‘American Psycho’ director calls out ‘Wall Street bros’ for idolizing Patrick Bateman: ‘I’m mystified by it’
Patrick Bateman is no role model.
“American Psycho” director Mary Harron told the Letterboxd Journal in a new interview for the film’s 25th anniversary that she disagrees with the fans who aspire to be like Christian Bale’s iconic serial killer character.
“I’m always so mystified by it,” said Harron about Patrick Bateman being embraced on social media today. “I don’t think that [co-writer Guinevere Turner] and I ever expected it to be embraced by Wall Street bros, at all. That was not our intention.”
“So, did we fail? I’m not sure why [it happened], because Christian’s very clearly making fun of them,” the director added. “But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. People read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and decide to shoot the president.”
Harron recognized that Bateman’s rising popularity is because of “memes” and “TikTok,” as well as the investment banker-turned-murderer “being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power.”
“But at the same time, he’s played as somebody dorky and ridiculous,” she said. “When he’s in a nightclub and he’s trying to speak to somebody about hip-hop — it’s so embarrassing when he’s trying to be cool.”
The filmmaker also said she thinks the men who are championing Bateman missed the point of the 2000 movie.
“It was very clear to me and Guinevere, who is gay, that we saw it as a gay man’s satire on masculinity,” she said.
“[Author Bret Easton Ellis] being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males, which is also true in sports, and it’s true in Wall Street, and all these things where men are prizing their extreme competition and their ‘elevating their prowess’ kind of thing,” Harron added.
“There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishizing looks and the gym,” Harron noted.
Based on Ellis’ 1991 novel, Harron’s satirical film “was about a predatory society,” she told the Letterboxd Journal. The screenwriter added that “now the society is actually, 25 years later, much worse.”
“The rich are much richer, the poor are poorer,” Harron said. “I would never have imagined that there would be a celebration of racism and white supremacy, which is basically what we have in the White House. I would never have imagined that we would live through that.”
An “American Psycho” adaptation is currently in the works with director Luca Guadagnino. “Elvis” star Austin Butler is set to play Patrick Bateman.
