In this interview the director admits that it was a failure on her part for people to walk out thinking that it was all in his head.
I just perfer thinking it was in his head. It opens too many questions without answers the other way.
IMDB Comment:
For the people who say the movie was all in Patrick’s head. This movie is about you. You are that bartender who stands there and listens to a man say “You’re a f#cking ugly bitch. I want to stab you to death, and play around with your blood.” and ignores him. You can sit at a resteraunt table with a man who says “I like to dissect girls. Did you know I’m utterly insane?” and then reply about a tanning bed. You are that guy at the front desk at Pat’s apartment building who looks at a man drag a bag the size of a body (which happens to be leaving a bloody trail behind him), and shrugs it off. You are that model who hears a man say “I’m into murders and executions mainly.” And guess to yourself he must have said mergers and acquisitions, because nobody would just come out and admit they’re in to murders and executions. You are that person sitting inside your apartment who hears a girl screaming, beating on doors for help, and a buzzing chainsaw outside, yet doesn’t open your door or call anyone for help. You are that person who can sit in front of a man drawing a girl lying on her stomach with a chainsaw in her back with crayons and say things like “My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be corrected, but I have no other way to fullfill my needs.” and then want to marry the man. You can have a man confess to 40 or so murders (that he even has video tapes of), and think it’s a joke or all in his head (wow…that lawyer at the end is hilarious…that’s really you!!)
The fact that there are people who dismiss the murders in this film is glorious. You are the people that surround Bateman. You make this movie…so much more…real. Thank you.
WHAT ever.
Can I be the guy who makes the business cards? Because I think that guy makes out okay.
For me what seemed to seal the fact that he was imagining at least some of it is walking into the apartment near the end. If she wanted it to be more ambiguous, that’d need to change. I also come to the film not having read the book, so I’m sure that influences how I read the film.
IMDB Comment:
For the people who say the movie was all in Patrick’s head. This movie is about you. You are that bartender who stands there and listens to a man say “You’re a f#cking ugly bitch. I want to stab you to death, and play around with your blood.” and ignores him. You can sit at a resteraunt table with a man who says “I like to dissect girls. Did you know I’m utterly insane?” and then reply about a tanning bed. You are that guy at the front desk at Pat’s apartment building who looks at a man drag a bag the size of a body (which happens to be leaving a bloody trail behind him), and shrugs it off. You are that model who hears a man say “I’m into murders and executions mainly.” And guess to yourself he must have said mergers and acquisitions, because nobody would just come out and admit they’re in to murders and executions. You are that person sitting inside your apartment who hears a girl screaming, beating on doors for help, and a buzzing chainsaw outside, yet doesn’t open your door or call anyone for help. You are that person who can sit in front of a man drawing a girl lying on her stomach with a chainsaw in her back with crayons and say things like “My need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be corrected, but I have no other way to fullfill my needs.” and then want to marry the man. You can have a man confess to 40 or so murders (that he even has video tapes of), and think it’s a joke or all in his head (wow…that lawyer at the end is hilarious…that’s really you!!)
The fact that there are people who dismiss the murders in this film is glorious. You are the people that surround Bateman. You make this movie…so much more…real. Thank you.
Dear IMDB comment person,
No. The fact that these people don’t react to him in the film is part of the reason many people think it’s all in his head. We aren’t ignoring what Patrick said, they are.
You aren’t at least willing to concede that his interpretation is a pretty damned valid one?
The interpretation that these people [within the world of the film] are so vacant and/or self-absorbed, that they are mentally absent from life, so much so that they don’t even notice a blatant serial killer among them, is valid. The commenter’s assertion that anyone who walks away with the impression that many of the film’s events are Bateman’s fantasies is as vacant and self-absorbed as the people in the film is not valid. That last part is what I am contesting.
And it just works better IMO. The end scene with his demented sketchbook of all his “crimes” makes more sense. The transitions from real to imaginary are so easy to see, at least so it seems upon viewing. There’s always a transition to another scene before he commits an atrocity. All the killing he does at his home, it’s not hard to picture him firing up Huey Lewis and just concocting his weird little fantasies all by himself.
It adds another dimension to the hookers scene. He calls up the two hookers, there’s some weird foreplay, then there are suddenly scenes of him going to town on them, posing in the mirror, totally awesome shit let’s be honest. They wake up, the hookers are happy and satisfied, and then there’s a scene transition and they leave beaten up and miserable. That entire sequence always puzzled me a little (I never read the book). I always took it to mean all the superfucking was another fantasy of his and he probably got weird and violent on them because they probably acted more or less like real hookers, that is rather indifferent - which he hates, of course. Like, the part with him talking to them at the start was real, then who knows what, and then they leave that same night. I’m sure I’m wrong.
Also, American Psycho works best for me as a metaphor for the time in which it takes place. The important thing isn’t that he’s a psychopathic murderer in real life or not, it’s that the mental framework he puts on display, coupled with his appearance, is the peak of existence in that time. He’s at the top of the food chain, and it’s a sick, sad place to be.
And yeah, the murders are imaginary.
I’m amazed anyone could read far enough into the book to get grossed out by the murders. It’s just this endless, vapid litany about clubs and business cards and incredible amounts of detail about nothing any normal human being could possibly care about. Which is the point, I’m sure, but it’s really, really hard to sit through.
I have to shake my head with these explanations that it was all in his head. Without the crimes being real, the theme is 1000x less poignant. if he didn’t do it, then he’s really fucked up in the head, if he did, then society is really fucked up. It’s the society that allows the most vile disgusting shit to go on without so much as a blink. Bateman can walk up to some chick rip out her vagina with his teeth, decapitate her head and walk around with the lips of her severed head wrapped around his erect penis and still not be criminalized. Society blankets him like a bad stain to maintain the status quo.
The movie starts and he’s a cool cat. He’s a blood crazed psycho but he has it under control. As the movie progresses he turns into a crazy psychopath because no one cares. His existence is invisible because everyone’s existence in the movie’s setting is meaningless. Like Bateman says, “I simply am not there.” And that makes him sloppy, careless, mad. It’s not so much the killing anymore but the getting caught. Even in direct confession however he can’t get any relief because no one takes him seriously. His ending monologue, “… even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”
I just don’t think the societal claims work as well if he was just mental.
The way it “works” is that in the end, he’s just as full of shit as everyone else. Also, it’s a sly take on the slasher genre, in that the victims are mostly despicable people anyway (much like they are in many B slasher pics, annoying teenagers) except the one “nice one” who gets away (Chloe Sevigny). The tweest is that since he never actually kills anyone, it all amounts to a darkly comedic daydream about murdering people you hate, something to which most people can relate - as opposed to being utterly and completely repulsed by the entire thing, as you obviously are.
I would venture a guess that whether or not you think it was all real says something about you as a person, perhaps. However, I’m not willing to be as recriminating as that imdb commenter. Yikes!
In reading the wiki article about the book, it states the book was also left deliberately vague. Also, the events in the novel start on Arpil 1st, which is…well, you know!
Also:
Patrick Bateman’s brother Sean from Rules of Attraction is in the chapter entitled Birthday/Brother, but is mentioned nowhere in the film; However, Patrick is mentioned by Sean in both the book and the film version of Rules of Attraction.
Hahaha, The Rules of Attraction. Oh, what a film that was.
As far as I know, three Bret Easton Ellis books have been made into movies: Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho. In the all three cases the books are superior (although I do like the movie adaptations of the first two).
The reason I bring this up is that I don’t think Ellis’ style really translates to film. He writes books about motivations and internal monologues. In The Rules of Attraction, plot elements hinge on people mishearing each other (something they tried to do in the movie, but I don’t think 99% of audiences caught it.) The various first-person narrators give the reader contradictory stories. The protagonists are desperately unhappy, unmotivted and lost, but they don’t let on, except to the reader.
If you take away (or, in the case of the three film adaptations I mentioned, fail to preserve) the slow motion car crash going on inside every character’s head, you are left with rich kids doing drugs and having sex. Or a businessman who’s a serial killer. Or, uh, more kids doing drugs and having sex. The vapidity of Ellis’ characters is really the backdrop for their personal psychodramas - if you can’t properly translate that internal struggle into film, you are left with style, and shock, and name recognition. And very self-absorbed and superficial characters.
Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say that any point of view which claims to know everything about someone based on their reaction to a single movie is not valid.
American Psycho is one of my favorite books of all time, as in the top five ranking. Part of the reason is the way that different chapters change pace because of the different story each one tells. And really, besides a couple of over-arching elements, each chapter is almost a stand-alone story.
In any case, the next time you read it, skip the three music chapters where he reviews the latest from Huey Lewis, Whitney Houston, and Genesis. When I’m re-reading the book, if I don’t want to get drug into the really banal parts, I simply skip those three. These chapters are exactly what you describe above: endless, vapid litanies about details that no one cares about. Even the scenes concerning business cards aren’t half as bad. Try it again, skip those three, and see if the rest of the book wins!
For the record, I sometimes re-read it with the approach that everything is in his head and sometimes that everything is real. It changes how you view his interactions. I fucking love it (and didn’t care for the movie, probably because I so enjoy the book). The sequel was awful low-budget, straight-to-video horror: I loved it.
I’d just like to point out how awesome it is that Ellis mean to be vague in the novel and the director of the film adaptation meant to not be vague but ended being accidentally vague, thus being more faithful to the book and delivering a better film. OH HOLLYWOOD.
You really get that from that? Seems more for dramatic effect than an actual claim of omniscience, but maybe I’m just not paranoid enough.
Based on the film as I saw it in 2000, no its not. I can sort of see it after the fact with information that I have now but as I saw the film, no.
oh this is related to this conversation
http://www.shackpics.com/viewer.x?file=theperfectbillboardamericanpsy_skldn1okz3xbwsohnimw.jpg
Awesome.