American Psycho movie theory

[Snake]

I like both this movie and Fight Club because he gets btfo'd in that one too. What a homo.

He's fucked a lot of underage girls during his "music career."

 

[Riccardo Bosi]

He's fucked a lot of underage girls during his "music career."

I'm gobsmacked that someone from Hollywood would behave in such a manner.

 

[UnPRePared]

I'm gobsmacked that someone from Hollywood would behave in such a manner.

Good good, don't even get me started on that vanity project motherfucker. Kevin Costner is more sincere in his music career than him.

 

[LingerLonger]

Or he could've been imagining it all.

The real estate agent covers up his murders to make a sale because it would disrupt the flow of her life. Police do not inquire about a missing person only a private detective. The lawyer in the last scene tells Bateman he saw Paul Allen alive in London to give Bateman some evidence that he could not have murdered Paul Allen. They are all complicit in covering up the murders.

The point of the movie is that Batemen is like Hunter Biden. The son of a rich banker or politician who commits rapes and murders and it all gets covered up. Everything he does murder and rape wise is real but he hallucinates other stuff like blowing up a cop car or an ATM machine requesting kittens. He is basically supposed to be a child of a billionaire whose father sweeps his insanity under the rug.

 

[Snake]

The book alludes more to it being real since IIRC he keeps mentioning the smell of roses to hide the smell.

 

[Udders]

Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women.

The opening of that scene is my favorite part of the movie.

I'm on the verge of tears by the time we arrive at Espace because I'm almost positive we won't have a decent table. But we do, and relief washes over me in an awesome wave.

 

[stealthygeek]

Fun Fact: James Van der beek played Patrick's brother in Rules of Attraction.



I've read a few of Easton Ellis' books and they were all set in the same Universe and would make references to other characters/places in different books. Can't remember if Patrick mentions Camden College in the movie but I'm pretty sure he does in the book at least. Also, Robert Downey Jr's character in Less Than Zero is related to someone in Rules of Attraction (I think he was brothers with the gay guy).

EDIT: I think it's actually Andrew McCarthy's character, not Downey jr

 

[Mc.Faggot]

He's fucked a lot of underage girls during his "music career."

my ex says she had sex with him when he was touring conventions with his band

shocking if true

 

[Calculating Bovinity]

American Psycho is my favorite movie of all time,

Let me guess, Joker is your second favorite and and Falling Down is a close third (you haven't realised that you're not supposed to root for D-Fens)

 

[analeggsalad]

Fun Fact: James Van der beek played Patrick's brother in Rules of Attraction.



I've read a few of Easton Ellis' books and they were all set in the same Universe and would make references to other characters/places in different books. Can't remember if Patrick mentions Camden College in the movie but I'm pretty sure he does in the book at least. Also, Robert Downey Jr's character in Less Than Zero is related to someone in Rules of Attraction (I think he was brothers with the gay guy).

EDIT: I think it's actually Andrew McCarthy's character, not Downey jr

him talking about what places to get reservations gave me flashbacks from the book. def the worst parts of it

 

[Stent]

Patrick Bateman hired the private detective. Schinkleboutit.

 

[SmellenShoehorn]

Fun fact, Christian Bale based his character on Tom Cruise

Take that for what you will

Oh GOOD FOR YOU

 

[Snake]

My name is Patrick S. Tomlinson. I am 42 years old.​

I live on 2611 N Oakland Ave, Milwaukee, WI in a half house next to a housing project.

I believe in not taking care of myself, with a unbalanced diet, in a rigorous Twitter routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll eat an entire Entemann's crumcake as I call people child on Twitter. I can do a thousand now.



After I finish calling people child, I then move on to calling people atalker. In the shower, I expel last night's four chilidogs into the shower drain and use my prediabetic foot to mash it down into the drain.



Then I apply the nigger pepperoni of the child I killed the night earlier onto my face as I prepare the rest of my routine.

There is an idea of a Patrick S. Tomlinson, some kind of fatbody, but there is no real me, only a Twitter account, something lazy, and though I can hide my cold gaze in endless selfies and you can shake my fat hand and feel flesh gripping you and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably incomparable: I simply... am... fat.

 

[LaylaCumiasMoistHotPocket]

I really felt a lotta sympathy for Sue. Throughout 3/4 of the film she is portrayed as a wholseome, naive, young girl. You really think shes getting thrown to the wolves.

But its she who was the wolf, turning the tide on Anthony. The pillow biting scene in the last act was extraordinary. She left his asshole looking like a stepped on beef patty.

 

[Udders]

My name is Patrick S. Tomlinson. I am 42 years old.​

View attachment 11631

I live on 2611 N Oakland Ave, Milwaukee, WI in a half house next to a housing project.

I believe in not taking care of myself, with a unbalanced diet, in a rigorous Twitter routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll eat an entire Entemann's crumcake as I call people child on Twitter. I can do a thousand now.



After I finish calling people child, I then move on to calling people atalker. In the shower, I expel last night's four chilidogs into the shower drain and use my prediabetic foot to mash it down into the drain.



Then I apply the nigger pepperoni of the child I killed the night earlier onto my face as I prepare the rest of my routine.

There is an idea of a Patrick S. Tomlinson, some kind of fatbody, but there is no real me, only a Twitter account, something lazy, and though I can hide my cold gaze in endless selfies and you can shake my fat hand and feel flesh gripping you and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably incomparable: I simply... am... fat.

The commentary is as good if not better than the art.

 

[sorchEDearth]

Interesting theory.

I can't say I'm a Brett Easton Ellis fan - his writing is a little too nihilistic and even fatalistic for my liking. But the work Gwin Turner did on adapting that story for film was exemplary; it turned a rather avant garde novel with chapter long tangents into a very watchable, and very distinct, film.

There's moments I remember questioning what's real and what isn't: the brief scene dragging Paul Allen's body where suddenly no blood is draining from the bag. The death of the women which would clearly have woken anyone nearby up. The discovery of the clean apartment. The crazy events one night after the ATM message. The co-worker telling Patrick he saw Paul Allen just recently, playing off the answering machine "confession" as a joke.

Now, one can view those things as a metaphor for yuppies being so conceited and selfish, that they would rather ignore and cover up such acts of others to keep their own noses clean, or for personal gain (like the realtor). Or you could even view the film in it's entirety as the progressive self destruction of an empty man, who slowly loses his mind. I take it differently myself: from the moment the movie starts, Patrick is completely gone. All the deaths are complete fantasies, an outlet for his rage issues and vapid existence of drugs and money. It's the simplest explanation for why, despite blatant and haphazard handling of killings that would've nailed anyone, he "gets away" with them. What you're actually seeing throughout the film is the facade of his personality, and the faux depth he has, being chipped away - i.e. the act falling apart. He has nothing to him and he knows it, but when the killer fantasies stop being enough, and he begins to see that they weren't ever real, his persona in real life fails, hinting that the fantasies might actually start becoming the reality.

It's why his secretary is such a focal point. She's the grounding rod, the one innocent that he tried to take advantage of but feels he can't. The potential victim he couldn't bring himself to kill, in a moment of rare, naked honesty where he practically begs her to leave - a moment where the fantasy was about to be the reality, but enough of his grasp on reality was still left to stop himself. She, in a way, was his last tether to humanity, and when she finds out just how crazy he is at the very end of the film, and breaks down crying, it represents that there was never a real Patrick, and he is now just an animal given to his fantastical impulses - further cemented by the final soliloquy of the film.

I haven't thought about American Psycho in a while, but that's what I think it represents: using the metaphor of shallow 80's capitalism to reflect a man's destructive psyche. Credit to Ellis, Bale, Turner, and the director of the film.

I hate this movie. It's a sophomoric bleaching of a potentially intelligent, powerful idea. That idea is that the FORM of the narrative should convey the MEANING of the story. In its simplest iterations (Faulkner or Kafka) it deals with craziness and what has come to be called 'surreal'. More subtle exercises (Joyce, Nabokov) extend that to an emotional breadth and archetypal depth. But that results in hard work for the reader, so from time to time, lesser novelists recycle the idea at the high school level so that a larger and lazier readership can 'get' it.

Films have a harder time with this problem, because they work with a more constrained imagination, and have a tighter integration with societal semiotics. Still, we have some intelligent work with the idea. Greenaway is my own favorite, who incidentally doesn't shy away from the edge of violence as is done here. (Why? To preserve the comic stance? If so, Turner and Harron are unwittingly like the society they think their poking fun at.).

A related problem is that Harron mistakes style in the costumes and actor's bearing for cinematic style. Really fucking shallow. This film is cleverness for dummies. The only intriguing element here is the probably unintended notion of Dafoe as an imagined Moriarty. This isn't taken anywhere, but Dafoe does have a haunting presence independent of this simple effort.

 

[O-BLOCK NIGGA!]

The book underlines that it's mostly Bateman's fractured mental state, and how the life and social scene he's stuck in strangles him, as much as he strangles other people. It's both working in tandem.

The movie only reinforces this, in a much shorter way, within its 1h 42m runtime.

 

[fenrir]

I hate this movie. It's a sophomoric bleaching of a potentially intelligent, powerful idea. That idea is that the FORM of the narrative should convey the MEANING of the story. In its simplest iterations (Faulkner or Kafka) it deals with craziness and what has come to be called 'surreal'. More subtle exercises (Joyce, Nabokov) extend that to an emotional breadth and archetypal depth. But that results in hard work for the reader, so from time to time, lesser novelists recycle the idea at the high school level so that a larger and lazier readership can 'get' it.

Films have a harder time with this problem, because they work with a more constrained imagination, and have a tighter integration with societal semiotics. Still, we have some intelligent work with the idea. Greenaway is my own favorite, who incidentally doesn't shy away from the edge of violence as is done here. (Why? To preserve the comic stance? If so, Turner and Harron are unwittingly like the society they think their poking fun at.).

A related problem is that Harron mistakes style in the costumes and actor's bearing for cinematic style. Really fucking shallow. This film is cleverness for dummies. The only intriguing element here is the probably unintended notion of Dafoe as an imagined Moriarty. This isn't taken anywhere, but Dafoe does have a haunting presence independent of this simple effort.

I'm not smart enough to sift through all this gobbledygook, but generally I agree that this movie is fun but also shallow and overrated. Christian Bale is a great creep, but his performance is just left hanging out there like a limp, unsucked dick while the director plays another Haircut 100 song so that she can be "ironic". "Remember the goofy 80's, y'all!"

Bret Easton Ellis was right: they really needed a man to write and direct it, not these two dykes.

"imagined Moriarty", huh? You read Ted Goranson too?

 

[guest]

There were some emails before the movie that were supposed to be from 12 years after the novel and they implied that at least some of the shit happened. He refers to it as "the issue"

They're not bad. Supposedly not written by Ellis but approved. Some of the book characters are in them, like Evelyn, Luis, Donald Kimball.

Has it really been 12 years since Paul Allen disappeared? I can’t believe I married Jean have a son am in the middle of a divorce the biggest deal of my life a custody fight and I’m out looking for sconces.I noticed that, while walking on auto pilot, I had found my way to the building where Pierce and Pierce still have their offices, the offices I haven’t been to since the “issue” made it better for all concerned if I went out on my own It’s about time The company will stake you It would be better if this were kept hush-hush.

You can find them here. They're not formatted correctly but the text is all there.

[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.ralphbeliveau.com/the-american-psycho-lost-email-entries/[/URL]