Author and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis is now also a podcaster, and for the debut episode of his new venture, the Less Than Zero scribe brought his good friend Kanye West on as guest. Throughout their hour-long conversation — which is only part one of a two-part series — Ellis and West talk about a variety of topics, but considering that the two visionaries are collaborating on a script together, it’s fitting that they spend much of their time discussing their favorite films. For the record, the flick ‘Ye has seen the most is probably Menace II Society, he really enjoys the work of Paul Thomas Anderson (particularly There Will Be Blood), and one of his favorite movies of the year is 12 Years a Slave.
Now, this is a Kanye West interview, which means there are the requisite moments of self-aggrandizement. Take this gem, which is somehow at once egotistical and humble: “If I were to write my title, like, going through the airport and you have to put down what you do, I would literally write ‘Creative Genius,’ except for two reasons: sometimes it takes too long to write that and sometimes I spell the word ‘genius’ wrong.”
Other times, Yeezus doesn’t want to be a god — he just wants to be an average joe who tunes out the world so he can binge-watch Breaking Bad with his boo. “Me and my girl sat up in a hotel [when] we had some days off,” West tells Ellis, “And we said, ‘Look, let’s just go ahead and watch this so we could just be like normal human beings.'” Then, of course, there are other days when the DONDA founder lectures at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design to tell aspiring architects that “the world can be saved through design.”
West and Ellis have a few overlapping projects on their respective CVs, aside from the still-in-the-works screenplay mentioned above. They recently collaborated on an American Psycho-inspired promo for Yeezus, and West also cut his own version of a trailer for The Canyons, a film starring Lindsay Lohan that was written by Ellis. Listen to the whole episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast here.
For a more heated interview segment with ‘Ye, scroll down for a snippet from his November 18 appearance on Philadelphia radio station 107.9 FM. As TMZ points out, the video below catches Kanye getting a little worked up about President Obama calling him a “jackass” a few years ago in the wake of Swiftgate. “I don’t care if somebody’s the president or not,” West says in the video. “I care about thoughts and how you’re helping people and what you bring to the world. My music brings joy to people, what I create brings joy to people.”
