American Psycho Green Room
Gabby Browne: [00:00:00] This podcast is an association with Spotlight Studios, a family of podcasts driven to create unique, one of a kind content. If you have any interest in learning more, please visit spotlightstudiospodcast. com. Hey everybody, welcome to the green room, our deep dive, deep, deep, deeper dive into everything movies have in store for us.
And today we're going a little bit deeper into American Psycho 3.
I don't even ever want to read the book American Psycho just because of how different it is than this movie. The book and this movie are two different things. They have the same title with decent comparisons between the two, but what Mary Herron and Guinevere Turner, what they chose to do is they took out the smut and the hinted [00:01:00] misogyny.
Men vs. Women in that same sense, the book was just almost disgusting. Like, he literally kills a little kid at the zoo and they did not want to have to keep that in there. They can show a type of violence and a type of fear that Patrick Bateman has without having gore behind it. Being directed by a woman and rewritten by a woman makes it such a unique aspect, such a unique look.
Aaron Couser: It's interesting that she put a flag on this movie. She rewrote the book to fit the screen, to adapt in the way that she wanted it done. And she believed in it so much that she spent all that time writing and just staying with it. Even though she was fired, she came back and still agreed to direct it.
You could tell that... Really meant a lot to her to tell this kind of a story. She
Gabby Browne: worked on several different TV series, but her big one was I Shot Andy Warhol. That was from 1996. I'm assuming what landed her this directing position here. [00:02:00]
Christian Bale: A lot of people would talk about Anthony Perkins in Psycho and say, you know, once you play a villain like that, you never get to play anything
Aaron Couser: else.
When you think American Psycho, you think of Christian Bale. 100%. Definitely. Christian Bale took this role and made it his own. If it wasn't for him, you might not even really remember too much about it. Just some
Gabby Browne: fantastic choices that, both by direction and by Christian Bale, that just Together, meld so well.
We talk about who could have done it. It was only Christian. It really was only Christian who could have done it, so. And
Aaron Couser: the director knew that. She said she's not going to direct this movie without him. It shows why. They were on the same wavelength. She knew
Gabby Browne: he was a little fucking freak.
Jonathan VanSickle: Mhmm. She needed it.
She needed it for this movie. She knew
Gabby Browne: it. She needed
Jonathan VanSickle: it. I could never really
Christian Bale: view him. Just as a villain, because you laugh at him, you know, never with him at all. So I was never really concerned and took, didn't take any of those career suicide threats seriously. In fact, [00:03:00] it sort of, was exciting.
Jonathan VanSickle: The process, the process and how this got put together, and the author said something really interesting.
While responding to, did these things happen? Did they not happen? He said, in a book, You can be way more ambiguous with these things. When you see something visually, it's truth. And so in a film, you have such a hard time building that ambiguity and did he, didn't he. And he, he commended the writers in, um, the almost impossible task of trying to portray the reality or lack thereof of this story that we're being told.
Mary
Gabby Browne: Harron even says this herself. One thing I think is a failure on my part is people keep coming out of the film thinking it's all a dream. And I never intended that. I think it's a failing
Mary Harron: of mine in the final scene that I just got the emphasis wrong. Because I should have left it just more open ended.
It makes it look like it was all in his head and as far
Aaron Couser: as I'm concerned it's not. As a director, Yeah, to not do too much or not do too little to give [00:04:00] ambiguity to the audience to make their own decision. You don't want to give too many clues. It's definitely, as the author said, almost an impossible task to do.
For me, when I look at that as an audience member, it's like, okay, you look at all those clues. It seems like it was just in his mind.
Gabby Browne: Not actually doing it, making it all up in his head takes away his responsibility. I just truly think he committed those crimes. Maybe not all to the extent, it's in the same thing as of his narcissism and grandeur of it all.
I killed 20, maybe 40. Some of these things happened and some of these things didn't. And I truly think that that's the case here. A lot of things he made up in his own head, but a lot of things he actually did. And you cannot take that deniability away from him. I can't watch the movie and say it's made up in his head because that seems too easy for me.
I want to hold Patrick Bateman responsible for the horrors he's caused, truthfully.
Mary Harron: Well, you know, when I was growing up, there were no female [00:05:00] film directors that I knew of apart from Lenny Riefenstahl. So it just never occurred to me that I could be a director and I was so embarrassed that anybody thought that I could make a film one day.
It's like, no, of course I couldn't make
Aaron Couser: films. Bringing it back to the director, Mary Herron, she brought the sensitivity out into it. Absolutely, she did. And she found the comedy within that really heinous book and made it really a beautiful art piece. You know, as I was
Mary Harron: on a lot of shoots and it took me Ages to get the chance, five years to get the chance to direct.
And then I realized actually you just have to know what you want. The director is the conductor of the orchestra and everyone else has the expertise and you have to ha, you have to control the tone and the picture and the overall sort of vision of it.
Gabby Browne: And it was both of them together, her and Christian Bale as a tag team duo, and the respect that they gave each other to allow these scenes to take place with trust.
And that's why they're so. Beautiful and authentic and genuine is, and, and frickin funny. They allowed to trust each other in these [00:06:00] scenes. When you
Aaron Couser: think about this movie, and it's been around for about 20 years, you think of more of the, of the comedic parts of the movie. The more absurdity of these personalities in these, in this society that these people are living in.
I think someone who has in touch with that sensitivity would, would be able to do that.
Gabby Browne: Absolutely, it just adds this other layer that I don't think if it was directed by a man that it would have. I also don't know if it would have half as many female characters, but who knows. Or they would be in it for less, less.
time. There's just a lot of ladies in this movie, and I really enjoyed that. I think
Jonathan VanSickle: for me, I agree with a lot of the economic inequality. I love that part of this movie. I love the cynicism. I think that's what creates a lot of the comedy in this movie. From watching it as normal people, is seeing the disconnect.
They just don't even live in our world. But I think most importantly to me, what I think is about is the repression of identity and self in order to conform and find power and success in this world. I think that was, for me, that was one of the biggest things that I really, [00:07:00] that really resonated with me.
Just what that can do to a human being and to your spirit if you're not true to yourself or if you don't have that love and that, that sense of identity and pride in yourself. I think really the toxicity in that environment that he had not only put himself in, but excelled in, is really what killed and was cancerous to his soul, brought him to doing these unspeakable acts or to even think that way, uh, whether we're saying if he did them or not.
So yeah, I think for me, it's, it's really a repression of self and just a destruction of identity and what that can do to the human psyche. At its core, this is, this is a... cynical black comedy. I don't think that it's been done to this extent or as well since American Psycho. Uh, the introduction to the genre, essentially, and honestly, kind of the peak of the mountain when it comes to it.
The way this movie will make you laugh. And shiver and horror, minute to minute, it's really incredible. It's really an incredible thing that they [00:08:00] achieved with
Aaron Couser: this one. It was something that she saw out of the book, pulled it out, and believed in it so much that she said, I'm not even going to take this money to direct it unless I'm with Christian Bale.
And you could just see how authentic it was. A project that someone cared so much about, and It was beautiful. For this show, that's the perfect movie for. Well, and the most exciting
Jonathan VanSickle: part about that is the narration that I think that occurs throughout. Because we are given an in depth look at this person's thoughts, at its core, he is a psycho.
He is an unreliable narrator. Where you go through this whole film through his eyes, you're kind of faced with these cruxes. You're like, wait, is that, is that what really, like it's, that's the interesting part about this movie. You're getting an in depth look at this person's life, but at the same time, maybe you're not.
What do you like about Patrick Bateman?
Christian Bale: What do I like? Um, I like nothing about him. I mean, he's a completely unredeeming character. He finds himself in so many ridiculous situations, and reacts in such a ridiculous manner. You know, he's [00:09:00] certainly somebody that I wouldn't want to, you know, be at a table with and eating, but I'd certainly want to eavesdrop on his conversation.
Gabby Browne: Spotlight.
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