Bret Easton Ellis has apologized to "Zero Dark Thirty" director Kathryn Bigelow for a series of tweets saying she was overrated because she was a "very hot woman."
In an essay posted Monday on the Daily Beast [4], the "American Psycho" author addressed each of his tweets individually, explaining his intentions and conceding that his critics were right to jump on him for his unprovoked attacks.
"As someone who is not a white, male, heterosexual filmmaker, as someone who has felt like an outsider for things they couldn't help, as someone who had been bullied for exactly those things he couldn't help -- I guess I should have known better," he wrote.
Ellis went on his anti-Bigelow rampage a little over a week ago, bashing the director's work before he even saw her upcoming film on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- a film certain get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. (The movie opens Wednesday.)
"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," he tweeted, listing her films: "Strange Days, K-19 The Widowmaker, Blue Steel, The Hurt Locker. Are we talking about visionary filmmaking or just OK junk?"
In his apology, Ellis wrote: "It wasn't until the last week or so -- after talking casually to a few women about the tweets, including a journalist doing a piece on me, that female producer, my mom -- and reading the countless news articles about them which, no matter how hyperbolic they were, revealed to me an insensitivity on my part."
Also read: Bret Easton Ellis: Kathryn Bigelow 'Really Overrated' Because She's 'a Very Hot Woman' [5]
In his own defense, he wrote that while he finds the marginalization of any person for race, gender or sexuality abhorrent, he felt that Twitter seemed like an open forum for somewhat-facetious agitation.
"Twitter seems like a writer’s funhouse to me, not something I’d use 'seriously' to 'hurt' someone," Ellis wrote. "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."
Now, he says he's taking a break from Twitter -- or at least from tweeting about "Zero Dark Thirty" -- until he sees the film.