What to Know About emmy Nominee Dies of Lymphoma: Mother Confirms Death of Gabe Lopez
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when my partner got me a cameo from KORY FUCKING KING right after the launch of the Pixelfed apps and kickstarter last year 🤣
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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.wordpress.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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How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
#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
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Can't no other franchise do the talent show like Drag Race España
#DragRaceEspaña
#RupaulsDragRace -
The BBC’s decision to cancel Drag Race UK is a betrayal of Queer viewers
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BBC cancelling Drag Race UK makes the future of queer TV feel hopeless
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BBC cancelling Drag Race UK makes the future of queer TV feel hopeless
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‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Dropped by BBC
#TV #TVNews #BBC #International #RuPaulsDragRace #Unitedkingdom -
Rupaul’s Drag Race UK axed after 8 series as fans hit out at BBC’s LGBTQ+ cuts
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‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK All Stars’ Sets Fall 2027 Global Premiere On WOW Presents Plus
#News #BBC #RuPaulsDragRace #RuPaulsDragRaceUK #WOWPresentsPlushttps://deadline.com/2026/09/rupauls-drag-race-uk-all-stars-2027-wow-presents-plus-1237072642/
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CW: Drag Race Mexico: Latina Royale spoiler
Xunami's so pretty and classy. I was rooting for her to go farther, partly because she went through the terror of self-deporting from Orange's USA
This season is not doing it for me. I live for the girls but the judging is not it
#RupaulsDragRace -
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
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Myki Meeks On Life-Changing Experience Winning ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ & How The Team Raises The Bar Every Year – Contenders TV Nominees Studio
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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.wordpress.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.wordpress.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
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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
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‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Renewed For Season 19 At MTV & Paramount+ Picks Up ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars’ For Season 12
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‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ ‘All Stars’ and ‘Untucked’ Renewed for New Seasons at MTV and Paramount+
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‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Renewed for Season 19 at MTV
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‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ ‘All Stars’ and ‘Untucked’ Renewed for New Seasons at MTV and Paramount+
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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.
https://creammagazine.wordpress.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
#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
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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 that was the result of said decadent era), but 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; I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. 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 Brett. 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
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#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #lessThanZero #literature #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Saw Stop! That! Train! last night and laughed my arse off. If you love Flying High, you will get a kick out of this. Seventies disaster movies? It's that and more and fabulous at the same time. Incredible cast too, I will watch it again. Very funny stuff.
#Movies #Cinema #DragRace #RupaulsDragRace #RuPaul #DragQueen #StopThatTrain #GingerMinj #Jujubee #Comedy #funny
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Get ready for a bumpy ride: RuPaul and a splendid ensemble cast bring the disaster movie back with a bang
Leave it to RuPaul to leave no stone unturned in the busy and competitive industries of entertainment and merchandising. Prior to crowning queens on his/her hit television talent series RuPaul’s Drag Race – now in its 18th season, with countless spinoffs to boot (a gorgeous, knee-high lace-up leather one, Hunty), she has been the host of her own talk and comedy shows, featured in so many films, published several books, been a brand ambassador for the likes of MAC and LA Eyeworks, has had science name a super-fly species after her, alchemised her own fragrance, manufactured her own candy, and even released a self-modelled doll – actually, a mostly-naked doll that makes Barbie look like an angel girl. Now, Ru can add film executive producer to the CV, thanks to the release of new disaster-dramedy movie, Stop! That! Train!
Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray), the film follows BFFs Tess (played by fab Drag Race alum, Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (ditto, Jujubee), who are train stewardesses trading their dreary jobs on the unfortunately-called Stank Rail for the far glitzier Glamazonian Express. As its name might suggest, the bullet-speed and opulent design of the Glamazonian Express makes the chug-chug-chugging and teak paneling of even the Orient Express fade rapidly in the rear view.
Just as Tess and DeeDee are starting to blend beautifully into their glamorous new environment, they’re singled out and given a good reading from mean girls uber mole first-class attendants, Amber, Ayshleiygh, and Alli (respectively played by Brooke Lynn Hytes, Symone, and Marcia Marcia Marcia).
When a catastrophic “Stormaganza” threatens to derail the high-speed train and crash it into somewhere in Florida, the duo in coach must join forces with their snobby coworkers, along with Madame President Gagwell (RuPaul) to save the day.
In a cutaway political press conference scene, I couldn’t believe I almost didn’t recognise Michelle Visage looking like drag queen Penny Clifford from Sydney death-trap venue, Stonewall Bar, circa 1999 in her role as a vicious journalist with a vicious tongue, purposely trying to push Madame President’s buttons. Visage gives her faux-vitriolic all to the camera – the bitchy facade (and caked makeup) so layered, you know you’re watching brilliant, comedic performance here.
Anyway, back in that speeding train. Against its backdrop of obulence drinks/dines/dances a well-heeled motley crew of character passengers, each outperforming – not each other – various caricatures on the LGBTQIA scenes who make us such a fun, diverse, occasional frictional community. It’s fun (if you’re queer or queer-friendly) trying to spot which one is like you on that train. It’s an ensemble that stars some of television and film’s most beautifully self-deprecating, brilliant performers. My only wish was that the appearances by luminaries like Nicole Sullivan, Missi Pyle, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Nicole Richie, and Sarah Michelle Gellar could have gone on for longer. You can read the full cast list below, but Rachel Bloom, Paul Scheer, Lisa Rinna, Natasha Leggero: Nail, head. Boxes, ticked. Even seeing and hearing Leggero’s socially-bereft character simply talking incessantly on her cell phone throughout the entire film is hilarious. She’s like, still making phone calls when it’s all about the voice notes and voicebank messaging now. And that’s funny.
“You’re ah…’: Sarah Michelle Gellar, whose apparent cameo (as herself) evolves into more of a very memorable supporting act. And still, no one on this train full of conceited egos seems to know who she is.
Extra applause for June Diane Raphael whose every move and line onscreen (and in just about everything she’s been in) is worthy of a meme to supercede eras. So histrionically brilliant is she at playing that bitch, that when she goes to light up a joint while the other passengers are going crazy all around her, you just want to take the seat next to her and scoob up.
RuPaul Charles as Madame President Gagwell in ‘Stop! That! Train!’ which he co-executive produced with longtime collaborators Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, and Tom Campbell.
This film’s got headtrip humour and slapstick mindstick, crafty teachable moments between catty critiques on wokeness, morality flying out the window, heck, humans flying out of windows. It’s got laughs and but-what-if-it-really-happeneds. It’s got lipstick, it’s got more lipstick (thank you, Jackie Santangelo). It’s even got disco-inflected, 80s-influenced numbers! My favourite!! There’s fun poked at wokeness, and wokeness whipped right back in when it’s needed. There’s give-it-to-me-straight realness and give-it-to-me-gay surrealness.
Where I was expecting a whole lot of done-to-death eye-rolling and obvious drag queen bitching, I was instead treated to excellent, sometimes blatant, sometimes subliminal, but always clever gags. There are certain reads that sound like they could have come from Drag Race, but much of the humour is fresh and original, even with the obvious Airplane! (Flying High! in Australia) overtones.
For me, personally, watching this big, beautiful mess on the big screen was like a flashback of 30-something years of time (I came out at the age of 19 and I’m not good at math). Like a rapidfire supercut of my very gay life. I didn’t exactly see the light in any of it. In fact, it’s Pure T filth – the entire show. But through that calamitous mess, my gods, I laughed.
On a final aesthetic note – because it’s drag at the heart of this film, after all – cheers to the sheer fishness of its superb drag queen cast. These actors are each so fishy, that I don’t think the words ‘trans’ or ‘gender’ entired my mind once throughout… not until Jujubee’s DeeDee starts to have one of her fantasies. Speaking of which, that pocket rocket hottie Brian Jordan Alvarez (who plays DeeDee’s beau co-conductor), I’ll put it to you gay. Honey, I am bookmarking your IMDb page and whenever you’ve got something new coming out, have your people call my people.
Stop! That! Train! is a laugh-a-minute (laugh-every-30-seconds, actually) ride of a movie. An altogether refreshing, fun and fabulous film.
‘Stop! That! Train!’ is in cinemas including Luna and Palace Cinemas from August 13. View the official teaser here:
TRAINSPOTTING
Here’s the full cast – ensemble, really – of the very funny Stop! That! Train!
- Ginger Minj as Tess
- Jujubee as DeeDee
- Brooke Lynn Hytes as Amber
- Latrice Royale as Barbra
- Marty Lauter as Alli
- Monét X Change as Protester
- Symone as Ayshleiygh
- RuPaul Charles as President Judy Gagwell[7]
- Sarah Michelle Gellar as Famous Actress
- Nicole Richie as Workaholic
- Raven-Symoné as Shayna Gefilte Manischewitz, the Florida Reporter
- Michelle Visage as Reporter 1
- Chris Parnell as Conductor Davenport
- Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Business Person
- Charo as Sexy Traffic Controller
- Brian Jordan Alvarez as Co-Conductor Cal
- Natasha Leggero as Person on Phone
- Drew Droege as Rich Gay
- Joel McHale as Male Passenger 2
- Rachel Bloom as Donna Dusk
- Guy Branum as Train Traffic Controller
- Daniel Franzese as Dishevelled Man
- Riki Lindhome as Reporter 2
- Mayan Lopez as Pregnant Woman
- Missi Pyle as Horny Divorcee
- Jerry O’Connell as Bickering Husband
- June Diane Raphael as Chic Woman
- Lisa Rinna as Sceney Celebrity
- Jai Rodriguez as Reporter 3
- Matt Rogers as Press Secretary
- Paul Scheer as Male Passenger 1
- Nicole Sullivan as Bickering Wife
- Angeria Paris VanMicheals as Amelia
* Paragraph edited / updated on September 11, 2026.
Northern Exposure: Highlights of this year’s Nordic Film Festival
#AdamShankman #angelGirl #antonino #ANTONINOTATI #Angelgirl #BrookeLynnHytes #COMPETITIONS #CREAMMAGAZINE #DONALDTRUMP #drag #filmPasses #filmPreviews #filmReviews #gender #GingerMinj #giveaways #GlamazonianExpress #JesseTylerFerguson #jimmyKlimmel #Jujubee #JuneDianeRaphael #lateNightTalkShow #lgbtqiIssues #lgbtqiNews #LisaRinna #MarciaMarciaMarcia #michelleVisage #militaryIndustrialComplex #MissiPyle #NatashaLeggero #NicoleRichie #NicoleSullivan #PaulScheer #pennyClifford #pocketRocketHottieBrianJordanAlvarez #POPCULTURE #RachelBloom #REVIEWS #RosieODonnell #rosieODonnellFirstEpisode #ruPaul #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #SarahMichelleGellar #StopThatTrain #sydneyDragQueenPenny #sydneyDragQueenPennyClifford #Symone #whereIsRosieODonnellNow -
Matraka: *breathes*
me: :scremcat:
#RupaulsDragRace #LatinaRoyale -
DesiRée Beck encara desafio em temporada latina de ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’: ‘Meu maior medo era não conseguir me expressar’
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DesiRée Beck encara desafio em temporada latina de ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’: ‘Meu maior medo era não conseguir me expressar’
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Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia Gerber looks just like her famous mum in New York
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Just bought tickets to see Stop! That! Train! because that is a movie that needs a big screen and a choc top
#DragRace #Movies #Cinema #StopThatTrain #RuPaulsDragRace #RuPaul
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Finally getting to sit down and watch a Drag Race episode again :sadcat:
And this Down Under All Stars premier is a hit! The queens shitting bricks when Raven walks in as a competitor lmao
#RupaulsDragRace -
‘Drag Race’ stars threaten to ‘sue’ Nancy Mace over attack on drag queens
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/drag/nancy-mace-drag-race
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‘Drag Race’ stars threaten to ‘sue’ Nancy Mace over attack on drag queens
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/drag/nancy-mace-drag-race
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Crystal Methyd Made Her Return to ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ Worth It
#TV #TVFeatures #Paramount #RealityTV #RuPaul #RuPaulsDragRace -
SiriusXM Signs Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova’s ‘The Bald and the Beautiful’ Podcast (Exclusive)
#Business #Digital #Podcast #PodcastIndustry #Podcasts #RuPaulsDragRace #Siriusxm #TrixieMattel -
Não consegui terminar de assistir o filme da Rupaula. Vou deixar para ver depois. #stopthattrain #RuPaulsDragRace
Não sei porque, mas eu não esperava que fosse ser exatamente o mesmo humor dos desafios de acting no drag race.
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‘Dancing With The Stars’ Lands First Reality Emmy Nomination In Ten Years
#News #ABC #DancingWithTheStars #EmmyAwards #Emmys #RuPaulsDragRace #Survivor #TheTraitors #TopChefhttps://deadline.com/2026/07/dancing-with-the-stars-emmy-nomination-2026-reality-1236976870/
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‘Big Brother’ Season 28 Cast Revealed: ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Alum, Rocket Scientist, MMA Fighter and More
#TV #TVNews #BigBrother #Cbs #RealityTV #RuPaulsDragRacehttps://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/big-brother-season-28-cast/
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ICYMI: Drag Race All Stars 11’s shocking end to another vague challenge https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2026/07/drag-race-all-stars-11-episode-10-tell-me-something-good-recap/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #DragRace #RuPaulsDragRace
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Drag queen Suzie Toot says Ron DeSantis can be free: ‘Live your gay life’
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/drag/suzie-toot-drag-race-2677149754
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Drag queen Suzie Toot says Ron DeSantis can be free: ‘Live your gay life’
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/drag/suzie-toot-drag-race-2677149754
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Bob the Drag Queen, Monét X Change’s ‘Sibling Rivalry’ Inks Podcast Deal With Libsyn (Exclusive)
#Business #Digital #BobTheDragQueen #MonetXChange #Podcast #RuPaulsDragRace -
Raven, RuPaul’s Emmy-Winning Makeup Artist, to Compete on ‘Drag Race Down Under vs The World’
#TV #TVNews #MichelleVisage #RuPaul #RuPaulsDragRace