Dear Bret Easton Ellis – If You Care About Your Future, Shut the F*ck Up

Now there is a movie on the horizon starring Lindsay Lohan.  Lohan is to Hollywood what Bret Easton Ellis has become to literature, although Lohan’s fate seems a bit more tragic. Both of them have been banking on power they once possessed when they were much younger. Ellis has a couple of good books under his belt but people have always thought of him as a gimmick. Lohan had promise. She hung out with the wrong crowd and then did some weird stuff to her face and now has become a free-for-all for media stoning.

Then there is the great Paul Schrader signing on as director. Don’t ask me what he’s doing getting involved in this. I won’t ask because I don’t want to know the answer. I know they’re going for a celebration of trash, a dirty kind of NOW, a Terry Richardson-esque B movie fantasy fest. A lot of people are probably going to love it. It might even become a whole cult on its own. I’m just wondering if this is really what  Ellis planned out for himself long ago.

I will give him this – he stands behind the crazy shit he says.  He doesn’t hide, like so many do in this generation of trolls.  They are puny giants who take extreme pleasure in saying what people should never say all the while hiding behind anonymity.  Ellis does no such thing. He lets his opinions fly and uses his own name. He doesn’t delete his truly repellent tweets afterwards either.  I admire that about him.  Despite being repulsed continually by his offensive vacuousness I haven’t unfollowed him on Twitter. I too like to watch the crazy. Hell, much of the time, I AM the crazy.

Michael Haneke’s “Amour” is what “On Golden Pond” would have been if it was directed by Hitler.

Michael Haneke is basically a strict and austere academic. “The White Ribbon” is great filmmaking with a kind of dumb thesis at its core.

Michael Haneke’s chilling formal “mastery” is always impressive yet always leaves me exhausted. “Amour” is undeniable but also a big trick.

Michael Haneke is that weird rarity: one of the world’s greatest filmmakers who has never made a great film.

The screening of Michael Haneke’s riveting “Amour” left me in a foul mood. It contains the most symbolic pigeon I’ve ever seen in a movie…

But here’s the price he pays for that – no one is going to want to see him succeed.  They don’t mind having a dark writhing creature back here in the dark where they can enjoy the pleasures of his subversiveness. It’s a whole other thing to bring it out into daylight.

Maybe  Ellis doesn’t care about PR and perhaps that makes him extremely admirable. But it is selfish. It is Clint Eastwood-like in its self-centered impulse to drag everything into the black hole of bad press. Sure, lots of people are talking about you but grease stains like that are permanent.

Of course none of this will matter if the film is good.  But if I were  Ellis I would grow the fuck up. I would stop living off the fumes of the ’80s bad boy image I’d cultivated for myself and I’d start realizing the sun doesn’t rise and set on the shit I take every morning. You know, just a thought.