Bret Easton Ellis loves The Hills

The new issue of Fantastic Man features one of my favourite authors Bret Easton Ellis on the cover, with a revealing interview inside. I especially enjoyed it as it reveals 2 new insights about the enigmatic Mr Ellis that I strongly relate to.

Ellis recently relocated to L.A. from New York, and like most authors he works from home, an apartment in L.A. I work from home myself, from a large Art Deco apartment lounge that doubles as the Pilot office. I love working in this environment, it’s a perfect fit with my work process, though I will admit to having the television on for much of each day, invariably CNN. I especially enjoy The Situation Room (10am Tues-Sat, hosted by Wolf Blitzer) and Anderson Cooper 360 (2pm Tues-Sat, hosted by Anderson). Anderson Cooper is what Chelsea Handler would call a ‘silver fox’. If you gave the Pentagon a billion dollar budget to create the perfect TV reporter/presenter – Anderson Cooper is what you’d end up with. I mention this because, in Fantastic Man, we learn the following:

Bret Easton Ellis works in silence, though he confesses to turning on the TV a number of times each day, usually to CNN. “I’ve had a lot of work to do lately and have been quite stressed about it. Having CNN on doesn’t help the cause at all. It’s just so dramatic. They have the most dramatic music. The CNN theme is so menacing. And you find yourself in some relentless adventure movie. And then what shouldn’t even be news is news. A private plane with no one remotely known crashes somewhere and you get coverage of it for an hour. Literally, you can look up from your desk and watch that for forty minutes. It is like watching a film to see how it ends.”

So totally true! Oh man, Bret just described my average weekday, joy! It gets better. Time for a guilty pleasure confession. I’m a big fan of the MTV reality show The Hills. There, I’ve said it. Deal with it. Now the average person is snobbishly dismissive of The Hills, and sees such shows as evidence of the final decline of Western Civilisation as we know it. In my experience, most Hills haters have never actually watched the show. When I was in London a few weeks ago, in the flat I stayed in, lived a delightful Kiwi couple, Dan and Ana. Ana loved The Hills, but boyfriend Dan had banned her from watching it. His reasoning? Something about it rotting the brain and representing the final decline of Western… blah blah blah. Dorks like Dan are missing the point.

Yes, The Hills is a fake reality-show about the fakest people living today – hot rich kids in Hollywood. This is contemporary youth culture reflected back upon itself via the most savage of mirrors… In other words, The Hills is a Bret Easton Ellis novel brought to gloriously-lit and lavishly produced life. I mention this because, in Fantastic Man, we learn the following:

It turns out that Bret is a fan of reality TV as a genre. The author foresaw its rage across the mainstream in Glamorama, when the protagonist imagined himself to be followed around by a film crew day and night. Bret says, “The Hills is the first show to do something completely new. It’s scripted reality, unapologetically presented, that breaks the fourth wall by having these characters interacting with the real world in a way that is completely created. I’m sorry, but whoever invented Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are just… nothing matches it. I’ve never seen L.A. look more beautiful in a work of art. There are no movies that are as beautiful as that and certainly none that understand the beauty and isolation of this city better.”

So totally true! Ha. In your face Dan! During its prime The Hills was one of the most compellingly strange shows ever. Watching the early seasons is exactly like watching a TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ celebrated debut novel Less Than Zero. While stoned. Deeeeeeeeep underwater. Drifting… slowly through the haze… It’s a major rush. TV is rarely this pleasurable.

If you’ve never watched The Hills before, I’m afraid you’ve pretty much missed the boat. The show’s final season with Lauren Conrad has just started on MTV here and there is a strong case to be made that the show jumped the shark some time ago. The first seasons are the strongest, as the concept and style were still fresh and new. But the fact is folks, if you are interested in contemporary popular culture and don’t have a working knowledge of The Hills characters, plot machinations and relevance as a cultural touchstone, then my friend, you don’t understand the culture. Okay, so the glory days of The Hills are over. Heidi and Spencer, or Spedi, as they are now known have gone on to mainstream fame in the US, where they are universally disliked. But, that’s the point. Spencer was the perfectly cast villain of The Hills, a role he played with a ruthlessness that was sheer joy to watch. He is the best TV villain of recent times. There’s an endearing Patrick Batemanesque quality to Spencer that really makes you want to cheer him on. Actually, all of the characters in The Hills talk and act in exactly the same way as the characters in any of Bret Easton Ellis’ first 4 novels.

A typical dialogue exchange in The Hills goes something like this:

HEIDI: Umm, did you see Lauren at the club?

LO: Uhh, yeah.

HEIDI: Was she, like, saying stuff? About me?

LO: Umm. No, she was like… We were there with a bunch of guys, and she was just… I guess maybe?

HEIDI: I mean, that is so not… Just, not like, what you do.

LO: Oh, I know. Sort of. Hey, want to go out tonight? Because, like, I just want to not deal…

Genius! Could have been lifted right off the page from Less Than Zero, The Informers, American Psycho, Glamorama…

Thanks Fantastic Man, and thanks Bret Easton Ellis, you made my day.