Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one of the literary Brat Pack and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique, as a writer, is the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style. His novels commonly share recurring characters. When Ellis was 21, his first novel, the controversial bestseller Less than Zero (1985), was published by Simon & Schuster. His third novel, American Psycho (1991), was his most successful. Upon its release the literary establishment widely condemned it as overly violent and misogynistic. Though many petitions to ban the book saw Ellis dropped by Simon & Schuster, the resounding controversy convinced Alfred A. Knopf to release it as a paperback later that year. Ellis's novels have become increasingly metafictional. Lunar Park (2005), a pseudo-memoir and ghost story, received positive reviews. Imperial Bedrooms (2010), marketed as a sequel to Less than Zero, continues in this vein. The Shards (2023) is a fictionalized memoir of Ellis's final year of high school in 1981 Los Angeles. Four of Ellis's works have been made into films. Less than Zero was adapted in 1987 as a film of the same name, but the film bore little resemblance to the novel. Mary Harron's adaptation of American Psycho was released in 2000. Roger Avary's adaptation of The Rules of Attraction was released in 2002. The Informers, co-written by Ellis and based on his collection of short stories, was released in 2008. Ellis also wrote the screenplay for the 2013 film The Canyons. Life and career Ellis was born in Los Angeles in 1964, and raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley. His father, Robert Martin Ellis, was a property developer, and his mother, Dale Ellis (nee Dennis), was a homemaker. They divorced in 1982. During the initial release of his third novel, American Psycho, Ellis said that his father was abusive and was the basis of the book's best-known character, Patrick Bateman. Later Ellis claimed the character was not in fact based on his father, but on Ellis himself, saying that all of his work came from a specific place of pain he was going through in his life during the writing of each of his books. Ellis claims that while his family life growing up was somewhat difficult due to the divorce, he mostly had an "idyllic" California childhood.