intellectual properties

(fame) puts you there where things are hollow

ELLIS: But people can create their own kind of fame with tech now. You can set up websites devoted to yourself. You can very easily live out that visual fantasy of yourself as famous. What may be different is that with such a culture of immediate gratification, the desire to actually move your ass, become talented at something, and then try to succeed at something like acting or singing or dancing is no longer necessary. Sometimes you watch those elimination rounds on shows like American Idol and wonder, “Do people really think this about themselves?”

BOLLEN: It’s gotten to the point that embarrassing yourself has overstepped talent. Talent is far less interesting or consumable than public spectacle.

ELLIS: Do we judge that human craving for attention? For fame? Doesn’t that need seem human in a way? “I’m here. I exist. Look at me.” There’s something weird about people putting that need down or judging it. I don’t know. I feel too contradictory when I discuss this. One side of me thinks, “This is ridiculous.” And then the other side says, “No, it’s also human.” I guess I just don’t know if I’m really that interested in complaining about the culture anymore.”

– full interview with Bret Easton Ellis @ Interview Magazine, regarding his new book, and the LA culture he has become famous for writing dispassionately about:

Sentimentality has no place in Ellis’s worlds—so much so that it is a wonder when any character thinks in the past tense at all. But now, 25 years after Less Than Zero launched his career, Ellis has made another shocking departure by going back to where he started. In June, Ellis releases Imperial Bedrooms, a sequel to his debut, which drops in on Clay, Blair, Julian, and other Less Than Zero denizens who, now in their forties, are haunting and haunted by the post-glamour, post-shock, post-moral, post-purpose Hollywood scene. Clay is now a screenwriter. Upon returning to Los Angeles from New York to work on a film, he slowly falls back into old ways—parties, drugs, sex—as the plot teems with more-graphic Ellisian tropes like murder, ghosts, dismemberment, and paranoia. For anyone assuming that the author has created something of an upbeat 90210 reunion, the opening pages clarify the difference between Hollywood’s favorite export and the actual on-the-ground circumstance: “The movie was begging for our sympathy,” says Clay, referring to the 1987 film version of Less Than Zero, “whereas the book didn’t give a shit.”

Filed in QOTD, tv, books and movies | Tagged with bret easton ellis | Comment (0)