- My moment was the headline
of the New York Times
after, I guess it was the first or second
Republican debate where
Trump had gone on CNN
and talked about how
Megyn Kelly was bleeding
through her eyes--
- I think it was the first--
- Whatever, okay.
- I think it was the first,
yeah.
- And I thought, okay,
well, whatever, but it
was the top headline
at the top of the New York Times.
And I thought, that is
so strange, why is that?
To humiliate Trump to some degree?
This was just something that you could
kind of talk about minimally,
but to create an entire
narrative over this,
in order to humiliate him
or to get him canceled,
was the beginning for me,
of like, oh, there's
something else going on.
There's a secret history here!
(upbeat music)
- I'm Dave Rubin and this
is "The Rubin Report."
A quick reminder, guys,
to subscribe on YouTube
and click that notification button
so that you might just see
our videos in your feed.
More importantly, joining
me today is an author,
screenwriter, podcaster, and bad gay,
Bret Easton Ellis.
(Bret chuckling)
Welcome to "The Rubin Report!"
- Hey, Dave, thanks for having me.
- I just added "bad
gay" on the fly, there.
- That's fine.
- Just from our little
pre-conversation--
- No, I've been called
a bad gay by other gays,
and it's been going on for a
while now, so I'm fine with it,
and I'm just surprised that you threw that
into the mix of what I do and who I am,
but yeah, that's been a part of my,
I guess, reputation
for a little while now.
- Yeah, all right, so before
we get to the bad gay,
why is this guy a bad gay thing,
by the way, I'm considered a bad gay too,
so you're in good company.
- Okay.
- That is not a pejorative--
- Okay, that's good.
- When I say "bad gay."
There's a ton I want to talk to you about.
You're on the short list of people
that I think relatively make sense
in 2020.
- Right?
- Which is a very high compliment.
- Many people think I
don't, but I'm glad that
you think I do.
- Yeah, I do.
I don't know what that was about me,
but what I wanted to start with is,
you are actually from Los Angeles.
- I am, I am.
- You are Los Angelino,
as they say, you grew up in Los Angeles.
I know how it framed a lot of your work.
- Yes!
- Could you just talk
a little bit about what
it's like to grow up
in this really bizarre city?
- Well, I think it was
perhaps less bizarre
in many ways when I grew up in the 1970s.
I was born in the '60s, and basically,
my childhood was spent here
in the San Fernando Valley.
And I think it wasn't necessarily
that the geography of L.A. was so special,
though it was, growing up
someplace where you can get
to the beach in 20 minutes,
and then the mountains in an hour,
and then the desert in 90 minutes,
was kind of a very special,
magical place to grow up.
There's a lot of freedom out here.
And there's a lot of freedom, also,
for a child and a teenager,
because of cars and
mobility and the freeways,
and once you get that
driver's license at 15 1/2,
your learner's permit, then
you're off and running.
And you have all of this space to explore.
And that was what was so wonderful
about growing up here in
Los Angeles during that era.
I think the other thing
that was special about it
was just special about
being a kid in the 1970s,
and that was, again,
an emphasis on freedom, a lot of freedom.
I barely saw my parents,
maybe my mom more so than my father,
who was a nine-to-five guy,
worked at a firm downtown.
But I just remember, especially now,
knowing so many parents who have
a kind of lockdown feeling
about their children,
that it was kind of amazing
how much freedom we had,
and how that freedom
aided us in growing up
and slowly move toward adulthood.
And I really cherished
that, and I really loved
that sense that we were
left to our own devices.
No parent was hovering over us
making sure we were
doing this or doing that,
and that we had all of this room to roam!
And also just to, I don't know,
read whatever we wanted to read,
see whatever movies we
wanted to see, and also,
in that decade, things were
really not made for kids!
It was a culture that was
completely made for adults.
And as a kid, that's where you
navigated yourself through,
and you really learned
a lot about the secrets
of the adult world, the world that you
really did want to move into.
So that is kind of what I
remember from my childhood,
both on just as a human being
and then as a kid growing up here in L.A.
- Yeah, so that's why I
wanted to start there,
'cause I think a lot of that,
it's very obvious that that framed
a good portion of your work.
But then also, when you see
now the way L.A. has become,
and because political
correctness and everything
that seemingly is so wrong with society
that it seems like it all
comes from right here,
it must drive you crazy!
Like you know, we can't have
hosts at the Oscars anymore,
for a place that used to be edgy and free
and artistic and all that good stuff.
- Well, look, that's not just L.A.,
that's pretty much
everywhere, and it really is,
particularly in the entertainment environs
of the West Coast and the East Coast.
That's just where we are right now,
a kind of corporate culture mentality
in terms of the
blanding-out of the culture,
of making, no one is
offended and all that stuff.
I mean, I'm kind of disappointed,
in many ways, at how the
narrative turned out.
From my childhood of freedom
in the '60s and '70s,
and even into the '80s,
1980s, being an artist,
and how important it was to have a voice
that was uncorrupted by
corporate hands, let's say,
and that you had the freedom
to tell any story you wanted.
Cultural appropriation hadn't yet existed.
So my disappointment isn't necessarily
in California politics and how they have
kind of ruined a lot of the
state, but more or less,
this mindset that says we all
have to act and be a certain way.
That's the thing that I miss most,
and when you say that
about, yes, the Oscars,
that we can't have a host
because first of all,
who wants to host it, and second of all,
they'll Google you if you're the host
and they'll find out you said
this, sometimes 17 years ago!
Or 12 years ago--
- We must be destroyed for--
- And then you can't be--
- What we said 17 years ago!
- Canceled, canceled, canceled!
But no, that's a cultural
thing that is really
part of what, and I'm not
here to plug the book,
but what "White" is about.
"White" really is about the trajectory
of being a Gen X guy who
had all of this freedom
and this sense of
possibility about expression,
and expressing yourself,
and then ending up
in the summer of 2017 or 2018 going,
"What the hell happened?
"What happened to all of
that, and where did that go?"
- Yeah, how much of your view on all this
is shaped by being a bad gay?
That gays are sort of
outsiders off the bat--
- We're two of 'em.
- And that does frame
how you kinda look at the
world a little bit, and--
- Completely.
- Yeah.
- Well, look, it's what, I think,
made me wanna be a writer, in many ways.
I think being gay as a kid,
then, I'm not so sure now,
I think it's probably a lot easier
and you're a lot more, what's the word?
Acclimated into culture in a way
at a much earlier age than we ever were.
I'm a bit older than you,
but growing up in the
'70s and into the '80s,
you were kind of a secret
agent, you were a little bit
of a secret agent.
- Yeah, the '90s was
the same thing.
- You were not out,
and you had to kind of navigate
these paths on your own.
One of the things that I
think is really interesting
about being gay is that I think you look
at the world in a much
more realistic, hard way
than your straight counterpoints do.
I think that you see the world
for what it's really like.
You're not really involved in the poses
and in the gamesmanship that goes on,
within societal structures.
And you also have to redefine
most everything that you
experience culturally,
whether it's movies,
whether it's pop songs,
whether it's things you watch on TV,
whether it's books you read,
so you really begin to
see the world in a way
that none of your other friends do.
You are an outsider, you are
an outsider because of that!
But I also have to say that
I did not let it define me,
and it was not something
that ever got me down.
I never got depressed by it.
It was something that I realized was just
another thing I had to
deal with among many
other things I had to deal with.
It was not, and I think
this is probably weird,
I was not that concerned with it.
And it became something that was...
I resented the fact that I couldn't
express myself in a certain way.
And I think that frustration certainly
played a part in wanting
to become a writer.
So I have to say
"thank you," in a way.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- I mean, it kind of
worked for me, ultimately.
- Yeah, but when you see what has happened
to the gay community, where it used to,
maybe in the '70s and
'80s and before that,
there was a subversive nature to it,
a lot of good art and music
and underground scenes,
all sort of--
- And writing!
- And writing, and all sorts
of things came from it.
Where now it seems like
it's so the reverse,
it's the most woke, sorta cemented--
- Bland.
- Bland way of thinking.
- Well, but--
- In terms of mainstream gay,
whatever the hell that is.
- But I have to say,
that's true of everything.
And it's just that what
happened in the last 10 years
is that gay life, whatever that means,
and I do believe that there is a certain
aspect if you're a gay person
that you do have a bit of a gay life.
It doesn't mean that it overwhelms you
and everything becomes
gay, it means that, yeah,
sure, you have the same preoccupations,
and some of the same concerns
as fellow gay people.
You obviously have to,
in terms of 20 years ago,
politics, or even further back than that,
how the United States was dealing
with the AIDS crisis, for example.
So you are pushed together to a degree.
But I think that that's
happening all over the place.
I do find it distressing
though, that the gay community,
and I have gay friends who hate
me even using that term now,
"the gay community."
- Yeah, (laughs) yeah.
- They really resent it, but
there is a gay community,
and I live in West Hollywood,
I see it on the Boulevard all the time.
But I think the problem is that
that is happening everywhere
and I do think that,
I would love it if the gay community
listened more to someone like Morrissey,
who is constantly criticized
by the gay community
for just being open and honest
and saying what he feels.
I don't think he's attacking anybody!
He's just, he's not
really on the right side
of the political curve
for most gay people,
and he's automatically attacked.
Now, that is really true
for a lot of people!
I wish that was pulled back,
and I wish that the
conversation was much more open,
and it just isn't right
now, and that is a problem.
But it's not just affecting
the gay community,
it's, I think, everywhere.
- Yeah, do you see that
as sort of a direct
offshoot of what identity
politics has done?
- Of course.
- Like if you don't identify
enough as gay, or the new
thing is that you can be gay,
so there's like a like a Peter Thiel,
Pete Buttigieg, maybe the
way we are a little bit,
version of gay, but we're not queer,
sort of.
- Right.
- Like we don't prescribe to the whole
set of ideas.
(Bret laughing)
It's not enough to be an out gay person
living in West Hollywood--
- Right.
- You know, from L.A. for 50 years.
That doesn't quite get it,
get you there.
- But you have to understand,
I kind of made my way through that
in the '80s as a young writer.
I was in what I call the glass closet,
meaning everyone I knew knew I was gay,
and I had a partner.
When I talked to the media, I couch it.
Back in those days, basically,
if you came out and you were a gay writer,
you were ghettoized, to a degree.
You were put into the gay
section of bookstores.
I don't think they have those anymore,
I'm not sure if they do,
(Dave laughing)
but they did have them, and
it meant a kind of death,
in a way, for a mainstream
acceptance, and--
- Right, so even if you
weren't writing about gay
things specifically--
- Right.
- You were gay, so oh!
- Right.
- Look, I was on the gay
channel on Sirius XM!
It was ridiculous, I didn't
wanna be on the gay channel!
I wanted to be on any of
the politics channels.
I would beg them, "Put
me on the left channel!
"Put me on the right channel,
"the other channel,
anything," but they were like,
"Well, you're gay!"
- Right.
- "What do we do with the gay?"
- Exactly, which is the problem,
and that is what I always resisted,
because I knew I was so
much more than simply gay,
or who I wanted to have sex with.
I always knew that from a very early age,
that I was a writer, that I was a person,
that I liked movies, all these
things that I wanted to do,
and then there was gay
somewhere over here.
And I never felt the need to make that
the number one aspect of my identity.
I don't think I even came out to anybody!
It just sort of happened gradually.
"Oh, you're bringing Jim to the party,"
or, "Oh, Jim's coming for the weekend,"
or whatever, and that was how it was!
I really didn't think that anyone
deserved a tearful coming out from me,
and I never even felt that that, now,
that's not to say that
people need it to go
through that narrative, and that's fine,
but I just didn't tie myself
into, with a gay identity.
And so I do think that that is a problem,
but again, not just for gay people,
but for people of color, for women.
But I also believe, Dave,
that this is an online problem, in a way.
There is an offline world out there,
an offline world--
- Does that thing still exist?
Which are we in right now? (laughs)
- Well, we're, I think
we're having an offline
conversation right now.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I hope I live my entire life offline
to a degree, even when I'm online!
And I have done that,
I've gotten into a lot
of trouble over the past decade or so.
But I think there's an offline world,
and I'm part of it, and
I know that the way women
and men and gay people express themselves
are very different than how
they express themselves online,
and that is kind of
where we're at right now,
and I think a lot of people are too afraid
to say things that they
say offline online,
and we'll just see where
this plays itself out.
- So it's funny you bring that up
because I was gonna
mention a little bit later,
so this is jumping ahead,
that "American Psycho,"
it's almost, to me, which, it
was your third novel, right?
- It was the third novel, yes.
- That it's like we're
all sort of behaving
like "American Psycho"
now, you know what I mean?
Like we're all sort of the
sane in the functional world,
in the real world.
- Right.
- And then everyone with
their secret avatars
and their anonymous accounts or whatever,
is a psychopath online!
- Right, yeah.
- So maybe there's your
sequel or something.
- Well, that's really interesting.
I talk a lot about the
creation of "American Psycho"
in the book "White," and for some reason,
it's haunted me because it was something
that I really thought was
going to be this strange,
experimental novel that
maybe 3,000 people read.
I thought it was so weird,
so out there, so super violent
and pornographic, that it would never
find a mainstream audience.
- Don't forget misogynistic,
'cause it cost you some stuff--
- Well--
- We can get to that.
- Misogynistic but also--
- I'm not saying that,
I'm saying what the critics--
- A criticism of misogyny.
- Yeah.
- Just because there's acts
of misogyny doesn't mean the book
is misogynist.
- Of course, of course.
- So I really didn't
think that many people
were gonna read it, but I also think
that one of the reasons
why it's still, look,
popular today and still in print
and tons of people read the book,
a lot of it has to do with the movie.
The movie definitely
made people re-interested
in the book, was because Patrick Bateman
is kind of a curator of his life in a way,
very much the way people are now!
I mean, a lot of "American
Psycho" was almost
as if Patrick Bateman is showing you
a series of selfies on his Instagram.
He's constantly describing his life
and what he's wearing and what he's eating
and where he's going and
what restaurant he's at,
and what dishes he's
eating in the restaurant.
It basically is how people
treat their lives today,
from this almost God's
eye view of, you know,
not living or participating in it,
but actually just photographing it,
and curating their life,
rather than living their life.
- Yeah, and what about
the part about having
two separate lives in a way?
Because that's, what seems to me,
people are doing online right now!
- Well, that is true, but you can also...
I don't know if I have a
lot of sympathy for that.
It kind of is frustrating
to see people do that,
but look, I know a lot of people
on Instagram that do that.
I talked to my partner's
sister who, one morning,
was extremely depressed
and they were on the phone,
and she was just
complaining about her life
and how unhappy she was,
and then 15 minutes later,
she took these Instagram
photos of herself,
totally happy, with the kids,
(Dave laughing)
going, "Great Monday,
lookin' forward to the week!"
So I don't know, I mean, I
think people are complicated,
and I think people are basically
wrecks a lot of the time,
and I think that social
media gives them a chance
to make them feel better
about themselves to a degree.
But I do wonder if the
tides are going to turn
and we are going to have a more realistic,
authentic social media, or if, maybe,
it's just not possible,
because of the medium itself.
- Yeah, it's interesting, I mean,
I think some of us are
trying to fight through it
and do something more authentic
and be a little more real
and not--
- I think you certainly do!
- Well, I try, but it's like
you have to try to do it,
as opposed to just waking up--
- I mean, I've stopped.
- Right, you, right--
- I stopped!
- So you're on Twitter much less, yeah.
- I tweet my podcast out.
- Yeah.
- And occasionally I'll make
a joke about, I don't know,
I made a joke about the
coronavirus a week ago,
and then people thought it was racist.
(Dave chuckling)
So it was sort of like,
it was a doge, it was
a doge meme, you know?
Remember those dogs?
- (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah!
- The Shiba Inus, and it was going,
ordering some bat soup and then saying,
"Oh, I've got the virums," or whatever,
something in doge-speak.
- Oh, so you were being
anti-Asian.
- Anti-Asian, yes,
because the doge was buying
the bat soup from a dog
that had an Asian mustache, and whatever,
and got a lot of racism
from that, so I don't do it,
I don't really do it anymore.
I don't really care, I'm
older, it doesn't really
(Dave laughing)
matter that much to me.
I have a podcast, I can say
a lot of what I wanna say
on the podcast without
having to be careful
about how its worded in a 200-word tweet.
And so that's one of the
reasons why podcasting
began to seem so interesting to me,
because you could place
everything within context
in a way that you can't on social media.
- Yeah, are you not surprised, then,
that people actually care
about this sort of thing?
- What sort of thing?
- 'Cause it's like, well,
meaning conversation, like
actual, just decent conversation,
where if you watch everything
on mainstream media
and the sound-bites and everything,
it's just like we're gettin'
clubbed over the head.
And then it doesn't seem
very, like people always say,
"Oh, Dave, it's so great,
you bring people in,
"you treat them fairly, you
have nice conversations,
"blah blah blah," and I'm like,
"This is not rocket science,
"you know?"
- Well, this is also not
the mainstream media.
- Yeah!
- And my podcast is not
the mainstream media.
- Yeah, no, that's what I mean,
that people are starving
for something else!
- Oh, I certainly think
that's why podcasts blew up.
That's one reason why podcasts blew up
and why it's become such a popular thing,
because of its authenticity,
and that it is two people
having a real conversation,
compared to, I mean, I really don't,
I don't understand--
- 'Cause we can get
into the gotcha questions,
they're all here,
and I needed to do them
in two minutes each.
- What, the--
- The gotcha questions,
they're all here! (laughs)
- Oh, I'm fine
with the gotcha questions,
I love gotcha questions.
- I love that when you walked in,
immediately you were like,
"Dave, whatever you wanna do."
- Yeah, whatever you wanna
do, it's totally fine.
But I do think that it's
hard for me to watch
people on talk shows
now, or morning shows,
promoting whatever they are,
and pretending to have some
kind of real conversation.
It's unfathomable to me
that anybody can do that,
let alone read a magazine article
about a celebrity, it just seems like,
because they're so neutered,
they're so boring.
- Yeah, one of the things
I've been thinkin' about
lately is when I go
on my book tour for my first book,
so you've been through this rodeo before,
is that I'm gonna have
to go on these shows!
And it's like, the idea
that I would have to change
from this mode, which
is just me being myself
sitting across from you doin'
it, no time constraints,
the rest of it, versus
now, go on all those shows
between commercial breaks,
the pointed questions,
you gotta get somebody
riled up about somethin'!
That actually gives me a
little anxiety, versus,
you wanna just talk about
whatever you wanna talk about
for as long as you want
to, I'm good to go!
- But you can do it authentically.
Because I hadn't been on
a book tour for 10 years,
and I went on one last year,
and I'm still kind of on it,
and I was shaky at first,
not doing it for 10 years, 2010 to 2019,
a lot has changed.
- A lot changes, yeah.
- And so I kind of, I got used to it,
and I figured out how you do that
and you stay on authentic person.
Also, I have to tell you,
a lot of it was print,
and the things that I did that were media
was surprisingly, I mean, look,
I did a lot of mainstream stuff.
I did Bill Maher, I did stuff on Fox,
but a lot of the mainstream media
didn't wanna touch me,
so that was something
that I really didn't have to worry about.
A little bit different in England,
a little bit different in France,
but when I did the mainstream
stuff, the talk shows,
I was just myself, and people liked it!
People liked it!
I think that's what you have to do.
People can smell inauthenticity.
And part of the problem now is that,
and my partner I talk
about this all the time,
is that, how do you survive
in this day and age
without being authentic?
You can't really do it!
- You can't do it.
- You might have been able
to do it 10 years ago,
and done your pose and
said your scripted lines.
It just doesn't work now; people smell it.
And that also means that you will be hated
by a lot of people, and you
just have to live your life
and let the cards fall where they may.
And that means maybe you're
not gonna get that job
or be on that show or whatever,
but you have to be able to sleep at night.
- Yeah, it's interesting
'cause one of the things
that I like about that sort
of pressure of authenticity,
maybe that's not the right word, pressure,
but it constantly forces
you to reinvent yourself
in a way, because it's
like if I give a talk,
and then I give the same
talk the next night,
which I never try to do, I'm
always trying to push myself
to change it and feel, really just like,
what am I really thinking right now?
Or did I think this and now I
moved it forward a little bit,
or did this thought go
the other way or whatever,
and that's actually good, creatively!
- But you're also doing
that when you say that,
kind of naturally--
- Yeah, yeah,
I'm not really trying, but--
- I think that's kind of,
the fact that you're
even thinking about that,
it means that you are concerned about this
and it's coming to you naturally.
I don't think you're sweating it,
necessarily.
- Yeah, no.
- Because I feel the
same way, I don't know,
I feel that I've been able
to adapt in many ways,
and want to adapt to what's
going on in the world!
And my career is very different now
than it was at one point,
and I also think it's hard
to keep a career going
that long without adapting,
without adapting, I mean,
I think you're stuck in a kind of stasis,
and that as an artist or as a creator,
that you want to adapt,
that it's something
that you want to do, that
it feels natural to you.
If this is making sense to anybody.
- It makes some sense, I'm kinda there.
- All right.
- So you mentioned
cancel culture before
and then I brought up
the charges of misogyny
related to "American Psycho."
So I just read on your Wikipedia,
and if it's on Wikipedia,
it's gotta be true,
that you had the deal
for "American Psycho"
with Simon & Schuster but
then because, what was it,
Women of NOW, or the NOW
of Women, or something,
they accused you of being misogynistic,
and then was the book dropped?
I mean, this is sort of an early version
of cancel culture!
- Oh, it is, it was.
- Yeah, clean that story up for me.
I got it on Wikipedia--
- Look, I had a deal
at Simon & Schuster, a big
deal at Simon & Schuster.
I turned the book in.
This is a long time ago,
in December of 1989.
And throughout 1990,
the book kind of moved
through the usual rungs of the ladder
that it does through a publishing house,
getting copy-edited,
we figure out a cover,
your editor does some basic editing on it.
But there were people
in the publishing house
who were very offended
by "American Psycho,"
usually assistants, young people
working in the publishing house.
And leaks started happening,
leaks of some of the most violent passages
were being sent to the press
and certain members of the press,
and so suddenly it became a story.
And the book hadn't been published yet,
but it became a story,
and it became more and more controversial
the more and more that these
notorious scenes were leaked.
And of course, out of context,
- Out of context, yeah.
- They're horrible.
And so anyway, the controversy got louder
and louder and louder, and yes,
kind of like today in a way,
Simon & Schuster collapsed and said,
"We are not gonna publish this book
"because of the outcry in the media."
Now this is another
thing that happened then
is that it was actually
the corporation that owned
Simon & Schuster that
demanded the cancellation.
It was Gulf+Western who
owned Simon & Schuster,
and the head of Gulf+Western
did not like the controversy,
did not like the fact that his corporation
was being blemished by this book,
who ordered the cancellation.
I knew the head of that company,
of Simon & Schuster, quite well,
and I knew that he wasn't
the one who canceled it,
but he was the fall
guy, he had to take it.
So anyway, that is what happened.
It's a happy ending
because a better publisher
picked up "American Psycho"
and they published it
a few months later and you know
the rest is whatever it is.
- Right, so it definitely ends
happily and a movie is made
and everything else--
- And I have to say,
one thing that's very interesting
is that Tammy Bruce was the head of NOW,
who was the most against
"American Psycho."
She was my nemesis
then, in 1991, and now--
- That's hilarious, I mean--
- And now she is one
of the leading lights, the
bright lights on Fox, actually!
And so I don't know, I
find that kind of ironic
in the way that the culture works.
- I mean, that fits so
much of a lot of stuff
that we've talked about privately
because I've only met Tammy Bruce once.
It was at a David Horowitz
Freedom Center thing,
and David Horowitz was a famous lefty,
children of communists who--
- Of course, of course!
- Then became conservative.
- Yes.
- And at his conference he did a thing
on sort of the new
generation of former lefties
that have sort of woken up, and it was me,
Tammy Bruce, Candace Owens
and a couple other people,
so that's the only time I
met her, and it's funny,
she was opposed to you back then,
and now here we are!
- I know.
- That's actually a
great segue for a little
political stuff; where
are you politically?
I mean, I have a sense
of kinda where you're at,
and everything these days feels
sort of amorphous, but--
- You know what?
I was never a political
person, I just wasn't.
Maybe it was because I
was privileged to a degree
and politics just didn't
interest me, why would they?
I was a privileged white kid.
And moving from high school into college
during the Reagan '80s,
everything seemed whatever,
I mean, I guess I complained
about Reagan mindlessly,
like all the kids in my class,
and a lot of people took
"American Psycho" to be a book
that was critical of the
values of the Reagan '80s.
And it was critical of some
of the cultural values,
certainly about greed and about yuppiedom,
but I had no beef with Ronald Reagan!
I mean, that wasn't part of
what that book was about.
Some of his iconography
is used in the book,
but that was just, he
was just the president
during the time that that book took place.
And then I was living with someone
for a long time who was
very invested in politics,
actually ran a couple
gubernatorial campaigns
in the '90s, and I got a close-up
look to that and I just hated it.
I just hated the whole notion
of how it was all played out,
and none of it interested me.
During the Obama era, everything's fine!
I mean, I wasn't really paying attention.
Something happened with Trump,
something happened with Trump
that I think has happened
to all of us to one degree or another.
Something was announced.
And again, another
presidential election cycle
is coming up and I'm kind of following it,
but suddenly I'm following it because
it's very interesting to me how the media
is treating the Donald Trump narrative.
Now, I'm talking about
a media that I had been
following closely for 30
years, and trusted, somewhat.
The New York Times, CNN,
New York Times and CNN,
all of my life, I read
them and I trusted them
and I believed in them
and they were, you know,
and I began to think that
they were missing the story,
that they were going off a different path
that really wasn't the reality,
that wasn't the reality,
that there was a new narrative
that they were forming.
And this began to bother me.
And I don't know why--
- I hear ya, brother! (laughs)
- I don't know why, I'm nonpartisan.
I never saw myself, really, if I saw,
I think we have a similar trajectory.
I think that I was a
liberal guy who was gay
and was rightly so,
rightly so, it was fine.
Never stridently, never
far left or whatever,
but I believed in the good
fight on the liberal side.
Something happened!
I began to see that
this side was curdling.
And that's something--
- Do you remember a moment?
- Oh, I do!
- 'Cause a lot of people
have, like, the moment,
yeah, what was your moment?
- My moment was the headline
of the New York Times
after, I guess it was the first or second
Republican debate where
Trump had gone on CNN
and talked about how
Megyn Kelly was bleeding
through her eyes--
- I think it was the first--
- Whatever, okay.
- I think it was the first.
- And I thought, okay, well, whatever,
but it was the top headline,
at the top of the New York Times.
And I thought, that is
so strange, why is that?
To humiliate Trump to some degree?
This was just something that you could
kind of talk about minimally,
but to create an entire
narrative over this,
in order to humiliate him
or to get him canceled,
was the beginning for me, of like,
oh, there's something else going on.
There's a secret history here!
And that is how I began to become
somewhat radicalized, in a way,
from who I thought I was
to where I ended up being.
And again, I have to
say, I'm not a partisan.
I still am someone who is loathe to vote.
I'm in the majority of this country.
And yet, what I've noticed--
- What do you mean,
you didn't go to my dumpy
polling station over here,
where I'm pretty sure I
contracted coronavirus?
(Bret laughing)
You weren't there yesterday?
- No, I was not there.
And I'm not going to be there, either!
But what I found so interesting,
and really what "White,"
a lot of it is about,
is about how I saw the
left begin to disintegrate.
A part of the aisle
that I thought I was on!
I thought I was in that part,
that side of the theater!
And I realized that I'm not,
and I don't want to be on
this side of the theater
if it is this hysterical, this crazed.
And also, I really hated
the creation of narratives
that were obviously not
true, that were being used
to undermine a legally-elected president,
whether I liked him or didn't like him.
I just thought there was something
so distinctly un-American about the way
the left was creating their stories,
that it just began
to unnerve me.
- Yeah, you know what's
super interesting about that,
that David Horowitz,
who we just mentioned,
when I had him in here,
he's a huge Trump supporter,
and I asked him, "Do you have
a moment when that happened?"
And he mentioned the
Megyn Kelly bleeding line!
'Cause he said for him, as
someone that was a conservative,
but didn't understand the Trump thing,
he's like, that moment got it for him
because it was basically Trump being like,
"Screw all of you, I play
by none of your rules."
So that same moment that sort of had you
wake up from a media
perspective as a lefty,
for him as a conservative was like,
that was why he loved Trump.
- But it's so weird because yes,
the Trump "screw all the rules"
guy is what everyone loves.
That's what everybody loves!
And it's so interesting that yet,
on the other side is what a lot of people
are horrified by who would normally
love that in a person!
- Right, they're supposed
to be in love with, right?
- And yet, because it's Trump,
and this is the problem with Trump,
and I talk about this again in the book.
I really believe it's about an aesthetic.
It's about this guy and what he looks like
and I always have said that if Trump
was in the package of a Mitt Romney,
it might be more palatable
for a lot of people,
and we certainly would not have this kind
of what is truly, I believe,
Trump derangement syndrome.
I believe it exists.
- Do you mean purely
physically, or you also mean--
- No, not purely physically--
- Some of the language--
- The language--
- The way he speaks, and--
- The tweets, everything,
even, look, my mom is
a huge Trump supporter,
as is my stepdad, as a
lot of friends of mine,
and that is the one complaint
that kind of comes up
that they wish that he would
take things down a bit,
though I don't believe that.
- I don't believe it either!
- I don't believe that either.
I believe that is
exactly why they like him
and that, again, it's that kind of like,
well, it proves that
you're a better person
than perhaps you really are,
to say something like that.
- Well, that's what I always
think of the never-Trump
liberals or the never-Trump
conservatives, it's like,
he did all the dirty work,
he had to do all the tweets
and all that stuff, and then he won!
You guys just always lose!
- Yeah, no, I know.
- So it's easy to crap
on him so you can still
go to nice parties, you know?
- No, I know.
But it really is, I think,
part of the problem,
is that for some reason,
Trump just, I mean,
I still hear it from people, this notion,
and they're still not over it,
that he's not presidential.
I think people are talking like it's 2015.
I think everything has changed.
A lot of things have changed
about the presidency under Trump.
He's really, he's been the
bull in the china shop.
And he's still there, and
he's still the disrupter,
which is what a lot of
people wanted from him.
What I don't get on the
other side, and believe me,
I live with someone who is a far-left
Bernie Sanders supporter
who really crumples
at the thought of Trump or
seeing him on TV every night,
just completely loses his shit over Trump.
I just don't understand
where there wasn't a moment
where, a kind of cunning didn't come
into liberal thinking about
how to deal with Trump.
That instead, it was just pandemonium,
(Dave laughing)
apocalyptic hysteria,
it was everything, let's
create the Russian theory,
let's create this, let's
bring Stormy Daniels out,
let's bring Michael Avenatti,
let's do all of these things,
instead of, I think,
just finding the perfect
Southern leftist
who could kind of play with
Trump on his own field--
- Right, like have a nice sense of humor,
be kinda respectable and be able to--
- And I think, basically, and
I think part of the problem
that happened during those three years
was that the left became fractured,
they lost judgment, that's what happened.
They lost judgment with Trump,
because once you start
getting that hysterical
and you start making up all this stuff,
you lose your judgment.
And I think that is
ultimately where they are now.
But again, we'll see how it plays out,
but getting back to the--
- As a writer, well,
as a writer, though, is
Trump in a way the most
perfect character that someone
could ever come up with,
because of that, because
of his ability to have
so many people have completely
polar opposite reactions
when he says one thing,
and if you look at Twitter,
and it's like one person
heard the end of the world
and one person heard the messiah coming.
That as a character, for a writer,
must be like, "Whoa, that's
what I wanna come up with!"
- Well, look I am a
fairly positive person,
so if those people hear
the messiah coming,
well, they heard the messiah coming.
I think the other side is deaf and blind
to whatever Trump offers the other side.
That's the problem, the
conversation isn't happening.
It is so one-note on one side,
in terms of understanding Trump,
of getting out of your bubble
and understanding the appeal of Trump.
If you're not able to
do that, you're dead,
you're basically, you're
gonna be a very unhappy,
very miserable person, but--
- That's also why I see
a lot of people that I
thought were pretty relevant
a couple years ago
politically and socially
that now seem crazy to me,
because they've been unable
to recalibrate after this,
or at least see a little bit
of something that other people saw.
- I'm reading this book
called "Antisocial"
by Andrew Marantz, who's a
writer for "The New Yorker."
And it really is about
his hellish descent into,
it started with the DeploraBall
in Washington, and inauguration 2017,
and trying to figure out alt-right people
like whatever, Mike Cernovich or Milo,
and it really reads like a lot
of stuff in "The New Yorker,"
in a very musty way,
(Dave laughing)
like we're still in 2015 and
you really are still lost,
kind of complaining about things
that we've all kinda
moved on from, in a way.
And I see the left kind
of stuck in that pocket,
that they're still thinking about things
that have long been dismantled,
and that it's a brand new world in a way,
and they're not ushering
themselves into it,
and that's a problem.
- Yeah.
- And that they don't
listen to anybody, either!
- So since you told me
that nothing's off-topic
and you already brought
him up, so you mentioned,
so your partner, you say "partner"--
- I said "partner," yeah.
- When you say "partner,"
that always reminds me--
- My boyfriend!
- Boyfriend, but partner
always seems like you're
playing tennis together.
- He was a boyfriend for two--
- Or you're playing
golf or something, or--
- He was a boyfriend for
two years and now it's been,
going on 11, he's a partner now. (laughs)
He moved into partner.
- All right, he's partner, fair enough.
- He's not my husband!
- So he's a Bernie guy--
- He's a Bernie guy.
- And obviously, you're not.
And I think that's super interesting.
We had dinner one night, the four of us.
- Yes, we did.
- And I think it's super
interesting because I get a lot of email
from people that are breaking up
over this kinda stuff!
- Right.
- I'm talking about marriages!
I have had people email me
that they have had divorces
or are in the midst of a
divorce because of this!
Yet, you guys can somehow--
- Absurd.
- Work past that.
- I think, look,
because politics are
not the be-all, end-all,
even though many people
might feel that way
in this crazy environment and atmosphere
that we're living in, I won't allow it!
I simply won't allow it.
And I don't think he will
allow it either, I mean,
we like each other more than that.
- Right, but is that generally easier
for, do you think, someone
coming from your perspective,
than usually the leftist,
we don't have to make this
about your boyfriend specifically,
your partner, but you know what I mean,
I find people that are
coming from it from a more,
it's "Oh, politics isn't
everything" perspective
can let a lot of stuff go, versus--
- Oh, yeah!
- A lot of lefties,
they think politics is everything, right?
They believe that this
thing is everything.
- Look, I am of that demo.
- Yeah.
- I will not let politics
destroy a relationship
and I will not let it
destroy a friendship at all!
I had dinner last night with three friends
who are on the right,
who are conservative.
I'm having dinner tomorrow
night with three friends
who are Democrat and
heavily SoCal liberals.
I move through both worlds,
and I will never define a
friend or not have a friend
based on what their politics
are, I simply won't do it.
I won't disinvite someone
based on their politics!
That is absurd, though of course,
this has happened, and
it's happened to me,
through this book and through my podcast,
even though I am not a
vocal Trump supporter,
and what I do is I've been criticized
in the media and I've
been criticizing people
who have been losing
their minds over Trump.
That gets you disinvited from
a lot of stuff, so that--
- To be clear, I mean, you
talk about this in the book,
you didn't even vote for Trump!
- No, I didn't vote for Trump.
- Right, but so much--
- It's not enough.
- Of the the book is related
to this--
- It's not enough!
- Yeah, it's not enough, yeah.
- You have to claw your face off.
You have to claw your
face off, but anyway,
I have to say, it would be absurd to me
if I lost my relationship with
my boyfriend over politics.
I think that would be absurd, yet,
it's come close, it's come close at times.
Certainly the summer of 2018
when everything looked
like it was blowing up
and the Kavanaugh hearings were happening,
and we were on separate
sides of the aisle.
I thought the Kavanaugh
hearings were a joke!
A complete joke.
- Yeah, that was a complete--
- He thought she was a heroine, a heroine.
That, I thought, was insane.
I thought it was absolutely
insane, and so we did
get to a couple of
whisper-screaming arguments
(both laughing)
in pavilions or wherever.
It was just nuts, and I
could barely drive the car
because we were screaming
at each other over this.
And I couldn't believe
how fast it would come on.
It wasn't a slow burn.
It would go one to 100
in like five seconds,
and you're screaming at
each other over this.
You cannot believe how one person sees.
At the same time, you take a deep breath
and you realize, what is this
about, what is this about?
And I will say, I am the more mature one.
(Dave laughing)
I don't say anything anymore.
I just keep it closed, I mean--
- You'll suck it up and say
you're the more mature one,
that's good.
- He was saying some things
about Bernie and about
Trump that just like,
"Well, maybe, you know, so."
But I can't imagine
letting politics define
not only my love life or my friendships!
Not gonna happen.
- So all the people that
when they've gone crazy,
one of the guys who helped
frame some of this for me,
do you know Michael Malice by any chance?
- I don't know if I do.
- He's an interesting guy
you'd like a lot, he's
really sort of, he's even,
he's not even a libertarian,
he's more of like an ancap,
no government, he likes chaos.
I call him the Willy Wonka of politics.
He's just kinda out there.
- Right.
- A really interesting thinker,
but he loves the tumult
that we're in right now.
Where I think my default is a little more,
if everyone could just calm down--
- Yeah, that's what mine is,
too!
- I think things would
be a little bit better.
- Oh, yeah.
- But I would imagine
though, also, as a writer,
and generally as a
creative person, it's like,
you kinda have to like it a little bit
if you're gonna be able to
get anything done, right?
Like if you were hating
this entire thing right now,
do you think you could
be creative through it?
- I actually do hate a lot of it!
I really do hate a lot of
it, and it's not, again,
the side that elected Trump that I hate.
I really do hate what's become
of the other side of the aisle.
That's really my problem, and
that's what makes me so sad,
and depresses me all the time,
is that there is this complete absence
of connection, of wanting to connect
and wanting to stem this
divide that's happening,
wanting to mend, mend something.
And I do think that the media is at fault.
A huge part of it is at fault.
I don't think Russians bots
are to blame for anything.
The media must be blamed for really sowing
these seeds of discord.
And the fact that my friends
on the left cannot speak
to somebody often, on
the right, is a problem!
I think there was some poll taken where
92% of people on the right
would have a liberal over,
8% of liberals would have a conservative,
or whatever that is, I really do see that!
I see that around L.A. and I see that
around the people that I know in New York.
That actually makes me depressed!
That is a depressing thing.
It doesn't make me happy to
be alive or to be a writer.
And a lot of what I'm writing right now
really has nothing to do with any of this.
I'm writing a novel that's set in 1980,
I'm writing another novel that's
based on an intellectual property,
so I don't know if there's
anything about this period
that I necessarily want to write about.
I do think that it is
kind of a very depressing,
stressful period to a degree.
I'm a lot older, so I
kinda let it run off me,
but you know, there is stress
floating around everywhere.
- Yeah, are you surprised
how it's worldwide now?
That it's not just a little L.A. bubble,
it's not just a little American thing,
that it seems to be everywhere now?
- Well, look, I was
surprised that this book
was being published in as
many countries as it was,
because it's nonfiction and
it seems to be specifically
about the United States and what's been
going on in the last
five or 10 years here,
culturally, politically to a degree.
But I did two tours of
France for this book,
because they see the same
thing kind of happening.
Cancel culture is rearing its head,
political correctness to an
almost frightening degree,
cultural appropriation is
starting to also rear its head,
the Me Too movement is
being weaponized in ways
that go against whatever its initial
promise was when it began.
And a lot of people were getting worried.
Certainly when I was touring through Italy
of all places, the same concerns,
that all of these things
that we're talking about here
is kind of sweeping
along Europe, at least,
throughout Europe, and that nationalism,
for another thing, is
sweeping along Europe as well,
which of course drives your
average liberal quite insane,
and gets 'em quite upset.
- Quite bananas, yeah.
- But also, I mean,
what is being recorded?
I mean, what is being
recorded, or reported?
The elections in Israel
happened the last few days.
You could hear a cricket!
- Yeah.
- About anything about
Netanyahu, I mean, anything.
And the way the headlines
were in the New York Times
and the L.A. Times were,
"might be," "looks like it,"
instead of decisively saying
that this has happened.
So I don't know, I mean, I think
we're in a very weird place
in terms of how we're
getting our information
and how we're getting our
information from everywhere,
so like you're saying,
yes, around the world,
this, whatever this might
be, yeah, it's happening.
- Do you think maybe we're
starting to enter a time
when we won't need institutions
the way we needed them?
So you mentioned the New York Times
and CNN before, these things that
were pillars--
- Of course, of course.
- That we all believed
in, and maybe that's part
of why younger people are just like,
"Eh, screw all this"?
- Yes!
And it's all becoming niche.
I'm seeing so much shit drop away from me,
so much stuff that I used to believe in,
that I used to watch, that I used to read,
just dropping away from me
because of, really, most of the time,
a kind of bias that I smell
and I can't deal with.
So I find a lot of that
just dropping away from me.
So yes, these institutions--
- Do you think there's a risk,
though, if they all crumble?
- Well, interesting, what's the risk?
- Well, the risk being that if
all the institutions crumble,
the things that sort
of link us to something
kind of mainstream,
that the Overton Window
will be so blown away that we're just
gonna have factions of people constantly
warring over what is actually true,
because there will be no institutions
that are able to wrangle--
- Don't you think
that's happening?
- You know, I do think that's
happening and I've
started to come to believe
that maybe that is the only alternative.
But I do think maybe
for a democracy to work,
you still need some sort of functioning--
- You think having the New York Times
being The Gray Lady--
- No, I'm not the--
- No, I'm just saying, The Gray Lady
of the country is really healthy?
I don't.
- No, I don't either,
I don't either.
- I absolutely don't.
And I think it's--
- I just wonder,
in the absence--
- It could be a problem.
- I just wonder in the
absence of all institutions,
as we watch colleges
crumble and universities,
which should probably
rightly crumble, too,
and we watch the media
establishment crumble
and now the political--
- Yeah.
- We're watching the Democratic Party
crumble in front of our eyes!
Well, what comes after, you know?
- I think easier for
younger people, perhaps,
who did not grow up like
us, with, for a long time,
a belief in these institutions.
- Yeah, that's the heart of what
I'm asking, yeah.
- Right, because, again,
my partner is very easily more adaptable
to a wide range of places
to get his information
and I don't even think he
reads the New York Times,
but also, his antenna
has been, I don't know,
sharpened during the
last three years, too.
And he has gone to many, many different
sources to get his information.
And I remember, there was a moment
the week of the Mueller
Report when it came out,
and he was so excited.
He had been fed these conspiracy theories
by Rachel Maddow for three years,
been sitting there at six o'clock here,
California time, waiting
for Rachel to come on,
and the Mueller Report was gonna come out
and it was going to completely
justify all the reporting.
Well, that night happened,
and I remember how quiet
it was in the house,
and I remember that he
did not turn on MSNBC
for about five days, did not turn it on,
and grumbled about it to
me, he said, "Oh, God,
"what was I thinking, how could have,
"I mean, God, I wasted so much time
"listening to this all the time,"
and that was really the
beginning where I noticed
that he was beginning to
get his news from a wide
variety of places that
were extremely niche,
YouTube, social media,
he's fine with that.
I still have a frustration with the fact
that these structures that
I believed in for so long
are no longer trustworthy.
- Yeah.
- And so for him, it's a shrug.
For me it's a bit of a moral grappling.
- Yeah, well, I think
maybe that is just this,
and that's what I mean
by, we're sort of like
this last generation that
grew up pre-internet, right?
Somethin' like that, the Gen Xers,
so it's like we still have
an affinity for a certain
amount of old things--
- Oh, I do!
- And they weren't all bad!
The New York Times wasn't always bad!
- No, no, no, no, not at all.
- So to watch it go to where it's gone--
- It's disturbing!
- Yeah!
- It is disturbing, and so,
but I have kind of gotten over that
to the degree that I've gotten over CNN.
And now, but it's very hard to then get
your news, you build your
own news feed, basically.
But you know what, I
was never that person!
So I really do look at
both sides constantly.
If you look at my Twitter feed,
I'm looking at stuff from the left,
from the right, from all over the place,
and I'm interested in how people
define the news that's important to them,
and what they feel is
vital, and what they don't.
And so, again, that thing
about the Israeli elections
or whether it's about how
woke "Invisible Man" is,
the movie that came out this last weekend,
or not woke it is, I mean,
I'm interested in both sides of the story,
both sides of the aisle,
and I feel that that
is missing from so many people now,
that they only want to hear the narrative
that verifies their belief,
rather than being open
to the possibilities of being wrong!
Or not being wrong,
but just maybe that's not
how I feel about something.
I've always wanted that my entire life,
that's what I've always wanted.
I wanted to hear the
other side of the story.
And maybe I'm just old
enough to still be that guy.
I don't know, certainly my
boyfriend feels that way.
He wants to be validated!
- Yeah, that could be
just, you're not that off,
generation-wise, but
yeah, there could be just
a certain amount of years separating that!
- Yeah.
- Yeah, all right,
let's move past politics, you wanna move,
put politics away?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- You got anything else to say
about politics?
- Mm-mm.
- Let's spend the remaining time
doing something that's
a little more in your
direct wheelhouse, just
sort of movies in general,
and the state of art and things like that.
I watched two movies this weekend.
- Yes?
- One, I thought was
this most bizarre, strange,
I could not figure out
if I liked it or hated it
or even if it was a full movie.
I don't even remember what it was called,
it was color of somethin'
with Nicolas Cage.
- "Color Out of Space," yeah.
- "Color Out of Space"?
Did you see this, by any chance?
- I did! (laughs)
- Okay, so I won't even
go into it, was such a, it was a complete
cluster of insanity, but I was like,
"Someone made this movie--"
- They did.
- "That's insane, I can't believe it."
And then I watched "Uncut Gems," the--
- Yeah, I've seen that.
- Did you see that?
- The Adam Sandler movie.
- Yeah, I thought it was
absolutely wickedly brilliant,
and almost perfect, the pacing,
the music, the everything.
And when we finished
watching it I was like,
and I really hadn't heard
a tiny bit about it,
I didn't know what we were watching,
so it's like really nice
when you know nothing
about a movie and then it just
kind of blows you away.
- Yeah, it is.
- Anyway, say all of that to say,
I haven't had that experience in a while,
where I just turned on
somethin' and I just loved it.
What do you make of the
state of movies right now
and the state of art and
the things that we're
gettin' these days?
- Well, because first of all,
that's very rare to find a movie
as well done as "Uncut Gems."
It's not like there 150 of
'em that come out every year.
They just simply don't.
Most years are bad years for movies,
and that is true from 1968 to 1976
through 1989, whatever.
There are great years for movies.
1999 is a famously great year for films,
and this--
- What was '99?
- '99 was everything from "Magnolia"
to "American Beauty" to "Fight Club"
to just an explosion
of indie movies
that were also, had movie stars
and were big-scale event pictures.
But I think part of the problem
is that most movies aren't great,
and it is a very hit-or-miss medium
in terms of something
achieving something, greatness,
or even the kind of enjoyable movie
like "Uncut Gems" is a rare thing to do.
What do I think?
I think that I am just
going with the flow.
I think that last year was a very,
very good year for movies,
and I have a podcast about
films and about culture,
and I usually spend most of
my time the last five years,
since I started this
podcast in 2013, complaining
(Dave laughing)
about the year in movies.
This past year, I couldn't.
It was a really good year for movies,
and "Uncut Gems" was one of those movies,
but you know, a lot of the
time, and I see a lot of movies,
it is "Color Out of Space," it is Nic Cage
unleashed--
- What happened to that guy?
Does anyone know what happened?
'Cause even, I guess he lost all his money
and then I don't know
what exactly happened,
but the movie, the plot,
everything about it,
it was such a mess, I was like,
"This is either the most brilliant thing
"I've ever seen, or the worst movie,"
like there was no
in-between with this thing.
But more importantly, watching him,
it's like, what's happening to this guy?
Is he an actor anymore,
like what the hell's
goin' on here?
- But you have to understand,
Nic Cage started out as a weirdo
in the early '80s in movies,
even in "Valley Girl"--
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- One of his first movies,
he was this outsider,
and I don't think people
remember "Vampire's Kiss,"
which was a movie where he played
a literary agent in New York who thought
he was a vampire or became a vampire.
A whacko, nutjob performance.
A lot of people remember his performance
in "Peggy Sue Got
Married" as a performance
that marred that movie
because it was so bizarre,
and even Coppola, who directed
"Peggy Sue Got Married"
was thinking, what are you doing?
And even the co-star, Kathleen Turner,
was going, "Who am I acting with here?"
So we've got to understand that Nic Cage
has been this kind of actor
for many, many, many years,
and even the movie that
he won the Oscar for,
"Leaving Las Vegas," was a kind
of weird offbeat performance
about a guy who drinks
himself to death in Las Vegas.
So I don't know, I think what's happened
is that he's felt a lot more free
in terms of expressing his inner freak.
And that can be a healthy thing, or not.
I know he needs to make money
and I know that he did
lose all of his money,
and that he will do a movie
if you write the check,
which is about a million bucks--
- By the way, for the record--
- I often say,
he's sometimes good!
We have to understand, he was really good
in that movie called "Mandy."
- So that was the other one--
- From a couple years ago.
- There was a two, I could've bought both
at the same time.
- But "Mandy" works.
"Color Out of Space" doesn't work.
They're both kind of--
- I don't know,
I was like, "Maybe this
is the best performance
"I've ever seen!"
- No, no, no, no.
- There was something
about him that I was like,
I can't stop thinking about--
- No--
- What is this guy on?
- Nic Cage is hit-or-miss,
and he's a miss in "Color Out of Space,"
so I know Nic Cage fans are gonna
come after us, but--
- Now you're gonna get,
you can't mess with the Nic
Cage fans, they're worse than
the intersectional feminists!
- I've been canceled
so many times, I've been
canceled so many times,
I don't care if I'm canceled
over Nic Cage, believe me,
but so, I don't know, I mean, look,
I have a belief in the
medium, I wanna make movies,
I'm going to direct something soon.
So I really do believe
in the medium, but again,
we're older, and movies
still have this patina
of something about them
that I still find special,
even though I find myself constantly
disappointed by them to a certain degree.
And especially after
a year like last year,
when there was, I
thought, 12 or 13 terrific
movies released by the studios.
I'm still a believer.
- So as a guy that is a believer,
when you see fan films
popping up all over YouTube
and like for me, "Star
Wars" was just so mangled
and beaten at this point, and wrecked,
and yet I watch these little
fan films that people make,
these little 10-minute things,
- Yeah, I know!
- That stay true,
and they're artistically beautiful--
- I've seen 'em, I know, I see them.
- And the tech and the special effects--
- I know, I know.
- Are all great, and I'm like,
"Man, Kathleen Kennedy or
whoever's runnin' it now,
"give it to these people!"
Does that stuff inspire you?
- To a degree, but a lot of that
cannot sustain a two-hour movie.
A lot of these fan films are very sweet,
and I get caught up in them as well,
but they are not enough to
sustain a full-fledged movie,
and all the working parts
that you have to think about
when you're putting
together a proper piece
of cinematic entertainment,
whatever that is.
I sound like a old-school
college professor.
But it's true, and I think
this is a very interesting
thing that happens among
people my partner's age.
He's a millennial, he's 33,
is that there is something about craft
that they don't necessarily care about.
Craftsmanship is old-school,
craftsmanship is "Empire,"
"Empire," back to the 20th century.
I think that's a mistake.
I think craft is a big part
of why a lot of things work.
I think style is a big
part of why things work.
And I think that all of
this is kind of taking place
in a kind of style-free zone
that really doesn't care about aesthetics,
but it's about ideology, and
it's also about either the...
A fan film, these movies that we see,
are really based on your
feelings of nostalgia
or sentimentality over a
particular work of movies.
It's not its own thing,
it's not creating your own
reflection of that to a degree.
It's kind of stealing from
the movie and recreating it,
in a way, with music or whatever.
So I don't know, that seems to me
to be a little bit of a
problem and that's why
I also don't find them that interesting.
I can watch a few and then,
but I'm not--
- Yeah, well,
that's what it is, I watch
a few when I'm doin' cardio
and then I'm like--
- But you're right--
- But there's something there,
it's like, at least it's something,
where I go to so many movies
now and I'm like, "Ah,
"this is just kinda nothing."
- They're soulless,
they're nothing, that is true,
and so you're right to a degree,
why not just hand them
off to these people,
because they can't do any worse
than the people who are making them now!
- Yeah, does Hollywood
ever get outta this thing?
Or is that the same symptom
of this sort of institutional crumble?
- Well, I do see that something
interesting has happened,
is that the director, the authorial voice,
is being wiped away in Hollywood.
It's especially being wiped
away by the Marvel movies,
and by the "Star Wars"
movies, to a degree.
- That's actually what I
wanted to ask you next,
about just new stories,
'cause I feel like,
"Star Wars" to me feels, and this is,
my whole house is "Star Wars,"
I love "Star Wars" so much,
and my ethos is from "Star Wars,"
but it feels dead to me now.
Marvel movies, like with
the "Last Avengers,"
they killed it!
- It really took you
this long--
- Yeah, it's enough already!
We need new stories, that's the thought
that both of those
movies, when they ended,
I was like, "Give me somethin' new."
I've had it with these heroes,
I've had it with all this stuff.
- I was feeling this a
lot long ago than you are.
We're a lot--
- The look in your eye right
there, you're like, "Oh."
- You finally got it now,
finally, now--
- Yeah, welcome to my world.
- "Rise of Skywalker" and "Endgame"
were the ones that made--
- Yeah.
You do have a couple years on me,
that's why.
- Yes, I do, I do.
And I was never a "Star Wars" person,
and, blasphemy, I know.
- But generally speaking,
that concept of needing new stories
where so much of what has--
- You know what?
It's not stories, it's
the people telling them.
It's not the story, I
think if you had gotten
really terrific directors
with signature styles,
who were dropped into
the "Star Wars" world,
maybe they could make marvelous movies,
but I don't think that's
the corporate directive.
"Star Wars" has become a corporation.
And I know that people have
been fired from movies before
because they brought a
little bit too much attitude,
a little bit too much of their
own spice into the movies.
I remember the whole
controversy about "Solo,"
that standalone Han Solo
as a young guy movie,
where the directors were
replaced by Ron Howard
at a certain point
because they were bringing
too much of their comedic
edge into that film.
And that seems to be the case,
where the brand is more important
than who is kind of telling
the story, in a way.
They want the brand to stay on topic.
And they don't want it
to veer too much out of
a certain corporate thing.
- I'll give you that.
- And I think J.J. Abrams is the same way.
I don't think J.J. Abrams brings anything
particularly special to
the "Star Wars" movies
compared to other people, do you think so?
- I think at the very--
- And I haven't seen
"Rise of the Skywalker,"
I did not see it, so--
- Well, I would say this--
- I ran out,
I walked out of--
- What, "Last Jedi"?
- The Rian Johnson movie--
- That thing was possibly
the worst--
- I vowed never
to go see another one again.
- That made "Color Outta Lines,"
or whatever the hell movie--
- "Color Out of Space."
- I saw look like, (laughs) you know--
- "Gone with the Wind."
(both laughing)
- Yes, exactly!
"Rise" was fine, but
yes, he just tied it up.
It was just like, we
have such a mess here,
he came in and he was just like,
"Let's just tie this
thing up so we can just
"get it outta here."
- And still, you know--
- Yeah.
- And also, the same thing
is true with the Marvel movies.
They all feel basically the same, I mean--
- You realize they try to cancel
every director that says this, right?
'Cause doesn't the director every,
like Coppola or somebody
will come out and say this
every few months?
- Yeah, Scorsese said it
last year--
- Scorsese said it, right.
- And got into a lot of trouble for it.
He's essentially right
to a certain degree,
but I do think that
those movies, of course,
offer huge audiences a lot of pleasure,
and you can't deny that,
and you do sound like a bit of a grump,
in terms of proclaiming that
Marvel movies aren't cinema.
I think they are cinema,
I think cinema encompasses the fan films
that you and I were just talking about,
and to David Lynch's 24-hour whatever
version of "Twin Peaks"
that he put on, what was it,
Showtime three years ago.
That's cinema too, a lot
of things are cinema.
- A lot of things are cinema,
a lot of things are
conversation, we're outta time!
- Well, thanks for havin' me, Dave!
- We'll continue this over dinner,
we'll see if we can--
- I would love to.
- Convert your partner boyfriend
to the dark side.
- Yeah.
- Now we've really tied it together.
- I hope so too.
- Follow this man, he makes sense,
@BretEastonEllis on the Twitter.
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