Purple Magazine
— The Los Angeles Issue #30 F/W 2018

bret easton ellis

los angeles
fiction
bret easton ellis

interview and photography by OLIVIER ZAHM

All artworks copyright Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis and courtesy of Istock and Gagosian gallery

Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero, and his latest one, Imperial Bedrooms, are the only ones that take place in Los Angeles, the city where he was born and raised. Yet, his style is infused by a Californian void, paranoia, narcissism, irony, and solitude. And while he never gives a narrator an authorial voice or point of view, his books are about himself and his life. He’s called them all an exorcism. In 2006, he moved back to Los Angeles, where he now lives and writes in a very different city from the one he left when he was still a teenager.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Bret, let’s talk about Los Angeles. It’s the city where you work, where you live, and where you come from. Is it still a very isolating place, now that you’re famous, now that you have many connections?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I grew up here. I left when I was 18. And I always sensed — even then, as a teenager — that there was something about the spatial geography of the city that made one feel very alone, very isolated. And that was compounded by the fact that you were in your car all day, which made you even more alone. You’re not on the streets, bumping into people like in New York or Paris — you’re in a car, listening to music, and then you’re back at your house or your apartment, away from the real life of a city like London, Paris, even San Francisco, New York to a degree, Chicago to a degree. LA is very different because it’s so huge — it’s so geographically massive. And part of the appeal of that is all the space that you can move through. That was very appealing to me as a teenager: that we were mobile, that we had the sea and the mountains. We could go downtown, we could go over to Century City. There were so many places to go — and so many things to see. But ultimately, you were alone.
And definitely that alienation is a pragmatic thing, it’s a real thing, but it was also something that I thought was metaphorically interesting when I wrote Less Than Zero. And I’ve only written two books about LA: the last book and the first book. The Rules of Attraction takes place in New England, American Psycho in New York, Glamorama in New York and Europe, Lunar Park in some kind of suburbia in the Midwest or in the East. Some of the stories in The Informers — but I haven’t really written as much about LA as I have about many other places. Ultimately, the metaphor of being alone became one of alienation in Less Than Zero, where Clay, the protagonist, was very alienated. He was also alienated by his youth, by the wealth, etc.

OLIVIER ZAHM — How long did you live in New York?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I moved to New York in 1987. I came back to LA in 2006, after being away for almost two decades, living in New York. I’d been in college for four years before that. So, I basically left LA in 1982. Always visiting, always dropping in, spending the summer, spending the winter — but always at either a friend’s house, my mom’s house, or a hotel. When I was visiting LA, I was mostly living at the Chateau Marmont. A lot of people around, a lot of partying. I remember staying there two months in January and February of 2006, when I was looking for an apartment to buy. Actually this one.

OLIVIER ZAHM — When did you come back to LA?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — In 2006. I never lived alone in my own place in LA until I bought this apartment. And I never had experienced this LA life, and not until June of 2006… I’d already bought this apartment, was having it furnished while I was away, and I remember coming into this apartment, [whispers] you could hear a pin drop. I said: “Oh, my god. It’s so quiet.” And I looked out at the view, and it seemed so far away and desolate. And when I lay down in bed for the first night in the apartment, to sleep, it was so quiet. I was, like, “I don’t hear anything!” Also, there was a problem because I’d never slept here before. I didn’t
realize, because of how the apartment faces, how hot it gets. That side is facing the shadow; this is facing the sun. So, I woke up. I went,
“Eugh-uh!” I couldn’t breathe. Boiling! And it was so quiet. And that first summer here, I had a profound sense of isolation that I’d never experienced in LA before.
I realized that for the past 20 to 25 years of my life, I was either in a cafeteria with my student friends, or in New York … it was basically: “Oh, I’m hungry, there are three delis on my block, I’m just going to jump down and go get a sandwich, and come home.” That was it! It was so easy. And I would bump into someone I knew and would say, “Hello.” The Strand Book Store was right by my house. And here, I realized, I’m going to have to get in the elevator, go down to my car, get in my car, drive down four or five blocks to a place with a sandwich, park in the lot, walk by myself into a grand, empty supermarket, get the sandwich, drive back, and eat
my sandwich in a very quiet apartment. I couldn’t believe how quiet it was. I couldn’t believe how isolated it was.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Did you start to like it, or was it a punishment to come back here?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I learned to love it. I’ve never been a lonely person, but I’ve been a very solitary person — and I like it. I don’t mind being alone and solitary: it doesn’t ever bother me. One of the pleasures of being a writer is being solitary.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Maybe you needed to write. Is that why you moved back here?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Yes. And I love the emptiness of Los Angeles. I work from my apartment, and the various places I have to go to sometimes are not that many or not so far from here. So, I don’t deal with the traffic. I do sometimes when I have appointments, and I’m shocked and horrified by it. And that reminds you that you’re not so isolated in the city — that the city is massive and filled with many, many, many people, but spread out. It’s so spread out.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Are you thinking about moving back to New York in a few years?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I cannot imagine that.

OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s maybe why social media and Instagram are so important here — because people are always on their phone now.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — But aren’t they everywhere? Everywhere, people are on their phone. Most everyone I know who’s single hooks up on apps. And the notion of going to a nightclub or a singles bar to meet someone is gone. It doesn’t really exist anymore. But it’s like… I don’t know, I often feel like someone who comes from an almost Victorian era — where relationships and sex and meeting people were so tactile. You went to a bar and talked to someone and decided whether you wanted to sleep with them or not, or whether they were attracted to you, or whatever. And you could touch them and feel them and talk to them in person. And honestly, I don’t know which is better! [Laughs] I was very jealous of my boyfriend, who grew up with these Internet hookups as a teenager. And he said, “I had sex at a very early age.” And I said, “You did?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, I just went on the computer, looked for other teen boys who wanted to hook up, rode my bike to someone else’s house in Calabasas — their parents were gone — and we had sex.” I said, “That was unthinkable when I was a teenager.”

OLIVIER ZAHM — Unthinkable! You couldn’t hook up like that … impossible! We’re from the same generation. But it doesn’t mean that life on the phone reduces isolation. It’s maybe more the opposite.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I don’t know. You believe that technology is adding to the isolation, adding to the loneliness. I suppose it does. But modern life is lonely. Especially in Los Angeles. I just read an Edith Wharton book. Turn-of-the-century life was also lonely. I actually prefer that the older I get. I find it hard to be with people at a certain point, except for very close friends. I don’t go to parties anymore. I don’t go to screenings. You get to a point where you feel you’ve met enough people. I don’t want to meet any more. I’m perfectly happy with Todd [Michael Schultz, his boyfriend] and finishing my work for the night and then turning on Apple TV looking for a movie … or FilmStruck. Pleasure: opening some wine, getting into bed — nice.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You’re living the LA lifestyle. The true epitome of it.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Well, don’t you think the epitome of it is going to many red-carpet premieres and awards shows, and then going to the coolest restaurants and up to Leo’s [Leonardo DiCaprio’s] for a party, or whatever? I feel that that’s the epitome of LA. Or going to a Purple dinner!

OLIVIER ZAHM — [Laughs]
BRET EASTON ELLIS — That is the epitome.

OLIVIER ZAHM — You’re speaking about Hollywood, then.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I believe that LA is Hollywood in many ways. That the town is a reflection of Hollywood — the values of Hollywood permeate the town. And I do believe that Hollywood is a huge reason, financially, why the town exists. You have these parties that need to be catered, and you need to employ people. I mean, Oscar season alone keeps some businesses intact for the year! They make all their money in that week. So, I think this is a company town, just like Flint, Michigan, was a company town making cars. Hollywood is a company town making content — entertainment. It still is, even though entertainment has exploded into everything.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Even you are part of this entertainment now.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Well, I’m on the fringes. Because now, if someone is a part of it, they’re working for corporations, and they’re essentially making animated and Marvel movies. The kind of content that me and my entire generation wanted to make, they’ve stopped creating. It’s now moved to television. So many people I knew were employed as screenwriters — that’s completely dried up because they don’t make those movies. The studios don’t exist. They’re corporate entities now, and they’re making product, which is basically animated films and superhero movies, like The Avengers, and Spider-Man, and things like that. That’s where the profits are.

OLIVIER ZAHM — And would you say that this is the death of cinema as an art form?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — It’s not the death of cinema as an art form. I think it is the death of a certain kind of cinema — the two-hour, sustained movie. That has changed drastically in the last 10 years, with the way Marvel movies are all interconnected. Basically, the big movies are franchised, continuing stories. It really started with Harry Potter, but also the Star Wars movies. The Avengers films, the DC Comics … they’re an endless series of movies that are interconnected. And in many ways, that’s a radical disruption of how we watch movies. I also think the way TV is serialized — and how we’ve gotten used to seeing an 18-hour movie in parts — has relegated to the past the art form of the two-hour movie you saw in the cinema. I know very few people who do them here. They talk about TV series all the time, but if you ask them if they saw a movie in a theater, you just don’t hear it as much as you once did.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Do you still believe in the future of auteur films, or independent cinema in LA, like in the ’90s?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Is the audience there? Maybe in the art world, in a gallery. I guess in France or in Europe it always will be. But here in the United States, I don’t know. Most movies come and go, and play in one theater here and disappear. Even movies that I thought at a certain point would have been discussed, talked about, somewhat popular in a fringe way. And you can’t get money to make movies. I mean, so many movies open a week in LA — in a shitty theater in North Hollywood or in Santa Monica — but they’re all basically crap and have been made for, like, $500,000 to $600,000. It’s very rare to find the movie that got enough money to be made properly. That seems to be over. And also, our relationships to movies have been changed completely by the Internet and by what’s available to us. My boyfriend can watch two hours of YouTube videos, and that is a more satisfying experience to him than going into a theater in LA — where he’ll have to go at a time that is demanded: “It’s at 2:30.” “Why does it have to be at 2:30?” And he will have to choose a seat. “Why do I have to choose a seat? I wanna sit wherever I wanna sit. You mean I have to watch the movie for two hours? I can’t get up, I can’t stop it?” An entire generation has a different relationship to the movies than we did. And I think it’s just not as serious an art form to them.

OLIVIER ZAHM — What’s the main problem in LA from your point of view?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — It’s becoming too expensive for creative and interesting people. You’ve seen what’s going on with the housing prices. Taxes. Just the cost of living has three couples I know, who are upper-middle-class — one a business owner, one a musician, one a writer — all leaving. Mostly, it’s having children because it’s very expensive to raise kids in this city. And these are not single people. These are creative families. And they simply cannot exist here. It doesn’t work financially for them. So, they’re moving to Nashville, to Portland, or other cities. A couple I know who live over in the valley, who have two kids, were speaking about Austin, Texas. Austin is kind of expensive, as well. But tax-wise, it’s much, much cheaper. California taxes are insane! They basically take about half of your money.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Like in France. [Laughs]
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Like in France! I had to spend three weeks in Las Vegas last August. An old script of mine had been put into production. I was the writer of the script and a producer of the movie. And I was making some good money. I’ve been told many times: “Don’t you wanna live in Nevada where you don’t pay taxes… Your family has a ranch out there. Can’t you move back and become a Nevada resident?” My accountant was telling me the same thing: “You’ll save a lot of money.” And I was always going: “Oh, whatever… I don’t know, maybe? Really, do I have to do it?”

OLIVIER ZAHM — Is Bret Easton Ellis anti-tax? [Laughs]
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I have to say that I’ve been very upset lately about how much tax I’ve had to pay. And this is such a rich person talking… well, I’m not such a rich person, but I’ve been so upset lately by the amount of tax that I’ve had to pay. But I don’t know honestly. We were shooting all over Vegas, in the suburbs, by the mountains, out in the desert. I’ve never been so horrified by how shitty the roads were, how crappy the storefronts were. This is what happens when you don’t pay taxes in a state! Everything just goes to shit! Nothing gets paid for. Nothing gets taken care of. It was awful. So, I’m happy to pay the tax to live here. I mean, not happy, but I understand what we get from that tax. So, it’s fine.

OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s becoming more expensive for artists to live here, while at the same time, a lot of artists are moving here to live — from New York, from Berlin, from Paris.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — And they’re starting new communities in weird places: in Atwater Village, in Highland Park, in Eagle Rock, in not-the-good-part of Culver City — and good places like Silver Lake, Echo Park, are gentrifying. In Silver Lake, you can’t rent or buy anything. The Hollywood Hills are maybe cheaper. Everywhere is so expensive. But the kids I know — and I do know young people coming here — they have to go on the fringes, the outside. They’re not moving to Silver Lake — they can’t afford it. Even Echo Park, I don’t think you can afford it anymore. Welcome to LA!

OLIVIER ZAHM — Where do they go?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Eagle Rock, for example, has been happening for three or four years. My producer on the podcast is a millennial — he lives in Eagle Rock, but in a guesthouse. And the guys I know — young millennials who came here — I was working on a project with them and asked, “Where do you guys live?” Two brothers and a friend of theirs, they said, “We live in Atwater Village.” I said: “Atwater? People live in Atwater Village?!” They said: “Oh, it’s totally affordable. We live in a guesthouse — behind another house that the guy rents out. And it’s doable.” But if you’d told me that Atwater Village was going to be the place for young people to live, I would go: “Are you kidding me? I grew up out here. I know what Atwater Village is.”

OLIVIER ZAHM — It is changing so quickly.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — But it’s true with every big city in the US — San Francisco, all the young people were gone 15 years ago. They got priced out of San Francisco, so there are no students, there are no artists, there are no musicians. San Francisco is a gated community of rich people now. And that’s what’s interesting because, really, the youth culture gets stagnated. I saw it actually happening in New York: when young people were making an exodus out to Brooklyn, to Greenpoint. There are now million-dollar apartments there. Are you kidding? Or my neighborhood in New York, which was really not a good one when I moved there in 1987. Ten-million-dollar apartments are on 13th Street now, closer to 5th Avenue, 6th Avenue. There are $2 million, $3 million lofts along 2nd Avenue, 3rd Avenue. Clinton Street, Rivington. But getting back to LA, yes, that’s happened here. It’s a hard place for young people unless you want to be in entertainment.

OLIVIER ZAHM — But this new community of creative people coming to LA, they go to the east and even far east. And it’s changing the geography of the city. Which is interesting. It’s like a new city.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Yes, completely interesting. And these remote parts of the city are blooming. Everything around where we are in Hollywood now is kind of dead — it’s over. No one can get in here. It’s closed. It’s locked. But youth always finds a way to survive. And they don’t care if they live in a shithole. When you’re young, you don’t care. When you’re old, you want a nice room — you want room service! You want a nice market nearby.
When you’re young, you can deal with anything because you’re high all the time!

OLIVIER ZAHM — Well, that’s another new thing about LA — marijuana is legal.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — It’s so expensive, by the way. My boyfriend used to like marijuana. My mom used to like marijuana because she’s old, and she has arthritis. She was so anti-drug, but she began to use edibles to help her with her pain and to get her to sleep. Well, when it was affordable. Now that it’s a new business, it’s being taxed, my boyfriend can’t afford it. He doesn’t go to the pot store anymore — he can’t do it. My mom stopped buying it. My producer, who is 35, always relied on the marijuana stores. It’s almost, what, 28% tax on it. A huge jump up. And there are some people who could afford it, who can’t afford it anymore.

OLIVIER ZAHM — But that’s a revolution, in a way.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Well, I think another revolution in LA was when Uber exploded. Who would’ve thought that not only the bar scene would explode and the profits from alcohol would rise … and also the lack of car accidents? The lack of DUI [driving under the influence] and the lack of car accidents. And now you don’t need a driver’s license to live here.

OLIVIER ZAHM — My case!
BRET EASTON ELLIS — You should get one! But — getting back to the app thing and sex — Los Angeles now has the highest level of STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] ever in its history. It has tripled, quadrupled. What is that from? I’m not out there anymore, but my boyfriend knows people. And it’s just really crazy.

OLIVIER ZAHM — How do you see sexuality here in LA, and gay sexuality specifically — is it different?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Well, I do think the modern image of homosexuality in the United States started here, in Los Angeles. I’m speaking about the kind of idealized surfer body, the beach-sex vibe, the blond-haired, good-looking, all-American, blue-eyed, white-toothed male: that became the gay ideal. Many gay porn stars looked like it. There was an idealization of the Californian male, the Los Angeles male. That really did flourish, and you still see it… And certainly San Diego, which is a huge hub of masculine gayness.

OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s not happening in West Hollywood?
Hollywood is a corporation. Filled with terrible people who are trying to just make money and stop creativity and just deal with corporate profits. But for some reason you just don’t see it.

BRET EASTON ELLIS — West Hollywood is effeminate, unmasculine gayness. I have gay friends who come in from around the world, and they go: “We went out to West Hollywood last night — there’s no one attractive. Where are all the men? Where are the real men?” And I said, “They’re in San Diego.” You go to San Diego — that’s where Barry Diller goes, that’s where David Geffen goes. You go to San Diego because the navy and military are down there. And you’ve got real, masculine, macho gay men down there. I do think that the contemporary ideal is changing rapidly — like everything is — but for a long time, there was this West Coast ideal that permeated all of gay culture. But even beyond that, in advertising — Calvin Klein started doing these underwear ads in the early ’80s that were of these all-American boys lying out in bright sunlight and a blue sky. It wasn’t like the leather scene from the early ’70s in New York. It was something more wholesome. More commercial. More broadly appealing.

OLIVIER ZAHM — And didn’t David Hockney contribute to that, too?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Certainly. There was a West Coast ideal in that.

OLIVIER ZAHM — And what about the influence of LA on youth culture?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Youth culture, when it was really blowing up in the late ’70s, early ’80s, was here in LA. That’s where youth culture became popularized. Less Than Zero was a reaction to that. But many of the big movies were, whether it was Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Valley Girl. There was this explosion of LA as youth-culture central because it had the beach — it had the entertainment industry. Even though MTV was back east, there was still a fantasy ideal about LA that influenced youth culture at that time. And I do think that the young men in those movies were an objectified ideal of a certain kind of American maleness that’s attractive. Just as it’s true for the opposite: the blonde girl with the big breasts, suntanned in a bikini, driving around, is still an ideal for many straight men. So, I think LA tapped into that. Now it’s really niche. When my boyfriend saw what porn I liked, which was the California ideal of these short-haired, blond, not-too-built-but-average surfer types, he said, “That’s fascist.”

OLIVIER ZAHM — Totally! [Laughs]
BRET EASTON ELLIS — “What is this perfection? You like to look at perfect guys fucking each other?” And then I looked at his porn. He’s 31 — this was when he was in his 20s — and I looked at some of his porn that he’d left on my computer and said: “These are overweight Mexican guys. You find that attractive?” And he said:
“I am my age. I’m open to anything.” And I see it now. When I look at porn, I have a feed that alerts me to what kind of porn is available, and I’d noticed that there is
“chub porn.”

OLIVIER ZAHM — Chub?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Fat young men having sex with each other. “Chub.” And I was appalled. I walked in to my boyfriend and said, “Who in the hell watches this?” And he looked at it and said, “Overweight young men who want to see themselves reflected in pornography, and they wanna see a version of themselves in it.” And
I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” But I will say, and I told him — to set the record straight — that the five or six big international gay-porn sites still have idealized men.

OLIVIER ZAHM — In the late ’70s and mid-’80s, the West Coast hedonist and sexual revolution here in LA sort of disappeared. Do you think that LA has become darker and darker? Or more and more boring?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Everything has become more boring. I don’t think anything’s become more interesting in terms of the city. In the United States, most cities have become more boring: they’ve become more homogenized. Globalization has taken over. And you can see it in the design of things. There are some fabulous hotels here, and I first saw it when there was a redesign of the Hotel Bel-Air. I went
up there about a month after they’d changed the famous Bel-Air Bar and said: “I could be in Copenhagen! What is this? What is this design here?” They got rid of all of the ivy and all of the weird things about the Hotel Bel-Air. All very blanded out, with those terrible fire cones that are in those silver triangles, and there was a sheet of flame coming up through it. And I remember going to one of my favorite old hotels here — it’s now called the Waldorf Astoria, it was the Beverly Hilton — to the new restaurant, with a friend, and my friend said: “My God, we could be anywhere. We could be in New York. There’s nothing in it that tells us, ’This is LA.’” It’s been erased, this idea of a city having an identity, to a degree. There is this purposefully international style that has really hurt some of my favorite places in LA. It mostly affects hotels and big restaurants. Certainly the new Spago: it looked like a California-Mediterranean place when Wolfgang Puck first opened it, but they get such an international crowd that they redid the design. It could be a restaurant in an airport. I mean, I love the restaurant. But I think everything is a little bit more boring. Everything has been blanded out by globalization. And this international-chic look — in the big cities, it’s impossible not to be confronted with it.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Do you see LA as a city of the future with the explosion of Internet, the space industry, transhumanism, the wellness industry, plastic surgery, artificial intelligence, etc? And maybe New York more as a city of the past, connected to Europe.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Totally. I agree with that. I think LA is a city of the future still. I still believe in that because, coming from Europe and into New York, this is the end of the line. The Pacific starts, and there’s nowhere else to go. So, I think people initially came here and just stopped. And it was, like: “Oh, my God. What do we do?” “Well, I think we make movies about ourselves? I think we get some cameras and make some movies about ourselves.” [Laughs] “There’s nowhere else to go! And look at how nice it is — like the palm trees and the beach and everything.” But even metaphorically, that is true: LA is the end of the line, literally. So, people come here, stop, and it’s the place where you can reinvent who you are. Or try to. Because, as I’ve always said, LA doesn’t let you do that. You think you can come here and reinvent who you are: no. LA forces you into the person you really are. I realized this when I came back here in 2006.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Was LA a new start for you when you came back?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Yeah. I’d had a rough year, my boyfriend had died in 2004 — a freak aneurysm. It was so sudden and shocking. I kind of wandered around. I did a book tour for Lunar Park … that was all done. I moved here in 2006 and wanted to start over — to reinvent myself. Well, I did, but I became more real. I was going to fake it and just be a movie producer and write a bunch of scripts and make a lot of money and just lead a hedonistic lifestyle, date young boys, and have my midlife crisis, and all this stuff. But getting back to what we were talking about — the isolation of the city forces you to confront yourself and spend time with yourself and realize who you really are. I saw this so often with actors. I got to know a lot of young actors when I was doing The Informers, my LA movie, and one of the things I realized because I became intimate with some of them — and I really became very empathic with the struggle of the actor here — it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. It’s very diminishing and embarrassing, and I tried to help too many actors, but what I saw with them is that they came out here wanting to “make it” and to display themselves. And the harshness of the city and its isolation don’t allow you to! You can’t reinvent yourself. You become who you really are. And that was like the mind being blown. And I still think that’s true.

OLIVIER ZAHM — And did LA give you a new perspective on your own life and writing?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — It did. And New York never did that — it never allowed that to happen. LA allowed me to become extremely introspective, to think a lot about myself, what I want, what I don’t want. And in New York, everything was just kind of there. It was very easy. Now I find New York impossible.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Introspection and perspective. Because in New York, it’s all about the ego fight, no? It’s an ego competition.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Yeah. And everyone is crammed into these blocks of power, and everyone is racing around in these buildings and in this grid — this tiny island. And that exacerbates it. That makes it more pronounced. Here … well, look, Hollywood is a corporation, too. Filled with terrible people who are trying to just make money and stop creativity and just deal with corporate profits. But for some reason you [whispers] just don’t see it.

END