Ryan Murphy’s Sanded-Down Version of 'The Shards'

Before the often controversial interview podcast and the many Twitter outbursts, before the precocious splash of “Less Than Zero” and the scandal of “American Psycho,” Bret Ellis—the writerly “Easton” still silent—was a student at the expensive Buckley School in Los Angeles. As a teen-ager, Ellis did drugs, saw R-rated movies, engaged in clandestine sexual affairs, and generally misbehaved, taking full advantage of the autonomy that well-off children were apparently granted in the early nineteen-eighties.