Bret Easton Ellis: Imperial Bedrooms
Tags: Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms
“You’re so pale,” Blair says to Clay near the end of Imperial Bedrooms, the highly-anticipated sequel to Bret Easton Ellis’s seminal 1985 book Less Than Zero. Fans will remember that Blair made the same off-handed comment to Clay near the beginning of the earlier book, only this time there’s a touch of menace to it, because after all he’s seen by the end of the book, Clay should be pale, from fright. In the 25 years since they snorted, lied and fucked their way through a living dead existence as massively over-privileged, disaffected Beverly Hills teenagers, Ellis’s golden Gods have seen their youth mercilessly evaporate and their universe contract into a noirish bubble where naked power grabs, bottomless secrets and bad plastic surgery are the norm. They may still be at the summit of society, living and working in the movie business in upscale L.A., but they are no longer enviable. They are cursed beings now, seizing and devouring youth and beauty wherever they find it, while failing to arrest their own inexorable slide into ugliness and irrelevance.
Devotees of Less Than Zero who scratched their heads at its 1987 film adaptation, which morphed the tough source material into a Reaganesque anti-drug parable starring sympathetic junkie Robert Downey Jr. and snipped its most significant scenes – the characters’ dead-eyed reaction to the running of a snuff film at a mansion party and later, an actual rape – will howl with laughter at Imperial Bedrooms’ opening passages, which see Ellis’s characters watching the candy-coated film about their lives and reacting to it. The film did happen in their universe, thanks to a book one of them happened to later write, but hey, it was just a movie. You want to know the real story, right? It’s a classically Ellis spin into the metatextual, blending character and actor, fiction and reality, author and reader into one whirring margarita mix in much the same fashion as his last book, 2005’s maybe-autobiographical Lunar Park. Imperial Bedrooms even sees Ellis using Clay as a surrogate to relate some of the author’s own experiences as a producer on 2008’s disastrous film adaptation of his own 1994 short story collection, The Informers.
Ellis has never been a stranger to the movie business – fans of the Christian Bale-starring adaptation of his grisly 1991 classic American Psycho dog him at every book reading. But in recent years he’s embraced the business with a newfound gusto, diving into a number of original projects, including a collaboration with Gus Van Sant on a biopic about the mutual suicides of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake and a long-simmering collaboration with Roger Avary on a film adaptation of what some consider his masterpiece, 1998’s Glamorama, a Kubrickian horror story about a shadowy organization of supermodel terrorists. Avary and Ellis are also in possession of what’s becoming an urban legend, a feature film called Glitterati that Avary shot on the sly in Europe while filming scenes for 2002’s The Rules of Attraction. Legally unscreenable in any public forum because it contains (very) intimate scenes featuring non-actors unaware they were in a movie, as well as other scenes that both parties curiously refuse to discuss, Glitterati is already Hollywood folklore. SuicideGirls recently called up Bret Easton Ellis at a hotel in Portland to discuss as many of these things as possible.
Ryan Stewart: How’s the book tour going?
Bret Easton Ellis: It’s going really well. I’m in Portland right now. It’s been surprising. I’m surprised by the crowds.
RS:
A mix of book fans and movie fans?
BEE:
All kinds of fans. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but I suppose it’s a really good thing. It’s been positive. I don’t know if it’s necessarily good for me in terms of my ego and my narcissism, because it does feed those things to an incredible degree. But then, you know what happens? The tour itself kind of bitch-slaps me and says “Snap out of it!” The tour itself is a lot of work. It brings you back to the reality of a 9 to 5 job. You’re out there for hours with people who, for whatever reason, your work has meant something to them. They’ve showed up and they have stories they want to tell you and books they want to have signed. It’s a strange life, and life isn’t that strange in the years when I’m just myself working on whatever I’m working on. But every five or six years when I go out on tour it’s a reminder that there’s another Bret Easton Ellis out there, one that people respond to very differently than, say, my friends do, who really couldn’t care less, you know?
RS:
Do the horror fans still show up?
BEE:
Oh, completely. It’s a wide array, but I’ve noticed that there are groups of people who are into, like, one book. There are different factions, and some of them were introduced to the work through some of the movies and yeah, there are the factions who are definitely interested in American Psycho, and also Lunar Park. It’s interesting.
RS:
Do you get offers to do the comedic TV interviews, like The Daily Show?
BEE:
None. I get no offers to do that. I also don’t think I’d be any good at it. It takes a lot of deep breathing and some Xanax just to get in front of a large crowd and read the book and answer questions coherently, in a long-form format. I actually read for a very short amount of time and then I just like to talk to the audience, do the Q&A and have an interactive thing going. And as long as I’m kind of in control of that I can relax a little bit and loosen up, though it takes like ten or fifteen minutes and maybe a shot or two of tequila before moving on to that part of the night. But no, I haven’t been offered any of that. I’ve done no television for this tour.
RS:
Are you quick with a joke? Would you do well in that format, maybe with some coaching?
BEE:
First of all, I wouldn’t want coaching, and I’m not that interested in the format. I’m more or less relieved that there hasn’t been any television this tour, for any number of reasons. For most morning shows you have to get up at around 6:00am, and I also hate looking at myself on screen. And also, just the way you have to sell yourself in those four minutes that you have -- it turns you into a kind of ad man. You’re out there shilling for the publishing house and you have to be presentable and you’ve got to get it all focused into four minutes and also have the funny stories prepared. It’s just more artificial than what I guess I’m used to, so in a way I am glad it hasn’t happened. I did do one TV thing in Atlanta, this Fox morning show and it was fine, but it was still just, like, if there’s any other way to talk about the book and help out the good folks at Random House, I’d rather do that.
RS:
I’d imagine this is a very socially active time for you in general, just because you’ve got so much movie business going on.
BEE:
Yeah, it is a more socially active time. Even this tour has a lot of social activity just because I know more people in more places now. At every stop, I’m seeing a lot of friends. But also, in terms of my life in L.A., yeah, if you’re involved in projects you have a lot of meetings and you’re trying to get people to give you money to make a movie and yeah, it is social. Part of what I find enjoyable about L.A. and that business in particular, is that there’s something about working together with people towards a goal of making a project that you believe in…there’s a team spirit to it that I like. Very, very different from working on a novel, where you’re just alone with this thing for many years. As fun as it can be, you’re alone and that’s just the way it is. It’s not pink or black or bad or good, it’s just how it is. They’re two very different ways of working and one is social and one is a-social.
RS:
Are you embracing your new role as a producer? Do you hang out in clubs and meet the up-and-coming actors?
BEE:
Well, so far we’re only talking about one movie as producer and writer.
RS:
What about Lunar Park and, hopefully, this?
BEE:
We don’t know about this one. No one is attached to anything on Imperial Bedrooms. Whenever someone tells me they’ve heard that a project is going forward, and that it was on IMDB, I look on IMDB and I scratch my head and think ‘But that’s not going anywhere, it’s not in pre-production.’ What you read on IMDB isn’t always correct, and no, that’s not happening. And Lunar Park I’m not involved with. I know the guys who are making it, and I’m friends with them, but I’m not involved on the creative level with that movie even though I might have some kind of producing credit. And hanging out in the clubs is not part of the process! [laughs] It’s more low-key than that. It’s drinks. It’s dinner. It’s a social function at someone’s house. It is not hanging out at clubs, trolling for young actresses and actors to be in my movies. I know that might disappoint some people, but it’s just a fact.
RS:
I read your recent quotes about how actors aren’t particularly smart. Were you including emotional intelligence in that?
BEE:
Actors have to be emotionally smart. Or, good actors have to. And most of the actors I’ve met are emotionally smart. And yeah, I was making a distinction between emotional intelligence, which is a big thing to have, and an important thing to have. And having a college degree doesn’t necessarily make anybody smarter, I guess. I have plenty of friends who are very successful and did not finish college, so I’m not making judgments on that. But actors usually have not gone to college and actors have usually not gotten an education. They usually start their career when they’re in high-school or very young, and that’s what they’ve been focused on. That’s just the way it is. But yeah, they do have to have that emotional intelligence to move forward and that can be just as important as having an M.F.A. from some liberal arts college. I do like actors, I would never diss them.
RS:
I know you’re an admirer of David Thomson’s writing. Did you read his biography of Nicole Kidman?
BEE:
Yes, I did.
RS:
I was riveted by that book. I’d never before read a book by a film critic where the critic admitted to having emotional feelings for the actress he’s writing about. He more or less cops to being in love with her.
BEE:
I think what he captured is what we all feel. That’s what movies engender, and that’s a movie star engenders in us. They do make us fall in love with them, by the very nature of the medium. It’s us gazing at them alone in a dark room. There’s a very intense, sexual, voyeuristic thing about the way we look at actors and actresses. So, to me that was not such a huge surprise. What was a surprise was how naked he was in admitting it. But all of his writing is like that, really. I had read everything up to the Nicole Kidman book, and when I read that book it wasn’t really a surprise, it was more like ‘Oh, finally someone has placed this emotion within a context, within a critical essay.’ And that was exciting. Anyone who reads David Thomson knows that he’s had a hard-on for Nicole Kidman for a long time.
RS:
Have you ever been so taken with an actor or actress?
BEE:
Not to the point that I’d devote a book to it! Off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone. There are certainly a lot of filmmakers that I have been, but we’re talking about a sexual and a visual response to an object, in a way. When you’re younger, that happens. As someone who is older now, it doesn’t happen with the frequency that it happened when I was younger, but I’m sure I have. And if it comes to me over the course of this interview I will tell you! [laughs]
RS:
The struggling actress/femme fatale in Imperial Bedrooms, Rain Turner – is she a composite of real actresses you met or is she just something you thought up?
BEE:
I would say she’s a combination of both. She was a composite of what I sensed – and to a degree, experienced – in terms of the desperation factor among actors in L.A. It was something I had never really had to deal with before. I’d had friends who were actors, but they were successful. I had never before been involved in the casting process of a movie like I was with The Informers. And I was very surprised by what became available to me during those months, as someone who had written the script, written the book it was based on, and was a producer on the movie. I was surprised. I didn’t know that that was really something that happened. And in the book it’s dark, but I think of it as a kind of comedy, in a way. It’s not that bad. I mean, what? Trading favors with studios is worse. “If I write this movie, will you do my passion project? Will you guys fund the development for The Golden Suicides, the movie I want to make with Gus Van Sant, if I write your shark movie?” That’s how it is. It’s mutual exploitation and people just doing favors for each other. But the disappointment and the sordidness of managers lying to you or lawyers or agents fucking up something – that’s much more stressful than the casting couch. Which is a joke, and pretty harmless. In the book, because of Clay’s pathology and his masochistic-romantic tendencies, it becomes something much bigger for him. But yeah, it was based on things that I witnessed. I’m not going to say that there were things I partook of, but there were things I was noticing while I was putting together Imperial Bedrooms.
RS:
Did you have a long-standing desire to try your hand at writing a Raymond Chandler vixen -- one of those human onions that you can never get to the bottom of?
BEE:
Not particularly, but I was reading a lot of Raymond Chandler. And I did want to imbue Imperial Bedrooms with a noir quality. So, yeah, a femme fatale entered into the picture. Now, because of who Clay is and because of his narcissism, she really doesn’t get the kind of play that maybe another narrator would have given her. Clay is only interested in his own desires and his own needs. He’s really not interested in anyone else’s at all. He doesn’t care about them at all, so he doesn’t really ask the right questions. Nor does he uncover enough about her for her to become a full-blown femme fatale. And therefore, the novel doesn’t really become a full-blown noir. It has noir elements, but not really the resolutions that a lot of noir has, just because of who our narrator is. He’s not a detective, he’s not solving the crime, he’s much more interested in his own needs. That was something that was very interesting to me, as a writer, to explore within a novel. But to get back to your original question, I had not really been feeling that, been thinking about creating a character like Rain Turner, but she needs to be there.
RS:
I would think the noir framework gave you some cover to write rotten females without the usual suspects coming down on you again, like they did with your recent comments about women directors.
BEE:
Well, but I’m not really thinking about writing rotten female characters. The men in my books are so much more rotten than the females that I really don’t get the misogyny label. I do think I misspoke when I said that thing about female directors. I think I should have couched it by saying ‘Look, the movies that I really respond to were made by men, not by women, but women are fine!’ Or something along those lines. Yet, in the last year or so I find myself confronted by the fact that a lot of the movies I’ve responded to are directed by women. My favorite movie of the year is Fish Tank, by Andrea Arnold, this British filmmaker. I’ve tweeted about how much I love it. But yeah, I made some comments that I’m not taking back at all, but I probably should have prefaced them a little bit more. [laughs] I should have been more aware of what the reaction would be. I did get a lot of women quite angry with me about that comment, and oddly enough, no men. I looked at all the tweets and all the blogs and not a single man came to defense of the female directors, which was telling.
RS:
You made it a little weirder by saying later that Kathryn Bigelow is a more exciting female director because she’s good-looking.
BEE:
Well, I feel that way! I stand by what I think about The Hurt Locker. I think that if a man or an average-looking woman had made The Hurt Locker it would not have been as interesting a movie as it was by the fact that a beautiful woman made it. That is something that’s just….true! I can’t self-censor myself. That is something that I was thinking about while watching that movie at the ArcLight last summer or whenever it came out. I was thinking ‘God, a lot of this is kind of been-there-done-that, but it’s pretty well-made’…but I could not get it out of my head that this really beautiful woman made that movie.
RS:
Full stop?
BEE:
Yep. There you go.
RS:
You’ve said elsewhere that you refuse to believe that Imperial Bedrooms could affect Less Than Zero’s reputation in any way. Did that mindset give you the freedom to migrate these beloved characters into what’s essentially a different genre?
BEE:
Completely. As a writer you have to write what you want to write and your need to write a novel can’t be predicated on what the audience wants or what the readership demands from you. If that happens, you’re screwed. You can never write a novel based on people’s feelings about your other books. If that was the case, I’d be trying to write American Psycho every other year. I’d be trying to appease the fanbase. So, I never feel pressure. I never feel any kind of weirdness. It’s never a struggle to write a book. It’s an emotional thing, and it’s not pragmatic or logical. And because it is an emotional thing, there really isn’t any stress. These feelings keep pouring forward and that creates a novel and sort of makes the book appear. None of it’s hard or difficult, though it might have been at a difficult point in my life. The creation of a novel, or a lot of novels, stems from pain and stress and drama. But working on the novel and figuring the novel out? That’s what releases you from the pain and stress. It’s a transporting experience to lose yourself in the writing of a novel, no matter how painful the basis for it might have been.
RS:
I couldn’t help but notice that this novel and Less Than Zero both have these terribly sad Black Dahlias that wander into each book’s final passages and get eaten alive by the city. Are you haunted by the idea of a hayseed stepping off the bus in downtown L.A.?
BEE:
Of course. If you’re working in L.A. that is something you’ll be confronted with on a daily basis. That’s how the town works. I imagine it would be the same in another context in Las Vegas, which is another gambler’s town. Actually, there’s probably more logic to gambling than to how this business runs. If you learn to gamble you can probably make a lot more money than you’ll probably make in Hollywood. Am I haunted by it? Yeah, I was haunted by it. I’m not haunted by it now, but when I was first confronted with it, it was haunting. But at the same time not everything ends up being tragic. A lot of people come out to that town at a very young age to become an actress or an actor, and they do work it, but there’s an expiration date, you know? There’s a timeframe in which they can make it. And when that timeframe begins to reach its close, it can be upsetting. It can be upsetting for you, and for the person who is trying to make it and it just isn’t happening, and they know that in a year or so they’ll be selling real estate. That is the reality of the situation. And you know what? A lot of people make the move, and then it’s okay. They gave it a shot, it didn’t happen, it hurts, but you move on with your life. You can’t let it haunt you forever. A lot of the people who I know that didn’t make it are probably – if you want to know the truth – more content than when they were hustling for auditions and being rejected twelve times a week.
RS:
You’re still in contact with those people?
BEE:
Oh, yeah. I know a lot of people who’ve moved on to other professions, people who before I even knew them were actors or actresses. When we talk about the business and the system, they’ll be like ‘Oh, God, when I first got here at age twenty I did that and my self-esteem was shredded.’ A lot of the people I know who came out here to make it in the business have the same war stories, and they’ll start telling them as the night nears its end.
RS:
Did you make a conscious choice in the book not to linger on how L.A. has changed over 25 years? The city doesn’t intrude on Clay nearly as much this time.
BEE:
He doesn’t care anymore. He’s now the fully-formed person. He’s no longer a vacant party boy, drifting around and noticing stuff and being bored, and not a lot is going on and he doesn’t have a lot to do. Clay has appetites, and he’s hungry and focused and successful. He wants what he wants, and I think that’s why this novel is so much more focused, simply because of who Clay is at this age and what his personality is like. When I was working on the book, I did what I do with every book: I did a very long outline that’s just about how this narrator is going to narrate this book. I’ve done that with every narrator, whether it was Patrick Bateman or Victor Ward or even the first Clay in Less Than Zero. And this time it was ‘Okay, Clay is not going to notice this, this, or this.’ I would write a scene for the Clay of Imperial Bedrooms and then I would realize ‘Oh, I have to cut those two lines out because Clay would never notice that.’ Or ‘He would never pay attention to that particular line of dialogue.’ Everything really had to be about whatever situation he was in. It had to be much more focused than, you know, rambling dialogue that the first Clay in Less Than Zero would have overheard someplace. So much depends on where the narrator is now in his life, in terms of what is noticed and what is not noticed. I think what you’re talking about, in terms of how each Clay perceives Los Angeles, just has to do with age and time. Maybe if Imperial Bedrooms was narrated in the third person it would have much more of a feel for how L.A. has changed. Though I don’t really know if L.A. has changed that much. I don’t think it really has. I mean, it’s pretty much the same city it was when I left at 18 or 19. I’ve changed since then, I think, but I don’t think the city has. Not that much.
RS:
I think you mentioned somewhere that you’d prefer directors to adapt your work who had your same upscale L.A. background. That might have been in reference to The Informers, maybe?
BEE:
I was talking about The Informers, where I realized almost near completion that a fatal mistake had been made that none of us realized. And the mistake was that it really did need someone who had grown up out here and got these characters, lived with them, grew up with them, to make a movie about them. Regardless of how much the producer, the director and I all seemed to be on the same page with the script, once the movie started to be shot and cut together, it became apparent that – no – this has been misread. It happens in slow-motion, at first. And you think ‘Huh. That’s a little off. That’s not really how it was in the script. Let’s see what happens.’ Then, suddenly it becomes like an avalanche. You’re like ‘Oh God, the tone of this is all off.’ And yes, I really do think that a lot of it had to do with Gregor being Australian and Marco Weber, who was the main producer on it, living and working in Germany for so long. That was his first American production and it has this strange, disconnected feel to it. With someone who lived out here, understood those people, knew them well, I think the movie would have been a lot funnier. It was written with a lot of humor in it, and none of it is apparent in the film. There are a couple of obvious laughs here and there, but overall there should have been a looser, more comedic tension to the movie that it didn’t have.
RS:
A making-of documentary about The Informers would probably be more interesting than the movie turned out to be.
BEE:
Well, there wasn’t one made, I can tell you that! I was there for some of it. But I was not there once the production moved to Europe. They did shoot a lot of it in Uruguay and Argentina. And the writer’s strike hit, and that prohibited any writers from visiting the set of any film. I had been on set while they were shooting a lot of the stuff in L.A., and I was able to work with the actors on any problems they had with their lines and I was even there on the set re-writing stuff, but once it moved to Europe I wasn’t allowed on the set. And I heard some things. I heard that it was a fairly wild set once it moved out of L.A. So, maybe you’re right, maybe a making-of documentary of The Listeners – Ha, I’m already moving back to Imperial Bedrooms! – maybe a making-of documentary of The Informers would, in fact, be more interesting. And that is sad to me, because there was so much work done on that movie. And there was so much hope for it to be really good. But by now I’ve learned that that’s true of every movie, it’s always a miracle when a movie works out or even becomes halfway-coherent. So many things can happen out of the blue that will just derail a film.
RS:
Do you regret signing away the perpetual rights for Glamorama to Roger Avary? You couldn’t have predicted his misfortunes, but still.
BEE:
Yes and no. I do regret doing it, but at the time it seemed like a really good idea. In retrospect, I guess I do wish that I’d kept the rights. But only because it’s such a different movie culture now. Back when Roger bought the rights it was still possible to conceive of a movie like Glamorama and to do it within the studio system. Now that’s no longer true. The studios won’t allow a movie like that to be made. It could be made as an expensive independent film, but that would be incredibly risky. It’s also a very long book, so how do you prune it down? I had dinner with a pretty successful British TV director who has also done features – an action director – who has been following Glamorama since its publication, and we mused about the idea of doing it as a series for HBO. We’d do it as a one-season series, a ten-part or twelve-part miniseries. But then you realize that HBO doesn’t do miniseries’ like Glamorama, they do miniseries’ that win Emmys. They do John Adams and The Pacific and Band of Brothers, movies about big, important historical subjects. Glamorama doesn’t really fall into that category.
RS:
Speaking of Roger, the legend of Glitterati is sort of growing by the day. It’s like that Jerry Lewis clown movie. I can’t pass up the opportunity to ask something about.
BEE:
Ask me specific questions, and I’ll give you yes or no answers.
RS:
I’ve heard that certain famous people pop up during the film, and maybe they’re acting, but maybe they’re not acting? Is that true?
BEE:
To a degree. [laughs]
RS:
Who pops up? Come on, tell me.
BEE:
I really can’t say. Until Roger feels comfortable enough to show the movie, I personally don’t feel comfortable talking about it. I kind of wish that I never had talked about it. I talked about it once because I had just seen it and I was kind of shocked. I just thought ‘Whoa.’ Roger came over to my place and showed it to me on his computer. We watched the entire movie on his computer.
RS:
How long is it?
BEE:
Oh, maybe 90 minutes. And I just felt like there was nothing you could do with it. I really don’t know what you can do with it! Roger’s got to figure that out.
RS:
If you were looking at it as a film critic, would you say that it’s a valuable piece of art?
BEE:
Yes, I would. It’s good. I like it.
RS:
Are you in correspondence with Roger?
BEE:
I was in correspondence with him, but I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months. I was actually in the middle of doing a project with Roger and James Van Der Beek, we were all working together on this project, and Roger was…he was not in jail, what was that?
RS:
He was out on work furlough during the day, I think?
BEE:
Right, exactly. He was in the work furlough program, and we were working on our project, and then I guess that’s when the twittering started.
RS:
Sarcastic twittering about “life in jail.”
BEE:
Which they did not find jokey. And then he got into a lot of trouble. So, no, I haven’t [corresponded recently], but I think he’s getting out shortly. I was just talking to James -- James is in touch with Roger a lot -- and I think Roger is supposed to be out very shortly.
RS:
If they do end up making a movie of Imperial Bedrooms, it will need to be heavily sentimentalized in order to tonally match with Less Than Zero, right?
BEE:
[laughs] Right! My first response to that would be that there’s no way they can sentimentalize Imperial Bedrooms because of the nature of the book, but they did it with Less Than Zero! If they did it with that, they can probably do it with Imperial Bedrooms. But I really don’t know if Imperial Bedrooms will be turned into a movie. It would depend on a lot of factors, and I just don’t know if in today’s movie culture it’s viable. Unless Robert Downey Jr. says “Yes, I want to do it” in which case it will be made next week.
RS:
I think Jami Gertz is retired, right?
BEE:
Doesn’t she do television?
RS:
Maybe, I don’t know. Unless I’m mistaken, though, her last screen appearance was in Twister.
BEE:
Well, she’s got a big family. I think she would do this, though. And I’ve talked to Andrew McCarthy many times and he would totally do it. And there’s some talk that James Spader would totally do it, so it really just depends upon Downey, and also how you figure out how to make the movie. The movie would be “These are the real people, and Less Than Zero the film was just a movie.” You’d have to show them watching the movie Less Than Zero, and then commenting on it as they’re leaving the screening room – then we cut to their real lives. So, I think it might be overly meta for an audience, but maybe not.
RS:
If they have to watch Less Than Zero, you’ll have to recreate scenes from Less Than Zero with new actors so that they’re not watching themselves on screen.
BEE:
Right, yes. And then they leave. The idea of doing that is very intriguing, but I don’t know how realistic it is.
RS:
When I was reading the book I kept having this vision of James Spader with excessive plastic surgery. Very upsetting.
BEE:
I know, I know. I gotta tell you the truth, though, when I’m working on a book I’m not thinking of any actors, so I never had those images in my head. I wasn’t picturing Jami Gertz as Blair, I wasn’t thinking of Andrew McCarthy as Clay, I just had these vague, vague, anonymous people in my head while I was working on it. I was not thinking about what James Spader looks like now in terms of how Rip would look now.
RS:
I noticed that on your twitter page you recently made lists of American things and people that are delineated as “empire” and “post-empire.” For example, porn star Ginger Lynn is “empire” and Sasha Grey is “post-empire.” Why is Shia LaBeouf post-empire?
BEE:
Hmmm….why did I write that? When I think about who the big action stars were during the empire, they seemed to be much less boyish. Now, everyone seems to be kind of a boy. So, Shia seems to me to be emblematic of a post-empire sensibility in terms of an action guy. And Shia is post-empire. Post-empire is really post 9/11. That’s the spike, and then let’s say it really starts in ’04 or ’05. Wouldn’t you say his career really started in the last six years?
RS:
Oh, sure. His career pretty much started with Disturbia, and that was in early ’07.
BEE:
Yeah, so he’s post-empire.
RS:
So, it’s basically just a time delineation.
BEE:
Yes, I should have prefaced with the fact that it’s a time delineation. Empire is 1945 to September 11, 2001, with a spike in the early Aughties and then once you get to ’05 or ’06, we’re really in a post-empire world. But it’s interesting, because when I play this game with some people they throw out some weird ones and there are arguments about it. Sarah Silverman?
RS:
She was a name stand-up in the mid 90s. She was on HBO shows during that period as well, like Mr. Show.
BEE:
Right! But half the group said “Oh, empire!” and some people said “Post-empire!” and there was this weird discussion about how you can be empire and still somehow be relevant in the post-empire age. Or something can be a post-empire thing and still have its roots in the empire. [laughs] This could go on and on and on! It really just depends on your sensibility and what you think is empire. But basically, if you do really just follow the time constraints, there’s a clear delineation between empire and post-empire.
RS:
Someone else gave me a good question to end on, they wanted me to just ask what your favorite book is and what you’re currently reading.
BEE:
Well, what I’m reading right now on tour is not really representative of anything, but I’ll tell you what I’m reading on tour. I am reading a collection of short stories called Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It, by Maile Maloy. I have also started a novel that I picked up at Jay McInerney’s house, because I was staying there in the Hamptons over the weekend. I picked up this book called Mergers and Acquisitions by Dana Vachon, and for some reason I’m carrying that around and I’ve read the first chapter. I am also reading a book about the making of the movie Nashville, and it’s called The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece. So, those are the three books that I have with me at the moment. My favorite book of all time – and I’ve said this many times – is L’Education sentimentale by Flaubert. But again, I’m just telling you what I’m reading. I’m not saying these are fantastic books and I’m loving them, I’m only telling you what I have on the road with me. And of course I’m always looking for new things in Imperial Bedrooms to read at each reading to mix it up a little bit. I found myself getting a little bored with the section I was reading, and I’ve been trying to find something else, but it’s hard to find stuff in the middle and later sections that will make any sense to an audience that hasn’t read the book.
RS:
The opening must be the crowd-pleaser.
BEE:
Oh, yeah. That’s basically what I stick with. And you know what? I only read for like five minutes anyway, I don’t read for a long time at all. I’ll leaf through it today if I have time, to try to find three or four pages, but I have a feeling I’m just gonna go back to the very beginning.
RS:
Sounds like a plan. Thanks for taking the time, Bret.
BEE:
No problem. I like SuicideGirls and I was happy to do it.
Imperial Bedrooms is available in bookstores everywhere.
Imperial Bedrooms is available in bookstores everywhere.
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