18 November 2003
Blah blah discovery blah blah Chris Morris blah Brass Eye blah genius blah blah Bret Easton Ellis blah blah one-trick pony blah blah notes blah.
- Chris Morris
- Who says Americans can’t write books? My school teacher for one did, but she was wrong and she’s dead now, and as if to dance on her grave, this American is all book. His name is Bret Easton Ellis, he’s from New York. Now I want you to imagine a book over six feet tall that looks like a man, then imagine that that book takes you aside, throws open its arms, and sprays words all over your face. It makes you laugh, it makes you cringe with raw satire like guts.
- Is all this chopper-out-and-slash routine just a big ‘love me’ thing?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- No, not at all. The book—
- Chris Morris
- Could be, that incessant brandishing of your chopper in our face saying ‘love me, love me my chopper, I’m slashing all over the place.’
- Snaps fingers
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Well, yeah. What I’m motivated by as a writer — or as a satirist I think — are things in society that annoy me.
- Chris Morris
- This is a kind of anger thing.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Yeah.
- Chris Morris
- You know, you’re running around and inside your head you’re a mad as a one-inch hospital, and you’ve got to get it out somewhere.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- I, um.
- Chris Morris
- You look at something — like in your new book, models — and they make you feel as mad as a crab on telly.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- That’s true, and I think it’s…what this book is about is basically what all my books are about. The warning inherent in all of them is ‘hey, don’t be an idiot.’
- Chris Morris
- You did say this is a kind of revenge. You said that the tyranny of fashion has become so inescapable, we’re all trapped. Now when I read that I…it brought a lump to my throat because it’s an inescapable truth and then I just wanted to crawl away and drink tea in a zoo surrounded by creatures that knew no vanity.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- That is a fair description of the book.
- Chris Morris
- Right. I think in an interview recently you said that life is scary. What do you think is scary?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Not being able to trust someone, that’s very scary.
- Chris Morris
- Mmm. I think it’s much scarier.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Yeah.
- Chris Morris
- Yeah. What about governments standing around with their arms folded and nodding?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Scary.
- Chris Morris
- Now, you’ve stuck with the old chapter format thing. Why was that?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- What do you mean, like going backwards?
- Chris Morris
- In terms of sub-dividing the book into separate chapters.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- You know what? That’s something I can’t really explain or verbalise. I know when I begin writing a book — and I plan the book for quite a long time and I know a lot of the things that are going to happen in the book. One of them this time was the way the chapters were spaced out.
- Chris Morris
- Do you know how many chapters there are going to be?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- I have a pretty clear idea, yes, I do.
- Chris Morris
- It does expose you to the accusation that it is all chapter, no book.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- …um…
- Chris Morris
- Where are you going to go with this chapter thing?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- …um…
- Chris Morris
- Right. I want to ask you one thing, I found this on the back page of the book. Can we talk typeface?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Yeah, I don’t know what that is.
- Chris Morris
- It’s…typeface, it’s how the words are rendered.
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Right.
- Chris Morris
- Yep. So it’s like Courier, I suppose, or Geneva, that sort of thing, except this one is called Electro.
- Whose idea was it to use a typeface at all?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- I think it’s the book’s designer.
- Chris Morris
- When you read the galley proofs do you ever go — flips through book — ‘ooh, let’s not have a typeface.’
- Bret Easton Ellis
- Yes.
- Chris Morris
- And, you have the power?
- Bret Easton Ellis
- I think sometimes you want—
- Chris Morris
- To say ‘print that book, and I don’t want you to use any typeface at all.’
- Bret Easton Ellis
- …right.
In case you’ve been wondering, a lot of this (on the Morris side) isn’t supposed to make sense, it’s supposed to catch the interviewee off guard.
I was surprised — although in retrospect pehraps I shouldn’t have been — at how whiny Bret Easton Ellis’s voice was.