feeling because of the tone that you're a fighter. And, you know, I recently had problems with my father that i just resolved that are cyclical so how much did and i find that people who are creative and certainly have a certain type of disposition are in conflict i'm projecting all this onto you uh you're absolutely right that you're totally right that the sort of journey to find a better father oh yeah it's. It haunted me. It haunted me all my life. Like, what was the dynamic with you guys?

I tuned out. I tuned out very young. Like, you shut down? I kind of shut down and lost myself in books and film and music. And that was just kind of my world. The dynamic in the house was, and I've written about this extensively in a novel I wrote called Lunar Park, where, you know, my dad was a problem. He was a problem.

For you or in general? In general for everyone in the house. The community of home. Yeah. And it just kind of like, I guess couldn't really deal with the, I want to say the negativity. What was the? The problem with, I think he was just an unhappy man but how did it manifest drinking oh drinking anger anger very angry yeah kick the dog once that was really bad a dog kicker

i know kick the dog and that was just did he kick you didn't kick me but there were a couple of scuffles, a couple of altercations. And drunkenness. Yeah, yeah, and drunkenness. So I kind of, I just became very pragmatic in a way. I kind of had to shut down. I knew I was there until I was about 18, and I just learned to navigate. I learned to navigate around certain things. around certain things and one was his anger and his inability to I don't know to connect with his children and you know we would have right I mean it wasn't like I yeah I mean and it would and you know I have to say it is a really shitty thing for a guy to not have that father no and i and i see how it has

wrecked certain things in my life like what because like you like to have a father but to but you know you know he's there he's not emotionally supportive because he's incapacitated for one reason or another whether it's narcissism drinking oh narcissism was a big big sure so then you just boomer narcissism yeah horrendous so then you're just left to your own devices to try to develop some sense of self that usually has no closure and you wander the world looking for that closure and then you just your whole life is spent reacting to this thing and then you stop and you have to stop you get to a point where you just have to stop doing it you hit a wall you know you just can't keep looking for that yeah and it's futile it's ultimately futile and so you just have to stop doing it. You hit a wall. You just can't keep looking for that.

And it's futile. It's ultimately futile. And so you just have to process it yourself. But the other thing is that I've noticed that I see guys, and it's not a lot of them, but I see guys who've had really good relationships with their fathers. They're more together. Of course.

They're just more together. Even if you have one grounded parent that isn't either the you know The if they're not completely codependent to like it's hard I think to have a good parent who's signed on to the bullshit of the bad one for a period like it But like how did it incapacitate you emotionally? specifically in terms of you just you just said like you know you as an adult You've looked at you know how what the effect of it is, has been on your life. Well, I think it's made me, it's made a lot of my relationships with other males fraught with a kind of suspicion. It just made, it made my male relationships complicated in a way, more complicated than I think I initially thought they were until at a certain point I looked back and said, not everyone's your dad. You know, not everyone is your dad.

That's right. That's someone had to tell me that. Right. No, I know. Not everyone is your dad. And that is, yeah, that was a big moment. And then just dealing with it in therapy. Did you have that thing where like, I find, like, I'm not even sure if when I was younger, maybe 15, 20 years ago, that I might have been effectively a borderline personality. I don't know. Because I know you grow out of that sometimes. But I found that my emotional requirements of friends was too big. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. It's just like. Massive. You pick one guy and it's like, well, you're the guy. You're it. And these people. Oh, I did that. These people are like, what do you want from me?

I don't understand what you. Oh, God, this is bringing back so many shit. So much shit from my 20s. Okay. I was exactly like that. It's the worst. But add on that I was also famous. You know, I was really well known.

That is a horrible, toxic thing for, but I'm kind of exaggerating that. I mean, I was also a good friend and I was a funny guy and I was, you know, I had a lot of friends and I wasn't an asshole. Right. But I know exactly what you're talking about. The emotional requirement. Exactly. And that is what I was searching for. I needed it so badly.

Yeah. I couldn't breathe if I didn't have it. Now, that doesn't manifest itself in terms of you going out with your friends and acting like a dick at all. It's much more subtle than that. Right. And more insidious in a way. Right. And you can do it while smiling and taking people out to dinner. It's not like, you know, grabbing someone literally by the lapels and saying, I need this. You don't do that. No. So, yes, that was a huge requirement I had.

And that's a huge regret, too. Because I know that it fucked up relationships I have with my male, a couple male friends. That I just was a massive problem that they were still attracted to and wanted to be friends with. Sure. And we had this mind game shit. And they would start competing with me and be super competitive in a way that I didn't understand. And it was, yes, it was.

And the fact that you're in your 20s. Yeah. And it's just like craziness. Well, I can't imagine that. Like, how old were you when Less Than Zero was published? I was 21. So, I mean, that's crazy. It is ridiculous.

Well, that book was huge. And knowing you even now, the short amount of time I know you, I can't even imagine the insanity of that. Of being lifted to that level and then being just sort of almost like, you know, it was almost like the New York press was like ready. The literary press was like, finally, they're here. It wasn't that nice. You know, this is the weird thing about, it was about, you know, half of the reviews for that book were bad and they really targeted Simon and Schuster, my publisher as kind of, you know, what are you doing publishing some like 20year-old drug addict's diary? And they got a lot of flack for that.

But again, so the book, for whatever reason, it was a word-of-mouth book because they only published about 5,000 copies of the theme for their first edition and not expecting it to do anything, not a penny for promotion. So they kind of just dumped it out there. And I was happy. I mean, I didn't care. 5,000 copies. Awesome. And then I did a couple of promotional pieces for a couple of newspapers and then it kind of built and it didn't really become a bestseller until about five months after it came out. It was a really slow build. But it seemed like that the timing that once the

press got hold of it and got hold of the idea of you in New York and maybe you and Jay and whatever was happening in the mid-80s in New York, which wasn't great, was it? I mean, it was sort of like this weird post-disco, unclear time. Completely, yes. That's actually, I was trying to figure out a way

to put it. Looking for definition. Yeah, it was. And maybe you guys provided some of that juice. You know, we might have. Was it in tamajana what's in that crew or she before you guys no she was there too in new york so there was this like there was some vitality but there were also a lot of you know there were editor editors and people in who were very cool editors like the editor that discovered me this young guy named morgan entrican who was like only about six or seven years older than me.

And he had acquired Lessons Zero originally. So he was out on the town, you know, Gary Fiskejohn, who was Jay's editor. So there was this like group of literary people. And yeah, they were in fashion spreads. You know, it was that, I mean, it's kind of hard to. I don't know. Reimagine that for today. Well, no, because like if you really think about it, there was a period where when you talk about the heroes that you guys were emulating or trying to sort of be the legacy of. There was a time and I've talked about this before where where New York intellectuals defined a nice chunk of of of culture.

And then it started to sort of contract. You know, certainly, you know know the party times happened the disco times happened and i think that there was a struggling of the intelligentsia of new york to to sort of hold on to that uh that cultural relevance and and also the city itself you know i didn't care i know but am i right you were you were right about all of that. That is completely correct. That is an absolute correct reading of the time. I was 21 or 22. Who were these adults I was hanging out with?

They were all 10 years older than me. I really had my own friends, and I never considered myself to be part of the intelligentsia. There was Susan Sontag. The real ones. I was just a pop culture. The people that you studied in college, like Susan Sontag. There's always Susan Sontag. The real ones. I was like the, just a pop culture. The people that you studied in college, you know, like Susan Sontag. There's always Susan Sontag. Right.

Which is sort of like, I kind of understand. Yeah. Yeah. But that's real intellectual stuff. Well, sure. I get it. Yes, I would be at parties and there would be Norman Mailer and Gay Talese and Kurt Vonnegut and John Didion and all of the literary luminaries that I grew up with. all of the literary luminaries that I grew

up with. One of the awesome things about, you know, becoming well-known is that it does open that door for you to meet these people. And you're in parties with famous people looking uncomfortable. Yeah, right, right, right. Exactly. Exactly. A bunch of famous people standing around not knowing what to do.

But I think I was just kind of young enough to just not even like let it overwhelm me or anything were you still detached or you were having fun i was having fun you weren't shut down i no i had shut down in a different way and that came about with the writing of american psycho and what that came out of in a way was oh i have to grow up and i have to grow up in this miserable yuppie reagan era society there's a book in between them oh yeah there's a book yeah i published a book uh i had already been i almost had finished the rules of attraction once lesson zero came out so lesson zero came out in the summer of 85 and then i had finished and that was a sort of a sequel you know all the books are kind of linked. Yeah. The characters appear in all different books. I read Lesson Zero on a train.

I decided that after, I think, I don't know. It must have been right when it fucking came out. Because it was like, I'm going to take a train across country after college. So maybe it was 86. It was around that time. And I got a stack of books. I had Legs by William Kennedy. Lesson Zero.

Blue Movie by Terry Southern. I remember the books I chose to read, but when I read Less Than Zero, I was sort of an aspiring intellectual and I thought it was profound to me, the style of it, because I just plowed through The Sound and the Fury. And I thought that the lack of description was genius in a way that these characters, you really had to sort of hang on to the tone of their words and the actions. And you become part of that if you were that age. So I thought it was a great book. It changed my mind about things. Thanks.

I mean, to get back to that train thing, I used to do that. I used to take the train cross country with a bunch of books. I sometimes do that. I used to take the train cross country with a bunch of books. I sometimes did that. I would take it from, you know, you'd stop in Chicago. Yeah. Change trains. From New York.

Then you'd have to go down. If you were going all the way across, like in my recollection, in order to go all the way across, you couldn't just go straight up the top. Or maybe it was my choice because I went from Chicago to like Memphis and over. I don't know why I did that because I think I wanted to see Memphis and I had some romantic idea about the train. I did too. And I still kept that romantic idea for a couple of years. I liked it.

And it was, I just prefer to like not have anyone have any contact with me for like three or four days. And there was something about that that was so soothing to me instead of flying cross country or whatever. I just, I just liked that. So it's so strange that you mentioned that because during that time 86 that was your reprieve around the time where after i started having immense regret and anxiety

about being like a well-known person because the first year is fun yeah the first year is great and then you kind of have an anxiety attack in terms of like, maybe this isn't so great. Well, but also how do you feed it? How do you maintain, how do you live up to the expectation? You ignore it. You just do whatever you have to do. You don't, you just do what you have to do. Oh, really?

None of the anxiety was around that? Like now I'm this guy, people are expecting things of me and I got to. Okay. Yes, that is true. That is where the anxiety stemmed from. But the only thing you can do about that is to just move on and do what you want to do. I mean, there's nothing you can. Right. Did you notice on the train? The one thing I remember about that train ride is that you realize that the whole sleeper car is really just like it's being in a bathroom. Because right. There's just the full down bed and then there's the toilet. Right. And then like when you're on the train, I remember that there was drama unfolding on the train. Like there was a guy who was traveling with his kids and some woman who was traveling with her kids. And I sort of watched this relationship unfold as we moved cross country because you're sort of limited to this train and you get out.

It stops for a minute for a soda. And I just saw them sort of become a couple over. It was kind of interesting. Or you hang out of the bar car. Yeah, the bar car was there i was drinking at the time and then there was that they really sold that the the car with the seat with the glass ceiling it's just filthy and the weird thing about the train is that you literally what you see of america is the other side of the tracks like you're you're going through just the worst parts of big cities exactly like these you know parking lots, you know, fast food. Pieces of equipment that are rusting. A lot of that.

But there was just something about it during that period of my life that I, the isolation of it, I just really, I really liked it. All right. So you're freaking out. Yeah, I was freaking out about becoming a man in a society whose values I found reprehensible. But I still wanted to belong to the society. What do you do with that? I wanted to fit in, which is something that Patrick Bateman says at one time in American Psycho. But that really was a book that stemmed from me not wanting to be a part of the society, but also wanting to fit in, if that makes any sense. You're kind of

trapped. What do you do? I mean, do you just go off into the, you know, the woods and live in a cabin or how do you, how do you navigate through the society? How do you, you want to interact with people you want to engage, but you're, you, you don't like the, you know,

what were the world, but, but see, the thing is, is that you sort of entered almost immediately out of college, a very, you know, high minded set and a very lofty sort of a world, you know, to-minded set in a very lofty sort of world,

you know, to be kind of hanging out those parties. It's very insulated. I mean, what value, you know, just by nature of being in that group, you were already operating against, I would imagine, some of the values that you had a problem with. Yeah, but actually, I was with a lot of my friends who were my age. Again, I want to stress, we were 23. We were just out of college. And so we were all kind of, I don't want to call, say, a united front.

But we would talk about this a lot. Like, Jesus, this is kind of like, this is ridiculous. Our country is ridiculous. This world we're about to enter into as men is ridiculous. And yet, what other option is there right so it was kind of you know what what really was the other option it's not just new york society right it's i'm not just talking about the intel telegencia i'm talking about the world right the world order right in a way yeah and okay so this is what i have to do to be a man this is what's expected

of me this kind of pose to fit in right Right. And then, you know, so American Psycho was kind of my exorcism of those, the anger and the hopelessness that I felt about that time. And then pretty much after I finished, I said, oh, okay, I can move on. And that's really how writing books has always been for me. There's a problem. There's something painful, something, some kind of drama in my life. And I really write the book to explore it explore it yeah and by the time i'm done with it i've kind of like processed it in a way so that

i feel was kind of better but was that all cultural or were you dealing with you know childhood stuff as well i mean in terms like because that character that this sort of weird detachment but charm of it all was kind of disturbing um you know i don't know i mean how does how do you create a character how does someone like that and i've been thinking i was thinking about this guy this kind of faceless yuppie moving in this world i never had a clear vision of what he looked like i knew he was a reflection of all of these things he was obsessed with but wasn't at the time the romanticization of the stock market was around that time as well I knew he was a reflection of all of these things. He was obsessed with consumer-supported brands. The romanticization of the stock market was around that time as well, right?

It was. Well, actually, I just moved to New York in 1987, and it was about five months before the crash. Four or five months before the crash. And then, yeah, I was riding American Psycho at that time. Right. And I had been hanging out with guys that I had been introduced to, older guys who were working on Wall Street from various friends of mine, their older brothers or whatever.

And I would go out with them thinking, okay, I'm going to find out how this all works. I'm going to find out what they really do. What are they really doing? Yeah. And they really weren't interested in that. They were interested in going out, socializing, nightclubs, high-end restaurants, spending money. And that really, this whole idea, and doing a lot of drugs. And this whole idea of the book that I was going to write about, I think slightly

earnestly, like a New York novel about an unhappy guy on Wall Street. And I'm so glad that didn't happen. But, well, it is a somewhat earnest novel about an unhappy guy on Wall Street, but it's hallucinatory. It's crazy. How that unhappiness manifested itself became a little richer than the just basic unhappiness. Right. And so, yeah, and so because of, I just remember one night sitting in yet another super expensive restaurant with these guys just talking about, bragging about their tanning machines and their, who's got the best haircut and, you know, who's got the nicest summer place in the Hamptons. I, it was so clear to me. I said, this is a novel about a serial killer. I don't know how I made the connection. I said, this is a novel about a serial killer. I don't know how I made the connection. I said, this is a novel about a fucking serial killer.

And that's really kind of how the genesis for American Psycho happened. And then creating Patrick Bateman. Patrick Bateman, a lot of people forget, had appeared in The Rules of Attraction. He is Sean Bateman's brother. Sean Bateman, if you've seen the movie Rules of Attraction, was played by James Van Der Beek

and so Sean Bateman who's the main character in the Rules of Attraction is having problems with we kind of find out that his whole everything he's told us about himself is kind of a lie and as his life kind of crumbles in the last section of the book it's revealed that

oh he's not a farm kid. Oh, he's a rich kid. Oh, he's from New York City. Oh, his father has a ton of money. Oh, he has his asshole older brother, Patrick Bateman. So Patrick Bateman's introduced in the last like 30 pages of Rules of Attraction. And as I was working on American Psycho, I was thinking, who is this guy? And I thought, it's that guy at the end of Rules of Attraction.

Why not? Patrick Bateman. And so that's just – that's kind of how it happened. Well, it's interesting, though, like that moment you had where this guy's a serial killer is that in the midst of being who you were among these people who they decided that what one does with their life is irrelevant other than to make enough money to be as extravagant as possible and and and that's what stockbrokers do what's your job to make money that's the job you know so so the detachment when you were just describing it of being in to hearing them talk about that the weird sort of emptiness of it all why why wouldn't they be talking about killing why wouldn't that be the next thing to find meaning so you were almost in kind of like projecting a quest for meaning that could only end there.

That's true. And I do think that the violence in American Psycho is Patrick Bateman's desire for something real, tangible, blood, flesh, death, instead of this kind of abstract world of brands and consumer items and, you know, bad pop music and, you know, clothing and strange food being served to you. And it cost $85 a plate. So anyway, so yeah, that's where that's where that all came from. So were you happy with the film adaptation? The film adaptation was, you know, i look i never thought you could make that book into a movie ever and i remember when uh first person who was interested was david cronenberg so david cronenberg and i met a couple of times that would have been amazing well david

cronenberg also was insistent on like the script needed to be only 70 pages long because it takes him two minutes to shoot a page. He wanted no scenes in restaurants, no scenes in nightclubs, and I don't want to shoot any of the violence. Yeah, well, why would that? So I went off and I rewrote, I wrote my own script and I was burnt out on the material anyway.

And so I kind of did a pass that, you know, it was kind of the greatest hits from the book more or less, and he didn't like it. And so he hired another writer. That didn't work out ultimately and i it went through director at oliver stone and leonardo decapper were going to do at one point and it finally landed uh with uh you know mary heron and guinever turner

who did the adaptation and i you know i thought how are they going to do this how are you going to do this book why would you do this book because Because it was conceived as a piece of, you know, a novel. It was conceived as a novel. It wasn't conceived as a script. It wasn't conceived as a movie. It is a novel thing. It's 400 pages in the mind of this guy. And he's a completely unreliable narrator. You don't know if some of these things happened or not. You don't even know if the murders happened, which to me is interesting. It's much more interesting not to know that than to definitely know that. Do you know it? I don't know it.

No, I don't know it. Okay. But so what the movie's going to do, what the movie's going to do is, regardless, it's going to answer it. He's going to have done them because we're watching it happen. You're answering questions

that aren't that interesting, I think. you're answering questions that aren't that interesting I think you're answering questions that the answers aren't that interesting I guess that's what I meant right and so so the movie is faithful to the book to a degree I guess I guess what a lot of people liked about it who hated the book is that it clarified the humor of the book but a lot of people just read that book straight I said what the fuck is this? Are you kidding me? It caused trouble, didn't it? It's not funny.

This is not funny. Murder's not funny. Yuppie. People miss satire sometimes. And so that was a big problem with the anger. But it's interesting. So the movie was okay. The movie was fine.

I just didn't think it needed to be made. But I think ultimately after watching the movie not too long ago, again, there are certain points where it's not clear whether he's really doing the murders. I mean, they're happening on screen. But the sort of weird – his ability to control his environment so specifically becomes dubious after a while. Could he really luck out that much in his ability to kill? No. Right. And there's – look, that's true of to kill. No. Right.

And there's, look, that's true of the book as well. Right. I mean, the descriptions in the book are kind of comic book outrageous. Right, right. It's like, you know, reading a Warren comic. You've seen how people are dismembered and, you know, and it's, you know, highly imaginative. But, yeah, so the movie, look, also what the movie did is it kind of like made

uh it gave the book kind of a second life um and you know as a writer you're always kind of grateful for that and it wasn't a hugely popular movie but it you know it did okay and i think and i think it what the most important thing it did was uh and the movie's fine um is that it clarified for people who were confused the intent of the novel which was black satire right and a lot of people just saw the book as like a listing of horrors a catalog of horrors some people are so uh numb to the to satire they just can't cross the they can't make the jump uh like even if you tell them this is it's a dark comedy it's like there's a lot of people died yeah I mean I don't know that there's any other way to read that book there is no other way to read that

book that's the only way it's the only it was meant to be read that way and I you know when I said earlier my problems with the book now about 20 25 years after it was published are i sense a kind of earnestness and intent that i feel that there was still a remnant of that writer wanting to satirize the wall street guys and just show them how foolish they were and even though ultimately i don't think the book fully lands there, there are traces of that for me. And I wish it had been a little purer that I'd stay more focused on what my aesthetic design for the book was. Taking those fuckers down a notch? Yeah, yeah.

And I, you're right. I mean, but in the end, it was just a very personal book. And it was really about three years what I was going through, what I was fantasizing about, my reactions to things. And then again, what happens is, you know, you finish the book kind of relaxed in a way. You had gotten that morbid in your anger and in your mind and in your frustration? Not to the depths of Patrick Bateman. And I wasn't fantasizing about killing people necessarily. Though in my, probably in some horrible way,

I was devouring everyone in sight. I was devouring male people in sight. Like, you've got to do this for me. I'm eating you right now. You know, I mean, ultimately, I mean, I knew that he was a serial killer. I knew that there were going to be murders. I knew that there was going to be violence.

And I kind of left those chapters or spaces blank because I kind of didn't really know how to write them. And ultimately, I wrote those. It was about 10 pages of stuff interspersed throughout the book. It's not as much as you think. It might be very heavy. And I think that's why people imagine this is a complete catalog of horrors. But it's not that much. But personally, where were your frustrations leading in your own life and relationships and that kind of stuff and whatever unresolved stuff about your father and all that stuff?

Was the writing of that some sort of hitting of bottom for you? No, no. say like was the writing of that some sort of hitting of bottom for you uh no no it was kind of like um dealing with stuff it wasn't hitting bottom at all it was dealing with stuff i felt i was at the bottom yeah and it was a way of elevating getting myself out of it right um and sure you know i was i looked at a lot of the values of my father i was i was thinking about that a lot um he died about a year after American Psycho came out. But before then, I was seeing, especially in the 80s, when he had made a lot of money. I didn't grow up as a rich kid. I think people have this idea that I did. I grew up in Sherman Oaks. We were middle-top or middle-class. Um, uh, and so, but when my father really did begin to make serious money in the eighties, there was a very different man. Um, and I mean, he really bought into the excess of that decade.

And I have to admit that impacted me as well. And, you know, and then he also died $10 million in debt. So, you know, you have this, you kind of get that person. Well, yeah. And also there's that idea of like, you know, have this you kind of get that person well yeah and also there's that idea of like he does you know it's false rewards i mean you know like after you grow up with a man who is fairly you know without conscience or empathy emotionally in terms of his own family and all of a sudden now he's got a fortune it's hard not to think like where's the justice of that no i mean it was just also I mean yes the justice in that but

also just you know sadly kind of glamorous I remember like I mean he really you know he lived it up yeah he lived it and but where were you with it you know I I know that you're not necessarily as vague as you once were about your sexuality but the mid 80s yous was a pretty wild time and a scary time. I mean, how much did that play into your frustration or your mindset? Well, look, I'd always known I was gay from an early age. And to me, it's like the most boring thing possible. I was never ashamed of it.

I never felt like I had to come out of anything. It was like, oh, shit, this is another thing I ought to deal with. And it's such a it's just and it's such a boring thing too because it's like you know it's sexuality is like the color of your eyes or whatever it's just such a yeah nothing can be done about it right so i so i put that on my list and i was like okay so this is what i gotta do uh again pragmatic gotta navigate here a little bit you know um but i would say that i i never was in a kind of closet i was in the glass closet we call it where people know but you don't go around announcing it or

saying anything about it and the problem really was in the mid well after lesson zero came out i never i never said i was straight or anything but i would be coy about it because there was at that time uh you know a kind of ghetto ghetto ziation yeah of gay writers you were automatically put over here you were automatically reviewed here and i just thought you know i don't want to do that i've got enough like weird bisexual sex going on in this book and i don't what do i need to say i'm not going to walk around with a girlfriend or anything but the one thing that did happen was you know aids hit in about 83 84 i first heard about it while i was at Bennington. And Bennington was a super promiscuous campus.

I mean, I'm sure every campus is. But Bennington was even more ambisexual than most. Because it's smaller. Smaller. And the kind of male it attracts is all over the place. And understandably so pre-AIDS. You know, there was a lot of experimentation. There was a lot of stuff going on.

So when AIDS hit, we were kind of the last, I guess the first generation that closed the door. Right. The door was closed on us and we kind of survived. Right. You know, it was people who were older, not a lot older. I mean, I had a classmate of mine from high school who died of it in the 80s. But we kind of just got it. Okay, we can't do this.

We can't do this. We're not going to do this. Let's get into a relationship or whatever. And so it really wasn't that wild a time. When I got to New York, people were just scared. And so I immediately got into a relationship that lasted about seven years that was monogamous. Got you through. And got me through it.

But it was, you know, the wild time had stopped. I never experienced it. I never saw it. Well, that's probably a good thing that it was just college wild time and not bathhouse wild time. You dodged a bullet. Right. No, that's true. But I also was never the kind of guy who would go to a bathhouse.

That was not my kind of thing. Yeah, it's a little scary just to think never the kind of guy who would go to a bathhouse. That was not my kind of thing. Yeah, it's a little scary just to think about, kind of. I mean, it's exciting, I guess, but it's a little scary. I think the reality of it would be like a wake-up call. I think the reality of like, oh, this is what a bathhouse is really like. It's not like it is in a porno film or whatever. This is like, oh, those kind of, oh, okay. in a porno film or whatever this is like oh those oh okay you know the body fascism in porn is i i don't think necessarily carries over carries into the bathhouse yeah maybe i don't know it seems

that there is a pretty high premium put on uh uh body fascism in the gay community oh yeah there definitely is yes and a big problem of you know gay shame and triggers and stuff like that. But it's like, if you let that, you know, get to you. I think it's hard to get old in a community that puts such a high premium on sex. Well, isn't that kind of... Oh, you mean just the gay community? Yeah. But look, it's across the board.

Sure. It's especially true for women as well. Yeah. Very difficult for women. Yeah. You become invisible after a certain age. Well, you know, I just, I know it's not politically correct to say it anymore,

but man up, you know, that's really what I feel like. There was that ridiculous Facebook thing. Did you see that Facebook campaign to ban man up as a term because it's gender specific? Really? Oh yeah. And that's like Justin Timberlake holding up a little thing. So do you ever say woman up?

That's the kind of like, you know. I don't know, I'm not sure where all this, I don't know where it takes language after a certain point with we're all so inherently hypersensitive of the impact of the sort of established meanings of words or misunderstandings of words. I don't know where

we end up language-wise. I don't know where it all ends up. Maybe it'll be interesting, I don't know but it will be interesting or will it be boring will everybody be sort of you know half panicked about how they're addressing anything or what they say when they're angry angry even if they're not you know if it's not coming from a negative place i don't know it's you know well it's it's considered i kind of elitist now to have opinions that are negative and i noticed that i just last night, I tweeted something last night. I was done with work. And so I told a boyfriend, let's just watch a movie or something.

I'm not going to work anymore. And he said, sure, put on a movie. And so for some random reason, I wanted to watch Marathon Man, the Dustin Hoffman movie. Why wouldn't you want to watch that? And yeah. And then I noticed, though, that he had already turned to his phone about 20 minutes in. And I said, so you're not. He's younger than you.

Yeah. He's about 27. And he said, yeah, I don't know about this. I said, OK, let's watch. We haven't watched season four of Louie. Yeah. Let's start watching that. Yeah.

We're caught up. Season three. Let's start watching season four. And what about that episode that got a lot of buzz on social media the fat girl episode and he says yeah sure put it on so we put and he's a fan too and i'm a big fan of louis ck but i watched the fat girl episode and i kind of sank a little bit i said really you're letting the fat girl just editorialize and this pity party that she's having in front of you and you're not like engaging with her at all the camera's just slowly panning around her

and you're letting her make this point that, okay, sure, yeah, we should all love the fat girl. Sure, it's not fair or whatever. And I just kind of thought that episode tanked for me. And so I tweeted it out, something about the fat girl episode tanked and this is like the worst Facebook thread or whatever. And of course i was i

was waiting here you go the barrage of there now true there is a 10 to 15 percent like an agreement like people go yeah you're right about that maybe they should have done that last scene differently and then there was the barrage of how dare you say that about louis ck you made the canyons you made the canyons how how can you know and it's like i'm just kind of used to that you know reactive thing that goes on in the culture without kind of placing things remarks opinions tweets into a context i could never understand how people could get so upset about the delivery system is now limited context i mean like i was reading like last night i read some book uh by a woman named Hodson, Chelsea Hodson.

It was called Pity the Animal. It's a chapbook. It's a small book. It's more like a, it's sort of an essay slash poetry. It's not, I don't know if you'd call it poetry, but you know that kind of fragmented cultural criticism. She's bringing together, you know, the Marina Abramovich performance piece and some things from, you know, weird manuals of sales manuals and mannequin presentation manuals. It's one of those kind of high-minded, but, you know, clearly, you know, astute intellectual criticisms of women as objects and whatnot. But it'd been a

long time since I kind of, like, engaged in that type of writing. And, you know, it's ironic that before I'm talking to you that, you know, it was weird. It's ironic that before I'm talking to you that there, you know, that there was a time where that stuff was important and the conversation around that stuff was important. I still think it probably is important, but that context of really following through with, with a, with an earnest critique or a well-founded intellectual critique and following through with a reasonable discussion around the possibilities of

the implications of what you're saying, it's just fucking gone. So if you're going to present it to the animals on Twitter, if you're going to say, here's some meat and expect anything different than a frenzy, then it's a shame because the sort of time it takes to process and have a reasonable conversation about aesthetics or sociopolitical meaning, it's very limited now it's insulated it's not going to happen on twitter really twitter is all frenetic right and and it's it's it's in in in in in in those moments you don't realize like these are just idiots sitting at home this is not some sort of you know structured debate on anything right and

you're getting you're dealing with a media platform that feeds on controversy. Right. So the, but you're right. But the overreaction to things is not only limited to Twitter. It really is part of what is going on kind of nationally. This lack of context for things is really has never been higher. No, it's horrible because there's no because there's no sense of history anymore. Because of the internet, which is the collective unconscious, it has replaced any sort of organic idea of genuine human community, that nothing needs to happen.

The time frame is no longer important. So if history is obliterated, there's no point of reference, no point of evolution, no point of sort of the gaining of wisdom. It's just everything happens in the now. It doesn't matter what part of the history you use to attack somebody else. It's troubling that

there's no context for Hitler anymore. Right. To some kids, it's like, oh, the guy with the mustache? that kind of bothers me all right like like last night when i was reading this woman you know chelsea hodson's piece i'm like this used to be this kind of stuff used to be important to me to take the time to sort of you know engage in this and to really think through this stuff and and to appreciate the poetry and and the relevance of art and stuff like that and it it's just like, what am I doing now?

You're looking at BuzzFeed, taking a test to see what kind of rainbow you are. That's what you're doing. I'm reacting. All you can do is react. All you can do is react. Yeah, that's true. Well, you know, look, I'm guilty of it as well. I mean, I have a Twitter feed and I go to it often and I throw out opinions.

But I also recommend books. I recommend books and I recommend obscure films or music that I like. But it's true. I can look at myself as part of that problem too. I see things, I react to them and I put them out there. But when you say you got done with work for the day, what is your work day? I try to keep it on par with uh you know everyone else i know who has kind of a nine to five a day job what do you do you write i write i do write i get up in the morning and i have my morning routine and then i'm in my office and then which is part of my it's in it's in my condo and so i'm in my office and then i take a

break midday and that break is i break is I never do lunches. I can't do business lunch. It drives me crazy. So I usually go to a movie or I go to the gym. And then I come back and then I work until about six or seven, maybe later if I've got to finish a project. Now, it's true. If I'm under deadline on something, then I will work until 10 or something. But that's very rare.

And that's my day. And that's my day. And that's, you know, do you know what you're writing? Oh, completely. Yeah. Are you writing a novel?

Uh, you know, I was thinking about that driving over here and I was also thinking driving over, God, how tough it is to just like make it in the world, just survive. How do people do it?

It's just like a day to day grind. But anyway, I know I tweeted this morning. Every day-day grind. But anyway. I know. I tweeted this morning, every day is a mountain. That was how I woke up. So we were on the same page. Well, yeah. But I'm just thinking like the usual stresses, the usual fears you kind of have early on in the day where you think, what's going to happen?

No, I got to do that thing tomorrow. I got to do that. I got to finish this. And then it's just kind of like you're exhausted by it, and it just ultimately goes away. But getting back to the work thing, the novel thing, I was working on a novel.

I started a novel in January 2013 after working on scripts for a year, like 15 scripts I wrote. Did anything get made? Two movies got made. Which were they? One was a movie called Downer's Grove, which has not been released yet. And the other one was The Canyons.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I just kind of got hungry for writing prose, you know, rather than writing scripts. And scripts are fun to write. But I got hungry for writing descriptive kind of prose. Where it's just you. Yeah, where it's just me. And no one's going to rewrite it or whatever. And then I just got distracted again.

And there's just a problem with this particular story that I want to do. And I'm just not, I just haven't found it yet. It's not necessarily writer's block. I just kind of can't figure out if I really want to tell this story. It's about something that happened to me in high school. And is it really, is it a novella? Do I want to write another novella again again because the last book i published was very short um so yeah that's where it is so i don't know about the novel i just i have various projects

that i'm working on now and i'm finishing well tell me about a luna lunar park a little bit and how that sort of put to rest this this father stuff well i, I was thinking about writing Lunar Park right after American Psycho was completed. And there were two books I wanted to write. One was kind of an homage to Stephen King, which is what Lunar Park ultimately became. And the other was kind of an homage to the international thriller.

That book became Glamorama, which I got lost in for like eight years. It's an epic book. It kind of half works. I mean, it's my favorite of my books, but it's super divisive among fans. A lot of people just hate it. Equally enough, you know, people love it.

But so Lunar Park, I didn't feel old enough to approach the Stephen King book because I always knew it was going to be about an older man. And he was not going to be a writer at first. He was going to be like a political operator in Georgetown. So I went and said, okay, I know the world of glamor. I know the fashion scene in New York. I know the celebrity world. And it's kind of, it, I kind of preceded Zoolanders about a young male model

who becomes a terrorist, gets, gets folded into a terrorist cell. And so, um, and so I knew that world at the time and I wanted to write that book. Uh, so, uh, I wrote that book and then as I was finishing up glamorama, then lunar Park became much clearer to me. Like I knew it was going to be a lot more about a writer. And then the writer was going to be me. And I knew it was going to deal a lot with my dad. And I knew it was going to deal a lot with my own career. And I was going to deal with American Psycho, which had been really haunting me in terms of what I was being defined as.

And that's fine. Which was what exactly? The writer of American Psycho. That's it. The writer of American Psycho. And that's fine. But I wanted to explore that. And I wanted to bring kind of Patrick Bateman figure back into the suburban setting.

And so, and really the over, you know, the driving, I don't know. The beating heart of Lunar Park was really about finally resolving my issues with my father. Your expectations that were unmet. Yeah. And I felt, because I was still angry with him about just the sheer carelessness of his life. And, you know, he really did put my mom in trouble because of the IRS and the debt. The divorce wasn't really final. It was so complicated.

And it was so stressful to deal with the aftermath of that. I had to deal with it. I had to stand up and deal with this huge mess that my father was conscious of when he died. And there was a lot of unresolved, you know, feelings about him. And really in Lunar Park, and this sounds corny, but I don't care. It just, you know, forgave him. And it just kind of lifts off you. And I remember writing the last month of that when I was writing.

The book ends with this kind of, I don't know, this dream vision of my father as a boy growing up in northeastern nevada and it was just you know it just knocked me out writing this and because it was just all about forgiveness just total forgiveness and just moving on and it's hard yeah real forgiveness is fucking you know it's like you know people it's easy to you know pay lip service to forgiving, but Jesus Christ to really let something go. I don't even know what exactly the inner mechanism is for that. Either it happens or it doesn't. Well, come on. Sometimes, look, sometimes not letting it go can drive you.

Right. Really drive you. Right. Gives you an energy. Right. Ultimately, I think it's a negative energy and you walk into walls and you kind of get lost in it and it's become a comedy of errors yeah yeah it's just it's it there's no way that it ends well and the only way the only thing you can really do is to

you know forgive people i just there's no other way but sometimes the the only the only impetus for for forgiving is just emotional exhaustion. You hit the wall. You hit the wall. I was sick of feeling this way. You're sick of feeling this way. And what could I do with my dead father? Who was I going to talk to about it? Who wanted to listen to it anymore? Someone complained about their dead dad. And everyone has their dead dad

stories. Everyone has their like, you know, oh, dad hit me. He was cold and remote. It was like, yeah, whatever. Do you remember, though, the moment where it was released? Completely. I completely remember this. I was in my mom's house.

Yeah. The house you grew up in. The house I grew up in. I was in my old room, and I was staying there. I was in from New York. I was staying there. I was in from New York. I was staying there. And I wanted to write a large portion of the last part of the book in that room. Whatever.

Magic is magic. And I remember finally doing the pass. the pass this must have been in uh september september of uh oh four september of oh four and i just remember august of oh four september before and i remember doing the final pass on the last two or three pages of the book literally you know feeling, feeling my chest unconstrict, relax. And it was just this huge, profound moment. Did you cry? I don't know if it got that kind of dramatic. I mean, I had cried writing part of the book.

Some of the book was kind of moving to write, but ultimately. Yeah, so I do remember that very clearly. And you just felt it go and i just felt it in the magic space that that sort of was your your fortress your protection yeah it was and um yeah and it just uh i've i've never had i don't think i've ever kind of bitched about my dad since then now my, my sisters, on the other hand, still have unresolved, I think, feelings about their relationship with my dad. But even then, I mean, I say that, but it's not as bad as it once was.

But ultimately, you're right. You just have to get, you just get to a point where it's not. Yeah, and hopefully shit fades. You know, I mean, like the one benefit of staying alive, you know, when you have enough heartbreak in your life is that hopefully if you don't commit to it and become bitter, it will fade a bit. You know, it has to.

Right. And being embittered is sucks. It's the worst. It's physically painful. No one likes it. And no one wants to be around it. Yeah. physically painful.

No one likes it. And no one wants to be around it. And it's like, you know, and it's not really that hard to just like make the step over here. You're not right. It is. It's just a switch. It's a throwing of the switch

and taking the hit. Right. I'm looking at it not as black, but as pink. It's a weird mixture of taking the hit and manning up simultaneously yes yes that's exactly what it is like it's like sorry okay i've been humbled and now i'm gonna man up to not be bitter i find life easier to move through that way

i find it much easier to move through life that way we're older we're getting older so i mean it's like you you can't approach life with the same you know irresponsible passionate anger that you did when you were in your 20s because it like it doesn't it doesn't age well really no but i think you can still be you know discerning sure you can still be opinionated yeah you can still have a kind of dark view of right but you can't say like i'm fucked everything i am in trouble that that looks ridiculous on anyone past a certain age it's ridiculous exactly right i mean unless you're saying it like you know kind of ironically or whatever but that that, yeah, that doesn't that doesn't work. Well, before we finish up, let's talk because we talked briefly on your show that, you know, like I seem to like not unlike my compulsion towards, you know, talking about the denial of death by Ernest Becker.

You know, I found that your contextualization of the world we're living in is post empire was was very compelling to me, and I don't know why you don't write a longer piece about that. Yeah. The piece I wrote a couple years ago about Charlie Sheen, Empire versus post-Empire, whatever we are. We're in a post-Empire world now. And post-Empire is kind of defined by transparency. That really was kind of the theory of just being yourself. And if that means it's Charlie Sheen in meltdown mode, well, that's post-Empire.

Empire is him in a tuxedo on the red carpet, faking answers to a news reporter. But I think that it speaks to not only the authenticity that comes with volatility and a lack of control or respect for the context of media. But also that transparency in that way also speaks to the tremendous lack of boundaries on all levels. OK, yes, that example of Charlie Sheen does. But I see Jennifer Lawrence as post-Empire. I see an entire generation coming of age without the filters that especially, I think I'm somewhere in the middle, that I especially see with my parents' generation,

where everyone was kind of, everything was kind of a mask. Everyone did follow a kind of protocol. But it was a much more intimate culture media-wise. Yes, that's true. That's true too. You know, so, you know, really looking at the idea

that if you think about it, during your parents' and my parents' generation, there was no internet. There was four TV stations, and that's including PBS. Right. And there was maybe five movie studios that were really doing things. Right. You know, there was always an off the grid.

There was always a fringe. There was always that. But, you know, now the tabloid and fringe is sort of, you know, taken over out of necessity that, you know, that which is really the usurpation of what was that empire. The breaking open. Yeah. But also in that empire, you had aan mailer sure you had a muhammad ali yeah you know you even had in terms of his evasions andy warhol you know you had people who right seemed authentic i mean and i know people find that weird that i'm saying i'm throwing warhol out there but i feel that he did do he defined He had cultural relevance and defined something.

And so there were certainly people who were, but for the most part, society branded them as loonies or crazies or people not- New York. Right, or New York. But I just see it as more kind of the norm in terms of celebrities. Sure, there's still the People magazine, Airbrush, Cover Story, but more or less,

it's just how do you not, don't you look kind of ridiculous if you're following these old ass guidelines about presenting yourself in a way, if it's not real? Why not just present your real self? You know, show the crack up, you know, be real. And I think that, I mean, I especially, you know, think that people respond to that kind of realness in a way that I don't know if we're ever going to be really able to go back to that, you know, the PR thing, the PR mistake.

You know, when Vanity Fair says we're not dealing with PR people anymore, it was a big moment. able to go back to that you know the pr thing the pr mistake you know when vanity fair says we're not dealing with pr people anymore it was a big moment we're not dealing with it so if you want to have a profile done come to us we're not dealing with your pr people and and you can't approve it now vanity fair still is does puffy kind of celebrity covers but you know there's that's being enroaching into into. Well, I think it's just very interesting to see, like, you know, sort of bouncing back on going back to what we were talking about before. Is that what what evolves out of this? Because I think that the risk of it, you know certainly and predatory sort of media and that juice of like even twitter you know implies something a little bizarre and a little disturbing about culture and

and and what you know where does the this who determines what the dialogue is is it just this frenetic mess of of like you know waiting for somebody to pop or some controversy to unfold what happens to the dialogue of culture i don't know who's in charge of that who did well look i was talking about this intellectually you know niche yeah niche yeah yeah everything is niche right right so it's it's findable you just have to find your you just have to find it and then you know it's like how I was feeling about, you know, talk a lot on my podcast about loving movies and being a cinephile. And we're talking about how A.O. Scott published a piece in the New York Times in January about how, you know, being a cinephile is outdated. Movies aren't at the center of the conversation anymore.

Video games are more relevant in a way to the conversation than movies and television, certainly. And I kind of got some of my friends and I kind of got despondent by that because we're making movies. We like movies. And then ultimately I was talking to Kevin Smith and Kevin Smith, we were talking about this notion and he said, you know what I felt? I got bummed out too, but you know what I felt? Fuck it. If I wanted to have a conversation about movies, wanted to have a conversation about movies i'll have a conversation about movies it's a niche thing but i i can still do it yeah right doesn't have why do i have to be why do we have to be interested in something that's at the center but i but i think that that definition of the center it seems to me that i didn't read a o scott his piece on it but it's almost like they're they

they're you can't be an intellectual and then in some sort of, you know, apologist in order to keep up with current trends. Absolutely. You're completely correct. Yes. Yes. And that's what I was doing. I think I got tripped up a bit, you know. And no, I didn't get tripped up because I was depressed by it because I was still doing it.

Right. And then I realized, fuck it, I am going to still do it. Yeah. But yeah. But you're absolutely correct. Because then you're chasing that. Right. fuck it, I am going to still do it.

Yeah. But yeah, but you're absolutely correct. Because that, then you... Chasing that. Right, because then you become exactly what we were talking about before somebody who does not respect context or history. Exactly, exactly.

Which is ridiculous. Yeah. Like, there's a desperation at the heart of even, you know, popular criticism. Like, somebody like A.O. Scott, having not read the piece, it's just sort of like, don't dismiss that. Right. That's how we got here piece, it's just sort of like, don't dismiss that.

Right. That's how we got here. And those things are masterpieces. You can't just say, like, that's video games now. Right. Fuck that. Well, no. It was a lament.

Right. It was definitely a lament because you're the film critic for the New York Times. You're automatically denigrating your own. But it's not denigration. It really is everything is a niche now niche or niche whatever whatever and and so i feel that kind of brings an enormous amount of freedom in terms of like you know this whole idea of relevancy relevancy you know that's that's the big put down you know right well they're not relevant that's not a relevant thing what in

the hell is relevant anymore that's right what is relevant what is posterity what is it what is what does it mean yeah when i hear people using relevancy as like a put down i think they just don't get it yeah it's just that's gone yeah that's gone find your people and be relevant to them exactly yeah that's that's that's a way to do it. But see, on some level, to me, that feels like a surrender. That if the fight isn't to raise the bar and it's just to find your choir, then what happens to the bar? Is there a bar? Or do we just sort of like, well, this is our fortress.

There's a lot of morons out there, but they're not our problem. Let's watch this movie. I don't know. That sounds, yeah. Now I'm depressed. No! No. No, I'm not depressed.

But that, you know, you do the work you want to do, and it always comes down to that. You're always looking for people to like your work. You want the work to be received. looking for people to like your work you want the work to be received and and and the weird thing is is that now you can sort of have a guarantee if you maintain some level of consistency with the people that like you that your work will be received you know will be appreciated in in as big a way that you want it to be or will have the impact that's no longer important as long as you have your niche right and you're doing what you want to do. Exactly. That's not depressing.

That's not depressing. So we're not depressed? No. And I don't think surrendering is depressing either. I think surrendering is good. Sure. You have to. Yeah.

A little bit. Right? Yes. Because eventually you're just, it's windmills. You're fighting windmills. Yeah. All right. You want to eat the rest of your sandwich?

Yeah. Are we done. Yeah. All right, you want to eat the rest of your sandwich? Yeah. Are we done? Yeah. Okay. I enjoy talking to that guy. He's an interesting guy, and I think he warmed up. I like that guy. I did his podcast, too.

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