Ellis was one of the literary Brat Pack[1] and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique as a writer is the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style.

[7] Though many petitions to ban the book saw Ellis dropped by Simon & Schuster,[5] the resounding controversy convinced Alfred A. Knopf to release it as a paperback later that year.

During the initial release of his third novel, American Psycho, Ellis said that his father was abusive and was the basis of the book's best-known character, Patrick Bateman.

[12] After the success and controversy of Less than Zero in 1985, Ellis became closely associated and good friends with fellow Brat Pack writer Jay McInerney: the two became known as the "toxic twins" for their highly publicized late-night debauchery.

[13] Ellis became a pariah for a time following the release of American Psycho (1991), which later became a critical and cult hit, more so after its 2000 movie adaptation.

After the death of his lover Michael Wade Kaplan, Ellis was spurred to finish Lunar Park and inflected it with a new tone of wistfulness.

When Van Sant appeared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast on February 12, 2014, he stated that he was never attached to the project as a screenwriter or a director, merely a consultant, saying that the material seemed too tricky for him to properly render on screen.

Ellis and Van Sant mentioned that Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling were approached to star as Duncan and Blake, respectively.

As of April 2014, radical filmmaker Gaspar Noé was officially attached to direct if the film went into production, but he proved troublesome to work with due to his erratic behavior.

[23] The film was released in 2013 and critically panned, but was a modest financial success, with Lindsay Lohan's performance in the lead role earning some positive reviews.

"[28] Responding to Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign, aimed at preventing suicide among LGBT youth, Ellis tweeted, "Not to bum everyone out, but can we get a reality check here?

In one interview Ellis described feeling a liberation in the completion of the novel that allowed him to come to terms with unresolved issues about his father.

[31] In the "author Q&A" for Lunar Park on the Random House website, Ellis comments on his relationship with Robert, and says he feels that his father was a "tough case" who left him damaged.

[32] Earlier in his career, Ellis said he based the character Patrick Bateman in American Psycho on his father,[33] but in a 2010 interview he said he had lied about this explanation.

"[36] The book was intended to be published by Simon & Schuster, but they withdrew after external protests from groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and many others due to its alleged misogyny.

It contains vignettes of wayward Los Angeles characters ranging from rock stars to vampires, mostly written while Ellis was in college, and so has more in common with the style of Less than Zero.

Ellis has said that the stories in The Informers were collected and released only to fulfill a contractual obligation after discovering that it would take far longer to complete his next novel than he'd intended.

[36] The book plays with themes of media, celebrity, and political violence, and like its predecessor American Psycho it uses surrealism to convey a sense of postmodern dread.

And when I say "best"—the wrong word, I suppose, but I'm not sure what else to replace it with—I mean that I'll never have that energy again, that kind of focus sustained for eight years on a single project.

It is based on Bennington College, which Ellis attended, and where he met future novelist Jonathan Lethem and befriended fellow writers Donna Tartt and Jill Eisenstadt.

In Tartt's The Secret History (1992), her version of Bennington is "Hampden College", although there are oblique connections between it and Ellis's The Rules of Attraction.

[47] Ellis also includes a reference to Tartt's forthcoming Secret History in the form of a passing mention of "that weird Classics group ... probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals."

[49] Patrick also briefly meets with the narrator from McInerney's 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City (who is referred to by his name in the 1988 movie adaptation).

Letters to Sean Bateman from a Camden College girl named Anne visiting grandparents in Los Angeles comprise the eighth chapter.

In May 2014 Bravo announced that it had teamed up with The Rules of Attraction feature film adaptation writer/director Roger Avary and producer Greg Shapiro to develop a limited-run series based on the novel.

The plot will stray from the source material and is described as follows: "Inspired by the book and film of the same name, the high-concept series takes the students and faculty at the fictional Camden College and unravels a murder mystery by telling the same story through 12 different points of view.

Children of the 1%-ers live as unhinged and wild adults in a Bret Easton Ellis world with seemingly no rules to hold these privileged few down."

The aim of the show, which comes in 1-hour segments, is to have Ellis engage in open and honest conversation with his guests about their work, inspirations, and life experiences, as well as music and movies.

Ellis, who has always been averse to publicity, has been using the platform to engage in intellectual conversation and debate about his own observations on the media, the film industry, the music scene and the analog vs. digital age in a generational context.

[58] Guests have included Kanye West, Marilyn Manson, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Kevin Smith, Michael Ian Black, Matt Berninger, Brandon Boyd, B. J. Novak, Gus Van Sant, Joe Swanberg, Ezra Koenig, Ryan Leone, Stephen Malkmus, John Densmore, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, Matty Healy, Ivan Reitman, and Adam Carolla.