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American Psycho

johnapril

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I think the ambiguity is one of the things that makes the book good, or at least technically impressive.  For the first half at least, I just assumed that all the killings were supposed to be "real."  The clues only start to come together very late.  When they did, it was almost like an epiphany.  I was quite impressed with Ellis at that point.

My take has always been that the murders were definitely imagined.  The ambiguity or subtlety is used not to confuse this issue, but to keep it secret from the reader for as long as possible.  And also to show that Bateman at some point isn't even really sure himself.
Everyone look to the left. Satan.
 

esquire.

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i watched a tvland special that talked about shows that were 'campy'. maybe, i'm misinterpreting the term, but would 'american psycho' be considered to be 'campy'?
 

RJman

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i watched a tvland special that talked about shows that were 'campy'. maybe, i'm misinterpreting the term, but would 'american psycho' be considered to be 'campy'?
No. Camp = 1960s Batman show.
 

Patrick Bateman

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One of the appeals of the book, to me, is that Bateman's lifestyle is not only affluent but leisured. I imagine that even during the go-go 80's most 20-something i-bankers didn't spend what Bateman and his friends spend on lunch, and they probably didn't go out to an expensive restaurant, bar & nightclub every single night. In real life dinner talk for me and my co-workers consists of "Where should we order from on Seamless" rather than "Hey, let's make reservations at Spice Market."
 

esquire.

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(esquire. @ June 23 2005,17:44) i watched a tvland special that talked about shows that were 'campy'. maybe, i'm misinterpreting the term, but would 'american psycho' be considered to be 'campy'?
No. Â Camp = 1960s Batman show.
They also called Dynasty and Golden Girls 'campy' shows. I didn't catch the whole show, but they pointed out several things that would make a show 'campy': * in some campy classics, what would be horrifying, a certain shocking excess, to the rest of the population would be hilarious to the people who got the 'joke'. they used 'baby jane' as an example. despite the amount of gratitious violence in AP, people still find it entertaining and hilarious. didn't some of the biggest laughs come when patrick bateman is chasing after people with a chainsaw? i could argue that AP has that feature. * an emphasis on clothes and costumes * ridicules dominant culture; some argue that it must mock the middle class pretentiousness AP mocks the 80s yuppie * frivilous, theatrical, exagerations, ostentasious * dishing and that kind of gossip i've already forgotten, but i seem to remember that AP also had that in it as well
 

ATM

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One of the appeals of the book, to me, is that Bateman's  lifestyle is not only affluent but leisured. I imagine that even during the go-go 80's most 20-something i-bankers didn't spend what Bateman and his friends spend on lunch, and they probably didn't go out to an expensive restaurant, bar & nightclub every single night.
And they were probably expected to do actual work.
 

esquire.

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i was pretty confident that all the killings in the movie were all imagined. how else to explain: * the police car exploding with a single shot, where even PB is shocked at the movie style explosion * the lawyer who tells him that he had lunch with the person in london that PB thought he had already murdered * the atm machine that tells him to feed the cat to the machine * right after the massacre in the apartment, he finds it totally cleaned up without any police investigation or the nyc post coming up with a headlining story about a bloody killing. instead, there's a real estate agent * leaves a message for his victim's fiancee on the answering machine that the victim is traveling to london, trying to match the voice and tone of the victim. somehow, the fiancee doesn't even recognize the voice of her own boyfriend, the victim. * killing that prositute with a chain saw without waking up any of the neighbors. and, then dropping his chain saw as she runs down the stairs with a perfect, almost impossible shot. etc..... but, in an interview, the cowriter who also played one of thevictims, is saying that they intended to show the killings were all real. http://www.planetout.com/popcorn....er.html PQ: Back to American Psycho. How did you tackle writing the film version of a book that has been vilified as overly violent? GT: First, I read the book. The director [Mary Harron] and I agreed that it had to have a lot less violence. Then we just started making the list of scenes we liked, stuff we thought was funny, horror we thought we could film suggestively, rather than showing an axe going into someone's head. Then we made a list of those things we liked and tried to make it into a coherent narrative. And we decided early on that we wanted it to be clear that Patrick Bateman is really killing people. But talking to people over the last few days I realize we may have failed to convey that. Because everyone tells me they think it was just a dream, that the murders didn't happen. PQ: So you are saying ... GT: All the killings that happen in American Psycho are real. Those characters certainly did die. But if they don't seem real it's because some of the details exist only in the mind of Patrick Bateman. He glamorizes the murders and it is through his eyes that the story is told. PQ: Was there a concern about two women helming a project like American Psycho? GT: On the contrary, I think it was a very deliberate choice so that we would bear the brunt of the feminist outcry. The producers wanted to deflect past criticisms that the story was misogynistic. It's amusing to me because, if anything, our version is anti-male. By toning down the violence and turning up the satire the men just look so foolish or beastly. And then there's the way the male characters see women as commodities. I think the film ends up as a sharp poke at men. And I have to say that so far the reaction from women has been really good. Women who hated the book have told me they love the film.
 

Cliff

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I was going to comment but, you'll have to excuse me I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable at the Four Seasons in twenty minutes.
 

Patrick Bateman

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The Four Seasons? Isn't that a little uptown? I mean, aren't you going to be late?
 

dumadiscount

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so has anyone got the patrick bateman figure yet? mini-review please
biggrin.gif
 

Moerdani

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I watched the movie again, ten years after seeing it the first time. I thought the costume designer did a good job, with two quibbles. The first was the choice of necktie knot for Patrick Bateman. There is an idea that is Patrick Bateman, and he wears a four-in-hand or asymmetric half-Windsor. The knot consistently displayed was either a full Windsor or a symmetric half-Windsor (minus dimple) that was just too large for the collars.

The other quibble? I liked the braces, especially the wine-colored black-leather ends (Thurston?) Bateman wore in a scene with the detective played by Willem Dafoe. But would Bateman wear braces with trousers that have belt loops? Okay, maybe. But would Paul Allen? Definitely not. Have you seen Paul Allen's business card? It even has a watermark!

A good friend posits that the murders were real, and Bateman gets away with everything because it was the 1980s--a time when everyone got away with everything.
 

Reggs

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I forgot if I posted this story before, but it's always one of my favorites. I once had a meeting with a bunch of radio guys. When they came in we all started exchanging cards and near the end I said "Let's see Paul Allen's card."

No one said anything and kind of looked around awkwardly. I was smiling expecting someone to get the reference but no one did. For whatever reason, I did not explain that it was from a movie. They probably thought I was crazy.
 

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