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Ep. 16: 'American Psycho' Critiques Consumerism with Carnage
13 Plays7 months ago
Patrick Bateman's skincare routine might be flawless, but his moral compass is anything but. In this episode of Adaptation, Nate and Chris dive into Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho' and Mary Harron's razor-sharp film adaptation. From Bateman's obsession with appearances to the satire of Wall Street excess, we discuss how the book's graphic horror translates to the screen, why Christian Bale's performance became iconic, and whether Patrick Bateman is the ultimate unreliable narrator—or just a brilliant disguise.
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Chris's Letterboxd (@cjanderson878)
Hosts: Nate Day, Chris Anderson
Producer: Nate Day
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Podcast Introduction and Personal Updates
00:01:13
Speaker
Welcome to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast.
00:01:15
Speaker
I'm Nate.
00:01:16
Speaker
And I'm Chris.
00:01:18
Speaker
And today we have a very interesting story to talk about.
00:01:21
Speaker
We are discussing Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho.
00:01:26
Speaker
But before we dive into that, how are you, Chris?
00:01:29
Speaker
How are you, Chris?
00:01:30
Speaker
I am doing great.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's a nice cool day out here on the East Coast.
00:01:33
Speaker
How are you doing?
00:01:35
Speaker
Birthday boy?
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm doing pretty well.
00:01:37
Speaker
And I'm another year older.
Book Recommendations and Movie Discussions
00:01:40
Speaker
I spent my birthday in the Pacific Northwest with some friends and had a really great time doing that.
00:01:46
Speaker
And now it's just back to the real world.
00:01:50
Speaker
But that also means I guess I get to get back to my movie habits, my movie hobbies.
00:01:55
Speaker
But what have you been reading, Chris, in your free time?
00:02:00
Speaker
I've only managed to finish one.
00:02:02
Speaker
It was a bit lengthier book, so I've only finished one between Forrest Gump and American Psycho.
00:02:09
Speaker
It was actually a recommendation of one of my summer school students up in Boston, a high school student from Spain.
00:02:17
Speaker
Oh.
00:02:19
Speaker
It's called The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E.
00:02:22
Speaker
Schwab.
00:02:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I've read a couple of her books before, really like her writing.
00:02:30
Speaker
And so when they we did a lesson on writing book reviews as part of practicing their English conversation.
00:02:37
Speaker
And I recognize the author and she goes, you have to read this really fun book, almost.
00:02:43
Speaker
Almost too complicated.
00:02:44
Speaker
I don't know.
00:02:44
Speaker
Fun book.
00:02:45
Speaker
Great book.
00:02:46
Speaker
If you like realms of magic, not fully high fantasy and not fully modern world, you know, kind of a little bit of changing the rules, but kind of staying somewhat based within reality as well.
00:03:01
Speaker
I think you would definitely dig that author.
00:03:04
Speaker
Cool.
00:03:05
Speaker
Good stuff.
00:03:05
Speaker
Did you, I assume you didn't get many movies in over the weekend.
00:03:09
Speaker
Not a ton, no, because again, I was out of town.
00:03:12
Speaker
But I think since the last time we recorded, I did catch the Naked Gun movie.
00:03:17
Speaker
Have you seen the ads for that?
00:03:19
Speaker
Yes, I can't wait to watch it.
00:03:21
Speaker
I loved the original.
00:03:22
Speaker
Oh man, you're going to love this one too.
00:03:24
Speaker
It is so good.
00:03:25
Speaker
It's so funny and dumb and silly and, but still genuinely good.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of like the perfect comedy mashup because it's directed by and co-written by Akiva Schaefer, who's one of the Lonely Island guys.
00:03:43
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that.
00:03:44
Speaker
Produced by Seth MacFarlane.
00:03:46
Speaker
And so it's really kind of just a big...
00:03:52
Speaker
comedy free for all.
00:03:53
Speaker
It's like a tight 90 minutes or something very close to that.
00:03:56
Speaker
And you just laugh the whole time.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yep.
00:03:59
Speaker
That's, um, it's Ian McGregor, right?
00:04:02
Speaker
No, Liam Neeson.
00:04:03
Speaker
Liam Neeson.
00:04:04
Speaker
I always mix them up.
00:04:05
Speaker
I think because of their names, not because of them as individuals.
00:04:10
Speaker
Is that who you pictured for that role?
00:04:12
Speaker
It's not.
00:04:13
Speaker
But what's so interesting is Seth MacFarlane, the producer was on another podcast I listened to called The Town.
00:04:21
Speaker
And
00:04:22
Speaker
He was there to talk about the movie, and he said that he was pretty insistent that they have dramatic actors, that they don't have comedians trying to make the material funny, just letting the material be funny.
00:04:34
Speaker
It's a lot funnier when Liam Neeson delivers a line straight, and it's, like, insane than it is to have, I don't know, like, Adam Sandler or somebody that, like, is known for Eddie Murphy, somebody known for being goofy, trying to do their own sort of goofy thing to it.
00:04:52
Speaker
Instead, you're hearing a funny line from the guy from Taken.
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:04:56
Speaker
And it sort of makes it even funnier.
00:04:59
Speaker
Interesting.
00:05:00
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:05:00
Speaker
What a strategy.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:02
Speaker
I mean, because the comedy is that like this hard-boiled cop is doing and saying all of these stupid things, right?
00:05:08
Speaker
It doesn't need a funny person to be funny on top of that.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:14
Speaker
But it works really well, I think.
00:05:17
Speaker
It's super funny.
00:05:18
Speaker
You're going to love it.
00:05:19
Speaker
You're going to be exhausted afterwards because literally, I'm not kidding, every line is a joke.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:25
Speaker
But it's so funny.
00:05:27
Speaker
Perfect.
00:05:27
Speaker
Perfect.
00:05:28
Speaker
I love that.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
You're going to be nuts about it.
00:05:33
Speaker
But that's about it for me because, like I said, I was on vacation.
Deep Dive into 'American Psycho' - Book
00:05:38
Speaker
So let's talk about this movie and this book that we have watched since then.
00:05:47
Speaker
That was the weirdest way you could say that.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still in vacation mode, I think.
00:05:51
Speaker
So we're just going to roll with it.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm in.
00:05:55
Speaker
This is, I mean, it's par for the course.
00:05:57
Speaker
This is a freaking weird one.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:06:01
Speaker
I also cannot for the life of me remember if I've seen the movie in its entirety or not.
00:06:10
Speaker
Really?
00:06:11
Speaker
I know that I've seen snippets, and even at that, it was enough.
00:06:16
Speaker
This bothered me a little.
00:06:17
Speaker
I always have preferred to read a book before I see the movie so that I'm picturing what my brain makes up for a character.
00:06:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:26
Speaker
Instead of the movie's casting choices.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:06:29
Speaker
I could remember no other details or parts of the movie, but...
00:06:35
Speaker
My brain created the entire world except Patrick Bateman and just has a vivid picture of Christian Bale already imprinted.
00:06:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:45
Speaker
So a little bit annoying, but I will be interested to see what's different.
00:06:50
Speaker
Because other than that, I don't really, I don't know what else is in the movie in comparison to the book.
00:06:55
Speaker
Well, we'll talk about it.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
I suppose that's why we're here.
00:06:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about the book, American Psycho.
00:07:02
Speaker
It is by Brent Easton Ellis, born in L.A.
00:07:07
Speaker
in 1964.
00:07:07
Speaker
He's written a few... I didn't...
00:07:12
Speaker
Couldn't think of a good way to describe them because this is his only book I've read.
00:07:15
Speaker
But from the descriptions of others, essentially all cause people to question what's going on.
00:07:24
Speaker
Perhaps not as much as American Psycho.
00:07:25
Speaker
This is certainly his most famous, especially since the movie came out.
00:07:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:30
Speaker
But what's curious is in a number of interviews, he's essentially suggested that each book reflected in some way how he was feeling and his own life at the time that he wrote it.
00:07:45
Speaker
Wow.
00:07:47
Speaker
That's scary.
00:07:48
Speaker
Right, exactly, exactly.
00:07:50
Speaker
So in early on interviews, I only listened to one of them myself, but they are discussed a lot.
00:07:56
Speaker
I don't know if the dude's interviewed a lot or it's all they had to write about that I read about him.
00:08:03
Speaker
But in these interviews, he early on claimed that Patrick Bateman, if you cannot tell, dear audience, that is the certainly not protagonist, but the main character of the book American Psycho.
00:08:17
Speaker
He is the psycho, if you will.
00:08:21
Speaker
It was based on his father.
00:08:24
Speaker
That's what he said.
00:08:26
Speaker
Crazy statement.
00:08:28
Speaker
And the interview that was actually with him that I listened to, the interviewer asked about that quote.
00:08:35
Speaker
And he said, well...
00:08:37
Speaker
I do hate my father.
00:08:38
Speaker
So there's that.
00:08:39
Speaker
But he did eventually rescind this statement and say that was a lie, I think, more or less for publicity.
00:08:47
Speaker
The character is, in fact, based on myself, which, yes, exactly as you already alluded to.
00:08:52
Speaker
That's a creepy thing to say about a serial killer.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:57
Speaker
Narcissist, misogynist, any other wild list of descriptors for Patrick Bateman, none of which are good things if he's based on you.
00:09:06
Speaker
Right.
00:09:07
Speaker
I know I'm getting a little uncomfortable over here thinking about giving this guy so much airtime.
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:13
Speaker
The second I read that quote, I was like, that's a bad thing.
00:09:16
Speaker
And he did go far more into depth of what I mean by that is the emotional isolation, some of the deeper themes that we will get to.
00:09:27
Speaker
Sure.
00:09:28
Speaker
But yeah, curious statement, no matter what.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:32
Speaker
Also interesting, because I did not know anything about this gentleman until we set out to do this adaptation.
00:09:39
Speaker
So Brett Easton Ellis, a lot of interviewers asking him about his sexuality.
00:09:45
Speaker
And I couldn't figure out why, because to me, that's not an appropriate question.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:52
Speaker
I mean, first of all, period.
00:09:53
Speaker
What are you doing asking an author?
00:09:54
Speaker
What does that have to do with anything?
00:09:56
Speaker
I did find out it was germane.
00:09:57
Speaker
And that's why so many were asking.
00:10:00
Speaker
He has a later novel that was inspired by, I didn't quite, at the very least dedicated to a former lover who had passed.
00:10:11
Speaker
And they were saying, what's the deal?
00:10:13
Speaker
Are you straight?
00:10:14
Speaker
Are you gay?
00:10:17
Speaker
This was curious, because obviously I have no preconceived notion, no reason to believe one way or the other or make an assumption of this author's sexuality.
00:10:27
Speaker
And the second I read that he had a later book dedicated to a man he had loved and lost, I thought, okay...
00:10:36
Speaker
A gay author wrote this crazy novel of misogynistic abuse, rape, and murder of a bunch of female prostitutes.
00:10:47
Speaker
What the heck?
00:10:48
Speaker
And there's a very... Is the scene with Lewis... Crap, I can't remember his last name.
00:10:56
Speaker
One of these many kind of yuppie friends of Bateman's and he follows him into the bathroom and goes to strangle him.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yep.
00:11:05
Speaker
And he turns around and says, oh, why here, Patrick?
00:11:08
Speaker
I also love you.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's okay.
00:11:10
Speaker
That is in the movie.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:12
Speaker
So that scene and Bateman's subsequent treatment of this character coming from a gay man as the author is kind of crazy mentally for me.
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:26
Speaker
Like what?
00:11:27
Speaker
What?
00:11:28
Speaker
What message are you trying to send?
00:11:30
Speaker
Which would be the same question of a straight male author and Bateman's treatment of the other female characters.
00:11:37
Speaker
Right.
00:11:39
Speaker
And so as these questions were coming up for me, I realized, oh, I see why they're asking him this.
00:11:44
Speaker
And brilliantly is maybe too strong a term.
00:11:47
Speaker
But Ellis...
00:11:50
Speaker
responds to this specifically and says, I give every reporter a different answer because I don't want this answer to color how you perceive the book.
00:12:01
Speaker
Wow.
00:12:03
Speaker
Wow.
00:12:04
Speaker
Which I did not even realize was in fact happening to me.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, so I see why.
00:12:08
Speaker
He did much later, at least much later than the release of this book.
00:12:15
Speaker
He does respond eventually saying, well, I haven't slept with a woman in five or six years, so I don't know how long I can play out the claiming to be bi thing.
00:12:25
Speaker
But I guess for whatever it means, which is not much, does eventually go.
00:12:30
Speaker
come out unequivocally as gay but that that was interesting to me that he foresaw the response that would occur and therefore deliberately he literally just said sometimes i say straight sometimes i say gay sometimes i say bye because um it doesn't matter for you and i want you to be guessing which i respect that yeah that'll kind of come up a little bit in the movie discussion too
00:12:57
Speaker
Interesting.
00:12:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, I was it was a detail that I expected not to matter at all.
00:13:04
Speaker
And then it was coming up and I thought inappropriately.
00:13:07
Speaker
And yeah, I don't know.
00:13:08
Speaker
It was just more of a discussion than I anticipated at all.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:12
Speaker
This was his third novel.
00:13:13
Speaker
It was supposed to be released by Simon & Schuster, who, as the publishers, ended up backing out because of its overly graphic nature, which I don't blame them at all.
00:13:24
Speaker
Wow.
00:13:24
Speaker
That'll come up, too.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:28
Speaker
Obviously.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:31
Speaker
Now, I wanted to try something new this time because we talked a lot during the Forrest Gump episode about...
00:13:38
Speaker
And actually, we've had a couple, I think this has come up, where I've asked you, what themes did you feel you were supposed to take away?
00:13:45
Speaker
What morals?
00:13:46
Speaker
So this time, I tried to take a different approach.
00:13:50
Speaker
I wrote down, here's what I think I'm taking away.
00:13:54
Speaker
And then I looked up the critical reception and how it has globally been received.
00:14:01
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:14:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I'm curious to hear if these line up with how you felt about the movie.
00:14:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:09
Speaker
So from the book, beyond exactly what Simon & Schuster thought, being extraordinarily graphic, I heard it as almost exclusively an indictment of this consumerist society.
00:14:23
Speaker
The constant references to who everybody was wearing, right?
00:14:30
Speaker
The jacket by Armani, the wool.
00:14:35
Speaker
Just a nauseating quantity of...
00:14:39
Speaker
What the heck are those called?
00:14:40
Speaker
The people that make the clothes designers.
00:14:42
Speaker
Thank you.
00:14:43
Speaker
Oh, my gosh.
00:14:46
Speaker
Just so many.
00:14:46
Speaker
So annoying.
00:14:47
Speaker
I don't like I get what you're trying to do here, Brett.
00:14:50
Speaker
I don't want to hear the name of any more characters shoes.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:55
Speaker
Which was the point.
00:14:56
Speaker
Right.
00:14:57
Speaker
The attempt to control or tame the self, and this to me was based on his obsession with how he looked, looking in mirrors all the time, the crazy in-depth walkthrough of his...
00:15:13
Speaker
Skincare routine, going to the gym two hours or more a day.
00:15:19
Speaker
One example here was even as his I don't know if this happened in the movie, even as his receptionist Jean and professes her love to him, he asks if his hair looks OK.
00:15:29
Speaker
Oh, that's not in the movie, but I can see it fitting.
00:15:33
Speaker
It was kind of a blip.
00:15:35
Speaker
As I read that, I thought, I bet they cut this out of the movie.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:38
Speaker
But the obsessive how you present to the world compared to who you actually are.
00:15:44
Speaker
Right.
00:15:45
Speaker
And it is eventually kind of ambiguously revealed that his parents own something, started something.
00:15:51
Speaker
In some way, he does not need to be working.
00:15:54
Speaker
But he's still obsessed with having this high-profile job, telling people he works on Wall Street, mentioning how much everything he buys is, not going places because they're too cheap.
00:16:08
Speaker
And this is...
00:16:11
Speaker
contrasted with brutally raping and murdering people and animals as well as this weird knowledge of high-end stereo systems and in-depth analysis of 80s pop albums yeah yeah does that also happen in the movie yes it does
00:16:33
Speaker
Okay, so the juxtaposition of those kind of three final things are what made me think, okay, so the theme is maybe questioning how much we as humans can control who we are compared to how we're viewed?
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:54
Speaker
Does any of that sound along the lines of what resonated with you?
00:16:57
Speaker
Yes, it does.
00:16:59
Speaker
I haven't really looked through your notes on this document here.
00:17:02
Speaker
I don't know if you've looked at mine.
00:17:03
Speaker
The movie is basically a satire.
00:17:05
Speaker
And so when we talk about these things like yuppie culture and Wall Street culture and Sigma male culture, the movie is a complete indictment of all of those things.
00:17:19
Speaker
Okay, so same lines along the same.
00:17:22
Speaker
Certainly not celebrating it at any point.
00:17:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:25
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:17:27
Speaker
I had never heard this term before.
00:17:28
Speaker
Tell me how this genre – try this one on for you.
00:17:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:32
Speaker
Black comedy horror.
00:17:34
Speaker
Does that sound about right?
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely a black comedy.
00:17:38
Speaker
I don't, I have a hard time calling.
00:17:40
Speaker
I guess this one's a horror because in some ways it's a slasher, right?
00:17:43
Speaker
He's committing murders on screen with sharp objects.
00:17:47
Speaker
But it's not scary.
00:17:50
Speaker
It's not, I mean, unless you know somebody that behaves like Patrick Bateman, it's not scary.
00:17:56
Speaker
You know what?
00:17:56
Speaker
That part actually did start getting to me a little bit because obviously I'm listening to this as I walk through the streets of Manhattan.
00:18:03
Speaker
Right.
00:18:03
Speaker
Some of which she is alluding to fairly frequently.
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I'm seeing I mean, I'm not going to sit here and be judgmental enough to say I saw anyone that I would personally call a yuppie.
00:18:13
Speaker
But many, many gentlemen dress like him and his friends are in this book as he's talking about murdering people.
00:18:18
Speaker
And I started I started feeling a little bit weird.
00:18:20
Speaker
But we'll get to that a little bit later.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:23
Speaker
Okay, so these were, I tried to write down, here were my initial thoughts.
00:18:26
Speaker
Here's what the pundits, the people paid to talk about this, talked about.
00:18:31
Speaker
They posit that Bateman is, this is putting my spin on it.
00:18:36
Speaker
No one said this verbatim, so maybe too strongly.
00:18:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:01
Speaker
which was nauseating to me in that, okay, yeah, we all live in a Western consumerist society.
00:19:10
Speaker
The rest of us aren't murdering people.
00:19:12
Speaker
Right.
00:19:14
Speaker
Yeah, the word victim there, I'm like, huh, interesting.
00:19:17
Speaker
Right.
00:19:18
Speaker
I could see where they were coming from, and I don't know this part again at all from the movie.
00:19:23
Speaker
There is a brief scene.
00:19:24
Speaker
There are a few allusions that are essentially to lead you to he had a rather...
00:19:30
Speaker
unpleasant upbringing a rather vapid uh sort of vacuous mother some unknown father and again ellis himself talks about a lot of his writing is based on having this abusive father that he hated and a nasty divorce between his parents so i don't know i see where they're getting at there um i don't know i liked my analysis more
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
00:19:58
Speaker
I guess I would say I understand the same that you're saying.
00:20:02
Speaker
I understand where they're coming from and saying that these pressures make bad people out of the people they're applied to.
00:20:08
Speaker
But yeah, to consider him a victim whatsoever.
00:20:13
Speaker
I mean, there is no victimization when you're cosigning.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:19
Speaker
And, and, like you said, we're all doing this thing.
00:20:22
Speaker
You know, you're in New York right now.
00:20:24
Speaker
I've got lots of friends in New York right now that are not killing people because they have to work hard and have, you know, professional rivalries and things like that.
00:20:34
Speaker
So that's a little too sympathetic.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, no one full on.
00:20:38
Speaker
I think it was the idea is let's criticize this system and perhaps at a, yes, satirical, let's extend this far past reality.
00:20:51
Speaker
What could it become?
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
You know, a little thought experiment, maybe.
00:20:55
Speaker
But as you know, as the core basis, an indictment of consumerist society and this whatever rat race makes sense.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Themes and Character Analysis in 'American Psycho'
00:21:04
Speaker
A viewpoint that I did not consider at all myself, and I'm curious if you were reading in between these lines in the movie, is a lot of discussion about Bateman as an unreliable narrator.
00:21:17
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:21:19
Speaker
And I think this is a fascinating discussion.
00:21:22
Speaker
We've talked about this before when authors talk about their characters as sort of writing themselves.
00:21:28
Speaker
And, oh, I was surprised how that character came out, too.
00:21:31
Speaker
Like, no, you weren't.
00:21:32
Speaker
You made them up.
00:21:32
Speaker
Right.
00:21:33
Speaker
Right.
00:21:34
Speaker
Ellis himself did at one point was asked about Bateman as an unreliable narrator, and he himself claimed that as he wrote, he also felt unsure if the information Bateman was providing was trustworthy.
00:21:49
Speaker
It's like, well, you wrote the character.
00:21:51
Speaker
Right.
00:21:52
Speaker
That makes it a very different story to me and a very cool angle.
00:21:56
Speaker
Obviously, he was like losing it, becoming more and more unhinged as the story goes.
00:22:03
Speaker
But at no point did I consider personally, oh, should I be believing everything he says?
00:22:08
Speaker
Which I don't know.
00:22:09
Speaker
I thought that was fascinating.
00:22:10
Speaker
And does that occur in the movie?
00:22:12
Speaker
I think, yeah, it does.
00:22:13
Speaker
I think the beauty of the construction of this character is that because he is...
00:22:19
Speaker
a murderer and vapid and admits to being like emotionally disconnected everything says I shouldn't I shouldn't trust this guy but then the flip side of that coin I guess is that he is as honest as they come you know when he's about to murder somebody he says yeah I'm gonna kill you
00:22:41
Speaker
And he tells us up front that he's having an affair, you know, and... Many.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah, actually, yeah, many.
00:22:50
Speaker
One, like, running affair.
00:22:52
Speaker
He makes it clear that he doesn't like his fiancée.
00:22:54
Speaker
He doesn't like... Oh, are they engaged in the movie?
00:22:58
Speaker
Yes, they are.
00:23:00
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:23:02
Speaker
But, you know, he, like, lets you into those dark corners, so you're sort of tricked into believing him, despite everything...
00:23:11
Speaker
You know, despite 1000 red warning signs.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:15
Speaker
Okay, hold on.
00:23:15
Speaker
Don't go any further with that yet, because that actually gets to the question I'm going to ask you later.
00:23:19
Speaker
Cool.
00:23:20
Speaker
But I like the track you're going down.
00:23:22
Speaker
One part I forgot to put in the notes here, so I wanted to mention it before I missed it.
00:23:26
Speaker
There is this little tiny quote, and I meant to write it down and I lost it, but it is along the lines of him saying either his favorite or like what he considered the most important or truest song ever written was Brilliant Disguise by Bruce Springsteen.
00:23:41
Speaker
Are you familiar?
00:23:42
Speaker
I don't think I am.
00:23:45
Speaker
Okay, listen to these lyrics.
00:23:46
Speaker
It's just, I think it's so brilliant as a line because it sneaks by you in the storyline, but then you pull up the lyrics.
00:23:55
Speaker
I hold you in my arms as the band plays.
00:23:57
Speaker
What are those words?
00:23:58
Speaker
Whispered baby, just as you turn away.
00:24:01
Speaker
Saw you last night on the edge of town.
00:24:02
Speaker
I want to read your mind to know just what I've got in this new thing I've found.
00:24:08
Speaker
So tell me what I see when I look in your eyes is that you...
00:24:12
Speaker
or just a brilliant disguise.
00:24:15
Speaker
And then it flips and I'm not going to read the whole thing, but the penultimate stanza in the song.
00:24:23
Speaker
So when you look at me, you better look hard and look twice.
00:24:27
Speaker
Is that me, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?
00:24:31
Speaker
Interesting.
00:24:32
Speaker
It's good.
00:24:33
Speaker
I know.
00:24:39
Speaker
And it gets at exactly what you were just saying.
00:24:41
Speaker
This guy is not just wandering and willy nilly murdering people.
00:24:47
Speaker
He indeed is.
00:24:48
Speaker
But yes, this is what lends to my initial by this point in the book before I had really started reflecting more was this is a gratuitous, violent book of some guy we are clearly not supposed to like.
00:25:04
Speaker
Right.
00:25:04
Speaker
There's no question there.
00:25:06
Speaker
There's no moral ambiguity.
00:25:09
Speaker
So what is what is the question like, yes, murder, bad guy who murder bad.
00:25:15
Speaker
And then we got into this point and the discussion of his family and these influences on him.
00:25:20
Speaker
You know what made him this way.
00:25:23
Speaker
And it did.
00:25:24
Speaker
It did not give me pause.
00:25:25
Speaker
I don't have sympathy for the serial killer, but it did make me think more about, OK, I'm
00:25:32
Speaker
When we look at something and so willingly think objectively bad, are we considering everything?
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:25:42
Speaker
It does, yeah.
00:25:44
Speaker
Okay, I want to hear about the movie.
00:25:46
Speaker
For anyone else who's curious, because I kept asking myself some of these things, I have looked up some definitions that have been involved in this discussion.
00:25:56
Speaker
Postmodern, it came up a ton in discussions about the book and the, I don't know, zeitgeist that you are supposed to be understanding it from.
00:26:06
Speaker
And this is a term that I hate.
00:26:10
Speaker
But Britannica defines it as a Western philosophy, late 20th century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism, general suspicion of reason, and
00:26:26
Speaker
and acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.
00:26:33
Speaker
I think this is a load of bunk because at any point, anyone in history now or in the future at infinity can say, this time is postmodern.
00:26:46
Speaker
Nope.
00:26:47
Speaker
Whatever time you are in when you're saying that, that is by definition modern.
00:26:50
Speaker
Right.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:52
Speaker
So I don't like this, especially because I feel like it's used as a defense of these things being utterly ridiculous.
00:27:01
Speaker
The Wall Street boom and the tons of cash and drugs being thrown around.
00:27:06
Speaker
No, this was just the modern version of that.
00:27:08
Speaker
So that one I pulled up because I didn't like.
00:27:11
Speaker
The second one I pulled up because I kept thinking, man, this guy's a psychopath.
00:27:15
Speaker
And then I went, or is he a sociopath?
00:27:18
Speaker
And then I went, I don't know what the difference is.
00:27:20
Speaker
So I looked it up.
00:27:22
Speaker
A sociopath, this is according to WebMD, is an outdated informal term for someone who has antisocial personality disorder, ASPD.
00:27:32
Speaker
This disorder can cause you to lack empathy.
00:27:35
Speaker
Clearly, Bateman lacks empathy, which means you don't care about or understand other people's feelings.
00:27:40
Speaker
You might not feel remorse for bad things you do, and you might often take advantage of others for your own personal gain.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
And later, this article was massive.
00:27:49
Speaker
I just pulled the brief definition that I could essentially said psychopath is of the same ilk.
00:27:57
Speaker
It is a cousin to sociopath, also an outdated term, also in modernity considered part of APSPD, antisocial personality disorder.
00:28:08
Speaker
Okay, got it.
00:28:09
Speaker
So again, for your information, I don't know, I put them in here because those were things I was wondering as I read through some of this terminology, especially in trying to understand what was this book trying to communicate.
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's helpful.
00:28:24
Speaker
Thank you.
00:28:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:26
Speaker
Please tell me about the movie.
00:28:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:29
Speaker
I love this movie, so I'm excited to do this.
00:28:32
Speaker
Interesting.
00:28:33
Speaker
Wait, you loved it before we even brought this up as an option to talk about?
00:28:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:38
Speaker
Well, I think my appreciation really grew.
00:28:43
Speaker
I liked it a lot, and my appreciation really grew doing all this research and
00:28:48
Speaker
Ellis was fairly involved in the making of the movie, so hearing about how some of the ideas kind of evolved and were received and all of that made me really kind of really, really dig this movie.
00:29:01
Speaker
Plus, it's just a really well-made movie, too.
00:29:04
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:29:11
Speaker
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00:29:15
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:29:32
Speaker
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00:29:37
Speaker
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00:29:46
Speaker
Released in the year 2000, which was kind of perfect timing for 100 reasons, yuppie culture was huge in the 90s and really kind of became the like centerpiece of youth culture in America throughout that decade.
00:29:59
Speaker
So capping it off with this movie in a new decade and new century was sort of like just like mind boggling that it worked out the way that it did.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:11
Speaker
Directed by Mary Heron, written, co-written by Heron and Guinevere Turner, two women.
00:30:17
Speaker
I think that's really, really interesting that this book was written by a gay man and the movie was created by two women.
00:30:25
Speaker
And it's ultimately about
00:30:27
Speaker
the quote unquote capital S Sigma male.
00:30:31
Speaker
And I think that's where a lot of the satire in this comes from is because it's these groups of people that are able to see from an outside perspective that sometimes straight guys can be a little silly.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense.
00:30:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:48
Speaker
Starring Christian Bale, like you said, this was sort of his breakout role as an adult.
00:30:52
Speaker
He was a child
00:30:54
Speaker
star, child actor in some big movies, but this was kind of where he turned the corner into serious adult work and was being taken more seriously in Hollywood.
00:31:04
Speaker
Supporting roles by Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto, and Willem Dafoe.
00:31:08
Speaker
There's a lot of people in this movie.
00:31:11
Speaker
I did not know that.
00:31:12
Speaker
I didn't know any of them were in it.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:14
Speaker
I mean, pretty much everybody's role is really small in the movie.
00:31:18
Speaker
Everybody's got small roles because...
00:31:21
Speaker
Patrick Bateman is such a narcissist, right?
00:31:24
Speaker
And well, do they do essentially first person view in the movie?
00:31:29
Speaker
Is it him narrating?
00:31:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah, he narrates the whole thing.
00:31:32
Speaker
Okay, yeah, almost the entire book is first person, nearly stream of consciousness.
00:31:36
Speaker
You know, it's not Dubliners, but it's getting there.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that's pretty much the case for the movie, too.
00:31:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:44
Speaker
Who did Reese Witherspoon play?
00:31:46
Speaker
Was she Evelyn?
00:31:47
Speaker
The fiance, yeah.
00:31:50
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:31:51
Speaker
this movie was stuck in development hell for a little while.
00:31:53
Speaker
A few other iterations almost came about that I thought were kind of interesting.
00:31:57
Speaker
Ellis wrote the first take at a screenplay, particularly fascinating, because he's sort of lukewarm on
Movie Adaptations of 'American Psycho'
00:32:04
Speaker
the movie.
00:32:04
Speaker
He's like, it's a good movie, but I don't think it needed to be made.
00:32:07
Speaker
He's never been like, particularly enthusiastic about it in interviews from what I've seen.
00:32:12
Speaker
So it was interesting.
00:32:13
Speaker
He didn't think the movie adaptation of his book needed to be made.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah, he was kind of indifferent about that.
00:32:20
Speaker
It's,
00:32:20
Speaker
It sounds to me like this guy was maybe a little bit of like a tortured soul, tortured artist guy that has a little bit of a hard time reading his own feelings.
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah, checks out.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yep, yep, yep.
00:32:36
Speaker
But anyway, he also wrote the first version of this screenplay.
00:32:42
Speaker
And it varied wildly in the end from the book.
00:32:47
Speaker
And he says that that's because he was bored by the material.
00:32:49
Speaker
So it actually ended with Patrick Bateman doing a musical number on the top of the Empire State Building while police were chasing him.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy.
00:32:59
Speaker
Because Ellis was like, I just couldn't think about the story anymore.
00:33:04
Speaker
Which makes sense.
00:33:04
Speaker
You write a whole book and then you're asked to basically rewrite it.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:11
Speaker
Then there was a version David Cronenberg signed on to direct.
00:33:15
Speaker
He's a body horror director.
00:33:17
Speaker
He's known for these movies that are just about how gross the human body can be and how mutilated and tortured it can be.
00:33:24
Speaker
with Brad Pitt starring.
00:33:26
Speaker
And that was a very, very violent take, obviously.
00:33:30
Speaker
And if I'm remembering correctly, it missed a lot of the nuance.
00:33:34
Speaker
Most of the satire and the criticism was not there.
00:33:37
Speaker
It was kind of more of a straightforward serial killer story.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
And then at this point, Heron was brought on and she wanted to cast Christian Bale, but she was fired because the studio didn't want Bale.
00:33:49
Speaker
Like I said, he wasn't totally taken seriously yet.
00:33:51
Speaker
So they brought on Oliver Stone, real guy's guy director.
00:33:55
Speaker
He's directed like some presidential biopics and like sports movies, real dad stuff.
00:34:02
Speaker
And Leonardo DiCaprio was going to star.
00:34:04
Speaker
And the take on this one was more Jekyll and Hyde, which I think is a mistake to approach the story this way.
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah, interesting.
00:34:13
Speaker
What's the end of the story if that's your perspective the whole time?
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
And those two ended up leaving over creative differences.
00:34:20
Speaker
So Heron was rehired and allowed to cast Christian Bale.
00:34:24
Speaker
So long, long road for this movie.
00:34:27
Speaker
But yeah, wow.
00:34:30
Speaker
You know, we ended up exactly with the cast and crew that we're going to make a great version of the movie.
00:34:36
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:34:37
Speaker
The yuppie culture was like, who are you wearing?
00:34:39
Speaker
What are you wearing?
00:34:40
Speaker
Et cetera.
00:34:41
Speaker
A lot of American brands didn't want to be associated with this movie.
00:34:44
Speaker
So a lot of famous lines had to be changed.
00:34:46
Speaker
Clothing brands, they usually had to source clothing from European brands.
00:34:52
Speaker
There's a line in the movie after, I think after he sleeps with a prostitute, he says, don't touch the watch.
00:34:59
Speaker
In the book, I believe it's don't touch the Rolex.
00:35:02
Speaker
So, but Rolex...
00:35:04
Speaker
said that they couldn't do that because they didn't want to be associated with this extremely violent movie.
00:35:10
Speaker
Interesting.
00:35:11
Speaker
I mean, I'm not surprised.
00:35:13
Speaker
I'm not either, except that the end product is so satirical.
00:35:17
Speaker
I'm like, we'll talk about this later, but I guess that just went over so many people's heads.
00:35:23
Speaker
I don't know.
00:35:24
Speaker
Christian Bale, famously as a method actor, never broke character during the shoot, so he was a total creep to be around.
00:35:32
Speaker
I mean, I have to imagine.
00:35:33
Speaker
He is rumored or is supposedly in control of his sweat glands, and the business card scene when his character is sweating is supposedly real.
00:35:44
Speaker
The sweat on his face is being made by his body.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker
This movie debuted at Sundance Film Festival, which is a really interesting choice because that festival is mostly known for indie films and documentaries.
00:35:58
Speaker
So it was kind of played to the wrong crowd and got pretty divisive reviews there, but was more warmly received during its theatrical release and has since sort of been reevaluated and is known as a...
00:36:12
Speaker
pretty great film at this point.
00:36:15
Speaker
And yeah, I think one of the many reasons that you had Christian Bale stuck in your head so much is because this movie has become so it's the source of so many memes at this point, like the meme of him walking into his office, he's got the headphones on and like the furrowed brow and he's just like walking with
00:36:35
Speaker
real purpose and then you know it's paired to a silly song like walking on sunshine or something like that and so people are you know people are doing that now with the song from k-pop demon hunters and and yes there's another meme i believe again it's when he's sleeping with the prostitutes he's got her legs up on his shoulder and he looks to the side he's watching himself in a mirror have sex yeah
00:36:57
Speaker
And people make jokes about that, like looking to the side and seeing a pile of stuffed animals on her bed.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
So it's funny.
00:37:07
Speaker
Or like a pile of dirty clothes or.
00:37:09
Speaker
It's just a bunch of labubus.
00:37:11
Speaker
Labubus.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:13
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:37:14
Speaker
Those things haunt my nightmares.
00:37:16
Speaker
Exactly.
00:37:17
Speaker
It would fit.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
But the other thing, I've mentioned Sigma Male a handful of times because one of the really unsettling things about this movie is that some people look up to Patrick Bateman in a lot of ways because he takes care of himself like that.
00:37:33
Speaker
And he like exercises and he takes his work really seriously.
00:37:37
Speaker
I think these people are trying to get at the masculine side of yuppie culture, but they're
00:37:42
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's just kind of the regular like symptom of anti-intellectual Americanism.
00:37:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:51
Speaker
Is that people think that Patrick Bateman is cool because of all of these things that make him exactly not cool.
00:37:56
Speaker
That's that's even better because throughout the book, Bateman absolutely idolizes and loves Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan.
00:38:05
Speaker
Oh, no way.
00:38:06
Speaker
Who, like, famously do not get satire.
00:38:09
Speaker
Remember Reagan ran Born in the USA, a Vietnam protest song, as his rally music.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:15
Speaker
Oh, my gosh.
00:38:16
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:38:18
Speaker
It's just generational idiocy.
00:38:21
Speaker
Idiocy.
00:38:21
Speaker
It really is.
00:38:22
Speaker
And it's creepy and it's scary and it's sad and it makes me scared for...
00:38:28
Speaker
being alive um this movie is getting a new adaptation in a few years supposedly i will i will admit that this director that's signed on luca guadagnino is fairly famous for signing on to projects and then they never materialize but this is the director of challengers and call me by your name well at this point they definitely can't let army hammer be yeah no yeah that'd be really bad
00:38:56
Speaker
But anyway, he's known for movies with subtext, in particular, queer subtext.
00:39:02
Speaker
So kind of interesting, again, that it's coming up, you know, the sexuality of it all and what does it mean?
00:39:07
Speaker
And like, is there a self-hatred in Patrick Bateman because he's not actually...
00:39:13
Speaker
interested in who he should be, if he's going to fit into yuppie culture.
00:39:18
Speaker
I think it'll be really interesting.
00:39:19
Speaker
I hope this comes together.
00:39:22
Speaker
As much as I love this movie, I would love to see somebody else's take on it as well.
00:39:28
Speaker
There would be a very interesting angle there, especially if they leaned into Bateman as an unreliable narrator.
00:39:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:36
Speaker
Oh, totally.
00:39:37
Speaker
Totally.
00:39:38
Speaker
There's a lot of discussion of the book in particular of did he actually kill anybody?
00:39:44
Speaker
Right.
00:39:45
Speaker
Oh, totally.
00:39:46
Speaker
Did he make all of this up?
00:39:47
Speaker
So along those lines, you know, is he telling us what he wants to be and none of this is actually true?
00:39:53
Speaker
Oh, that'd be a great movie.
00:39:55
Speaker
Well, and I think, too, you know, the modern, there's such a huge obsession with true crime right now.
00:40:01
Speaker
And so, you know, half the shows on TV are about true criminals.
00:40:05
Speaker
And you finally get to the episode that's like,
00:40:07
Speaker
Why did he do it?
00:40:08
Speaker
Why did he kill all these people?
00:40:10
Speaker
And the answer is always, almost always that he was struggling with who he was, you know, that he was gay and didn't want to be.
00:40:17
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think this could be very timely.
00:40:22
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:40:23
Speaker
Certainly.
00:40:24
Speaker
Cool.
00:40:24
Speaker
That's the movie, though.
00:40:25
Speaker
I love this movie.
00:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, but let's talk about it a little bit.
00:40:29
Speaker
Why don't you hit me with one of your DQs?
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:33
Speaker
So is there a particular first person he kills on screen is I mean, everybody that he kills is innocent.
00:40:40
Speaker
But this it's it's a homeless man on the street.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yep.
00:40:45
Speaker
He turns around and kills him.
00:40:46
Speaker
So it gets a little bit.
00:40:47
Speaker
It's like really shocking and jarring.
00:40:49
Speaker
And you're like, oh, we're really in it.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:52
Speaker
And it's pretty early on.
00:40:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:55
Speaker
But you do know that he's going to be a killer at some point in the movie.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yep, yep.
00:41:00
Speaker
So there's a lot of book where you're unsure, though?
00:41:03
Speaker
It's a slower start.
00:41:05
Speaker
And again, that could just be my perception because I haven't seen the movie.
00:41:11
Speaker
So I assumed it was like immediately clear.
00:41:13
Speaker
And it's a little bit ambiguous from the start.
00:41:16
Speaker
And you're like, what's I think I think it's a little more of the psycho.
00:41:22
Speaker
What's going to happen?
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:25
Speaker
It's tense.
00:41:27
Speaker
Right, right, right.
00:41:27
Speaker
Exactly.
00:41:28
Speaker
Exactly.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:31
Speaker
And it doesn't it doesn't happen when you think it's going to happen.
00:41:34
Speaker
Right.
00:41:34
Speaker
There's like the business card scene and you're like, whoa, this guy's going to lose his shit.
00:41:39
Speaker
So upset.
00:41:40
Speaker
And then he walks out of the room.
00:41:41
Speaker
So upset.
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:46
Speaker
As I thought it, because I wondered that while I was reading, and then when I went to type it earlier today, I was like, there's no way it's possible to see this movie at this point and not know, you know?
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:58
Speaker
Well, that kind of plays into mine a little bit.
00:42:02
Speaker
The movie being made, like I said, caused a lot of public backlash due to its depictions of violence, particularly against women.
00:42:09
Speaker
But, you know, we shouldn't
00:42:11
Speaker
probably shouldn't kill men either.
00:42:13
Speaker
Probably.
00:42:15
Speaker
Is the satire and dark humor, is that clear in the book?
00:42:19
Speaker
Because that's one of the reasons they loved Mary Heron's take on the material.
00:42:24
Speaker
And I just, I can't, I can't fathom there being so many groups of people that would misunderstand that this is a total takedown of people like Bateman.
00:42:35
Speaker
It is abundantly clear that this is
00:42:40
Speaker
an unlikable, like you, you are not to like essentially any of the characters.
00:42:46
Speaker
They are all depicted as horrific materialist, vacuous creatures.
00:42:54
Speaker
But the, the dark humor part is,
00:43:01
Speaker
It's more of, I would call the book more of like fully horror.
00:43:06
Speaker
Based on what you're describing, I think they tone down the graphic nature in the movie.
00:43:14
Speaker
That's pretty wild because there's some really graphic scenes.
00:43:17
Speaker
No, it'll be more clear in a second.
00:43:19
Speaker
But as I was reading, there were a lot of scenes that I was like, how on earth did they like truly, truly nauseatingly to the point where
00:43:32
Speaker
a couple of days one i had to stop reading for a while two i could not myself eat a meal for some time after sitting and reading for a while oh wow yikes the um i will say the encounter with the prostitutes um you don't know what happens to them they just like stumble out of his
00:43:55
Speaker
apartment uh you know bloodied and bruised yes so that's the first violent scene in the book the he kills the homeless man later in the book and all he so they have like the also in the book gratuitously graphic sex scene just regular sex scene on the point of like um like
00:44:21
Speaker
There's erotic fan fiction that is less explicit than this scene was in the book.
00:44:27
Speaker
Very, very detailed.
00:44:29
Speaker
And then they go to sleep and one of them is touching his chest and he says, don't touch the Rolex.
00:44:35
Speaker
And then it says a half hour later, I got hard again and got up.
00:44:38
Speaker
And went over to my shelf where there was a coat hanger and a rusty butter knife and some other things.
00:44:47
Speaker
And I said, now the fun can really begin.
00:44:50
Speaker
And then they leave the apartment unhappy and bruised.
00:44:54
Speaker
And one of them alludes to it later on.
00:44:55
Speaker
So, yes, that first scene.
00:44:57
Speaker
And that's kind of the first point where you go, wait a minute.
00:44:59
Speaker
Is he like you think he's going to kill him and then he doesn't?
00:45:03
Speaker
And that was the point where I wondered, oh, am I thinking of the wrong movie?
00:45:06
Speaker
Is this guy not the serial killer?
00:45:10
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:45:12
Speaker
But yes, he does kill both of them later in the movie.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:16
Speaker
But second question.
00:45:18
Speaker
So we've already basically hashed this out, but I did a lot of personal digesting and distilling of the book to decide what I thought the themes were.
00:45:31
Speaker
I did really find more to it on reflection than I did while I was reading.
00:45:36
Speaker
While I was reading, I thought it was just...
00:45:38
Speaker
gratuitous and kind of over the top.
00:45:41
Speaker
But then the answers I saw from critics were even more different.
00:45:44
Speaker
And even the author's answers about what the meanings and the themes were more different.
00:45:49
Speaker
And so this is a discussion that I think we've never specifically had head on with our respective hobby slash obsessions of reading books and watching movies.
00:45:59
Speaker
Whose opinion is correct?
00:46:01
Speaker
Or is there one correct answer?
Interpretations and Conclusion of 'American Psycho'
00:46:05
Speaker
You know, the author or the producer saying, here's what I intended, or the pundits whose full-time jobs are to analyze and tell us, or is the correct answer, this is what I took away, so that's what's correct for me?
00:46:21
Speaker
That's a really big question.
00:46:24
Speaker
And I think the unsatisfying thing is that my honest-to-God, honest answer is
00:46:33
Speaker
Do you like how I said honest twice?
00:46:34
Speaker
I think everybody's is correct.
00:46:37
Speaker
The author obviously has some ownership over really everything because this was born of them, right?
00:46:45
Speaker
And he wrote it for something specific, but then he published it.
00:46:49
Speaker
He opened it up to interpretation.
00:46:53
Speaker
And that interpretation includes critics who do this as their job, bibliophiles like you who do this as a hobby,
00:47:03
Speaker
And filmmakers who adapt this and give it a new life in a different format for a different audience, which is a different set of critics and a different set of cinephiles.
00:47:15
Speaker
And I don't think that... If somebody read this and truly felt that it was...
00:47:22
Speaker
just about praising a serial killer i i think you'd have to have you know a discussion to figure out why that's their perspective why they don't feel like this went far enough and sort of indicting who he was and what he was doing enough to be commentary but i don't think it makes it invalid uh-huh uh-huh that nate that is an incredible answer thank you
00:47:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:50
Speaker
No, I like that answer a lot.
00:47:52
Speaker
You're going to have a reading of this, whether you are Ellis or Heron or Christian Bale or you or me, you're going to have a reading of this story and get something out of it.
00:48:04
Speaker
And who is anybody else on earth to tell you that you got what you got out of it was wrong?
00:48:09
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:48:10
Speaker
Your opinion gets to be your opinion no matter what.
00:48:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:14
Speaker
Unless, yeah, as long as you're open to more in-depth, like analysis and background research and additional opinions and allowing them to maybe inform yours, then I don't see any reason with letting people believe what they believe.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:48:32
Speaker
No, I think that's a great point.
00:48:35
Speaker
Wow.
00:48:38
Speaker
No, I expected no answer to this.
00:48:40
Speaker
I expected to share my frustration in this question with you and we would both go, yeah, that's a crazy question.
00:48:46
Speaker
I did not expect an eloquent answer.
00:48:48
Speaker
You A plus, sir.
00:48:51
Speaker
Wow, A plus.
00:48:52
Speaker
All right.
00:48:53
Speaker
I'm on a roll.
00:48:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:59
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:49:25
Speaker
That's C-L-I-C-K-U-P dot com slash podcast.
00:49:33
Speaker
Okay, well, I've got one last question.
00:49:34
Speaker
And I think we've kind of already answered it.
00:49:36
Speaker
But I'd like to hear you sort of share it again, succinctly here.
00:49:43
Speaker
Is it clear throughout the book that Bateman is this unreliable narrator?
00:49:47
Speaker
Or is it saved for the big crazy twist at the end?
00:49:51
Speaker
I mean, does the hit the twist hit as hard?
00:49:55
Speaker
I understood it as 100% what was actually happening and that he was just in a rapid decline and unraveling at this rate.
00:50:09
Speaker
I did not at all personally understand this angle of, oh, he is unreliable and we should not be taking all of this first person view as reality.
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:23
Speaker
So I thought,
00:50:24
Speaker
It would appear I'm the wrong person to ask, because that's one of those things.
00:50:27
Speaker
When I looked it up online, I saw other people talking about that angle and I was like, oh, that's really cool.
00:50:35
Speaker
So maybe I'm just not intellectually advanced enough to have understood that.
00:50:42
Speaker
I took it in a very different way.
00:50:45
Speaker
But to answer your question, according to other critics, it is apparently quite clear throughout the book, yes, or at least that some people described it as a schizophrenic break.
00:51:02
Speaker
And there was sort of supposed to be part, like, did you ever read brief history of seven killings?
00:51:09
Speaker
Nope.
00:51:09
Speaker
Doesn't sound that brief.
00:51:11
Speaker
It is not brief at all.
00:51:12
Speaker
It is a tome.
00:51:13
Speaker
It's like a thousand pages.
00:51:14
Speaker
A brilliant author used to work at the same college my mom worked at.
00:51:18
Speaker
And there are chapters that are supposed to clearly be that character while high on drugs.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:29
Speaker
And I had to have that explained to me.
00:51:31
Speaker
And once it was, I was like, oh, my gosh, how did I not understand this immediately?
00:51:36
Speaker
So unfortunately, I'm the wrong person to ask that question to.
00:51:40
Speaker
But from the critical analysis that I've observed after finishing reading, yes, it is supposed to be clear throughout the book.
00:51:47
Speaker
Wow.
00:51:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:48
Speaker
Well, I think that's I mean, I said this earlier.
00:51:51
Speaker
I said that's the beauty of the character is that.
00:51:54
Speaker
All the warning signs are like pointing at another sign that says, don't trust this mofo.
00:52:00
Speaker
But you're like, well, that's who I got.
00:52:02
Speaker
And that's sort of the beauty of an unreliable narrator.
00:52:06
Speaker
Well, and honestly, it actually checked out for me like it didn't fall apart missing that piece because on a much smaller scale, obviously, I think we all have been sitting at dinner, sitting at game night, go see some friends, a co-worker at a Monday morning meeting and they're off.
00:52:30
Speaker
You know, obviously, hopefully in all of our day-to-day instances, it's not because they can't wait to get home and torture and kill a puppy they bought the week before.
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah, inexplicably so.
00:52:42
Speaker
And then suddenly the next day, because that's the thing, the next chapter he would show up and be fine and his hair would be done.
00:52:47
Speaker
And initially, you know, he's very much blaming it on this stressful job that he has and these coke binges.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:55
Speaker
And it's you kind of have to get into it before you go, oh, no, he's compulsively killing.
00:53:01
Speaker
And these are moments when he's like really unhinged.
00:53:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:05
Speaker
It was surprising to me to consider it.
00:53:07
Speaker
It does feel like a different story with that in mind.
00:53:11
Speaker
I would honestly be pretty interested in rereading this in the not so distant future with that thought in mind, because I think it'd be a very different story.
00:53:20
Speaker
Pick up on the little nuggets.
00:53:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:25
Speaker
Well, what about recommendations?
00:53:27
Speaker
Who, if anybody, do you recommend this book to?
00:53:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:32
Speaker
So this is the part where I put some little statistics for us that I think speaks more to the discussion we had of the gratuitous graphic nature.
00:53:42
Speaker
Sure.
00:53:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:43
Speaker
So first and foremost, it is by no means a bad book.
00:53:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:49
Speaker
But I would be careful who I recommend it to because I present to you American Psycho by the numbers.
00:53:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:57
Speaker
Murders over 50.
00:54:00
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:54:01
Speaker
What?
00:54:03
Speaker
Murders described in considerable, gruesome detail.
00:54:10
Speaker
Around 12, six men and six women.
00:54:13
Speaker
Again, crazy, crazy detail like power drill to the jaw, reached in and tore the veins out of her throat with my hand.
00:54:25
Speaker
Like scary.
00:54:27
Speaker
Like at a point where in a regular horror movie you would be like, wow, he really killed them dead.
00:54:31
Speaker
But the writing continues.
00:54:34
Speaker
More detail is given.
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:37
Speaker
Animals killed at least five slurs.
00:54:41
Speaker
Verbal slurs based on race, sexuality, gender, or literally just the words cock and cunt.
00:54:50
Speaker
I lost track within the first hour.
00:54:54
Speaker
Whoa.
00:54:55
Speaker
And I... This part...
00:54:57
Speaker
I really appreciated seeing a couple reviews that agreed with me.
00:55:01
Speaker
Multiple people said they had to switch from the audiobook to a physical book because it was so jarring hearing somebody say these words so many times over and over and over again.
00:55:15
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yes, it gets the satirical point across.
00:55:21
Speaker
There are people I think would understand and enjoy the premise and the satire and the complexity that I would not recommend it to simply because it is so overtly off-putting in its use of language.
00:55:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:41
Speaker
The analogy that I put in here is that I once put myself through the miserable experience of listening to the audiobook of The Shining in one sitting, cover to cover, no pauses, no stopping.
00:55:56
Speaker
It was about a seven-hour drive from Minneapolis to Madison.
00:56:00
Speaker
I was not okay when I got there.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, I had to go settle down.
00:56:03
Speaker
Yeah, no shit.
00:56:04
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:56:06
Speaker
And that felt better than this.
00:56:07
Speaker
Oh.
00:56:09
Speaker
Whoa, okay.
00:56:12
Speaker
This is two for two now that I feel bad about the book that I recommended we cover next.
00:56:17
Speaker
No, but I just told you I would like to reread it in the near future.
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah, you did.
00:56:22
Speaker
It does not, I mean, you know strong language does not offend me.
00:56:27
Speaker
In this case, like Forrest Gump, it was gratuitous to no avail.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:35
Speaker
There was at least clearly a reason here, such that it was understandable, and at least in most cases did indeed add to the character.
00:56:49
Speaker
And so there are also very much people that I do know that I would recommend reading the book to.
00:56:55
Speaker
I think especially if you enjoyed the movie, if you were a fan of the movie already and are a reader, I think you would take more away from it than just the movie on its own.
00:57:06
Speaker
That being said, yeah, this might be...
00:57:11
Speaker
I know this is a comparison we deliberately do not draw, but this may be the second one in a row that I would recommend the movie over the book, and I haven't even seen the movie.
00:57:20
Speaker
Wow.
00:57:21
Speaker
So I would not not recommend it.
00:57:23
Speaker
I gave it a three out of five.
00:57:25
Speaker
If there were decimals in Goodreads, it would for sure have even been a three point five.
00:57:31
Speaker
It's just so the language is so oppressive.
00:57:34
Speaker
There are a lot of people I would like like in no way could I in good conscience send a copy to my mom and say, hey, you would love this.
00:57:41
Speaker
It's just not for Nancy.
00:57:44
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:57:46
Speaker
What about the movie?
00:57:48
Speaker
The movie, like I've said several times, I love this movie.
00:57:51
Speaker
So I definitely recommend this movie basically to anybody who's a fan of satire.
00:57:55
Speaker
I would similarly sort of put a content warning on there that says it's graphic and violent and uneasy to watch.
00:58:04
Speaker
But it's a movie that, you know, was meant to come out in theaters.
00:58:08
Speaker
Like, you'll survive it if you've seen a horror movie or...
00:58:13
Speaker
some kind of true crime story before in terms of its violence.
00:58:19
Speaker
Well, I wondered that during, like to make it into a movie pragmatically, they had to have toned a lot of that.
00:58:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:24
Speaker
And a lot of it is kind of used more artfully.
00:58:27
Speaker
I'm sure you've also seen the clip or the shot, I guess, of...
00:58:31
Speaker
Of his face covered in blood, and he's smiling, and his hair is slicked back, and he's in a rain poncho.
00:58:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:58:37
Speaker
That's when he's hacking up Jared Leto with an axe.
00:58:41
Speaker
So you see, there's scenes like that where, like, the blood splatters, but you're not watching the body.
00:58:47
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no.
00:58:48
Speaker
That does not...
00:58:50
Speaker
I want to explain to you the difference, but like it is not content that we could put, like our podcast would be pulled off the air.
00:58:58
Speaker
If I literally just read these scenes to you, the things he did with human bodies and animals and objects.
00:59:06
Speaker
Okay, well, the movie is not that bad.
00:59:08
Speaker
I mean, it's still rated R, but it's not that bad.
00:59:09
Speaker
Right.
00:59:10
Speaker
I mean, they had to calm it down enough to be in a theater.
00:59:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:13
Speaker
And actually, there was an extended version of that.
00:59:15
Speaker
I watched the extended cut and was like, oh, that wasn't.
00:59:19
Speaker
Was that even longer?
00:59:20
Speaker
It's still only like an hour 42.
00:59:22
Speaker
And I looked it up and they literally, I think they only cut about a minute of violence, basically.
00:59:28
Speaker
Because it just was like way too much the first time it screened.
00:59:34
Speaker
Yep.
00:59:35
Speaker
What I think is really interesting about this one, though, is that it's kind of a genre of its own.
00:59:39
Speaker
Like I said, I don't really classify it as a horror because you're kind of in on the scary the whole time.
00:59:45
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:59:46
Speaker
It's not you're not you're not shocked by this murder.
00:59:49
Speaker
You were prepared.
00:59:49
Speaker
Right.
00:59:50
Speaker
For the most part.
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:51
Speaker
And it's obviously not true crime because it's not a true story.
00:59:55
Speaker
But it's certainly along those lines.
00:59:57
Speaker
Like everything is realistic.
00:59:58
Speaker
It's not like the Stephen King stories where it's like, who did it?
01:00:02
Speaker
And then it's a other dimensional deity or something crazy like that.
01:00:06
Speaker
Yep.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yep.
01:00:08
Speaker
But it's similar in a lot of ways to Fight Club because it's got that sort of psychological angle to it, as well as being a commentary on masculinity in pretty much the same time period too.
01:00:21
Speaker
So if you're a fan of Fight Club...
01:00:23
Speaker
And actually, that's a good comp.
01:00:24
Speaker
Fight Club is pretty violent and gross and fucked up, too.
01:00:27
Speaker
So that's probably a really good comp.
01:00:29
Speaker
Also body horror.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:30
Speaker
If you like Fight Club.
01:00:31
Speaker
That kept coming to mind for me.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:34
Speaker
There's a lot of similarities between Patrick Bateman and Tyler Durden.
01:00:38
Speaker
And actually, weirdly, people kind of look up to Tyler Durden, too.
01:00:41
Speaker
And that's no bueno.
01:00:43
Speaker
No.
01:00:45
Speaker
So anyway, I give this a four and a half stars on Letterboxd.
01:00:48
Speaker
Bale is so, so, so, so good.
01:00:50
Speaker
Four and a half.
01:00:51
Speaker
So I should watch it.
01:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think you should.
01:00:54
Speaker
Maybe before you reread, once you do that, you should watch it.
01:00:59
Speaker
And that way you can kind of compare and contrast.
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, interesting.
01:01:03
Speaker
I will.
01:01:03
Speaker
I will.
01:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, but I can't stress enough, too.
01:01:07
Speaker
I really think that having women write and direct this is what brings just everything into focus and makes it so clear exactly what story they're telling.
01:01:16
Speaker
Gave it the right perspective.
01:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
01:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that.
01:01:21
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:01:22
Speaker
Wow, high praise.
01:01:23
Speaker
I mean, you know I watch it.
01:01:25
Speaker
Any movie you give 4.5 stars, I'm going to watch.
01:01:28
Speaker
Boy, do I have the movie knife for you.
01:01:32
Speaker
All right.
01:01:32
Speaker
Well, that's our conversation on American Psycho.
01:01:34
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us.
01:01:36
Speaker
Chris, what are we doing next time around?