Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Bret Easton Ellis: Imperial Bedrooms

Mistrials made a name for himself when he was only 21 with the publication of his debut novel less than zero which became a generational touchstone and Kit continues to find new readers. Mr. Ellis is the author of four other novels including American Psycho and Lunar Park and the short story collection the informers for his books have been adapted into a film including the informers for which Mr. Welles co-wrote the screenplay and his writing has been translated into 27 languages. Imperial Bedrooms is a sequel of sorts to less than zero or reintroduced to Clay and his group of rich and dangerously leisured friends. Twenty five years after the events of less than zero when Clay a successful screenwriter living in New York returns to Los Angeles to help cast his most recent movie he catches up with his old friends shacked up with a young wannabe actress and starts receiving bizarre threatening text messages. People magazine called Imperial Bedrooms a hypnotic haunting vision of disillusionment 21st century style and time out in New York called the book arresting the spare and continued Imperial Bedrooms. We'll leave you feeling bruised guarded and a little nervous about noises at night. Thank you. Thank you guys for coming out tonight.

I'm going to read very briefly from this book Imperial Bedrooms no more than ten minutes and then I'd like to open it straight up to a Q&A and just to have a conversation. I don't know a dialogue with the audience. I think that's probably going to work best since I've got nothing else prepared. So I'm yet you know this is a sequel in a way to less than zero. The clay of this book maintains that the clay of Less Than Zero was misrepresented even though a lot of this stuff in less than zero happened in the clay of Imperial Bedrooms maintains that the writer of Less Than Zero just didn't like Clay very much and portrayed him as this kind of passive drifting dude who didn't do anything to help anybody really. And what Imperial Bedrooms becomes in a way is the quote unquote real Clay's attempt to

make a claim for himself which as you continue to read the novel you'll realize is kind of pointless on his part. Maybe the writer of Less Than Zero did get it right. The brief section that I'm going to read has to do with how the clay of Imperial Bedrooms feels about the movie adaptation of that book about him. The movie adaptation of the book about him that the book that he didn't like even though everything in that book he said a lot of the stuff happened to him. He really just didn't like that book and he is these are his thoughts about the movie version of that book about him that he didn't like. So I remember my trepidation about the movie began on a warm October night three weeks prior to its theatrical release in a screening room on the 20th Century Fox lot. I was sitting between Trent Burroughs and Julian who wasn't clean yet and kept biting his nails squirming in the

plush black chair with anticipation. I saw Blair walk in with a lawn and Kim and trailing rip milar. I ignored her. The movie was very different from the book in that there was nothing from the book in the movie despite everything all the pain I felt that the trail I couldn't help but recognize the truth while sitting in that screening room in the book. Everything about me had happened. The book was something I simply couldn't disavow. The book was blunt and had an honesty about it whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie. It was also a bummer. Very colorful and busy but also grim and expensive. And it didn't recoup its costs when released that November in the movie and was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book. I wasn't blonde I wasn't tan and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass spouting a jargon castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian I'll sell my car. I warned the after plane Julians dealer whatever it takes. This was slightly less true of the adaptation of Blair's character played by a

girl who actually seen what she belonged in our group jittery sexually available easily wounded. Julianne became the sentimentalize version of himself acted by a talented sad faced clown who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go. Because I was his best bud. Be good to her. Julian tells clay she really deserves it. The sheer hypocrisy of the scene must have made the author Blanche smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the after deliver that line I then glanced at Blair and the darkness of the screening room as the movie glided across the giant screen. Restlessness began to reverberate in the hushed auditorium the audience. The book's actual cast quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light. The book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit and attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to

1987 and a regime change. The studio didn't help. So the source material surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality had to be reshaped. The best way to look at the movie was as modern 80s noir. The cinematography was breathtaking and I sighed as it kept streaming forward interested in only a few things the new and gentle details of my parents mildly amused me. As did Blair finding her divorced father with his girlfriend on Christmas Eve instead of with a boy named Jared Blair's father died of AIDS in 1992 while still married to Blair's mother. But the thing I remember most about that screening in October 20 years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separate in our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Welles lived. But in this new movies scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. Later as a screenwriter I learned what all movies demanded when the scene occurred in the last 10 minutes. Julian looked at me in the darkness stunned. I died he whispered. They killed me off.

I waited a bit before sign but you're still here. Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended. The credits roll in over the palm trees as I probably take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away. But the real drilling wells didn't die in a cherry red convertible overdosing on a highway and Joshua Tree while the choir soared over the soundtrack. The real Julian Wells was murdered over 20 years later. His body dumped behind an abandoned apartment building in most Philo's after he had been tortured to death at another location. His head was crushed. His face struck with such force that it had partly folded in on itself and he had been stabbed so brutally that the L.A. Coroner's Office counted 159 wounds from three different knives many of them overlapping. His body was discovered by a group of kids who went to Calvert's and were cruising through the streets off of hill Hurst in a convertible BMW looking for a parking space when they saw the body. They thought the quote unquote thing lined by a trash bin was and I'm quoting the first Los

Angeles Times article on the front page of the Calif. section about the Julian Wells murder a flag. I had to stop and I hit upon that word and start reading the article again in the beginning the students who found Julian thought this because Julian was wearing a white tom ford suit that belonged to him. But it wasn't something he was wearing the night he was abducted. And their immediate reaction seemed halfway logical since the jacket and pants were streaked with red. Julian had been stripped before he was killed and then redressed. But as they thought it was a flag. My immediate question was then where was the blue if the body resembled a flag. I kept wondering where was the blue. And then I realized it was his head. The students thought it was a fly because Julian had lost so much blood and that his crumpled face was blue so dark it was almost black. But then I should have realized this sooner because in my own way I had put Julia in there and I had seen what had happened to him in another and very different movie. Thanks Sherry. I don't know why I was deciding what to read up on the train ride today and for some reason

that was it. That was the kind of mood I was in I guess. I don't know but I'm going to open everything up to questions if anyone has any questions and we can just like you know do it do it like that. The question is I guess if I paired it down as why you write the books that you write more or less OK. The question is how do I think about being a writer as a career. It's not a choice. I never saw it as a choice. It was something that I wanted to do from very early on I began writing when I was a kid and I think I began writing because I like books so much. There are a lot of books around my house my parents house and I was reading books and I think I loved reading so much that kind of as this kind of transporting experience that I wanted to write books myself. And so ultimately it never really felt like a choice to me it felt like something very natural something very emotional something that I wanted to do it was never like a logical some kind of logical or pragmatic decision. It was oh I like books. I want to

write books. And that really has how it has been ever since I wrote my first children's book when I was a kid up until you know this book. I mean so that's the only way that I know how to do it there is I just don't wake up one day and say oh I'm going to write the sequel to less than zero and I want to start next Monday at 9:00 a.m. and that's this house going to be I mean it's you know every book is comes from an emotional place and it's something that you feel and it's something that I think about for a long time before I'm absolutely sure that I want to sit down and write the book. So that's that is kind of my process in a way. I mean that's how it's and it also is a slow process because it means that I don't I haven't written as many books as I might have liked to have written but it's just you know you can't will a book. You can't force a book out. I think some people do. But I just I'm not the kind of writer. Well the description of the movie compared to how this character feels about the book pretty much exactly.

Yeah it was it was the movie version of less than zero really bears no resemblance to the book for me for a million reasons. I mean a lot of stuff happened when that movie was made that you know turn it into something that it wasn't supposed to be. And because this is a book about Hollywood and it's a book about people involved the movie industry I thought it was an interesting way to begin the book and also an interesting way to talk about how Julian Welles does die in the movie version of less than zero. But I wanted to keep him around in this book because I thought once I figured out who Clay was and what Clay was doing back in L.A. I wanted Julian to kind of revolve around him a little bit. And so it was also a way for me to get Julian back into the picture. It worked on a lot of different levels for me. So the question is do I work on multiple things at one time. And then there more of the question. But I can answer it without repeating the rest of the question because I don't work on multiple books at all and every book that I've had an idea for I published

I don't have anything laying around I don't have half written manuscripts I don't have there weren't ideas that I wished I'd pursued that I did in it. No. Every every every idea I've had for novels I've written and that I published. And I think part of why I don't have anything like half written or partly written is because again the process is I think about the book a lot. And I think do I want to spend this long with the book and do I really want to write this book and I make a lot of notes before even begin writing the book and I make a very long outline before I even begin writing the book and in some way that outline resembles a first draft a very long sloppy first draft and by that time I'm completely excited and buy the book and I I'm engaged by it and it's gripping me and and that I'm writing the book and I want to write the book and I'm finishing the book and so that's the best way I know a lot of people who like writers say oh well I'm going to let the novel take a world where it's going to take me out and is going to start with you know Stephen and Cheryl went to the cafe

and they had a drink and they saw this dog that they liked and it began to rain or whatever. And then we have thousands of novels that stop at page 120 and that person just doesn't know. You know they kind of lose their enthusiasm for it and because they they didn't figure out where it's going to go and it's you know can be a depressing situation. So that's why that's the question was Do I ever want to go back to the multiple multiple narrator style that I did in the rules of attraction or in the informers. You know it's not well you know I actually did think about it very briefly when I was thinking about Imperial Bedrooms I thought about doing that and then discard it very quickly. But no I haven't and I don't know why. I don't know what the question is WHY AM I SO TALENTED. I come up with all this stuff. That's really the question

isn't it. Like why am I God. The question really is how do I come up with all of these funny lines is why he was asking. I think a lot of well a lot of things happened I think that once they figure out who the narrator of the book is and that takes a long time to and when I figure out what he will notice and what he will hear and what he wants to present to the reader which is me basically because that's how it work. Then you know a certain kind of humor can you know announce itself. And so I think it's I think it's that that's that's why I don't know. I mean but that's a very complimentary question and it's it's much appreciated. It really is. There's another really wonderful question. I love it. I was so nice. I wrote a novel the first novel I wrote was when I was 14

and it was I thought I had an extremely interesting summer. And I wrote the novel about my extremely interesting summer. And then after I read the novel I realized it wasn't an extremely interesting summer at all. And that was a huge learning experience for me. And after that novel that's when I began I guess I don't know what to call. I guess the less than zero project in a way because there are many drafts that book Between the time I was 16 and 21 I think a lot of people seem to think that I wrote that book in like eight weeks got a huge fat publishing deal it got totally overhyped and boom you know there was this that didn't work that way at all. It was a very long process and you know looking back I knew I mean I guess no one's really asked me that before. I mean looking back I guess you have to have a certain kind. I guess I didn't second guess myself at all. I guess I did have a lot of confidence in it or I wasn't even thinking along the lines of having confidence just that I wanted to do it and that I was enjoying doing

it. I didn't I didn't step into that realm of starting to second guess myself and I really don't do that. I mean some of my critics tell me I should be doing that. But I don't work that way. It's just not how I work. I don't see novel writing out to be like I don't know to be this like consortium or to be like a business in a way where you know you have to show it to like 10 people to make sure it's good or you have to write it in a way you are. So you want to get like good reviews or whatever. I mean it's just really personal means of expression and it's not you know so that's how I always saw it. I didn't see it as well I guess what I'm saying is I'm saying it doesn't have to be good. I just sort of has to be you know. And you know what actually that comes out of my mouth and was mostly kind of a joke. But yes there are beautifully written novels that are dead completely dead and there are novels of a kind of sloppy and punchy. But yeah they have a pulse to them and they feel alive in a way that beautifully manicured novel can feel utterly dead. So to get back to your

question you know I guess I didn't second guess myself and I guess that I just you know kept moving forward and I didn't even think along those lines. OK in reality I would rather. Well. I mean you know they're made up people they're made up characters or not it's not they're not real books or they're not real stories or anything. But I would rather hang out with clay probably not a lot of effort not a lot of energy has to be expended there. It would be very easy to just like deal with them and it would be a little bit different I got a glimpse of actually hanging out with Patrick Bateman when I was doing some kind of research. The initial research that I did on American Psycho where I was hanging out with young guys were working on Wall Street. And that wasn't fun. That wasn't fun at all. And then I and then I. Well the other example was that one Christian Bale was about well he had the role but he didn't want to do it without my approval

which is look in retrospect I think crazy but I get it he's an actor and he just needed that writer to prove. And I think he would have done it regardless. So I don't know why. But he I had never met him before and he did and I was supposed to see him in a restaurant in Los Angeles and I was at the bar having a drink and someone tapped me on the shoulder and said Hi Pat Bateman and he had completely dressed like Patrick Bateman his hair was slicked back and he stayed in character for like 10 minutes and it was the most unnerving creepy thing that I've ever experienced. And I actually told him after 10 minutes we were at the table and my hand was shaking a little bit as he got to stop this. You can't act like this. Is like getting really out of out of control. So that's an easy now thinking that through. Yes I would rather sit with Clay who is the most reliable of those narrators. You know what. I think that kind of they're pretty much both reliable. I think I really do. I mean I know all this. Everyone says it.

Well. Well I was going to like say something stupid like both reliable and their unreliability but I'm not even that opens it up to a whole other thing that we don't want to go to. But the question is do I read my reviews and do they have any impact on me at all. I read all of my reviews. I read all the reviews that are written about me. I am regardless of how good or how bad they are they have little to no impact at all on what I'm working on or what I want to write about. And I found the whole you know the whole idea of I mean and I like a lot of reviewers. I like that I like a lot of writers who have written about me who haven't been particularly favorable. I mean I think I read like their other opinions on books and stuff. So no I would say for them for like 99 percent of the time it doesn't matter. I don't really feel much of anything when I'm reading the reviews though every now and then in the last whatever during my career there have been those moments where a writer that

I've admired has given me a bad review and that has stung a little bit. Not enough to distract me from my day. But it's like that's the kind of socks. But overall no they don't. The question is Why do I use characters from one book in another book and why do why does there seem to be this floating cast of characters. In all the books you know there's no plan there's not any kind of secret code or anything that's that's what. It's just something is a film and this is something that I like to do and every now and then you know it happens I think oh that'll be really interesting to use that character from that book as the narrator for this book like for example in rules of attraction that's when Patrick Bateman first makes his appearance. And I had had a vague idea for American Psycho. But but when I wrote Rules of Attraction Powter Baban was not at all going to be the narrator. And then as I began the year or so of thinking about American Psycho and what that book was going to be about I kept going back to him for some

reason and I wanted to use him. And I can explain why there was not like this. Again that's not a that's not a logical thing. You know it's just it's a feeling you have and so and it happens all the time. I mean I remember when I was working on Lunar Park and I wanted I wanted these neighbors to live next to the Snell's character and his wife and I was thinking OK I wanted the neighbor to be like this and like this and they probably would be like this and et cetera et cetera. And then for some reason I flashed on a peripheral character in the rules of attraction called Mitchell Allen. And then when I thought about that and using him it just gave me this opportunity to have the pride of his character talk about his sexual past and being at Camden because he went to Camden college together alone and the bridleless character. It's just it's just things like that but there's no grand plan any of that. The question is Was I happy with the informers. The movie version of it. And if someone made Luna Park going to a movie how would I want to see that done.

Well Luna Park is being turned into a movie. I have really nothing to do with it. I have there's Phil old and Robinson I think he's a director now attached and I think he may feel that dreams and he's made and there were a lot of directors attached to this movie for a long time. You get it the father son thing the whole that's what the producers were thinking it's fine it's fine. I mean who knows what'll get made. I don't know and I've been a lot of actors attached to it and I don't even Benicio Del Toro was attached to play the lead for a long time. And then I think Jude Law was attached at one point and I would rather see Jude Law play me than Del Toro so him and the informer is the movie version of that was a. I had to laugh I'm sorry because you asked me if I was happy with how it turned out. And I was not happy with how the information that it was a very painful situation. And it was the first time that I had stepped forward to assist in the adaptation of a book of mine and I

wrote a really great script. It was pretty good. I really was. And because of this great script we got like a ton of actors to be in it and we got a ton of money to make the movie. And then you know that you know that should happen and it just didn't. But the director's sensibility. There was a producer involved to kind of bowed down to the director. They cut out the vampires. You know there was like a lot of bad decisions were made and I was not in. I mean even if you're a producer on a movie and you work with the co-writer of the script you're not the money man you know and they make a lot of the decisions a lot of the creative decisions too. And so by the time that movie was done it was kind of I wouldn't say completely unrecognizable from the script that was written but I would have to say that there's about 40 percent of that missing and about 80 percent of the movie itself is kind of tonally off from what I had planned.

So you know I'm not going to I've complained about it a lot but you know it's just whatever it is. The experience of what as being all them being modern day. Yeah I mean what is there to say about it that was so. Yeah. Well you know people like I was beginning to tell that story a little bit in answering one of the questions about what happened like with less than zero whereas you know the myth that I wrote it very quickly and that it was published and there was an immediate success in that you know I was on the cover of all these magazines and stuff and really that's not true at all. Again I I worked in that book for about five years. It was published when I was 21. And people tend to forget that I was paid the least amount of money you can possibly be paid for a book.

It was like in like the low low as you know for figures you could get. A thousand bucks. Five thousand bucks for the book. And no no advertising money at all. And I was just happy to have a book published. I mean I didn't really intend on getting lessons or publish. It was something that I wanted to do. And then when one of my teachers at Bennington write it they said oh let someone pass it on to my age and that her message or whatever I mean it didn't really strike me as something that was going to happen. And then when it did it all happened in slow motion and it happened over a very long period of time. It was there was no prince there wasn't there was no money for advertising because half of the publishing house hated it. The editorial board really hated it. And the younger part of the editorial board really pushed for the book and so the part of the editorial board that was in power in terms of like you know promoting books said OK you can publish the damn thing but we're not going to promote it. And so it didn't really become a success until five or six months later and I was in school and I suddenly noticed I was getting more calls from my publishing house in my agency.

And you know that's how it happened. And then when it did become a success it was still in school. And if anybody's ever been up to Bennington I don't know why anyone would have been up there. It's very far away from anything and it's very small. And I think that year my senior year when the book really kind of took off I was you know I was kind of protected. I was still I went to finish college and I was still this very small school that was very hard to reach and it wasn't you know everyone said Oh. And so while that must have been so crazy it really wasn't. And then when I got out of school and I and I went and I moved to New York I mean everyone seems to think that I was part of this like crazy Brat Pack thing that was going on and I and I made fun of this whole thing in Luna Park in the first like 30 or 40 pages of Lunar Park I kind of wrote this like mock memoir of what people I think thought my life was like at that point when I thought I was just like you know I'm most 23 year olds hanging out with his friends. Everyone likes to think that I was hanging out with Jay McInerney and they were doing tons of blow all the time and were passing out in nightclubs and I might have been doing all of that.

But it wasn't my friends it wasn't J-Mac. And so you know it's it's really it's so interesting to see how the Nith takes over and I'm constantly amused by it. I mean that this myth of Bret Easton Ellis and I think part of the reason why I felt the urge to write Lunar Park stemmed from that you know and to write that opening that opening chapter of the book's stem from I don't know in a way wanting to set the record straight I don't know. Or will it really not kind of like avoiding setting the record straight but I don't know giving whatever I did so I'm happy. So yeah it was the I was also really really fun. I had a really good time being hot. And I'm psyched. It was awesome awesome. I love it. I love that question. Orleans is like Dubai. What is it again. It's sort of like does the writing change while I'm being inspired by other writers. Is that kind of what you're getting at.

No not really. No I don't think so. I think the idea for the novel has already been influenced by certain writers by the time I'm writing it and I knew like for example with Lunar Park I always I wanted to write a Stephen King book and I just I love Stephen King when I was an adolescent and I had my own ideas to out do a Stephen King book. And so that's kind of where that came from. But I didn't I wasn't rereading Stephen King while I was working on Lunar Park. I mean I already kind of knew his style and I wanted to replicate it because it was fun you know and it was something I wanted to do. And it's ironic that really to get to the last third of that book which is the Stephen King homage I had I felt like I had to do all this other stuff that while interesting and fun. I had to build it up to get there. And it's very ironic that most people hate the last third of Lunar Park and really like the first two thirds which I always thought were not as much fun to write as last third. So you know maybe you should take those people into consideration that people lose you

know people or maybe I should show my show to more people get more feedback. I don't know. But I was also thinking a lot about Philip Roth in the beginning of Lunar Park. I was thinking I was thinking a lot about Don DeLillo when I was working on glamour and so and I totally ripped off Joan Didion for less than zero so I've always been and Raymond Chandler was a big part of the bedroom so there is always some sort of author hovering in the back of my head that I'm referencing. It just seems to be the way that I like to work you know. So that's good. The question is Where do I get my inspiration from. And pain. Pain. That's where the inspiration comes from and through my own pain. A lot of it is a lot of it is stems from confusion and being upset by something and trying to figure out why I'm upset by this and why is this bothering me and why am I obsessed with it.

And yeah I mean that's where it all comes from. It comes from confusion and stress and pain and you know it's it's weird I really you know for the longest time I did not want to talk about because of the controversy over American Psycho I really never. Took a very defensive mode when that book came out and I said Oh yes but no one is being completely misread as it is a grand sweeping statement on Wall Street greed and materialism and you don't understand and it's not misogynist in nature blah blah blah blah blah. And I'm what in fact that novel was about me and it was about my loneliness and my pain and my isolation and my alienation during that period of my life and moving to New York and being introduced into the world of adults and being hugely disappointed by this world by their values by what was expected of me as an adult and by a kind of you know yuppie them is always just a trendy you know you know tagline for this consumerism in general and basically how a certain

class of people held no value held these things to value that were them but didn't make them happy and seemed to make them more miserable and you know on and on and on. So anyway that's really where American Psycho came from and it's only been lately that I feel comfortable enough to kind of talk about that. Of course it did become something bigger as the book took on this shape and it became about different things but that's where that book stemmed from. And I would say that's true for every book I've written whether it was for example like Lamhe around. I was thinking a lot about be having your private persona replaced by your public persona. And of course as always I was thinking about my father who was always like somehow present you know in all of the books because the father is at the center of this conspiracy to replace his son in Glamour Emma. So you know it's it's comes from you know pain and in a way writing the book is is a way

to get rid of that pain. And I know this sounds so Oprah and so touchy feely but they really are usually exorcisms in a way they really are. They do work at freeing yourself from whatever these constraints that these feelings like you know tied down with it. So that's that's where it comes from. The question is OK how do you deal with plot. I don't know. I really don't. It's not something that I am overtly concerned with. And it's. You know I'm just not the kind of writer is just logical sometimes like the story just unfolds in a way that I want it to unfold. A lot of the times my plots are very convoluted and dreamlike sometimes I mean for half of Les's zero there is no plot. They're just like people drifting around and there's more behavioral and descriptive rather than plot driven. So I don't know what the plot is held in that outline that I work on and it's

you know I guess what I'm trying to say is that VM everything springs from the emotion and that includes the narrator of the story the way the story is structured i.e. the plot and all it all comes from there is all part of one my you know big feeling I guess okay who really wants to who ever really wants to ask questions really should wave their hand a little bit. So I like it was so sudden I was just like I want to have asked a question of if you really want to ask the question because the time is running short. And I just want to get the people who really want to ask the question because a vice sometimes I hit someone who you know has a question about you know I don't know what's your favorite Starbucks or something and it's like a way some time but there's someone really wants to ask me something and also you can ask me during the Signy But OK so I'm looking at a waving hand.

The question dare I repeat this is like. About my reputation in a way seems set. And how do I deal with that psychologically in a way. Oh my God. Well you know what. I'm not thinking that way. I mean I'm not that well I wasn't thinking that way but now that you say this now I don't know. I'm oh look honestly I really don't think that way. And that's not I never wrote for like posterity. I never wrote to be whatever popular or famous or whatever. I mean I just write because I like to write. And so really there's no pressure there. There really is no pressure in terms of writing a novel I don't feel any. I feel pressure in other areas of my life. I don't feel any pressure in terms of having to write a particular kind of novel or to you know take into account this and this and this in terms of quote unquote a career. I just write these novels and I like writing them and I don't feel any pressure to

follow up a novel to write a novel that's going to sell more copies and another novel to try to write a novel it's going to you know be an Oprah pick or to be you know try to win an award or anything. I just don't I don't look at it that way. So that's a show I think first question second questions about he is a big Roger Avery fan and he asked me if I had had any chance to visit Roger Avery who wrote and directed the rules of attraction and also co-wrote Pulp Fiction. If I had visited him in jail because he's in. Debt he's in jail right now and I have not he's going to be released shortly. And yeah which if I want to be very selfish about it bodes well for glam around as a movie because he owns the rights to that. So the other question was about how I am on a certain level I act like I'm not that

concerned about a lot of things in terms of being a public writer but yet on the design of something like Imperial Bedrooms and especially with the very do she photograph. Of myself on the back. What's up. It's sort of like what he's asking. The very valid question. That's a good question. The book to me. I like books. I like holding books. I like looking at books. I like book covers. I have always from day one from lesson 0 always thought that an author's photograph is a big U-turn. You tend to turn to it a lot when you're reading a novel. Maybe not that much but but it's it's present and it's presence. I always felt was that image I always felt was sort of as important as the cover. And in every book that I published I've been very conscious of that photograph being representative of in a way the character who's narrating the book

and that's true with every hard cover photograph that I've had taken and it is true. We I worked with photographer Jeff Burton for two to three days to get just the right. Do she pose. Smirk. Even more like two days. But until we were finally satisfied that yes if you're reading this book and you see this devil on the cover and then you're looking at the back of the author photo a set of associations is going to come and hopefully that might make that might give the entire reading experience a totality that I find very satisfying as a reader. That is why that is there but that has really nothing to do but the anti of like you know wanting to win awards or wanting to win people over in a way but it's it's a good point. Movies that are influencing me that I like. Well I don't know. I think movies in general influenced me when I was starting out. I think the I think they influenced me as much as books probably did

very time I recently or just in general or what kind of movies influence my work in terms of. What kind of movies influenced me. Period bedroom's really no movies influenced Imperial Bedrooms really. I mean when I'm working on a script. Well no I can't even say that I'm influenced by movies when I'm working on a script and I'm influenced by the story and what I want to do when I'm working on the novel I'm influenced by the idea of it as a book. I don't know if I'm really influenced by the books themselves are really influenced by movies so much so I don't know but I like I'm an avid movie goer. I like to go to movies a lot. It's the only thing I seem to tweet about. I mean I really don't really you know. So that's like a half ass answer. I know but it's the best that I can do. I'm sorry. The question concerns the promotion of this book and how the reality of the book has seeped into the reality

the general reality of the real world that it. Is that my decision or do other people make that decision other people really make that decision. I mean I'm sorry that I'm not more hands on in terms of what the promotion for the books are about. But I'm really not. Once the book is done. Yes. I like to go out and promote the book for my house in terms of like going to events like these and you know like that but in terms of like designing a promotional thing for the book. No I'm really not that would never cross my mind to do that. She's referencing in Los Angeles magazine and also on the Web site there is Clate Easton who is I guess the narrator of this book. They do a thing we're on a map of all the places he likes to go in L.A. and in his voice he talks about why these places mean a lot to him and they're all places that are reference Imperial Bedrooms. That was not my idea. I did not have that idea. I kind of like made some suggestions on it but no that was not my idea.

The question is about how trendy I am. Do I actively go back into a book and put in more uptodate references. As it nears publication in a way I know I'm the am. But it's I'm just talking through to myself in terms of like what the question is. No it's all organic it's whatever I think the narrator would notice. I am not. Look I it's I think of the narrator I think of what their taste would be like. I think of what they would be listening to. It doesn't necessarily correspond to mine. I know in around that Victor Ward has his encyclopedic knowledge of pop music that I really don't have. But I felt that it was kind of funny and that it was kind of integral to who he was as a person. You know when people tell me oh my god American Psycho it must been so hellish to read all those violent scenes and all those like women are getting

murdered and it must be so hard to write. I said you know listen to Genesis records for a month and then I will tell you that's harrowing. That's Harold way to end that. But then I also felt what was his favorite goofy like like when he was like jazz. Is he like Huey Lewis. Thank you. I try to walk out my head and that really isn't that bad out of the three of them I like Huey Long is probably the best but I'm. So no no I like that bat for Lashes reference in Imperial Bedrooms. Was there pretty much from day one when I thought of that sequence. And you know Clay's like you know a middle aged white dude yes he's listening to the National a lot. So it's like it's not. It just feels you know it just whatever feels right for the narrator is what I like what I what whatever makes it more authentic. That's what I like to use. So it's not it is conscious in a way but it's conscious in a

way that's organic to the narrator who is. Yes. OK. You're only getting to more or less are getting you. And you still like the pressure's on you by the way you've got the last question that night. OK see you this morning. Yes. The questions about the remake of less than zero and anyone is actually going to do an authentic remake of the book. I mean of it as a film and that is every month I hear something about it happening and I hear it from either I heard Quentin Tarantino is interested in doing it or Greg iraki or people want to turn into a TV series or there is I'm always like this is always whispered to me all the time and I don't know that that that would be great that happened. I did read a couple of scripts from people that I thought were you know OK I don't know I don't know if that's going to happen or not and what I like to see it happen.

Yeah sure it would be fun. I mean it's not something. It really doesn't keep me awake at night. It doesn't really hit me when I'm just waiting because I'm going to look over you and you're going to be the last question of the evening. And. I'm very I'm interested in what it is. I'm interested. Does anybody in the audience have an answer for that. Like where. OK. Does anybody of another answer. Does anybody have an answer as to why I'm not going to write a sequel to glam around with the word as the narrator. Asked me again as to why I'm going to ask someone in the audience where does anybody know where Victor Ward is. Has anybody read this book. Does someone want to give an answer.

Someone raise their hand and tell me I'll get. Someone else. OK. Anybody else. Correct. He's dead. He's dead. So I like the story. I know what's on your mind actually snorting coke off strippers. But yeah that's why there isn't one there is not going to be a sequel to that. Now I did think about briefly this is why I don't read that many novels I did briefly think about doing a sequel to glam Ranma with the guy pretending to be fixed toward the end of that book and what that might entail. But I think the gentleman in that row over there has wins the prize. He read the novel correctly he's dead on that note. And now we open it with a cheery note. We're ending it with a cheery note. I am going to

sign everyone's books. You can bring whatever you want up and pictures are allowed and we'll start the signing. Thank you guys.