Bret Easton Ellis Apologizes For Sexist Remarks
by Shannon KeirnanNegative attention-seeking writer Bret Easton Ellis has apologized for his sexist remarks disparaging “Zero Dark Thirty” director Kathryn Bigelow.
Easton said this originally: Kathryn Bigelow would be considered a mildly interesting filmmaker if she was a man but since she's a very hot woman she's really overrated.
The backlash was immediate.
Luckily, Easton has released a lengthy semi-apology, recognizing (perhaps) that his remark crossed a line.
Here’s the important parts. The ones wherein he apologizes, and doesn’t discuss, in great detail “The Hurt Locker.”
“It’s become a problem for the Twitter Me; my Twitter consciousness, just wanting to have fun and be a bit of a provocateur in 140 characters. And then realizing ... err, that’s not really fun or that provocative. It goes beyond douchiness into another more insensitive realm…Twitter seems like a writer’s funhouse to me, not something I’d use “seriously” to “hurt” someone. I don’t want to hurt anybody. And I’m not even saying that Kathryn Bigelow was hurt or even noticed the tweets or even cared. I imagine her balls are bigger than that. I thought that in the Bigelow tweets people might find a certain truth (Yes, Bret! Tell us the truth! You’d know!) about the hypocrisy of the world, of the Hollywood mindset, beautiful women in the movie biz, reverse sexism, etc.
But they ultimately revealed a much more layered sexism that, I guess I thought as a gay man, I could get away with since my supposed vitriol about Bigelow was coming from another “oppressed” class. But in 140 characters it didn’t land that way… the outcry over the Bigelow tweets was eye-opening to me in a way that nothing else has ever been. I got it. I heard it. I looked back at what I was doing with those tweets (quickly, unconsciously, hurriedly, drunkenly) and I have to admit they simply back-fired… No one likes being wrong—I mean really wrong—about something.”