Bret Easton Ellis had sanctimonious literary pundits choking on their trail mix at the Melbourne leg of his promo junket for latest exercise in nihilism, ‘Imperial Bedrooms’, when he announced that the third season of ‘Mad Men’ is better than any book from the past 10 years. Shitting on his own medium was just one of many quality soundbytes B.E.E. pulled out during his talk on Friday evening, during which he also covered Robert Pattinson, his history of sexual experimentation, writers being “drama freaks” and the practical uses of Grindr. Here are two of the best…
How Bret Easton Ellis Screwed Vanity Fair:
He was asked by a punter whether he’d ever interviewed anyone. He went on to talk about a handful of profiles that he wrote for magazines in the 80s after ‘Less than Zero’ was released. One of these was a profile of brat pack actor Judd Nelson (‘The Breakfast Club’) that he was personally asked to write by Tina Brown a major powerbroker who, at that time, was editor at Vanity Fair. When he met with Brown she reportedly said of Judd Nelson “I don’t like him” and “I want to bring him down a bit”.
Ellis who was still in college at the time agreed to write the piece. As he worked on the profile he struck up a friendship with Judd Nelson and ended up telling Nelson what Tina Brown told him to do with the article. Nelson told B.E.E. that he should re-pitch the article to Vanity Fair as a tour of LA with Judd Nelson and Bret Easton Ellis and profile the coolest spots in LA to drink, eat, etc – a proposal that Vanity Fair accepted.
B.E.E. and Nelson went to every tacky, over-styled, and “over” restaurant and bar in LA for the article along with the Vanity Fair photographer. The article went to print in the November 1985 issue of Vanity Fair featuring Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielson on the cover and it wasn’t until afterward that Vanity Fair realised they’d been served a dose of credibility kryptonite. It was the last profile Easton Ellis was asked to write for the magazine.
Bret Easton Ellis is active on Grindr
He mentioned that before the talk he was chatting to a guy on social geo-networking / gay hookup site, Grindr, who was complaining that he couldn’t get tickets to the Bret Easton Ellis event. B.E.E. then offered to put the guy on the door saying:
“if you want to come I can get my publicist to put you on the door list”
and the guy replied:
“who are you and why do you have a publicist”
Question: Which books from the past 10 years do you think is superior to ‘Mad Men’ season three?
