American Psycho (2000)

Honestly I don't think it's as important as the film made out considering the story is meant to be a twisted parable about the empty soulessness of the eighties.

Within that context tho, I personally believe the subtext has much sharper teeth if you work on the premise Bateman realyy was a serial killer.

Definitely. It's much more valuable when it's viewed as operating from the thesis of a vapid self-absorbed yuppieverse, rather than just a build up to a GOTCHA! twist.

Aren't those two options kinda the same thing?

This movie got me at a good time in 2000. It still is one of the best and most hilarious flicks I've ever seen.

The scene in the bathroom between Patrick and Luis is damn funny. Sadly I've only skimmed through my copy of the book that I got not long after I saw the movie. I need to read it all the way through sometime soon.

It kinda undermines the entire point of the story in my opinion. Bateman isn't really a living breathing character in my opinion, the guys just a cypher for Bret Easton Ellis to make an incredibly laboured statement about a decade and the culture it spawned. It's kinda why I always thought making a film of the story missed the point to a degree.

My favorite part of the film is when Bateman returns to Allen's apartment and finds the realtor there.

Real estate agent: You saw the ad in the Times?
Patrick Bateman: No... Yeah, I mean yeah, in the Times.
Real estate agent: There was no ad in the Times. I think you should go now.

While the obliviousness of many characters is blackly funny, the realtor's behavior is more chilling than Bateman's. Whitewashing (literally) an apartment of slaughtered humans to hush an atrocity that could affect the value of an apartment overlooking the Park, just unbelievable.

Yes, Bateman's a psychopathic serial killer, and not the worst thing in Manhattan by any means.

Having attempted to force myself into liking Ellis as a writer, I feel like film adaptations are the only way to enjoy him. He's terrific at communicating a sense of ennui and apathy and soullessness, but it's so grueling to read. It's hard to fault his actual writing so much as his thematic goals. The films leave more thematics to interpretation than his writings do, but they're also infinitely more accessible.

Which is kind of amusing in itself, I guess.

As to the question of didhe/didn'the, the novel seemed deliberately vague, and the film only slightly less so. However, I recall reading an interview with Mary Harron that suggested she perceived it as reality. She also seemed to be pushing the Bateman = Reagan angle that I've come across a few times. I haven't watched it with that in mind, but it's an idea worth arguing for; the final scene with the Iran-Contra speech almost makes it seem too on the nose for my liking, but I buy it. If anybody embodies the society presented in the film, it's Reagan. Fuck, Bateman's entire public persona is no more authentic than Reagan's studied folksiness.

Neglected to mention that this movie introduced me to the beautiful song "Lady In Red."

I also can't hear "Hip To Be Square" without thinking of Bateman killing Paul Allen.

The last thing I need to be reminded of is seeing Bateman sweaty and admiring his muscles while he has a 3 way to "Sussudio".

It's pure fantasy. Bateman is a misanthrope who hates everyone and hates himself. He knows he's really no better than the bums he flaunts dollar bills in front of.

The violent projections are a shield to protect himself from the real world. A way of keeping himself inhuman.

Not to say that he's not capable of violence...

I strongly disagree. Rules of Attraction was moderately true to the book, but Less Than Zero and definitely American Psycho totally change around not only the story, but also tone and themes. I like the movie AP, but it is a whole other take on the idea and character. And say what you want, the guy can write. Glamorama is one of the most underrated novels of the nineties and I sincerely hope they never butcher that to fit in a movie.

There has to be, at least, 5 threads on the very topic you raise here (but I understand that the search engines are busted). I'll try to pull some when I have more time.

That being said, it makes absolutely no sense from a thematic or narrative perspective to have the murders be Bateman's fantasy. "American Psycho" (both the novel and the film) is, at heart, an extremely dark fairy tale. It's set in a Manhattan and social strata where individual identity has absolutely no purpose. The only things that matters in Bateman's world are money and labels. Because of this--because of the complete negation of personality and individuality--someone like Bateman can do anything and everything. Having the murders be some twisted fantasy in his head pulls every tooth that bites in the story.

The best explanation that I've heard is a variation on Mattoli's and probably the simplest: He did it, but because he is an anonymous yuppie, like the rest, there's no way for him to stand out. The real estate market was so intense at the time, his crimes were covered up. But there's very little difference between Bateman and Paul Allen and the rest, so a guy could be having lunch with somebody completely different or see them in Europe, but because the names and faces all blend together into this souless mass, it doesn't matter if it really was Paul Allen or not. The spree-killing sequence with the ATM and the cop and the old lady, I think that's fantasy though.

I figured the tip-off was when Chloe Sivigny finds the journal where Patrick has doodled all the atrocities that Harron couldn't put into the movie. To me that could signify that all his murders — not to mention his sexual awesomeness and his physique — are the daydreams of a bored, vacuous yuppie yearning for some extremity in his life. Note the emphasis on could. I think it's left ambiguous, and that's what makes it work. I'm a fan of ambiguity, which is why I'm not a fan of, say, definitive statements that Deckard is or isn't a replicant. That would be a long thread derail, so I won't go into that.

I feel that the intention was meant to be ambiguous but the film for me falls in the "It's all fantasy" camp. Mind you, you can argue that the book is so graphically over the top that it has to be a violent fantasy in his head.

That's exactly right and it's much more evident in the novel. The characters can name every single piece of clothing, jewelry, hair product, cologne, etc. that a person is wearing as well as the costs of such things, but are completely baffled by the person's actual identity. Thus, it's made very clear that the subsequent Paul Allen sightings are simply cases of mistaken identity. Hell, if I recall correctly, the detective says as much at one point.

But I ask again: if it's all a fantasy, to what end?

Isn't the ambiguity the entire satirical point? This was going on in the Inglorious Basterds thread as well regarding the opening scene. There's not supposed to be a clear answer, so you're just arguing in circles trying to figure it out.

This is one of the rare films I did a near 180 on. First time I saw it I just thought it was boring and kind of pointless, but every time since then I've found it more and more funny and clever. Now I think it's pretty hilarious and quotable as shit. Spending many months between viewings working in banks alongside genuine Patrick Batemen types definitely helped with this.

That said I'm still not convinced the ending works. Ambiguity can be fine but in this case I wonder if the themes it brings up wouldn't have been driven home more effectively if they'd played it a bit more straightforwardly. Like you guys have already pointed out, the final chase bits with the cat and so on had already become surreal and heightened enough to make us question how literally we were supposed to be take it all. But I'm not sure that idea needed to be pushed further than that.

Well, one can argue how well it was executed (no pun intended), but I think including the audience in on the ambiguity is theoretically more effective than a straightforward point. i.e. even we can't tell the difference between the soulless yuppies and the serial killers. The alternatives are having Bateman really be a serial killer and no one cares or notices, or Bateman being such an empty pathetic shell that he fantasizes about being a serial killer. In either explicit scenario I think the satire is a little heavy-handed.

While I (tried to) explain my position, I think this is the best argument in favor of finding ambiguity I've seen so far.

I've heard a lot of good things about Glamorama, but after pushing myself through American Psycho and The Informers, I just haven't talked myself into going back to the well. He's a great writer, I just can't bring myself to enjoy being pounded over the head by the emptiness of everything. I appreciate his ideas, but I don't need another 300 pages of hanging out with an intellectual Eeyore, no matter how well he's written.

But if Glamorama is a little more thematically varied I'll gladly pick it up. I might have assumed a bit too much from those two books.

Yeah, it's almost like two different films in one for me. Depending on my mood, I can see it either way, and that's some serious film craftsmanship to my mind. Not the answer you were looking for Timothy, but anyway....

Agreed all around. That surreal chase sequence calls into question the reality of the rest of the film. If it's happening in Bateman's head, you have to re-evaluate a lot of the rest of the film as unreliable narrative. If you interpret it as happening in the reality of the movie, it hammers home the fantastic nature of Bateman's world.

In other words, part of the point is, as you wrote, we can't tell whether the crazy is internal or external in the movie. And does it matter? No matter what, that final sequence makes us keenly aware that we're watching something exaggerated and fantastical - in terms of getting the point across, it doesn't matter whether this exaggerated fantasy is the story Bateman's troubled mind tells or the story that Harron/Ellis tell.

I did a 180 in the opposite direction. I watched the director's cut back when it first came out on VHS and was absolutely blown away. Who knew the Empire of the Sun kid was still relevant? I still find it to be great work on Bale's part (one of a handfull of performances of his I actually enjoy) but after reading the novel a few years ago I have to question just about every choice the director made. The book makes the movie look like feminist propoganda in comparison, and that's saying something.

I completely agree with you on the ending. The scene of his secretary finding the scribbles really blows the uncertain aspects of the book into real heavy-handed territory. The reason, to me, the novel works at all is the slow disintergration of the narrative from a first person perspective. When the movie chooses to go into the viewpoint of a woman (first from the prostitute and then the secretary) it makes the director's bias really obvious. This pushes the film into a realm that defeats it's own ending and makes the Bateman crimes seem more unlikely.

Now I'm not saying there is anything wrong with a female perspective in films, but I think Bateman's own misogyny and ego were so well satirized that you didn't need these additional loose perspectives. This slowly soured me on the film as a whole, but it's still enjoyable for a lot of reasons.

As far as quotes go the favorite one around my house is "Don't look at it, Eat it."

Regarding the ending, I prefer to leave it ambiguous, although the stuff with the cat, the ATM machine and the cop cars is obviously fantasy.

Regarding the rest of the film, I love it. Christian Bale gives one of his best performances, I can't listen to "Hip To Be Square" with a straight face anymore, and it's endlessly quotable. My favorite moment in the entire film is Bale's hilariously confused "WTF?" look at the gun after the cop cars blow up.

As far as the book is concerned, Ellis says that while Bateman's grip on reality is tenuous, he is a serial killer. The crimes are real. However, the book is the book, the movie is the movie, where Harron stands on this I have no idea.

My opinion on the film as a whole is that Bale makes it and everything around him is playing catch up (I kind of wish he'd pursue more comedic roles as he's very, very funny here). Had I seen the film before reading the novel I might feel differently, but it's difficult for me to separate the two seeing as how I had a much more visceral response to the source material and found the adaptation kind of trite.

I think it comes out pretty clearly in the film that he didn't do it.

At least that was my position after writing about 4 papers on the thing in college.

Edit: Not to say I don't see fine arguments above. Maybe my "clearly" is overstated. There is fantastic ambiguity and layers of meaning to that last scene with Dylan Baker.

Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner state on the DVD that it's the same interpretation for the film too. Bateman IS killing these people, but his mind's causing him to hallucinate certain things (the chainsaw impalement, FEED ME A STRAY CAT, etc.) They also admit that it's their own fault that they didn't make that more clear and less ambiguous.

You're likely onto something with the feminist comment, as both Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner are feminists.

It's amazing how well this movie holds up. I can't think of many other films released around the same time (outside of Fight Club) that still feel fresh viewing them 10 years later.

And mainly due to one of my old college friends repeating the line over and over drunkingly one night, I'd have to go with, "I have to return some videotapes" as my favorite quote.

The matte paintings / helicopter "spotlight" are so bad in this movie. Holy god.

I tried on google and failed those were good discussion.

If I remember correctly it's explicitly mentioned on the book.

Besides the already mentioned subtext stuff, there no indication on the book that there's an external agent forcing all his hallucinations. And that lack of motivation fits really well with the modest proposal style of storytelling. The killings must be real. And yes, Patrick is one hell of unreliable narrator.
Bale is really great here. The scene with the presentation card is as terrific as in the book.

Is the film really any kind of feminist statement? Most of the women are either prostitutes (one of whom is persuaded to service Bateman again, despite being tortured previously, with the assurance it won't happen again and the promise of more money) or vapid and vacuous privileged party girls.

The only two women who have any depth are Jean (who is told to dress more 'womanly' by Bateman and who complies because she has a crush on him) and the realtor, who is also a monster in her own way.

What possible statement are they trying to make?

I said "The book makes the movie look like feminist propoganda in comparison". Key words being propoganda in comparison. Bateman's character in the novel actually pleasures both women amazingly well in the first prostitute scene. In the film of course, he looks like a total moron (a really funny one, love the tennis shoes) and cannot seem to pleasure anything but his ego.

The film is still definately about Bateman's machismo, but there seemed to be a need prove him more inept and ridiculous for whatever reason. I would have just preferred the strength of the original, darker narrative of the novel (he kills a 5 year old at the zoo in broad daylight for god's sakes, not that I would have put that in the film) to undermine his character rather than use outside perspectives to play down original scenes. The outsider perspectives just happen to be female, hmmm....

I just think these choices just made the ending something less. Bale's still really funny, can't get over that.

Yes.

A film doesn't have to show cookie-cutter Positive Female Role Models to qualify as feminist; this film most often shows Negative Female Cautionary Tales. In Patrick's Reagan-era consumerist universe, everyone is reduced to a whore; everyone has false values. It's a satire, so almost everyone is scum, and it's also an Unreliable Narrator story, so all the women come off the way they do. The statement then is how women (and the world in general) are seen by an entitled yuppie prick. And Bale, who gets it (his mother-in-law for a while was none other than Gloria Steinem*), makes Patrick a complete tool and clown. Harron and Turner definitely took the misogynist curse off of Ellis' narrative.

* This factoid has always amused me, if for no other reason than imagining Thanksgiving at the Bale-Steinem house:

Steinem: "So, Chris, what've you been up to lately?"
Bale: "Well, I've just finished playing Patrick Bateman in the film adaptation of American Psycho..."
Steinem: "..."
Bale's dad: *facepalm*

Thread's like this are why I love CHUD. I was firmly in the fantasy camp, but after reading this thread....i think I've flipped. I always thought it was fantasy if only for the fact that whatever movies he seemed to watch, he acted out afterwards. He's watching a porno, and then has a threesome with 2 prostitutes. He's watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then chases the girl down the hall with a chainsaw AND tries to go cannibal on her by biting her leg. Then you have the shootout at the end where he seemingly can't miss. The police helicopter just happens to shine it's light into the office he's in......etc etc.

But after reading this thread...I completely am switching sides. I prefer the "he really did it" side. The fact that he gets away with it, because they are all indistinguishable from each other, I find that hilarious and fits more with the dark humor of the movie. And NOW it seems so obvious. He apparently looks just like Halverstram, and hell, even Paul Allen looks just like him. And the idea of the woman repainting Allen's apartment, just so she can re-sell it quickly?? That's just fucking sick.....and I love it.

As for favorite movie quote?

Kimble: You like Huey Lewis and the News?

Bateman: No. I mean.....I don't really like singers.

Kimble: Not a music lover?

Bateman: No, i like music its just........Huey's too black sounding for me.

.....GOLD.

Like I said above, I dig the ambiguity.

 

But my other feeling is, it doesn't matter if he did it or not. Others have. Others will. And they won't be caught either.

 

The literary reading would be that he's not one yuppie; he stands in for the particular misogynist strain of yuppie in the '80s. "Patrick Bateman," or the society he embraced and in which he flourished, "killed and mutilated" women, reducing them to fuck toys or arm candy. Or, of course, worse — one thinks of Robert Chambers.

I love American Psycho. Christian Bale was hilarious. The only murder scene I did not find amusing was the scene where Bateman stomped the homeless guy's dog to death.

   No  It's the one thing you should ALWAYS be reminded of.

 

  

 

  The image of Bateman running down a hallway naked, coved in blood and screaming is such a classic image for me, I love it, I really do.  

Bateman running naked and bloody while wielding a chainsaw is still less of a disturbing image than that one of him looking at himself in the mirror and admiring his muscles while he jackhammers that broad.

WOW.

 

I never read the scene like that, and I feel stupid for not doing so.

 

I agree. That scene with the homeless man...not just what he does to the dog, but also telling the guy he smells and is pathetic was the only part of the movie where I thought Bateman was too mean. The rest of the time I was either laughing at or morbidly fascinated by his words and actions. 

This is a real phsyco movie....you won't believe i left it in between as i could'nt bear this anymore.....