| Bret Easton Ellis |
The Real Bret Easton Ellis
By Dana Goodyear
“The Informers,” an ensemble film set in nineteen-eighties L.A.—Ray-Bans, chopper soundtrack, drugs, rock, vodka in the tub, spiritual alienation rendered as standing on the sidelines of a foursome, clothed—maintains a certain fidelity to that world as it is witnessed by Bret Easton Ellis, the postmodern pastiche author who wrote the short stories on which the film was based. Ellis wrote the stories during long winter breaks from Bennington College, while back home in his childhood bedroom in Sherman Oaks. They came out as a book in 1994, after his best-known novels, “Less Than Zero” and “American Psycho,” had already been published; he wrote the screenplay with Nicholas Jarecki several years ago, and both writers are credited as executive producers on the film.