Entertainment

Bret Easton Ellis Wrote a Film for Yeezus

by Maitri Suhas

In an interview with VICE, American Psycho author and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis revealed that he wrote a full-length film for Kanye West based on Yeezus, Ye's latest album. It's the second time the author and West have collaborated; last summer, Easton Ellis scripted a short promo for Kanye's album, a remake of a scene in American Psycho starring Patrick Bateman doppelganger (and Kanye's... brother-in-law to be), Scott Disick as Bateman and Jonathan Cheban as his buddy Paul Allen.

Neither West nor Ellis is a stranger to controversy. Kanye has propelled himself from celebrity to full-blown phenomenon; some think he's a genius, and others think he's an arrogant bastard. Which is, coincidentally, the general divide of public opinion regarding Easton Ellis, as well, who has become in the past few years more and more outspoken on Twitter, something he's received backlash for: He's criticized the likes of Kathryn Bigelow, David Foster Wallace, and Alice Munro. Ellis has always been condemned for seeming misogynistic, especially for his seminal novel American Psycho, though he insists he is simply a satirist.

And he's honestly a pretty good one. Much of his work, Psycho included as well as his first novel, Less Than Zero, centers on themes of consumerism and amorality, which dovetails almost perfectly with the message Kanye projects from Yeezus. Though creating art in different mediums, Ellis and West are both interdisciplinary artists. Love them or hate them, people pay attention to them.

West reached out to Ellis personally to create the promo video for Yeezus, which Ellis was at first reluctant to do, until he listened to the album in full. The result was admittedly great, whether or not you like West or Ellis, which is maybe the point they are trying to make by working together — artists don't have to be likable. Of the new project, Easton Ellis is decidedly mysterious:

You know what, I can’t. It’s in Kanye Land, and that’s subject to a whole other time frame. He came and asked me to write the film. I didn’t want to at first. Then I listened to Yeezus. It was early summer last year and I was driving in my car. He’d given me an advance copy, and I thought, regardless of whether I’m right for this project, I want to work with whoever made this. So fuck it, I said yes. And that’s how it happened. That was seven or eight months ago. We’ll see what happens.

Which brings me to the obvious question: where is Kanye Land, and can I borrow 'Ye's sex-motorcycle to get there?