#madonna — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #madonna, aggregated by home.social.
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Luc Besson Calls Madonna a ‘Phenomenon,’ Admits He’s Developing Another ‘Crazy’ Sci-Fi Story: ‘You Will Need a Ticket — And an Aspirin’
#Variety #Global #MarketsFestivals #News #AlPacino #FatherJoe #LucBesson #Madonna #VeniceFilmFestivalhttps://variety.com/2026/film/global/luc-besson-madonna-sci-fi-venice-father-joe-1236853299/
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Luc Besson Calls Madonna a ‘Phenomenon,’ Admits He’s Developing Another ‘Crazy’ Sci-Fi Story: ‘You Will Need a Ticket — And an Aspirin’
#Variety #Global #MarketsFestivals #News #AlPacino #FatherJoe #LucBesson #Madonna #VeniceFilmFestivalhttps://variety.com/2026/film/global/luc-besson-madonna-sci-fi-venice-father-joe-1236853299/
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Luc Besson Calls Madonna a ‘Phenomenon,’ Admits He’s Developing Another ‘Crazy’ Sci-Fi Story: ‘You Will Need a Ticket — And an Aspirin’
#Variety #Global #MarketsFestivals #News #AlPacino #FatherJoe #LucBesson #Madonna #VeniceFilmFestivalhttps://variety.com/2026/film/global/luc-besson-madonna-sci-fi-venice-father-joe-1236853299/
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Luc Besson Calls Madonna a ‘Phenomenon,’ Admits He’s Developing Another ‘Crazy’ Sci-Fi Story: ‘You Will Need a Ticket — And an Aspirin’
#Variety #Global #MarketsFestivals #News #AlPacino #FatherJoe #LucBesson #Madonna #VeniceFilmFestivalhttps://variety.com/2026/film/global/luc-besson-madonna-sci-fi-venice-father-joe-1236853299/
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Luc Besson Calls Madonna a ‘Phenomenon,’ Admits He’s Developing Another ‘Crazy’ Sci-Fi Story: ‘You Will Need a Ticket — And an Aspirin’
#Variety #Global #MarketsFestivals #News #AlPacino #FatherJoe #LucBesson #Madonna #VeniceFilmFestivalhttps://variety.com/2026/film/global/luc-besson-madonna-sci-fi-venice-father-joe-1236853299/
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https://www.europesays.com/hu/234847/ Madonna és Guy Ritchie fia, Rocco friss képeken #ApaésFia #Entertainment #GuyRitchie #hasonlóság #HU #Hungarian #Hungary #Madonna #Magyar #Magyarország #Szórakozás #sztár
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116 Madonna Art mix 01-2020
Canvas print 60 x 40
©Drakre52 morphingart
Eigen digitaal werk met gebruik makend van Morphing.
#drakre52 #morphing #art #madonna
https://www.facebook.com/Drakre52.art/
drakre52-art.jimdosite.com
drakre52.bsky.social -
116 Madonna Art mix 01-2020
Canvas print 60 x 40
©Drakre52 morphingart
Eigen digitaal werk met gebruik makend van Morphing.
#drakre52 #morphing #art #madonna
https://www.facebook.com/Drakre52.art/
drakre52-art.jimdosite.com
drakre52.bsky.social -
116 Madonna Art mix 01-2020
Canvas print 60 x 40
©Drakre52 morphingart
Eigen digitaal werk met gebruik makend van Morphing.
#drakre52 #morphing #art #madonna
https://www.facebook.com/Drakre52.art/
drakre52-art.jimdosite.com
drakre52.bsky.social -
Dolly Parton’s Favorite Oak-Grilled Filet Mignon at Gold Rush Steakhouse in California https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/22960/ #AlexMadonna #Dolly #DollyParton #Madonna #MadonnaInn #Parton #SteakHouse #SteakHouses #SteakRestaurant #SteakRestaurants #Steakhouse #Steakhouses
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Dolly Parton’s Favorite Oak-Grilled Filet Mignon at Gold Rush Steakhouse in California https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/22960/ #AlexMadonna #Dolly #DollyParton #Madonna #MadonnaInn #Parton #SteakHouse #SteakHouses #SteakRestaurant #SteakRestaurants #Steakhouse #Steakhouses
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Dolly Parton’s Favorite Oak-Grilled Filet Mignon at Gold Rush Steakhouse in California https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/22960/ #AlexMadonna #Dolly #DollyParton #Madonna #MadonnaInn #Parton #SteakHouse #SteakHouses #SteakRestaurant #SteakRestaurants #Steakhouse #Steakhouses
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🧿 𝑷𝒆𝒑𝒔𝒊, ¿𝑫𝒐́𝒏𝒅𝒆 𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒂́ 𝒎𝒊 𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒐́𝒏? 🧿
Lo de Pepsi y el avión militar no fue solo una anécdota absurda de los años 90.
Fue uno de esos momentos en los que una gran multinacional descubrió, demasiado tarde, que un chiste publicitario podía acabar convertido en una batalla legal muy seria.Todo empezó en 1996, en plena guerra comercial entre Pepsi y Coca-Cola.
Pepsi llevaba décadas intentando construir una imagen más joven, más rebelde y más moderna que su rival.
La marca quería que sus anuncios parecieran videoclips, películas o pequeños espectáculos de cultura pop.
Y dentro de esa estrategia nació la campaña “Pepsi Stuff”.La idea era sencilla: comprabas productos Pepsi, acumulabas puntos y luego podías canjearlos por premios.
Había camisetas, gafas de sol, chaquetas… merchandising típico de los 90.
El problema llegó con un anuncio de televisión que decidió exagerar la broma demasiado.En el spot aparecía un adolescente llegando al instituto con distintos accesorios de Pepsi.
Primero una camiseta.
Luego unas gafas.
Después una chaqueta de cuero.
Y finalmente, en el remate humorístico del anuncio, el chico aterrizaba frente al colegio pilotando un avión de combate AV-8 Harrier II.Debajo aparecía el texto:
“Harrier Fighter — 7.000.000 Pepsi Points”.Pepsi pensó que era tan ridículo que nadie lo tomaría en serio.
Pero ahí apareció John Leonard.Leonard tenía solo 20 años, pero entendió algo que a la empresa se le había escapado: las bases legales de la promoción permitían comprar puntos adicionales por 10 centavos cada uno.
Y en ningún sitio se decía expresamente que el avión fuese una broma.Así que hizo cuentas.
Comprar 7 millones de puntos costaba unos 700.000 dólares.
El problema era conseguir semejante cantidad.
Pero Leonard no era un adolescente improvisando en un garaje.
Convenció a varios inversores, entre ellos un empresario llamado Michael Hoffman, que quedó fascinado por el vacío legal.El plan era brillante por lo simple que resultaba.
Leonard reunió 15 puntos reales de Pepsi —porque las normas exigían al menos algunos originales— y envió junto a ellos un cheque por 700.008,50 dólares para comprar el resto.
Legalmente estaba intentando aceptar una oferta comercial exactamente como aparecía en la promoción.
Y entonces Pepsi entró en pánico.
La empresa respondió devolviendo el cheque y afirmando que el anuncio era “obviamente humorístico”.
Pero Leonard no se echó atrás.
Demandó a Pepsi por incumplimiento de contrato.Aquello convirtió una campaña publicitaria en un caso jurídico histórico.
El juicio, Leonard v. Pepsico, terminó llegando a un tribunal federal de Nueva York en 1999.
Y lo fascinante es que durante el proceso no se discutía si Pepsi tenía un avión o no.
La cuestión real era otra:¿Puede un anuncio televisivo considerarse una oferta contractual válida?
La jueza Kimba Wood concluyó que no.
Dictaminó que ninguna persona razonable podría creer seriamente que una empresa de refrescos estaba ofreciendo un avión militar valorado en decenas de millones de dólares.Y ahí Pepsi ganó.
Pero aunque vencieran en los tribunales, la compañía quedó bastante avergonzada.
Porque el caso había demostrado que su promoción estaba redactada de forma descuidada.Después del juicio modificaron el anuncio.
Cambiaron la cifra del Harrier a 700 millones de puntos y añadieron algo que antes no existía:
“Just kidding”.
“Es una broma”.Básicamente tuvieron que explicar oficialmente el chiste porque un estudiante universitario estuvo peligrosamente cerca de convertirlo en un problema real.
Lo más curioso es que, aunque todo parezca una locura, el avión jamás habría terminado en manos de Leonard incluso si hubiese ganado.
El Harrier no es un coche deportivo ni una avioneta privada.
Es un avión de ataque militar con sistemas de combate, radar y tecnología restringida.
El gobierno estadounidense jamás habría permitido entregar un aparato operativo a un civil.Además, el anuncio mostraba al joven aterrizando verticalmente en el patio del instituto, algo que en la vida real habría sido un desastre absoluto.
Los motores de un Harrier generan una potencia brutal.
El calor y la presión habrían destrozado el suelo y reventado ventanas alrededor.Pero el caso se hizo tan famoso porque tocaba algo muy humano:
la sensación de que una gran empresa había prometido algo y luego intentaba escabullirse diciendo que era “solo humor”.Décadas después, Netflix convirtió toda la historia en el documental “Pepsi, ¿dónde está mi avión?”, y ahí mucha gente descubrió que John Leonard nunca fue un oportunista caricaturesco.
De hecho, hoy trabaja como guardabosques en Alaska, en el Parque Nacional Denali, viviendo una vida bastante tranquila y alejada del mundo corporativo.
Y lo más llamativo es que tanto él como antiguos ejecutivos de Pepsi hablan ahora del asunto con bastante sentido del humor.Pero el caso del Harrier solo fue una pieza más dentro de la guerra salvaje entre Pepsi y Coca-Cola.
Porque durante décadas ambas compañías protagonizaron probablemente la rivalidad comercial más agresiva del planeta.
Uno de los movimientos más importantes fue el famoso “Pepsi Challenge” de 1975.
Pepsi instalaba puestos en centros comerciales y hacía pruebas a ciegas.
La gente probaba dos vasos sin saber cuál era cuál.
Y muchísimos elegían Pepsi.¿Por qué?
Porque Pepsi es ligeramente más dulce que Coca-Cola.
En un simple sorbo rápido, el cerebro suele reaccionar mejor al sabor más dulce.Aquello fue un golpe psicológico enorme para Coca-Cola.
Tanto que en 1985 la empresa cometió uno de los mayores errores de marketing de todos los tiempos: lanzó la “New Coke”, una fórmula más dulce diseñada para competir directamente con Pepsi.
El público la odió.
Y no porque supiera mal necesariamente, sino porque Coca-Cola había tocado algo emocional.
La marca estaba ligada a recuerdos, costumbres y nostalgia.
La gente sintió que les habían cambiado parte de su identidad cultural.La reacción fue tan brutal que Coca-Cola tuvo que recuperar la fórmula clásica solo tres meses después.
Y ahí se entendió algo importantísimo:
la gente no compra solo sabor.
Compra recuerdos, símbolos y emociones.Pepsi, mientras tanto, apostó por otro camino: las celebridades.
Y ahí fue donde empezó a gastar cifras completamente desorbitadas.
En 1984 firmaron con Michael Jackson el contrato publicitario más caro jamás visto hasta entonces: 5 millones de dólares.
Pero el rodaje terminó mal.
Durante una grabación, los fuegos artificiales explotaron antes de tiempo y el pelo de Michael se incendió delante de las cámaras.
Sufrió quemaduras importantes en el cuero cabelludo.Pepsi acabó pagándole una indemnización de 1,5 millones de dólares, que él donó a un centro médico especializado en quemaduras.
Años después llegó Madonna.
Le pagaron otros 5 millones para usar “Like a Prayer” en un anuncio elegante y aparentemente inocente.
Pero cuando salió el videoclip oficial, lleno de cruces ardiendo y referencias religiosas, estalló el escándalo.El Vaticano pidió boicots.
Pepsi retiró la campaña inmediatamente.
Madonna se quedó el dinero.
Y probablemente aprendieron que contratar estrellas gigantes también significa heredar sus polémicas.
Luego llegaron Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Pink, Cindy Crawford, David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal…
Pepsi quería parecer moderna constantemente.
Coca-Cola buscaba parecer eterna.Esa diferencia explica casi toda su rivalidad.
Y luego está una de las historias más surrealistas de todas:
el momento en que Pepsi tuvo una flota militar soviética.Sí, ocurrió de verdad.
Durante la Guerra Fría, Pepsi logró entrar en la URSS, convirtiéndose en uno de los primeros productos estadounidenses vendidos allí.
El problema era que el rublo soviético no podía intercambiarse libremente por dólares.Así que hicieron trueques.
Al principio, Pepsi recibía vodka Stolichnaya como pago.
Pero el negocio creció tanto que el vodka ya no bastaba para compensar la deuda.
Entonces la Unión Soviética ofreció algo completamente absurdo:
submarinos, destructores y barcos militares antiguos.Durante unos días, Pepsi técnicamente tuvo una de las mayores flotas navales del mundo.
Por supuesto, no iban a bombardear a Coca-Cola con submarinos soviéticos.
Los barcos fueron vendidos rápidamente como chatarra a una empresa noruega para reciclar el metal.Pero la imagen quedó para la historia:
una marca de refrescos “desarmando” indirectamente a la URSS.Y quizá lo más increíble de toda esta historia es que muchas de las campañas de Pepsi funcionaban precisamente porque parecían excesivas, ridículas y gigantescas.
Hasta que un día alguien decidió leer la letra pequeña.
▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkmrAHbwKA
#pepsi #cocacola #historia #marketing #publicidad #años90 #netflix #michaeljackson #madonna #kendalljenner #guerrafría #curiosidades #documental #empresas #historiacuriosa #cultura_pop #pepsistuff #johnleonard #economia #viral
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🧿 𝑷𝒆𝒑𝒔𝒊, ¿𝑫𝒐́𝒏𝒅𝒆 𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒂́ 𝒎𝒊 𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒐́𝒏? 🧿
Lo de Pepsi y el avión militar no fue solo una anécdota absurda de los años 90.
Fue uno de esos momentos en los que una gran multinacional descubrió, demasiado tarde, que un chiste publicitario podía acabar convertido en una batalla legal muy seria.Todo empezó en 1996, en plena guerra comercial entre Pepsi y Coca-Cola.
Pepsi llevaba décadas intentando construir una imagen más joven, más rebelde y más moderna que su rival.
La marca quería que sus anuncios parecieran videoclips, películas o pequeños espectáculos de cultura pop.
Y dentro de esa estrategia nació la campaña “Pepsi Stuff”.La idea era sencilla: comprabas productos Pepsi, acumulabas puntos y luego podías canjearlos por premios.
Había camisetas, gafas de sol, chaquetas… merchandising típico de los 90.
El problema llegó con un anuncio de televisión que decidió exagerar la broma demasiado.En el spot aparecía un adolescente llegando al instituto con distintos accesorios de Pepsi.
Primero una camiseta.
Luego unas gafas.
Después una chaqueta de cuero.
Y finalmente, en el remate humorístico del anuncio, el chico aterrizaba frente al colegio pilotando un avión de combate AV-8 Harrier II.Debajo aparecía el texto:
“Harrier Fighter — 7.000.000 Pepsi Points”.Pepsi pensó que era tan ridículo que nadie lo tomaría en serio.
Pero ahí apareció John Leonard.Leonard tenía solo 20 años, pero entendió algo que a la empresa se le había escapado: las bases legales de la promoción permitían comprar puntos adicionales por 10 centavos cada uno.
Y en ningún sitio se decía expresamente que el avión fuese una broma.Así que hizo cuentas.
Comprar 7 millones de puntos costaba unos 700.000 dólares.
El problema era conseguir semejante cantidad.
Pero Leonard no era un adolescente improvisando en un garaje.
Convenció a varios inversores, entre ellos un empresario llamado Michael Hoffman, que quedó fascinado por el vacío legal.El plan era brillante por lo simple que resultaba.
Leonard reunió 15 puntos reales de Pepsi —porque las normas exigían al menos algunos originales— y envió junto a ellos un cheque por 700.008,50 dólares para comprar el resto.
Legalmente estaba intentando aceptar una oferta comercial exactamente como aparecía en la promoción.
Y entonces Pepsi entró en pánico.
La empresa respondió devolviendo el cheque y afirmando que el anuncio era “obviamente humorístico”.
Pero Leonard no se echó atrás.
Demandó a Pepsi por incumplimiento de contrato.Aquello convirtió una campaña publicitaria en un caso jurídico histórico.
El juicio, Leonard v. Pepsico, terminó llegando a un tribunal federal de Nueva York en 1999.
Y lo fascinante es que durante el proceso no se discutía si Pepsi tenía un avión o no.
La cuestión real era otra:¿Puede un anuncio televisivo considerarse una oferta contractual válida?
La jueza Kimba Wood concluyó que no.
Dictaminó que ninguna persona razonable podría creer seriamente que una empresa de refrescos estaba ofreciendo un avión militar valorado en decenas de millones de dólares.Y ahí Pepsi ganó.
Pero aunque vencieran en los tribunales, la compañía quedó bastante avergonzada.
Porque el caso había demostrado que su promoción estaba redactada de forma descuidada.Después del juicio modificaron el anuncio.
Cambiaron la cifra del Harrier a 700 millones de puntos y añadieron algo que antes no existía:
“Just kidding”.
“Es una broma”.Básicamente tuvieron que explicar oficialmente el chiste porque un estudiante universitario estuvo peligrosamente cerca de convertirlo en un problema real.
Lo más curioso es que, aunque todo parezca una locura, el avión jamás habría terminado en manos de Leonard incluso si hubiese ganado.
El Harrier no es un coche deportivo ni una avioneta privada.
Es un avión de ataque militar con sistemas de combate, radar y tecnología restringida.
El gobierno estadounidense jamás habría permitido entregar un aparato operativo a un civil.Además, el anuncio mostraba al joven aterrizando verticalmente en el patio del instituto, algo que en la vida real habría sido un desastre absoluto.
Los motores de un Harrier generan una potencia brutal.
El calor y la presión habrían destrozado el suelo y reventado ventanas alrededor.Pero el caso se hizo tan famoso porque tocaba algo muy humano:
la sensación de que una gran empresa había prometido algo y luego intentaba escabullirse diciendo que era “solo humor”.Décadas después, Netflix convirtió toda la historia en el documental “Pepsi, ¿dónde está mi avión?”, y ahí mucha gente descubrió que John Leonard nunca fue un oportunista caricaturesco.
De hecho, hoy trabaja como guardabosques en Alaska, en el Parque Nacional Denali, viviendo una vida bastante tranquila y alejada del mundo corporativo.
Y lo más llamativo es que tanto él como antiguos ejecutivos de Pepsi hablan ahora del asunto con bastante sentido del humor.Pero el caso del Harrier solo fue una pieza más dentro de la guerra salvaje entre Pepsi y Coca-Cola.
Porque durante décadas ambas compañías protagonizaron probablemente la rivalidad comercial más agresiva del planeta.
Uno de los movimientos más importantes fue el famoso “Pepsi Challenge” de 1975.
Pepsi instalaba puestos en centros comerciales y hacía pruebas a ciegas.
La gente probaba dos vasos sin saber cuál era cuál.
Y muchísimos elegían Pepsi.¿Por qué?
Porque Pepsi es ligeramente más dulce que Coca-Cola.
En un simple sorbo rápido, el cerebro suele reaccionar mejor al sabor más dulce.Aquello fue un golpe psicológico enorme para Coca-Cola.
Tanto que en 1985 la empresa cometió uno de los mayores errores de marketing de todos los tiempos: lanzó la “New Coke”, una fórmula más dulce diseñada para competir directamente con Pepsi.
El público la odió.
Y no porque supiera mal necesariamente, sino porque Coca-Cola había tocado algo emocional.
La marca estaba ligada a recuerdos, costumbres y nostalgia.
La gente sintió que les habían cambiado parte de su identidad cultural.La reacción fue tan brutal que Coca-Cola tuvo que recuperar la fórmula clásica solo tres meses después.
Y ahí se entendió algo importantísimo:
la gente no compra solo sabor.
Compra recuerdos, símbolos y emociones.Pepsi, mientras tanto, apostó por otro camino: las celebridades.
Y ahí fue donde empezó a gastar cifras completamente desorbitadas.
En 1984 firmaron con Michael Jackson el contrato publicitario más caro jamás visto hasta entonces: 5 millones de dólares.
Pero el rodaje terminó mal.
Durante una grabación, los fuegos artificiales explotaron antes de tiempo y el pelo de Michael se incendió delante de las cámaras.
Sufrió quemaduras importantes en el cuero cabelludo.Pepsi acabó pagándole una indemnización de 1,5 millones de dólares, que él donó a un centro médico especializado en quemaduras.
Años después llegó Madonna.
Le pagaron otros 5 millones para usar “Like a Prayer” en un anuncio elegante y aparentemente inocente.
Pero cuando salió el videoclip oficial, lleno de cruces ardiendo y referencias religiosas, estalló el escándalo.El Vaticano pidió boicots.
Pepsi retiró la campaña inmediatamente.
Madonna se quedó el dinero.
Y probablemente aprendieron que contratar estrellas gigantes también significa heredar sus polémicas.
Luego llegaron Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Pink, Cindy Crawford, David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal…
Pepsi quería parecer moderna constantemente.
Coca-Cola buscaba parecer eterna.Esa diferencia explica casi toda su rivalidad.
Y luego está una de las historias más surrealistas de todas:
el momento en que Pepsi tuvo una flota militar soviética.Sí, ocurrió de verdad.
Durante la Guerra Fría, Pepsi logró entrar en la URSS, convirtiéndose en uno de los primeros productos estadounidenses vendidos allí.
El problema era que el rublo soviético no podía intercambiarse libremente por dólares.Así que hicieron trueques.
Al principio, Pepsi recibía vodka Stolichnaya como pago.
Pero el negocio creció tanto que el vodka ya no bastaba para compensar la deuda.
Entonces la Unión Soviética ofreció algo completamente absurdo:
submarinos, destructores y barcos militares antiguos.Durante unos días, Pepsi técnicamente tuvo una de las mayores flotas navales del mundo.
Por supuesto, no iban a bombardear a Coca-Cola con submarinos soviéticos.
Los barcos fueron vendidos rápidamente como chatarra a una empresa noruega para reciclar el metal.Pero la imagen quedó para la historia:
una marca de refrescos “desarmando” indirectamente a la URSS.Y quizá lo más increíble de toda esta historia es que muchas de las campañas de Pepsi funcionaban precisamente porque parecían excesivas, ridículas y gigantescas.
Hasta que un día alguien decidió leer la letra pequeña.
▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkmrAHbwKA
#pepsi #cocacola #historia #marketing #publicidad #años90 #netflix #michaeljackson #madonna #kendalljenner #guerrafría #curiosidades #documental #empresas #historiacuriosa #cultura_pop #pepsistuff #johnleonard #economia #viral
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🧿 𝑷𝒆𝒑𝒔𝒊, ¿𝑫𝒐́𝒏𝒅𝒆 𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒂́ 𝒎𝒊 𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒐́𝒏? 🧿
Lo de Pepsi y el avión militar no fue solo una anécdota absurda de los años 90.
Fue uno de esos momentos en los que una gran multinacional descubrió, demasiado tarde, que un chiste publicitario podía acabar convertido en una batalla legal muy seria.Todo empezó en 1996, en plena guerra comercial entre Pepsi y Coca-Cola.
Pepsi llevaba décadas intentando construir una imagen más joven, más rebelde y más moderna que su rival.
La marca quería que sus anuncios parecieran videoclips, películas o pequeños espectáculos de cultura pop.
Y dentro de esa estrategia nació la campaña “Pepsi Stuff”.La idea era sencilla: comprabas productos Pepsi, acumulabas puntos y luego podías canjearlos por premios.
Había camisetas, gafas de sol, chaquetas… merchandising típico de los 90.
El problema llegó con un anuncio de televisión que decidió exagerar la broma demasiado.En el spot aparecía un adolescente llegando al instituto con distintos accesorios de Pepsi.
Primero una camiseta.
Luego unas gafas.
Después una chaqueta de cuero.
Y finalmente, en el remate humorístico del anuncio, el chico aterrizaba frente al colegio pilotando un avión de combate AV-8 Harrier II.Debajo aparecía el texto:
“Harrier Fighter — 7.000.000 Pepsi Points”.Pepsi pensó que era tan ridículo que nadie lo tomaría en serio.
Pero ahí apareció John Leonard.Leonard tenía solo 20 años, pero entendió algo que a la empresa se le había escapado: las bases legales de la promoción permitían comprar puntos adicionales por 10 centavos cada uno.
Y en ningún sitio se decía expresamente que el avión fuese una broma.Así que hizo cuentas.
Comprar 7 millones de puntos costaba unos 700.000 dólares.
El problema era conseguir semejante cantidad.
Pero Leonard no era un adolescente improvisando en un garaje.
Convenció a varios inversores, entre ellos un empresario llamado Michael Hoffman, que quedó fascinado por el vacío legal.El plan era brillante por lo simple que resultaba.
Leonard reunió 15 puntos reales de Pepsi —porque las normas exigían al menos algunos originales— y envió junto a ellos un cheque por 700.008,50 dólares para comprar el resto.
Legalmente estaba intentando aceptar una oferta comercial exactamente como aparecía en la promoción.
Y entonces Pepsi entró en pánico.
La empresa respondió devolviendo el cheque y afirmando que el anuncio era “obviamente humorístico”.
Pero Leonard no se echó atrás.
Demandó a Pepsi por incumplimiento de contrato.Aquello convirtió una campaña publicitaria en un caso jurídico histórico.
El juicio, Leonard v. Pepsico, terminó llegando a un tribunal federal de Nueva York en 1999.
Y lo fascinante es que durante el proceso no se discutía si Pepsi tenía un avión o no.
La cuestión real era otra:¿Puede un anuncio televisivo considerarse una oferta contractual válida?
La jueza Kimba Wood concluyó que no.
Dictaminó que ninguna persona razonable podría creer seriamente que una empresa de refrescos estaba ofreciendo un avión militar valorado en decenas de millones de dólares.Y ahí Pepsi ganó.
Pero aunque vencieran en los tribunales, la compañía quedó bastante avergonzada.
Porque el caso había demostrado que su promoción estaba redactada de forma descuidada.Después del juicio modificaron el anuncio.
Cambiaron la cifra del Harrier a 700 millones de puntos y añadieron algo que antes no existía:
“Just kidding”.
“Es una broma”.Básicamente tuvieron que explicar oficialmente el chiste porque un estudiante universitario estuvo peligrosamente cerca de convertirlo en un problema real.
Lo más curioso es que, aunque todo parezca una locura, el avión jamás habría terminado en manos de Leonard incluso si hubiese ganado.
El Harrier no es un coche deportivo ni una avioneta privada.
Es un avión de ataque militar con sistemas de combate, radar y tecnología restringida.
El gobierno estadounidense jamás habría permitido entregar un aparato operativo a un civil.Además, el anuncio mostraba al joven aterrizando verticalmente en el patio del instituto, algo que en la vida real habría sido un desastre absoluto.
Los motores de un Harrier generan una potencia brutal.
El calor y la presión habrían destrozado el suelo y reventado ventanas alrededor.Pero el caso se hizo tan famoso porque tocaba algo muy humano:
la sensación de que una gran empresa había prometido algo y luego intentaba escabullirse diciendo que era “solo humor”.Décadas después, Netflix convirtió toda la historia en el documental “Pepsi, ¿dónde está mi avión?”, y ahí mucha gente descubrió que John Leonard nunca fue un oportunista caricaturesco.
De hecho, hoy trabaja como guardabosques en Alaska, en el Parque Nacional Denali, viviendo una vida bastante tranquila y alejada del mundo corporativo.
Y lo más llamativo es que tanto él como antiguos ejecutivos de Pepsi hablan ahora del asunto con bastante sentido del humor.Pero el caso del Harrier solo fue una pieza más dentro de la guerra salvaje entre Pepsi y Coca-Cola.
Porque durante décadas ambas compañías protagonizaron probablemente la rivalidad comercial más agresiva del planeta.
Uno de los movimientos más importantes fue el famoso “Pepsi Challenge” de 1975.
Pepsi instalaba puestos en centros comerciales y hacía pruebas a ciegas.
La gente probaba dos vasos sin saber cuál era cuál.
Y muchísimos elegían Pepsi.¿Por qué?
Porque Pepsi es ligeramente más dulce que Coca-Cola.
En un simple sorbo rápido, el cerebro suele reaccionar mejor al sabor más dulce.Aquello fue un golpe psicológico enorme para Coca-Cola.
Tanto que en 1985 la empresa cometió uno de los mayores errores de marketing de todos los tiempos: lanzó la “New Coke”, una fórmula más dulce diseñada para competir directamente con Pepsi.
El público la odió.
Y no porque supiera mal necesariamente, sino porque Coca-Cola había tocado algo emocional.
La marca estaba ligada a recuerdos, costumbres y nostalgia.
La gente sintió que les habían cambiado parte de su identidad cultural.La reacción fue tan brutal que Coca-Cola tuvo que recuperar la fórmula clásica solo tres meses después.
Y ahí se entendió algo importantísimo:
la gente no compra solo sabor.
Compra recuerdos, símbolos y emociones.Pepsi, mientras tanto, apostó por otro camino: las celebridades.
Y ahí fue donde empezó a gastar cifras completamente desorbitadas.
En 1984 firmaron con Michael Jackson el contrato publicitario más caro jamás visto hasta entonces: 5 millones de dólares.
Pero el rodaje terminó mal.
Durante una grabación, los fuegos artificiales explotaron antes de tiempo y el pelo de Michael se incendió delante de las cámaras.
Sufrió quemaduras importantes en el cuero cabelludo.Pepsi acabó pagándole una indemnización de 1,5 millones de dólares, que él donó a un centro médico especializado en quemaduras.
Años después llegó Madonna.
Le pagaron otros 5 millones para usar “Like a Prayer” en un anuncio elegante y aparentemente inocente.
Pero cuando salió el videoclip oficial, lleno de cruces ardiendo y referencias religiosas, estalló el escándalo.El Vaticano pidió boicots.
Pepsi retiró la campaña inmediatamente.
Madonna se quedó el dinero.
Y probablemente aprendieron que contratar estrellas gigantes también significa heredar sus polémicas.
Luego llegaron Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Pink, Cindy Crawford, David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal…
Pepsi quería parecer moderna constantemente.
Coca-Cola buscaba parecer eterna.Esa diferencia explica casi toda su rivalidad.
Y luego está una de las historias más surrealistas de todas:
el momento en que Pepsi tuvo una flota militar soviética.Sí, ocurrió de verdad.
Durante la Guerra Fría, Pepsi logró entrar en la URSS, convirtiéndose en uno de los primeros productos estadounidenses vendidos allí.
El problema era que el rublo soviético no podía intercambiarse libremente por dólares.Así que hicieron trueques.
Al principio, Pepsi recibía vodka Stolichnaya como pago.
Pero el negocio creció tanto que el vodka ya no bastaba para compensar la deuda.
Entonces la Unión Soviética ofreció algo completamente absurdo:
submarinos, destructores y barcos militares antiguos.Durante unos días, Pepsi técnicamente tuvo una de las mayores flotas navales del mundo.
Por supuesto, no iban a bombardear a Coca-Cola con submarinos soviéticos.
Los barcos fueron vendidos rápidamente como chatarra a una empresa noruega para reciclar el metal.Pero la imagen quedó para la historia:
una marca de refrescos “desarmando” indirectamente a la URSS.Y quizá lo más increíble de toda esta historia es que muchas de las campañas de Pepsi funcionaban precisamente porque parecían excesivas, ridículas y gigantescas.
Hasta que un día alguien decidió leer la letra pequeña.
▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkmrAHbwKA
#pepsi #cocacola #historia #marketing #publicidad #años90 #netflix #michaeljackson #madonna #kendalljenner #guerrafría #curiosidades #documental #empresas #historiacuriosa #cultura_pop #pepsistuff #johnleonard #economia #viral
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le plus vieux 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘳 connu
Salut la génération 🅧 ! 😘
Je viens de m’apercevoir que le clip de Prince pour sa chanson “𝘒𝘪𝘴𝘴” est le plus vieux “𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘳” (désoléℯ𝗲𝕖𝐞𝗲𝙚, je n’ai pas trouvé d’équivalent en français) que je connaisse. Ou alors, c’était une prophétie. 😱🔮😱 À 1:36, sans qu’on le comprenne et sans images subliminales, c’est l’album de Madonna de 2026 “𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗜𝗜” qui est annoncé !!! 😱 En 1986 !!! Et on se rend compte que non seulement c’est Madonna qui danse avec Prince, mais aussi qu’elle n’a pas vieilli depuis ! Nan ! Je rigole, bien sûr ! 😁😆😅🤣😈🤡
https://youtu.be/H9tEvfIsDyo?si=xnFT3jGRmS81CQJ6&t=96
#Confessions2 #humour #Madonna #Madonna2026 #pétasserie #Prince #PrinceKiss #prophétie #teaser -
Sam Smith compares Madonna to their mother
Sam Smith says Madonna reminds them of their mum.The 34-year-old singer/songwriter is close pals with the 68-year-old icon…
#Canada #Madonna #SamSmith
https://www.europesays.com/canada/197035/ -
115 Madonna Art mix 01-2020
Canvas print 60 x 40
©Drakre52 morphingart
Eigen digitaal werk met gebruik makend van Morphing.
#drakre52 #morphing #art #madonna
https://www.facebook.com/Drakre52.art/
drakre52-art.jimdosite.com
drakre52.bsky.social -
115 Madonna Art mix 01-2020
Canvas print 60 x 40
©Drakre52 morphingart
Eigen digitaal werk met gebruik makend van Morphing.
#drakre52 #morphing #art #madonna
https://www.facebook.com/Drakre52.art/
drakre52-art.jimdosite.com
drakre52.bsky.social -
115 Madonna Art mix 01-2020
Canvas print 60 x 40
©Drakre52 morphingart
Eigen digitaal werk met gebruik makend van Morphing.
#drakre52 #morphing #art #madonna
https://www.facebook.com/Drakre52.art/
drakre52-art.jimdosite.com
drakre52.bsky.social -
#mashup #idea: "Spirits in the Material World" by #ThePolice and "Material Girl" by #Madonna.
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#mashup #idea: "Spirits in the Material World" by #ThePolice and "Material Girl" by #Madonna.
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#mashup #idea: "Spirits in the Material World" by #ThePolice and "Material Girl" by #Madonna.
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#mashup #idea: "Spirits in the Material World" by #ThePolice and "Material Girl" by #Madonna.
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Princess Diana crowned greatest female style icon of all time - beating host of legends
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THE ORNETTE COLEMAN TRIO
at the "Golden Circle" Stockholm (volume one)
suédée par Antoine Paris
.
.
.#madonna #theornettecolemantrio #goldencirclestockholm #pochettededisque #pochettehommage
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THE ORNETTE COLEMAN TRIO
at the "Golden Circle" Stockholm (volume one)
suédée par Antoine Paris
.
.
.#madonna #theornettecolemantrio #goldencirclestockholm #pochettededisque #pochettehommage
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"Secret" is a song by American singer #Madonna from her sixth studio album, #BedtimeStories (1994). It was released by #MaverickRecords on September 26, 1994, as the lead single from the album. The singer originally recorded the song as a #demo with producer #ShepPettibone. However, #DallasAustin replaced Pettibone's role as the producer and reworked its composition, earning him a writing credit alongside #Madonna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksmPoKQ4yC8 -
AI-generated music barred from Australian charts after Madonna cover controversy
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It's 2026 and Madonna and Kylie are number one in the charts.
What time machine sorcery is this?
Gaun yersel! 🧙🎤
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It's 2026 and Madonna and Kylie are number one in the charts.
What time machine sorcery is this?
Gaun yersel! 🧙🎤
-
It's 2026 and Madonna and Kylie are number one in the charts.
What time machine sorcery is this?
Gaun yersel! 🧙🎤
-
It's 2026 and Madonna and Kylie are number one in the charts.
What time machine sorcery is this?
Gaun yersel! 🧙🎤
-
It's 2026 and Madonna and Kylie are number one in the charts.
What time machine sorcery is this?
Gaun yersel! 🧙🎤
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Madonna tops Taylor Swift in nominations for MTV’s Video Music Awards
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
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#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #AreInfluencersDying #areMillennialsEntitled #areMillennialsOverprotected #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #bretItSBret #brettEastonEllis #COCAINE #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #foundObjects #freeMusicDownloads #genXVsMillennials #generationX #generationY #generationZ #kylie #kylieMinogue #lessThanZero #literature #madonna #millennials #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theIceCreamMan #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
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Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #AreInfluencersDying #areMillennialsEntitled #areMillennialsOverprotected #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #bretItSBret #brettEastonEllis #COCAINE #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #foundObjects #freeMusicDownloads #genXVsMillennials #generationX #generationY #generationZ #kylie #kylieMinogue #lessThanZero #literature #madonna #millennials #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theIceCreamMan #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #AreInfluencersDying #areMillennialsEntitled #areMillennialsOverprotected #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #bretItSBret #brettEastonEllis #COCAINE #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #foundObjects #freeMusicDownloads #genXVsMillennials #generationX #generationY #generationZ #kylie #kylieMinogue #lessThanZero #literature #madonna #millennials #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theIceCreamMan #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #AreInfluencersDying #areMillennialsEntitled #areMillennialsOverprotected #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #bretItSBret #brettEastonEllis #COCAINE #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #foundObjects #freeMusicDownloads #genXVsMillennials #generationX #generationY #generationZ #kylie #kylieMinogue #lessThanZero #literature #madonna #millennials #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theIceCreamMan #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Madonna Leads VMAs Nominations With 11, Followed by Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Ariana Grande
#Variety #News #ArianaGrande #Madonna #MTVVideoMusicAwards #SabrinaCarpenter #TaylorSwift #VMAshttps://variety.com/2026/music/news/madonna-leads-vmas-nominations-taylor-swift-1236837092/
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Madonna earns her highest-charting single in nearly 20 years with Kylie Minogue collab
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"I'll Remember" is a song by American singer #Madonna for the 1994 film #WithHonors. It was released by #Maverick and #WarnerBrosRecords on March 8, 1994, as the #leadSingle from the film's soundtrack album. It was a radical change in image and style for Madonna, who had received huge backlash due to the release of her book #Sex, the studio album #Erotica and the film #BodyOfEvidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5-Fc-1UF4 -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars