'Shibuya' by Bad Snacks is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with Ellis about the ways Hollywood is failing to come to terms with ever-changing methods of production and distribution, what Ellis sees as the excesses of the #MeToo movement, our rapidly changing and failing public discourse, and the enduring interest and relevance of his work in 2018. From the bestselling author or Less Than Zero and American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students. He's also putting out one of the most engaging and insightful podcasts available on Patreon, in which he talks with guests like Kanye West, Rose McGowan, and veteran writer/director Walter Hill about the ways the entertainment industry is built on an unstable foundation of economic, sexual, and political hypocrisy. In this century, Ellis is back in his hometown of Los Angeles writing and producing movies like The Canyons with the likes of Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen, whose shambled personal lives might as well have been scripted by Ellis in one of his most darkly comic moments. In the book and movie versions of Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho, Ellis dissected what happens to a society in which depth of feeling is synonymous with failure to thrive. Charting the slow burn of upper middle class life for Los Angeles’ affluent youth, it depicts the casual sex, drug taking and snuff videos they encounter in their drift towards the middle-aged malaise. Bret Easton Ellis is author of White & bestselling author of American Psycho & Less Than Zero is a keynote speaker about freedom of speech, social media.

In the 1980s and '90s, novelist Bret Easton Ellis captured more fully than anyone the excitement and ennui of a wealthy and smug America that was stumbling without knowing it into a century filled with terror, disruption, and generalized hostility. No stranger to controversy before American Psycho Brett Easton Ellis shocked audiences with his bestselling debut novel Less Than Zero (1985).

American psycho less than zero