Considering that Kanye West's ticket sales have reportedly been low, it's curious that he's still always in the news. West is looking to further his film career-because film is a part of culture and he's the biggest thing in culture-by producing a project based on Yeezus. He's not messing around either: West tapped one of the most acclaimed modern American authors, Bret Easton Ellis, to write the screenplay.
The pairing of West and Easton Ellis is either perfect or the complete opposite. The rapper probably takes the prize for the biggest ego in America, but Easton Ellis is in the running. The author—responsible for new classics such as Less Than Zero and American Psycho—is great at his day job, but his Twitter account is a constant source of detachment from regular humanity. West's charm was such that he persuaded the initially wary author.
It's in Kanye-land and that's subject to a whole other timeframe," Easton Ellis explained to Vice. "He came and asked me to write the film. I didn't want to at first. Then I listened to Yeezus. It was early summer last year and I was driving in my car. He'd given me an advance copy and I thought, regardless of whether I'm right for this project, I want to work with whoever made this. So f--- it, I said yes. And that's how it happened. That was seven or eight months ago. We'll see what happens."
West is a fan of American Psycho, based on the preview trailer he did for Yeezus that obviously was a reference to the film. Don't get our aforementioned snark wrong: If this pans out, it could amount to a very interesting piece.
