Bret Easton Ellis

Paul Schrader to Direct BAIT Written by Bret Easton Ellis

by Adam Chitwood    Posted: August 2nd, 2011 at 6:42 pm

Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader has signed on to direct the indie thriller Bait. Variety reports that Schrader will direct the film, and is currently polishing the script written by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis. The story centers on a group of students who are trapped in shark-infested waters by a lunatic. In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, Schrader’s most noted films came out of his collaboration with Martin Scorsese, as he wrote the scripts for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead.

Schrader has also directed a number of films on his own, and has most recently been developing The Jesuit with Willem Dafoe and Oscar Issac attached to star. Bait is definitely an unexpected project, but with Ellis writing the initial draft it’s safe to assume that this isn’t your typical “teens in peril” gorefest.

Jonas Pate to Direct Bret Easton Ellis Script BAIT

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: December 17th, 2010 at 8:55 am

Jonas Pate (Caprica) will direct the Bret Easton Ellis-scripted thriller Bait for Picture Machine and Galavis Films.  For those who don’t know, Ellis is the writer behind such novels as American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and The Rules of Attraction.  According to Variety, his script for Bait “centers on a disturbed woman who holds a group of American students hostage in shark-infested waters.”  I’m interested to see this movie so I can watch how the students get into that situation.

The film is set in Spain so I assume the students are on a break of some kind and carelessly backpacking through Europe without realize that most Europeans don’t see us as “exotic” as much as “eventually-murdered”.  But even if you remove European disdain, how does the hostage situation play out?  Does one of the students say, “Man!  How can this spring break get any worse?”  “We’re in shark-infested waters.”  “Oh.  That’s how.” (I used the image above because it features a shark and an explosion, and hopefully Bait will have both. Surprisingly enough, I couldn’t find an image of hostages in shark-infested waters.  Click over to TopatoCo to buy the shirt).

Hayden Panettiere and Nikki Reed to Star in DOWNERS GROVE; Script by Bret Easton Ellis

by Tommy Cook    Posted: November 7th, 2010 at 9:24 pm

Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), and Nikki Reed (Twilight), have agreed to star in the Bret Easton Ellis scripted Downers Grove. Based on a novel by Michael Hornberg, the story, per the Hollywood Reporter, is about a high school student (Pannetierre) who fears she may be the next victim in a series of murders targeted at graduating seniors. The film, to be directed by Nelson McCormick (who helmed the remake of Prom Night and somehow made it worse than the original), will more than likely feature teenagers in various stages of existential crises who, in an attempt to suppress and quell the emptiness inside, turn to drugs and drinks and sex and extravagant spending and sports and makeup and pills and commercial entertainments and well, anything and everything – as is par for the course with all of Ellis’s writings (see: Less than Zero or The Informers or The Rules of Attraction or Imperial Bedrooms for proof on said matter; and by see – I mean read, as the books are all of superior quality to the movies).

Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis Commit THE GOLDEN SUICIDES

by Michael Sullivan    Posted: October 13th, 2009 at 11:14 pm

In 2007, two artists who were hot in the California scene committed suicide, one after the other, following fits of paranoia the two suffered, fearing the government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. Theresa Duncan, a video game designer for girls, killed herself in her bedroom. Jeremy Blake, a popular “digital painter,” found her there and ended his life by walking into the ocean a week later. And Nancy Jo Sales wrote an article for “Vanity Fair” about it. Now, two years later, perhaps the worst combination of writers imaginable are teaming up to pen the film. Find out more about the project, and why Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis spell disaster, after the jump.

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