Lawson: "Hi, good afternoon. Um... there are three elements to this; Bret Easton Ellis is going to read a couple of pieces from The Informers, and then I'll need plenty of time to take questions from you, I bet there's a lot of you. Um, it's quite hard for me to see the back, so when I do that, if you are at the back, you'll need to wave a bit, but I'll make sure everybody (...?...) as many as possible. The Informers is Bret Easton Ellis' forth novel..um...his first and for some time as famous as Less Than Zero followed by The Rules of Attraction in which he became from those (...?...) famous for being young and part of a group which...three words which you must hate by now - 'the brat pack people' - referred to young American novelists. And then he became famous for something different from being young, which was for being very chocking, when he wrote American Psycho, which was his third novel, and we are going to talk some about that, but that - as many people of you know - was famous or infamous for...um...it's content. But The Informers is a much QUIETER and more PASTORAL work...um... (Ellis and the audience laughs)...situated in Los Angeles like most of his work, and it's a series of monologues of young L.A.-based characters...and he is going to read...um...two of them, of which the first begins here... (Lawson passes a copy of The Informers to Ellis) I don't (...?...) if you (...?...) but..."

Ellis: "Um, can everyone hear me? It's OK? Uh, the first...uh...piece I'm gonna read is from a story about an older house wife who lives in Beverly Hills and um...it's just a page from this one section.
'I am lying on a chaise longue by the pool. (Ellis is reading a section from THE UP ESCALATOR which starts on page 20 and ends on page 22)'
The next section...is, uh, from a story about a rock star who's in a... named Bryan Methrow, who's on tour in Japan, and uh, this section of uh... He calls up an old band mate who's, who was in a band about ten years earlier, and Bryan Methrow has his own (...?...) now, so he's calling him up from a hotel in Tokyo.
'I call Matt. (This section starts att page 114 and ends when he passes out on page 116)'"

(Applauses, Ellis smiles)

LAWSON: OK... We hear a lot these days about the terrible effects of fame (...?...) young tennis players and so. You, famous...infamous (...?...) be a man...

ELLIS: Um, I don's think it has had any effect on the actual writing. I think it's probably had a NEGATIVE effect on my LIFE, but I don't think it's had any effect in terms of what I wanna write about, or...um...what I'm interested in writing about. Or HOW I write it... Um, but it's not, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to become world known. And I don't think it really... I mean, it offers you the freedom to write what you wanna write and not have to worry about... If you can make a LIVING by writing, that's great, but in terms of beeing world known is a... Nothing good comes from that, it's really, there's no benefits to that... It's just... It isn't..."

LAWSON: "You happen to be very young (...?...) theory. Do you ever wish you had a (...?...) writing books?"

ELLIS: "You know, I don't really ponder, I really don't think about it. And I really don't think that my...what I do, as a CARREER... It's something that was a...actually a HOBBY, and it's something I LIKE to do, that, um... I guess people could say it's a carreer, but I don't see it that way 'cause I don't even know if, you know, if after the book I'm working on now, if there's gonna be another book. I mean it's just something I happen to enjoy doing...um... But what, the question is why I was..? I forgot it."

(I'm missing part of it here!)

LAWSON: You say you let these characters speak for themselves. There are the scenes that are always brought up. Many people who have read theese books say you should have left them out. You say you let theese characters speak for themselves, but WHAT IS the function of that scene with the rat and the habitrail, for YOU?"

ELLIS: "I don't know. I mean, for me it was basically... I had been working on this book for about three and a half years, it was heavily outlined, I knew exactly what was going to happen. By the time I got to the point where it was time to write theese violent sequences, I'd been inside of Patrick Bateman's...in his head for so long, that I knew, unfortunately, exactly what tone, and what the action of those murder sequences was going to be, and I knew there would be very very violent, heavy overtones of sexuality. And...you know...maybe if you'd been a different SORT of narrator, maybe they wouldn't have been quite that violent, but it just seemed, with his pathology...his insanity...created those sequences. I mean yeah, as a writer I have to say yeah, I also made some estetic desicions, but I would also have to say as a writer, and after being in this guy's head for so long, HE made a lot of them too, automatically. It was just like OK, yeah, it seemed sort of right to me. But I can't explain it... Writing is such a WEIRD, PERSONAL, INTUITIVE, ORGANIC, PROCESS...that is hard to...it's hard to explain it in a clinical fashion. I mean I can't often explain why I'm interested in writing some stuff. I don't know where it comes from."

LAWSON: "But... You're able to separate... You say this is coming out from his head rather than out of your own head..."

ELLIS: "It starts out from my own head, yeah, but when you start to writw from that person's point of view for...you know, over a year, I mean...six months...they really start to DECIDING FOR YOU WHAT is going what is going to happen in this book. I mean for example...um...often I would find myself going back over chapters saying o' my God, that's, wait a minute, that's not an observation Patrick would make, or that's not...that's TO LYRICAL, that's a sentence...he's using a metaphore, he doesn't use metaphores, you have to like cross that off. Um... So it's like I guess a ton of work. He'll be doing things, and then I'd have to say oh no, maybe your voice isn't like that, and then he'll be saying... (Ellis starts to smile and looks at the audience) I'm sounding insane myself describing this process, I'm just realising it, but it was um...that's sort of what it was like. I mean, I guess it's the best way I can describe it..."

Then Lawson asks him about the accusations, about people thinking of American Psycho as.. how do you say, sexist? Chauvenistic? Humiliating towards women? You know what I mean. And Ellis responds: ELLIS: "I think it's a book that's far more critical of a certain sort of white...male...yuppie...capitalists...heterosexual...sexists...behaviour... whatever... I mean, I think it's more critical of that than it is of women. And plus, I mean, I don't know, I think everyone in that world of Wall Street, and of like old money/new money welth in New York...I mean, whether you're a man or a woman I think you deserve the same sort of slashing. I mean... So I really don't think that I was more masagonistic or... I think it was just NIHILISTIC, I don't know... But also, I don't agree with that idea that a depiction of an act of masagonism IS an act of masagonism, and a lot of feminists disagree with that; they feel it is one and the same. I think it's just you know...just...bullshit...I guess..."

Then he gets to respond to the accusation of being, you know, a commercial writer. Here's what he answers to that:

ELLIS: I was working on American Psycho a year before my second book came out, and I knew pretty much exactly what American Psycho was going to be like. And I discussed the project with my editor and my agent, and neither one of them really thouht it was really that commercial an idea. My publishing analysists went along with it, and then when they really saw the manuscript when it was finally brought in, they said this isn't very commercial at all, I mean where's the detective? I mean... (The audience starts to laugh, and so does Lawson) Where's the girl in danger? Why isn't he caught in the end? What's going on here? What are all these clothes? What is going on? You've got to cut all this out, the book is like 200 pages too long!"

Lawson asks him about the style in The Informers, and want to know why he always uses the long sentences...

ELLIS: Rambleminded...aimlessness... I think a very passive person doesn't use... And I think all of of the people in this book are very passive, and I think the book...it's...BASICALLY, it's theme is the DANGER of passivity and where it can lead. I think very passive people wouldn't use a lot of...periods...commas... I think they'd just ramble on and on...kill a kid...you know...be a vampire (he says it jokingly, and the audience laughs some)...yeah it's all possible. I think that's what this book is about."

About the irony, and his books actually being comedies in a way...

ELLIS: "I think most of their lives is a comedy. I think they're funny. Yeah, I think they're funny. I think they are funny books. I've (Ellis smiles)... I've really never admitted it until this week (he laughs)... but when I was writing American Psycho I was laughing a lot (the audience laughs at this and some are even clapping hands) I was... Aaah...it was a very very funny book to write, and I thought there was a lot in it that was REALLY FUNNY, and people just...there where a lot of them going Huh? What are you saying? I was interviewed you know by people who'd just FREAK OUT when I'd say that, and then just, you know... I don't know. And I think this book (he makes a gesture towards The Informers) is really, really funny, I laughed a lot when I was putting it together, and I also think the first two books are funny too. I think Less Than Zero is a very funny book... I don't know... Maybe I'm wrong?"

In the end there are some questions from the audience. One question is about who Ellis thinks should play Bateman in the movie...

ELLIS: "I can't picture a face. To me he's just sort of a metaphore for a lot of terrible things about the past decade, and a lot of terrible things about...MEN...in general."

Another guy asks: "What is you favorite bit in American Psycho?"

ELLIS: "I don't know if I have a favorite bit... (Somebody in the audience mentions that urinal cake Pat gives Evilyn at a restaurant) I was gonna say that actually, who said the urinal cake? I was gonna say... The part that, when I was working on it, that I laughed the most when writing was a scene when he gives his girlfriend a dessert...a grosse dessert...and that was... I don't know...not a lot of people are laughing..."

Another guy mentiones the fact that many people in American Psycho seem to like Patrick...

ELLIS: "Well, a lot of people are in love with Patrick Bateman. And I sort of... I think what I was doing on a surface level was, I mean there was a lot of male friends, a lot of women are in love with him, I wanted at least one man to be in love with him, or his IMAGE actually, which is what they are 'cause nobody really knows him. Um... And that was interesting to me... That's an interesting idea, it might be a little too fancy for me, or... But I like it."

Transcribed by Michael.