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American Psycho · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit, my pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. It's American Psycho, and this film is Lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's been a little while, but we're back. Sorry for the delay on this episode. Lots going on. I was in a wedding. Yeah, we were out of town. You know, that kind of thing. So we are back and we should be getting back to schedule, hopefully with some slightly shorter and easier books. We both our last two books, both of ours were, you know, length and somewhat arduous to get through. So that will not be the issue going forward. But we do have so much to talk about on this episode about American Psycho. So first, if you have not read or watched American Psycho, we're gonna give you a brief summary in Let me sum up. Let me Spain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This is a summary of the film, sourced from Wikipedia. In 1987, New York City investment banker Patrick Bateman leads a double life, meticulously maintaining a polished social facade while harboring dark impulse. By day, he dines at trendy restaurants, obsesses over his physical appearance, and navigates a shallow circle of wealthy associates he secretly despises, all while engaged to Evelyn Williams. His superficial world is epitomized during a business meeting where he and his colleagues flaunt their business cards, fixating on their designs while missing the misspelled acquisitions on each. Enraged by the superiority of colleague Paul Allen's card, Bateman's suppressed rage erupts when he encounters a homeless man and his dog in an alley. Initially offering help, he instead insults and brutally kills them, revealing his violent tendencies. Bateman's envy intensifies over Alan's affluent lifestyle and ability to secure reservations at the exclusive Dorsia, a Dorcia a restaurant Bateman cannot access. At a Christmas party, he arranges dinner with Alan, who mistakes him for another co worker, Marcus Halberstram. During the dinner, Allen's condescending attitude fuels Bateman's resentment. Bateman lures him to his apartment, gets him drunk and murders him with an axe. He disposes of the body and uses Allen's keys to access his apartment apartment, leaving a message on Allen's Allen's answering machine claiming he has gone to London. When private investigator Donald Kimball questions Bateman about Allen's disappearance, mentioning sightings of Allen in London, Bateman deflects suspicion with ease. Bateman's depravity escalates as he hires prostitutes Christy and Sabrina, engaging in sadistic acts before paying them to leave. His violence nearly turns on colleague Lewis Carruthers when he attempts to strangle him in a restaurant restaurant bathroom. But Carruthers misinterprets the act as a sexual advance, horrifying Bateman, who flees. Kimball's second interview heightens Bateman's paranoia, but he continues his spree, seducing a model and later toying with killing his secretary Jean. At his apartment, Gene narrowly escapes harm after Bateman warns her he might lose control. Unaware of the model's severed head in his refrigerator, Gene is not Bateman. He's aware of the severed head the way that read. Kimball later informs Bateman that a colleague claims to have dined with Allen on the night of his disappearance, solidifying Bateman's alibi. Kimball dismisses the idea of Allen's murder as implausible, leaving Bateman relieved yet unnerved. Bateman's violence peaks when he rehires Christie and invites acquaintance Elizabeth for a drug fueled encounter that turns deadly. Christie discovers corpses in his apartment while fleeing, only to be killed when Bateman drops a chainsaw on her in a stairwell. After breaking off his engagement with Evelyn, Bateman's unraveling intensifies. An ATM displays, bizarrely displays feed me a stray cat, prompting him to nearly shoot a cat. But he kills a woman who intervenes instead. Fleeing from police, he shoots an officer and inexplicably blows up a patrol car and kills more innocents before hiding in his office building. In a frantic voicemail to his lawyer, Harold Karnes, Bateman confesses to around 40 murders, including Alan, Christy, Elizabeth and others, admitting to cannibalism. The next day, Bateman visits Allen's apartment, now vacant and for sale. A realtor, suspicious of his N95 mask denies the apartment's connection to Allen and Urges him to leave. Gene, alarmed by Bateman's disturbed state, finds his journal filled with graphic sketches of murder. At lunch, Carnes mistakes Bateman for someone else, laughs off the confession and claims he recently dined with Alan in London, undermining Bateman's reality. As his friends discuss dinner reservations and muse about Ronald Reagan's Persona, Bateman, uncertain if his crimes were real or imagined, narrates his unrelenting pain and desire to inflict it on others. His confession, he realizes, has meant nothing, leaving him trapped in his hollow existence, craving punishment and liberation that will never come. On a door behind him, a sign reads, this is not an exit. The end. So, yeah, that is the summary of the film. Also add in here and just again at the top, probably a content warning. Throughout, we're discussing violence and sexual violence and all kinds of. If you clicked on the American Psycho episode, I would assume you were aware of this, but just wanted to mention that again, we don't really have a guess who, but kind of. So let's do that. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must know.
• 5:54
  Speaker B: Get used to disappointment. Yeah. So we don't have a guess who. There are sort of descriptions in this, but it would have been an absolutely insane thing to try to include as our normal segment. And you'll see why in a minute. Because I do want to read an example of how Patrick Bateman describes people.
• 6:18
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 6:18
  Speaker B: Because I think it is a really fascinating characterization choice.
• 6:24
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 6:25
  Speaker B: Price seems nervous and edgy and I have no desire to ask him what's wrong. He's wearing a linen suit by Kalani Milano, a cotton shirt by Ike Behar, a silk tie by Bill Blass and cap toed leather lace ups from Brooks Brothers. I'm wearing a lightweight linen suit with pleated trousers, a cotton shirt, a dotted silk tie all by Valentino Couture and perforated cap toe leather shoes by Allen Edmonds. Once inside Harry's, we spot David Van Patten and Craig McDermott at a table up front. Van Patten is wearing a double breasted wool and silk sport coat, button fly wool and silk trousers with inverted pleats by Mario Valentino, a cotton shirt by Gitman Brothers, a polka dot silk tie by Bill Blass and leather shoes from Brooks Brothers. McDermott is wearing a woven linen suit with pleated trousers, a button down cotton and linen shirt by Basile, a silk tie by Joseph Abound, and ostrich loafers from Susan Bennis Warren Edwards. And every single description of a person is that.
• 7:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, so it's clear what he's doing here. Yeah, it's clearly like focusing hyper fixating on the brands and the luxury items and the. The materialism of it and how that is such a central focus of Bateman. And the way he views people is not as people necessarily, but as the items that they own, their purchasing power, et cetera, their status symbols. But, yeah, it's. That would be. I don't think I could.
• 7:57
  Speaker B: That would be. That would be insane to include to.
• 7:59
  Speaker A: Try to guess those. I don't think I could do it because I don't know enough about the clothes they were wearing to really guess that, so. Cool. All right. Well, that was fun. Little explanation of why we're not doing a guess who this week. I do have a lot of questions, though, so let's get into them. In. Was that in the book?
• 8:15
  Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please?
• 8:17
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 8:18
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination.
• 8:22
  Speaker A: So we open up and in one of the very first scenes in the movie is Patrick Bateman and his co workers, several of his co workers sitting at, like, a bar or restaurant or something discussing things. And what they're discussing is not important. But at some point, one of them starts discussing a Jewish co worker or. I can't remember exactly. Or client or something like that, and starts being vaguely anti Semitic. Not vaguely explicitly anti semitic. And Bateman, Patrick Bateman actually calls him out kind of playfully and is like, hey, don't be anti Semitic. That's not cool. And I was like, boy, obnoxious finance bros will never change in terms of not. Not the calling out, the anti Semitism, but just the being anti Semitic. But I wanted to know if Bateman calls out his co workers for being anti Semitic. I have another question about this later in just a few that will expand on it, but I wanted to start here.
• 9:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, this actually is from the book.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Okay, interesting. And again, we'll talk more about this because I have, like, a broader question about it here in a second. We'll kind of get into the. The why and what's going on there.
• 9:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:34
  Speaker A: Shortly, my next question is, do we find out about him being having, like, psychotic, murderous thoughts very early in the story? Because in the film, like, within a few minutes of the film starting, they go to a bar or a club or something that night, and the bartender, like, asks for order or something. And then he. I don't remember what happens, but he gets upset at her. And he looks in the mirror behind the bar and we hear him say. See him say, like, I'll fucking kill you. Bah. Like, have this, like, violent fantasy. And it's like, very, very immediate. And I wanted to know if there was as little pretense in the book about, like, what Bateman's deal was.
• 10:15
  Speaker B: Yes and no. The scene with the bartender is pretty close to the book and it does happen fairly early on.
• 10:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:28
  Speaker B: The sections of voiceover from the beginning of the movie where he talks about how he's like an empty void inside, those are actually largely from the end of the book.
• 10:40
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 10:41
  Speaker B: And I wasn't a huge fan of the movie. Front loading those thoughts. I thought they were more impactful at the end when he's, like, being more honest with himself and the reader. I don't know. I'm kind of six of one on it.
• 10:56
  Speaker A: I could see why the movie may have chosen to done that because it wanted to be very explicit about what kind of person Patrick Bateman was. And I think the movie really didn't. Was trying its best to make sure that people didn't incorrectly like him. You know what I mean?
• 11:15
  Speaker B: Right.
• 11:16
  Speaker A: Like, I think maybe the movie wanted to be very explicit that, like, this guy's life sucks and is meaningless from the jump. So that, like, just to make. Because the whole movie plays out as a, you know, a black comedy and a satire, I think they potentially just really wanted to, like, try to head that off at the beginning of like, you know, making it clear to the audience, don't root for this guy. He sucks. You know what I mean? Maybe. I don't know.
• 11:39
  Speaker B: I think that's also clear at the beginning of the book that, like, he sucks and his life sucks.
• 11:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:45
  Speaker B: I have a note about this a little bit later. But, like, literally, like 30 pages into this book, I made a note in my reading notes that was like, honestly, if I had to live my life this way every single day, I might also be psychotic.
• 12:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:00
  Speaker B: Because it was just like, so awful.
• 12:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:04
  Speaker B: I would say, though, that the build up to, like, I think it's obvious that he's not a great guy and that there's something very off about him is very clear for from the get go in the book. But the buildup to his violent tendencies I think is slower in the book.
• 12:20
  Speaker A: Okay. So then the next morning, after that night out clubbing, we see his morning routine, which we go into pretty great detail in the movie. He has a very involved, obnoxious, influencer morning routine. And there was recently kind of memes and discussions about this when some of the, like, TikTok influencers morning Routines was posted and everybody's like, you know that you weren't supposed to model your life after Patrick Bateman, right? You know, that wasn't like aspirational, but he does have like the stereotypical modern TikTok influencer crypto bro routine. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 13:01
  Speaker B: Honestly, I would say it's like even more obnoxious. In the book. Yeah, the movie.
• 13:09
  Speaker A: I mean, there's a lot.
• 13:10
  Speaker B: There's a lot in the movie, but I think the movie, like, shortens it because he really, in the book, like, washes his face like eight different ways. And there's a huge section about all of the product that he puts in his hair and how worried he is about his hair thinning. Also the bit about. He says this in the movie. He also says it in the book, the bit about alcohol based products making your skin look older. Because you want to talk about something that ages you. An overly intense skincare routine that's constantly stripping your skin and irritating its protective barrier. It's one of those things ages you.
• 13:46
  Speaker A: Every time I see those, those kind of like the stuff he's doing in the movie where he's doing like a chemical peel every day, that cannot be good for your skin.
• 13:54
  Speaker B: No, it's not.
• 13:56
  Speaker A: Truly. Cannot be. Like, I get that there's probably some middle ground of, you know, daily maintenance, maintenance, but it cannot be like all of the shit he's doing, which is, again, I think, intention. Like, it's this over consumption. The movie is critiquing this.
• 14:13
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, the over consumption and the like, the over obsession with looking good and with looking youthful and worrying that you're.
• 14:22
  Speaker A: Not looking youthful and that actually the lengths you're going to do that actually ends up being detrimental to your goals.
• 14:30
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 14:31
  Speaker A: In the same way that that guy, that one weird tech bro who's like, doing blood infusions of like, his son's blood or what. You remember that? Weird.
• 14:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, I remember that.
• 14:40
  Speaker A: That guy who, like everybody's like, found out like, wait, this dude's like 38. He looks 60. Like, he made him look older than, like, all this weird shit he was doing actually aged him more than just, you know, being a normal person would have. Yeah. So I touched on this and this is me getting back to this question where Bateman called out one of his co workers for being anti Semitic in the beginning. And now we go to another dinner scene, and this is at the place with the braille menu. It's not braille, he says. It's braille it's just cut out letters.
• 15:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, they're like, raised or whatever.
• 15:16
  Speaker A: But they're at this dinner and it's him and one of his co workers, Lewis, I think. And then they're like girlfriends or whatever, maybe a couple other people, but they start discussing politics or whatever. And Bateman goes off on this big, long, clearly rehearsed screed about all of the ways he would change the world.
• 15:38
  Speaker B: And how the world should be, everything that needs to be done in order to improve the world.
• 15:43
  Speaker A: A lot of it is fairly progressive. It's like we need to end apartheid and push for racial equality. But there is some other weird stuff because he mixes that with. And get back to tradition, traditional values, which is like more conservative. You know what I mean? It's like kind of a hodgepodge, but on the whole, it's largely a fairly progressive. Yeah, you know, laundry list of things. And I wanted to know. And he does this. He espouses these views in front of his friends and in front of people in public when it's very clear that he doesn't care about any of this, that these are just the opinions he thinks he should be saying out loud to people. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because, boy, there's a lot of layers to this particular thing.
• 16:27
  Speaker B: There's. Yeah. So this scene is from the book. I think they might be in the car when he does it in the book and not in the restaurant. But. Yeah, sure, whatever. But it is from the book. I'm still kind of trying to work out exactly what we're supposed to take away from it because I think I.
• 16:52
  Speaker A: Know how it is.
• 16:53
  Speaker B: He clearly doesn't believe those things.
• 16:54
  Speaker A: Clearly.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: And the thing. The thing we talked about earlier where he calls out his co worker, friend, whatever, auntie. I, like, hesitate to even refer to any of these people as his friends because they're not his friends. But with that, when he calls out the anti. Semitism, I. I felt like the interpretation of that was that, like, he can kind of recognize that something is wrong when it's coming from another person, but not necessarily when it's coming from him, was kind of how I interpreted that.
• 17:28
  Speaker A: That's not how I interpret any of this. But. Interesting.
• 17:31
  Speaker B: But this specific scene where he does this, like, clearly, very rehearsed screed. He clearly doesn't believe those things. And I didn't think. I didn't feel like he was just straight up mocking.
• 17:49
  Speaker A: No.
• 17:50
  Speaker B: Or joking. So what is. What is your interpretation?
• 17:54
  Speaker A: My interpretation of it. And I Kind of touched on this when I prefaced the question. And I think this is the same for the anti Semitic thing. I think this is him saying what he thinks he should say. He knows these ideas are like what educated people in New York City say. These are like the publicly accepted, like.
• 18:18
  Speaker B: But I don't, I don't think any of his friends agree with those things either.
• 18:21
  Speaker A: No, I don't think they do, no. Well, no, no, but it's not that they. Deep down they don't. So this is the thing. I think this is where the switch and this is what the layers I was talking about. I think this is written in the 80s where the idea of being. Or not in the 80s, you know, like, this is written about like in the 90s, about the 80s, whatever. I think this is written in a time period where espousing these kind of views, even if you don't hold them, was seen as a good thing. Like this is like we've got the political client landscape and climate has become so fucked that now everybody just says the evil, awful shit they believe.
• 18:59
  Speaker B: True.
• 19:00
  Speaker A: That didn't used to be the case as much. You know what I mean?
• 19:04
  Speaker B: Right.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: And so I think what's going on here is that these are we. They. None of them believe this. None of them, even the people he's talking to, but they're all putting on a show. This is this. It's also I think a little bit in the sense of the movie and the book, probably a critique of like empty, vapid, like sure, of like empty values. Empty values and just like paying lip service to good causes but not actually caring or believing or doing anything about those causes. I think it's a critique of that and like yuppie. It's also a critique of yuppie culture which that was a big part of it is like they espouse these high minded ideals but really they don't give a shit. They're just going to expensive restaurants and.
• 19:42
  Speaker B: Right.
• 19:42
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? And, and actually have like terrible opinions about women and immigrants and all this sort of stuff. They don't actually believe these things they're saying. They just say them. And again, I think it kind of all comes back to the same thing. They say them because they know they're supposed to say them. This is, this is what smart forward thinking educated people in New York City talk about. They talk about how apartheid needs to be ended and we need to, you know, push for equality and like, you know, these kind of high mind. They all read the, the Atlantic, you Know what I mean? And, like, it's that kind of thing. And I think it's critiquing that. And he's just doing that. He's playing that. Because all of this is. And I read something that, like, somebody. I don't know if it was Bateman himself, of how he interpreted the character was basically playing him as, like, an alien who is pretending to be human. Like that. Like, an alien got dropped on Earth and, like, onto Wall street and, like, studied it and, like. And is now trying to blend in. Like, that is what's going on here. And so he just goes on this big speech about, like, all of these things, because that's what these people say. That's what you should say. And that's what's like, you know, that's what you get applauded for at dinner parties for saying things like that. And so that's why he does it. That's my interpretation of it. But it's all empty. It doesn't mean anything. They're actually horrible people. And it's not. I don't think it's a. It's at all critiquing those ideas that he espouses. It's critiquing him as the type of person and these kind of people. And again, it's very interesting now, looking through it in modern lens and modern landscape, because now we don't. They don't even pretend anymore.
• 21:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:12
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, these finance bros don't even have to pretend anymore. Now they just go, we saw this change happen. Elon Musk used to vaguely espouse somewhat progressive idea. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, a lot of those tech bros used to somewhat espouse, you know, populisty, liberal, progressive, ish values kind of. But then they realize they don't have to anymore because there's, you know, the deterioration of our political landscape has made that so. Like, I think it is interesting, but I think that's what's going on there. Anyways, I was.
• 21:47
  Speaker B: Sorry.
• 21:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. You were reading the whole time.
• 21:50
  Speaker B: I was listening to you. But I was also. I was looking in my reading notes and I was trying to find where that was in the book so that I could look and see what his friends said. Because I don't. Yeah, I don't remember what they said in the movie.
• 22:03
  Speaker A: I don't think they really responded.
• 22:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think they did.
• 22:06
  Speaker A: Or they must have been like, oh, of course. You know, like, I think they, like.
• 22:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, okay, so he gives his whole spiel I finish my drink. The table sits facing me in total silence. Courtney's smiling and seems pleased. Timothy just shakes his head in bemused disbelief. Evelyn is completely mystified by the turn the conversation has taken, and she stands unsteadily and asks if anyone would like to.
• 22:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. That was how I read it in the movie, at least. Again, I don't know for sure because I don't remember the reaction in the thing. And maybe it's not even that they all would espouse those things. I think it's more. So Patrick Bateman, specifically, like I said, is just playing a character that he thinks.
• 22:49
  Speaker B: No. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 22:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, that he maybe doesn't even aspire to, but just thinks is what a person like him should be like, or something like that. All right, so my next question is, Patrick Bateman gets home, and one of the things we see recurring throughout the movie is that when he's hanging out at home, he just constantly has hardcore pornography playing on his television with the volume on in the background. Even while he's, like, on phone calls and stuff. Yeah, again, very much the, like, Alien. I don't know. It's. Yeah. Anyways, I wanted to know if that detail came from the book.
• 23:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think the movie is able to kind of elevate that, where we can just see it in the background all the time. But the references to him watching porn are constant in the book, and it is constantly of an increasingly upsetting nature.
• 23:40
  Speaker A: Sweet. So the big scene, when you be the only scene from this movie I knew anything.
• 23:46
  Speaker B: Well, yes, this was the only thing I knew about this movie.
• 23:49
  Speaker A: Like, going in scene, most of the scene, but before I've seen other little moments. And obviously, like, there's quite a few famous gifs from the gifs from this movie that I have noted. But, like, this specific scene is like the main scene that I was aware of, and it is the business card standoff duel. And I wanted to know if it came from the movie or it came from the book, because Bale's performance in this scene is fantastic. It's incredible. There's a reason the scene is so well known is because it's just. And it's the way it's shot and just everything about it. But I want to know if the business card standoff came from the book. But also these specific details, this line, look at that subtle off white coloring, the tasteful thickness of it. Oh, my God, it even has a watermark. And then the other detail that I noticed, which is that every single one of them is vice president.
• 24:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. So the. The business card standoff is from the book, and the movie's version is pretty close to the book. That specific line, I think the only thing that the movie added is the part about the watermark.
• 24:52
  Speaker A: Mm. Okay.
• 24:53
  Speaker B: But I do, like. I do think that the movie elevated it in a couple of ways. The overall way being the way that the scene is shot and edited was really great.
• 25:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, we got a lot of these, like, close up, like, wide angle close ups of, like. And, like, Bail's face where he's just, like, sweating and, like, clenching his jaw.
• 25:11
  Speaker B: And, like, the sound treatment is great.
• 25:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, the sound effects where everybody. Every time they pull it out, it's like a. You get a sword being unsheathed. Sound effect is literally. I think they literally looked it up and that's what they used for it and stuff like that. And just the way it's all framed and when they slide the cards across the table and then just the visual gag, especially the first time you see it, the visual gag of every single card being basically identical except like, vaguely.
• 25:39
  Speaker B: Slightly, slightly different variations and shades of white font and shades of white. So the way that it's shot, obviously that's not something we're getting with the book. We can only have that with the movie. The movie never mentions what their titles are. And I absolutely love the detail of having them all be vice presidents, rendering an already meaningless title even more meaningless.
• 26:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's not even vice president of something.
• 26:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:04
  Speaker A: They're just.
• 26:05
  Speaker B: They're just vice president.
• 26:06
  Speaker A: But it's a great, perfect choice because it's not. They can't be president. That's too specific. And, like, it wouldn't make sense for there to be eight presidents, but there are companies that have numerous vice presidents that you're like, what do you even do? Like, you know, the VP is a thing where. Yeah, you can get. Get quite a few of those in companies in a way that it. It definitely feels like it's satirizing, it's satire, but it doesn't feel like a stretch like that, you know, like, you're like. You can almost believe a company would exist that would have eight of these douches all be vice president and, you know, like, whatever, because they don't do anything. They're all Nepo hires or whatever. We find. I mean, Bateman, we find out, yeah.
• 26:41
  Speaker B: His dad practically owns the company, basically.
• 26:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. Literally never does in. We never see any of them do any work.
• 26:49
  Speaker B: And that is clearly intentional. That is something that nails from the book. He does not do any work ever in the book.
• 26:56
  Speaker A: Not a single.
• 26:57
  Speaker B: Not a single bit of work. He goes to the office and, like, works out and sits. Then, like, watches TV or, like, reads a magazine. You're like, what is he? What do you do?
• 27:07
  Speaker A: Nothing.
• 27:07
  Speaker B: Nothing.
• 27:08
  Speaker A: This is not real. Yeah. Yes.
• 27:11
  Speaker B: The other detail that the movie added, which you mentioned in the summary, I.
• 27:17
  Speaker A: Did not notice this while watching.
• 27:19
  Speaker B: I went back and, like, looked at screenshots to verify this and make sure it wasn't, like, an incorrect thing somebody added to Wikipedia. But Acquisitions is misspelled on all of the cards.
• 27:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 27:32
  Speaker B: They all leave out the C in acquisitions.
• 27:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because they all work in mergers and acquisitions, which is another amazingly vague. But you know exactly what it is. Yeah, well, it's. Yeah, because it's all just pushing money around. It's firing companies, selling companies. That's mergers and equity. You know, they're just moving money around in meaningless ways. I kind of mentioned it earlier with the Braille. They call it a Braille restaurant, but every time they go out to dinner, they go to a different restaurant that is, like this other weird, equally absurdly themed restaurant, like the Braille one with the metal menus. They go to. Well, they go to a Mexican restaurant that's fairly normal at one point. Him and Paul Allen do. But there's. There's several different ones. They go to, like, some sushi restaurant. I don't know. They go to, like, several different restaurants, and they're all clearly, like, very specifically, like, themed. And. But they're all. I say themed. You might think of, like, a. Like a Chill. Not a Chili's, but like a. Or like a Hard Rock Cafe. Right.
• 28:32
  Speaker B: That restaurant.
• 28:33
  Speaker A: It's not that it is a, like, the Elevated. Like, it's very much a critique to me. It felt like a critique of the restaurant scene of the, like, 90s and 2000s.
• 28:42
  Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
• 28:43
  Speaker A: Which all had these very absurd. They had to have, like. Like, hooks, you know, they had to have, like, a specific thing they were doing where, you know, the restaurant's called Smoke, and, like, everything is, like, you know, smoked or whatever, stuff like that. And, like, everything's brought out on a little tray with a cloche full of smoke on it or something like that. And I wanted to know, though, if the absurd, like, different themed restaurants came from the book, because I thought that was fun.
• 29:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know that I would call them, like, themed in the book in the same way that we see in the movie.
• 29:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:13
  Speaker B: But ridiculous. Fine. Dining is a thread that runs throughout the entire book. They're always going to these completely ridiculous, expensive restaurants, and we find out at the end of every restaurant scene how much it cost. But then they complain about how the portions were really small and the food wasn't even very good. And there are all these descriptions of the dishes. And it'll literally just be a hodgepodge of cooking and fine dining buzzwords.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: Right.
• 29:47
  Speaker B: Like, strung together.
• 29:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes, it's very clearly. Yeah. And that. So the movie captures that, then, because it's very clearly a. A satire of fine dining, and it's specifically fine dining from that era. You had a note about this later about the.
• 30:02
  Speaker B: The 80s plating.
• 30:03
  Speaker A: The 80s plating with the dots. Yeah. And the. Yeah. Like, everything is. It looks.
• 30:08
  Speaker B: And like at one point in the movie, we see where they had, like, the knife and. Or the fork and the spoon and then dusted over it.
• 30:14
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 30:14
  Speaker B: And then.
• 30:17
  Speaker A: You see, like, the thing where they plate, like, it's like, some sort of sauce, like, in a circle in the middle. And then they cut, like, carrots into little diamonds and, like, place them, like, in the. Around. You know what? Like a bunch of that absurd. Which has largely fallen out of favor in modern fine dining. Modern fine dining has drifted a little more back towards, like, practicality and, like, actually making the good food and, like, focusing on that and not the weird, like, aesthetic necessary. There is still plenty of that, but it's a little bit, you know, like, I think that big bubble of, like, absurd fine dining from the 90s and early 2000s has burst a little bit. And it's at least seemingly, from what I have seen, most of the most revered restaurants these days tend to be more, you know, cuisine focused and not, like, weird, like, concept focused, I guess. Yeah. But anyway, so him and Paul Allen go out, played by Jared Leto in the movie. Great casting. They go out to dinner and Christian Bale gets him drunk because he hates Paul Allen. Because Paul is, like, everything he wants to be. He's slightly more successful, slightly richer. They do the same thing. They have the same job. But Paul Allen can get into Dorsia and Patrick Bateman can't.
• 31:31
  Speaker B: Yes. Basically the crux of it, because other than that, they have, like, the same.
• 31:36
  Speaker A: Basically the exact same life. Yeah. So he's very mad at him. So he takes him out, gets him drunk, brings him home and murders him with an axe. But I wanted to know specifically about that scene, if any of the details came from the book specific or any murder of. It doesn't have to be Paul Allen, I guess. But does he murder someone while wearing a raincoat? Murder someone with an axe while wearing a raincoat? While also dancing to Hip to Be Square by Huey Lewis in the news. Because that was great. It might not be Huey Lewis, but whatever.
• 32:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was that scene. Okay, so he does murder Paul Allen while wearing a rain jacket and using an axe. I don't recall that. He's listening to Hip to Be Square during that scene. Okay, but more on that in a minute. Because you have another question related to that.
• 32:22
  Speaker A: I do have another question. So we'll get to that here in a second. Then we move forward a little bit after that has happened. He takes care of his body, blah, blah. Move forward in time. And Patrick Bateman hires a prostitute, brings him home, brings her home, and then hires a different prostitute. He hires a streetwalker and then also calls, like, an escort, and it's like, a call girl and hires, like, a call girl. And she comes over and he's like. Has them both over and they're hanging out before they're gonna have sex or whatever. And they're all just sitting there kind of in silence, drinking wine or whatever. And at one point he says to them, like, don't you know? Don't you want to know what I do? And one of them just goes, no. And the other one goes, no, not really. And that line, that exchange cracked me the fuck up. And I wanted to know if it came from the book.
• 33:12
  Speaker B: Yes, it does.
• 33:13
  Speaker A: It's a fantastic.
• 33:15
  Speaker B: Exactly. From the book.
• 33:16
  Speaker A: It's so good. They're both just like, no. Yeah, it's great.
• 33:21
  Speaker B: Because he wants to show off.
• 33:22
  Speaker A: He wants to show up at the moment, and they're not receptive at all. Yeah. Another thing that we see throughout the movie that recurs. And he does it when he. In the Paul Allen scene, when he's talking about Huey Lewis in the news. But then again, during the scene with the prostitutes, he puts on some music. And I don't remember what it is in this one. I don't think it's Whitney Houston, but it's somebody or what it might be.
• 33:43
  Speaker B: But he does talk about Whitney Houston at some point later in a different scene.
• 33:46
  Speaker A: Yes, but he puts on music. And then he starts talking about the music to the people he's with. His for, you know, about to be victims. And I think every scene. And while he's talking, the way he talks about the music is so fascinating because he talks about it. And this is how I wrote it down when I was watching the Movie. He talks about the music like he's has memorized critic critical reviews of the albums and is just regurgitating those. Yes, that it's not about like how he feels about the music or it is. It is like the perception of the music, which again makes perfect sense for who he is as a person. It's not about. And the fact that he's like this alien who's, you know, he is psychotic or whatever and trying to kind of pretend to be human. And so he talks about music through the lens of like. Well, I read this article about this music that I can relate to people by talking about music. And I'll just regurgitate the facts about the music that I read in an article and I wanted to know if that came from the book. Book.
• 34:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, it does actually. So the book is almost entirely first person. There is a scene where it randomly switches to third person, like way, way later in the book. But for the most part we're in first person perspective through the perspective of Patrick Bateman, which was great. And there are chapters in the book that are literally just like expanded reviews of a handful of real life music artists from the era. He talks about Genesis, Phil Collins, Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis and the news.
• 35:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:27
  Speaker B: And I was pretty surprised that the movie found a way to work those sections in. A lot of his dialogue in those scenes is directly from those chapters in the book. I thought for sure that was something we were gonna lose.
• 35:40
  Speaker A: I think it's brilliant. Yes, I think it's brilliant because it's interesting because as you describe it, what you're talk in the book almost feels to me like while reading the book, it would be hard to know. It almost feels like he is writing those reviews is how it would read in the book. Whereas in the movie it 100% reads to me like he read that review somewhere in some magazine and is now repeating it verbatim back because he memorized it. And it actually goes back to the whole thing kind of my point earlier of how I read the. The political commentary scenes about or like his political. Where he's like espousing progressive political ideas. It feels very similar to me. It's not that he actually believes or cares any of the stuff he's saying. This is just like this is how humans converse. This is what I should be saying. Oh, humans talk about music. Normal people talk about music. I will talk about music. But he can't actually talk about music in a way, like a normal person about what they like about it or what. So he just Spouts facts that he read in a magazine six months ago. You know what I mean? But like I said, it's almost like. I think the movie kind of elevates that and makes it even more clear that it's, like, not his. Because it'd be one thing if it was clear. Like, these are his actual opinions about the music and he is writing reviews about the music or something like that. But that is not at all how it comes across in the movie to me.
• 37:04
  Speaker B: I mean, I think you could read it that way in the book that even if we're supposed to think that, like, oh, this is something he has come up with himself, it's still very much in the vein of a critical review.
• 37:19
  Speaker A: Yes. And not like.
• 37:20
  Speaker B: And not like engaging with it. Engaging with it. Not thinking about the themes or the emotions. It's a very fact based in 1985, so and so released this album and it had two top hits and Da da da Da.
• 37:38
  Speaker A: Showing that it was very popular. Yeah. It's all about the.
• 37:46
  Speaker B: It's music as a commodity.
• 37:48
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. As the same way everything is.
• 37:50
  Speaker B: Yes. And not as something to emotionally relate.
• 37:53
  Speaker A: To, which is the same thing with the politics. It's politics as commodity, not as something that he genuinely relates to. He espouses political views as a form of social. You know, what he thinks is, like, social commodity. Like, we'll give him social influence or, like, will make him look better in the eyes of other people or whatever. But it's not actually anything genuine. It's all fake. Yeah. Because again, that's the whole point of the entire thing, very clearly in the movie is that this is all fake bullshit that he is trapped in. Because that's what happens when you engage in fake bullshit. You become. Yeah, you become it. You are it. Yeah. So then with the prostitutes, he. Then they have sex with him. And this is another famous scene where the whole time he's having sex with them, he's just staring at himself in the mirror, flexing. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 38:46
  Speaker B: I don't recall a description of him doing this during a sex scene, but he does look at his reflection a lot in the book. So I think this is a very worthy addition.
• 39:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, I mean, it totally tracks.
• 39:02
  Speaker B: Totally.
• 39:02
  Speaker A: Get it. There's another fun exchange. I think it's between him and a coworker. Maybe like they're at a bar or restaurant. I think this might be.
• 39:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is him and the boys.
• 39:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. When they're at, like, the. When they're. Yeah. I think it's right before the scene where he goes to, like, strangle Louis. And then I think you're right. I think potentially. But they're having a conversation about something. And for some reason, Patrick Brateman brings up Ed Gein.
• 39:27
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 39:27
  Speaker A: And he goes. And he's like, oh, Ed Gein this, that, and the other. And then his co worker goes, ed Gein the mater d at some restaurant. And Patrick Bateman is like, no. And I wanted to know if that came from the book, because that was funny.
• 39:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, that exchange is directly from the book.
• 39:45
  Speaker A: That's fantastic. Then we see Patrick Bateman doing a crossword. In every single spot, he has just filled in with the words, either the word meat or the word bone. It's just every single word. And it seems to fit. Seems to work. Which is another interesting detail about kind of the. What's going on with the narrative here. And, like, how real any of all of this is. Because it seems the meat and bone seems to work pretty well in all of them. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 40:12
  Speaker B: Yes, it does.
• 40:13
  Speaker A: Okay, that's fun. So then we get the second scene where he hires prostitutes again. And then. Cause the first one, he doesn't kill them. He abuses them in some way that we do not see, thankfully, but he doesn't kill them. They leave. And then he hires the one prostitute again. And then, well, some friend that he knows or some woman that he is friends with comes over and he ends up killing them. And one of them, though, is running away after discovering some bodies and stuff. And they're actually at Paul Allen's apartment, I believe, in this scene. And she starts running away. And she's running away from him down a circular staircase, like, in this apartment building. And Bateman is, like, chasing her naked with a chainsaw. And he's, like, watching her run down these stairs. And then as she gets to the bottom of the stairs, he drops the chainsaw and it falls and kills her. Like, it lands on her and, like, cuts her in half or whatever. It's very, very ridiculous. And this is where I wrote. Okay, so this has got to not actually be happening. This is ridiculous. Like, and it's clear. Like, clearly, the whole tone of the movie is incredibly satirical from moment one. Like, everybody's performances and deliveries are all over the top, ridiculous. You know, everybody talks like an alien intentionally. And so it's very clear, like, what's going on. But this is where we hit the point where I'm like, oh, not only that, this may be like his. Like this is all in his head or something. Because that's super ridiculous. And then it gets. It spirals out from here. But I wanted to know if that scene of him dropping a chainsaw down six flights of stairs came from the book.
• 41:50
  Speaker B: So. No, this doesn't happen in the book. And it's a change I'm unsure about. And I'm about to. I'm going to go into my discussion of the violence in this book. So the sexual violence and violence in general in this book is extremely graphic.
• 42:11
  Speaker A: And disturbing, famously so.
• 42:14
  Speaker B: I genuinely don't even want to discuss specific examples, but if you've ever considered reading this book, please take into account that the descriptions of violence are extensive, detailed and designed to be as upsetting as possible.
• 42:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker B: This is the main reason it took me as long to read this book as. As it did because I. It's not an easy thing to read. It's not an easy thing to read. And I literally. I like, I literally. I could not read it and eat. Yeah, of course. At the same time.
• 42:49
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 42:50
  Speaker B: Because I will sometimes when I'm working on. I'll read during my lunch break at work and eat my lunch. There was no way I was reading and eating lunch with this one. So on the prequel, we discussed the violence in this book being considered gratuitous.
• 43:09
  Speaker A: We talked about. We were interested to see whether you thought especially in the book, because I knew the movie wasn't as violent and I was actually surprised how unique graphic the movie was.
• 43:19
  Speaker B: Actually the movie is really not. There's a particular.
• 43:23
  Speaker A: There's blood here and there and there's some upsetting scenes and implications and stuff like that.
• 43:30
  Speaker B: Some upsetting visuals and like.
• 43:32
  Speaker A: Like the scene where he kills the homeless guy is really like emotionally upsetting.
• 43:36
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 43:36
  Speaker A: But it's not like this like visually graphic necessarily. You know what I mean? And it was even less so than I. I knew that the movie would be toned down because of like the. What the director had talked about and like. Like what the point of what they were doing. I knew it would be toned down, but I was surprised by how much or how non graphic it was, I guess. But point being, what we were discussing was like, you know, there's clearly the book is doing this satirically, but we were trying to figure out even if the violence in the book is satirical, it could still get to a point where it's gratuitous and weird and unnecessary. And we wanted to see if it did that. Yeah.
• 44:14
  Speaker B: So I do think that there is a point to It.
• 44:20
  Speaker A: The violence.
• 44:21
  Speaker B: You're talking about the violence. The novel is essentially an exploration of the kind of person that is created by a hyper capitalistic, hyper privileged, zero consequences environment 100%. And it's satirical in the sense that it is exaggerated and hyperbolic.
• 44:44
  Speaker A: Right.
• 44:44
  Speaker B: Patrick Bateman might be the only character in the book committing nightly atrocities, but the other characters view humans and animals in the same way that he does, as disposable commodities.
• 44:57
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 44:58
  Speaker B: And I think that that's also true of real life. People who come from this world and now not even. Like, people who don't even come from that world, because it has truly bled into everywhere.
• 45:08
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 45:09
  Speaker B: So I don't think the violence is gratuitous in the sense that it's just there for shock value.
• 45:17
  Speaker A: It's not only there for shock value.
• 45:18
  Speaker B: It's not only there for shock value. I think that Ellis was at least intending to make a point.
• 45:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, it seems like he did, at least.
• 45:25
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. However, I do think the violence was gratuitous in the sense that I think Ellis could have still accomplished getting his point across in a book of about half this length.
• 45:39
  Speaker A: Right.
• 45:40
  Speaker B: Like, we did not need so many graphic, violent scenes to understand what was going on here. And there were also plenty of examples throughout the book where mentions of violence were kind of buried within otherwise normal sentences. Like, there was plenty of, like, I got up, ate breakfast, strangled a small animal, got to the office by nine. Which I personally found way more effective than the extended, detailed graphic description.
• 46:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. I think that the detailed, extended graphics descriptions serve a purpose in some specific, you know, context of what the book is doing. But I agree that you may. I mean, again, having not read the book, I think it's very likely that you could still. It's not like you need to never do that in the book. But just maybe wasn't as necessary as much.
• 46:32
  Speaker B: I don't think it was as necessary to do as much as he did.
• 46:36
  Speaker A: And that's where you get to the point where you're like, okay, so this is. Now we're just getting gratuitous to where it does feel like, why do we need all of this when we are. We get the point and it is doing it. And it's like, this isn't like a censorship thing. Like, this is, you know, it's just like a matter of like. But, you know, all of it should be in the. In the purpose of serving your goal. What is your goal?
• 46:53
  Speaker B: If we're right, the goal is accomplished, but we're still doing this.
• 46:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:58
  Speaker B: So, like.
• 46:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 47:00
  Speaker B: Come on, man. Yeah. And he seems like a weird guy, though, so I'm not really sure how to interpret him as, like, a person. But to get back to the chainsaw question, I am so glad that we didn't have to watch the same level and type of violence that's in the book, because I cannot stress enough that it was truly, truly upsetting.
• 47:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:26
  Speaker B: But I also think that making the violence more cartoony takes some of the bite out of the message.
• 47:36
  Speaker A: Maybe. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. I don't know. Obviously, it's hard to say. I can't disagree with you, because I definitely think that could be the case, that maybe it may have been worth it for the movie to have one scene to really drive the point home of how horrific this all is. Because, yes, the movie does. To my point where what I was saying earlier, I was kind of surprised by how not graphic the movie was and how everything is played for laughs the whole time in a way that is fun and it's entertaining, but it is. I still think it works. Like, it's still.
• 48:13
  Speaker B: I still think it works, but I. I question. I think it works. But I do question. Like, the book was viscerally upsetting.
• 48:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:29
  Speaker B: And the movie was not.
• 48:31
  Speaker A: Yes. And. And there maybe just. Sorry, go ahead.
• 48:35
  Speaker B: No, you go ahead.
• 48:36
  Speaker A: I was going to chime in and say. And. And that maybe there is some value to what the point of what the book is doing.
• 48:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:43
  Speaker A: Being viscerally upset.
• 48:45
  Speaker B: I mean, I. I think there is.
• 48:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, now maybe the book goes a little too long on that and does it a little too often or whatever.
• 48:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:53
  Speaker A: But there probably is at least some value. Like. Like art isn't only there to make you laugh or feel good or whatever. Like, there is value in being kind of disgusted or viscerally upset. And it's not that the movie has none of that. It's just that maybe it wouldn't.
• 49:09
  Speaker B: I think the movie just, like, softens it a lot by leaning into the, like, black comedy aspect of the satire, which is not present in the book.
• 49:19
  Speaker A: Clearly. Clearly. Yeah. Yeah.
• 49:22
  Speaker B: But, you know, it's kind of. It's a balancing act. Yeah, it's a balancing act. And it's kind of hard to talk about.
• 49:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:29
  Speaker B: Because I'm not really sure where I want to put my foot down on that.
• 49:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, it is definitely not a. I don't think. I don't think it's, like, there's an easy answer necessarily, because I appreciate. I Can also appreciate from the filmmaker's perspective. I mean, even ratings and stuff aside, like, even just taking that completely out, let's say they weren't concerned at all about, like, whether or not the movie would be, like, rated X or whatever, and, like, not even be able to show it in, like, traditional theaters or whatever. Even disregarding that. I can also understand the idea of a woman director being like, I can get my message across without exploitative, visceral violence in my movie. And I think she did. I think the movie, like we talked about, and I think you agree the movie works. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it's a different thing. And. And so, like, I don't know. Yeah, it is interesting. It's an. It's. That's where you get into some of the sticky places of art and, like, you know, how necessary is like, some of that stuff of, like, you know, more pornographic, for lack of a better term. And I don't mean sex even. I just mean, like, taboo, like, depictions of violence or whatever. How important is it for art to be, like. If it's making commentary about that, how. How important is it for to be very explicit about that versus alluding to it or. You know what I mean?
• 50:53
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 50:53
  Speaker A: It's an interesting. And it really just comes down to, like, you know, at the end of the day, how does the. Once you consume that piece of media, book, movie, song, whatever, does it do what it's trying to accomplish? And does it leave the impact that, you know, the filmmaker intended or the writer or whatever? But, yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting discussion. Very specific, small detail. That recurring line that happens in the movie a lot that I was interested to see if it came from the book, is that very often, seemingly, when he's trying to get out of awkward conversations or conversations that he doesn't want to be a part of anymore. Patrick Bateman will say that he has to return some videotapes and then just leave. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 51:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, he does that a bunch in the book as well. Streaming must have really ruined his life.
• 51:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. You can't just bail on awkward conversations by saying he needs to return some videotapes anymore. As things start to unravel, he gets to the point where I don't remember what really kicks it off, but something is. What just happened? What. What was the. Oh, it was after he killed the. The prostitutes. Right. I guess. And I don't know, he ends up at an ATM for something for some Reason, I don't really remember why, but he ends up in an atm. And the atm, the message pops up and says, feed me a stray cat. This is where it's becoming very clear that he is. So much of what we are seeing is not real. And there is a cat nearby and he picks up and is about to shoot it and then a lady walks up and he shoots the lady instead. But I wanted to know if the. If an ATM tells him to feed it a stray cat in the book and if that then leads to a big shootout with the cops. Because everything like pops off after this.
• 52:39
  Speaker B: There is a scene close to the end of the book where he briefly mentions an ATM displaying strange messages, one of which is, feed me a cat. But he doesn't try to feed it a cat. In a small miracle for me personally, there were actually no descriptions of violence against cats in this book.
• 52:57
  Speaker A: Fantastic.
• 52:58
  Speaker B: Other animals, yes. Cats, no.
• 53:01
  Speaker A: That's, you know, minor miracles, like you said. Silver lining.
• 53:05
  Speaker B: Tiny, small miracle for me personally.
• 53:07
  Speaker A: And in good news, in the movie, he doesn't kill the cat.
• 53:10
  Speaker B: He does not kill the cat.
• 53:11
  Speaker A: He just runs off. Yeah.
• 53:14
  Speaker B: There is a scene in the book where he gets chased by cops and shoots a bunch of people, but it's after he shoots a busker playing the saxophone.
• 53:22
  Speaker A: Similar idea though.
• 53:23
  Speaker B: Similar idea. Yeah. This is also. I mentioned earlier that there is a brief part of the book where it shifts to third person. And the scene where he's trying to run from the cops is where we go into like a third person. Like, and I feel like maybe we're supposed to read that as like a fugue state or like an out of body experience.
• 53:42
  Speaker A: Could be. Yeah, for sure. So while he then after this all happens, he shoots at the cops, patrol cars blow up, and then he's on the run and there's like helicopters, he thinks, seemingly chasing him or whatever, but he's trying to get to his office and he like runs into this one office building and is like looking around. He like shoots the security guard, but then it's like the wrong building. So he runs out of that building into another building that is identical and this is the correct building. And in the movie I'm 100% certain that it's literally the same building both times. I looked at the set very closely. I'm pretty sure he just runs right out of the one building and back into the same building, basically. Which is, I think, a fun idea. But I wanted to know if him getting lost in this labyrinth of identical Wall street corporate office buildings and Unable to escape in a very meta thematic microcosm of what is going on with his life. I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 54:42
  Speaker B: That does happen in the book, but obviously seeing the completely identical buildings makes it funnier and more impactful.
• 54:50
  Speaker A: Very good moment. I liked that a lot.
• 54:53
  Speaker B: I also liked the brief little moment. And there is a mention that something like this happens in the book where he gets stuck in the revolving door and is, like, running and he can't get out.
• 55:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. So then after he goes up, he leaves a big, long confession voicemail to his lawyer, who I think is like the lawyer for the company. It seems like. Or something like he says, my lawyer, but it seems like everybody at the.
• 55:18
  Speaker B: Company, one of the legal people for.
• 55:20
  Speaker A: The company, Howard Carnes or whatever his name is, he leaves this big, long confession saying, like, oh, I killed all these people. Just gotten a shootout with the cops. I've killed like 40 people, blah, blah, blah. Leaves that voicemail. And then the next day he's going to, like, clean, I guess, to clean up the crime scene or whatever at Paul's apartment. And he goes to Paul's apartment, but when he gets there, it's like, empty and all cleaned out. And there's a real estate agent there showing it to a couple. And he's like, looking around and everything's gone. And he's like, what the hell is going on? And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 55:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, that plays out almost identically.
• 55:57
  Speaker A: Is the real estate agent equally, like, weird. Weird, because in the movie she's very like.
• 56:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, she is like.
• 56:07
  Speaker A: It's like, it seems like she knows. And this, I think, plays into what happens with the lawyer here in the next scene is the idea of, like, we're not supposed to know if they're, like, in on it.
• 56:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 56:18
  Speaker A: Or, yes, he. Or if he's just crazy.
• 56:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 56:21
  Speaker A: And which. Which we'll talk with. I like, that's definitely the case with the lawyer here. I. With the real estate agent. It's a little bit different, but it's a similar idea, but because then immediately after that, he leaves there, he goes to a restaurant where a bunch of, like, the people from work are hanging out, watching Ronald Reagan speech. And he runs into the lawyer there, Carnes. And he's talking to the lawyer and he's like, oh. And the lawyer mistakes him for some other guy that works at the company. And he starts, like, kind of actually, like joking about how Bateman left this insane, like, made up.
• 56:58
  Speaker B: He says that, like, he's like, he's. Because Bateman says something to him, like, oh, didn't you get my message? And he's like, well, yeah, but it was a great joke. But, like, nobody would believe that Bateman would do that.
• 57:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like implying that it was this other guy pretending to be Bateman.
• 57:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 57:16
  Speaker A: Leaving this confession, but that. It.
• 57:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. And then he's like, no, I am. I am who I am.
• 57:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:22
  Speaker B: And I. I killed Paulo.
• 57:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. And all these other people. And then the lawyer goes, well, that's not possible. I just had lunch with Paul Allen in London, like, a week ago or whatever. And so he's. He's not dead. And I wanted to know if that exchange came from the book, because this is. And I was just touched. Alluding to this. I love that we aren't. You're not supposed to be sure. And this is how the movie ends. Is Bateman insane and none of this actually happened? It's all in his head? Or is the lawyer in on it, covering for him? Because these kind of guys don't get in trouble for anything. And you can read it either way. And I think you're supposed to read it. It both kind of. Anyways, we'll get to it. But yeah. I want to know, does it come from the book?
• 58:03
  Speaker B: Yes, it does. This scene and the apartment scene are the big culminations of realizing that we actually have no idea what really happened in the book.
• 58:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 58:12
  Speaker B: At all. Was any of it real? Was some of it real? Is Bateman insane? Or is it commentary on how these kinds of people never face consequences for their actions?
• 58:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 58:23
  Speaker B: And, you know, I have read some unreliable narration before. We've covered some stuff on. On this podcast with unreliable narrators.
• 58:33
  Speaker A: The same author, obviously, with the Fight Club.
• 58:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. No, that's not the same author.
• 58:38
  Speaker A: Brett Easton Ellis. Brett Easton Ellis didn't write Fight Club.
• 58:41
  Speaker B: Is that not Chuck Palahniuk?
• 58:43
  Speaker A: Oh, it's Chuck Palahniuk. I always get them confused. Sorry. I get them confused in my head for whatever reason. I don't know why.
• 58:47
  Speaker B: I mean, it's a very similar kind of story.
• 58:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. I think I always get those confused. I always think they're the same person.
• 58:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, but I. I have read some unreliable narration before this. This one blew him out of the water. Starting with little details about how nobody ever knows anybody's name and building to. Did literally any of this even happen?
• 59:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's. It's. It's. It's a very fun ending. Well, and speaking of it. So the final shot of the movie is, the story ends with Bateman sitting down after having this conversation with the lawyer. And we get his voiceover where he basically, you know, explains or commits, not commiserates, but extols the fact that he is trapped in this existence, this meaningless existence. His, his confession didn't mean anything. He tried to confess to his crimes. But yeah, either, either he never did those things or they're. It's all going away and he's just not going to get in trouble for it, so it doesn't matter and he's just trapped here. And while he's all saying this, there's a. We see while this voiceover is happening, we see on like a door behind him in this restaurant, a little placard that says this is not an exit. Which I noticed and thought was really clever. And I wanted to know if that big kind of like final existential speech and realization of Bateman that he is trapped here in this hell of his own creation is. Came from the book.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is exactly how the book ends. Right down to the this is not an exit sign, which is the final line of the book.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker A: There you go. And I want to talk on it here because I saw some things like as I was Googling, not Googling, but while I was looking up the trailer and stuff for this, for the edit. Every time I would put in American Psycho, the top results were always like, what does the ending of American Psycho mean? Is it real or is it people trying to figure out if it's real or not? And I, I cannot explain it express enough how much. That's not the point.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker B: Not the point at all. Yeah, like, it's interesting. It's interesting, but it's, it's not the point.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker A: And because the point very clearly, and actually I think the, the, the correct reading probably is that he did do those things and his punishment is that he has to stay trapped in this meaningless.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker A: Pointless existence.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker B: I mean it. Yeah. And it is kind like a Sartre style hell.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker A: Yes, it is. It is a hell of his own creation. It is, it's an examination of like you said earlier, of like what, what a hyper capitalistic, hyper privileged, zero consequences, zero consequence culture. What the kind of person that creates. But then also examining the fact that like, that's not only bad for everybody around them, it's also horrible for them because they lead meaningless, pointless lives that they derive no joy from that are. And they're trapped in them despite their best efforts. They can't even get out of it by murdering their way out. You Know what I mean? You can't escape this hell that you're trapped in, even by the most psychotic, deranged possible. You know what I mean? There is no escape. There is no exit. Because the exit was not becoming this person 30 years ago or whatever, or 20 years ago or blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Or not. You know, not. Never. Never entering this like capitalistic hellscape. Rat race, psychopathic, like. Yeah, it's. And so whether or not he actually killed those people or didn't doesn't matter. The point is he's trapped here because he's the kind of person who. It's, it's, it's almost like it's a. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Like he is. He's trapped here because he's the kind of person that deserves to be trapped here because he's the kind of person, the only kind of person and these kind of people are. I'm trying to figure out how to say it. It's an Ouroboros.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker B: Yes, it's an Ouroboros. It's a snake eating its own tail. Yes, he's trapped there because he's the kind of person who deserves to be trapped there. But also he is that kind of person because he is trapped there.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. In a way that is really fascinating. And again, it's why you get to the point where it's a criticism. It ultimately kind of boils down to really just broadly being a criticism of the system of.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker A: That creates these people.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker A: It is a criticism of Wall street, of hyper capitalism, of the super like image and materialism obsessed culture and all of that sort of stuff. It is critiquing those things and he is as much a victim as he is the perpetrator of those things. Yeah, it's very well done. I, like I said, I was like. Yep, nope, I got it up until the final like 20 minutes of the movie. I was like, this is fun and interesting, but I don't know if it's gonna stick the landing in terms of like the message. But I thought it did.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, I know, it really did. I think it fixed the landing.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, like, I thought it really nailed the landing. And I was like, I got that. I was like, okay, no, yeah, no, that all works. Really. And like it went from like some interesting, funny, clever conceptual, like, social commentary about like, stuff to like a much deeper meditation on what this system means and how it works and how it consumes the people within it and keeps them trapped there and self perpetuates and it's again, I was like, oh, okay, cool. Nailed the landing. Yeah. Very impressed with the. The movie. And I assume then by extension kind.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker B: Of the movie is. Honestly, it's a very accurate adapt.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker A: I mean, your answer was yes to almost all my questions.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker B: The movie obviously eliminates a lot of stuff from the book. It's a 400 page book and an hour and 40 minute movie. And the movie also, like we discussed, shifts the tone a little bit.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker A: It's a little funnier and more lighter.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little funnier. It's a little more lighthearted. Like I said, whereas the book is doing hyperbole and exaggeration as satire, the movie is doing more black comedy as satire. But aside from that, it's a very accurate adaptation.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker A: All right. I have one question for Lost in Adaptation. Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way. Yes, yes. And I want to get unlost as soon as possible. I just was curious. A thing we see in the movie several times is that especially specifically I noticed it when he's going to pick up the prostitute out on the street is that he is being driven. He has a driver who we never see, never know anything about. And I was curious if that is mentioned in the book and if so, do we find anything else about that? Is the driver aware of any of this? Is there even a driver? You know what I mean? Like, what's anything else from the book about that? I thought that was interesting. And it's only a handful of scenes where we see that, but he's clearly being. And it's not in the cab or anything. He has a driver.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker B: I don't think he actually has a driver in the book.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker B: It's never mentioned. He takes a lot of cabs and he sometimes rides in limos with his friends, like when there's a group of them. But he also walks a lot in the book.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, he lives in New York.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. So what does his driver think? Is not a mystery to be solved in the book.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker A: It's not in the movie either. It doesn't matter.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker B: It does not matter.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker A: Curious to see if there was anything about it in the book.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker A: Those are all my questions. It's time now to see what Katie thought was better in the book.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker B: Book. You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read? Everything. So we already kind of talked about this, but I mentioned this in Guess who when I read the description of how. How he describes people. But I. I found the constant rundown of what brands everyone is wearing to be such a fascinating way to demonstrate his values.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. He doesn't describe what his friends and acquaintances actually look like. Beyond, like, occasionally he'll mention a hair color. Mostly for women.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker A: Mostly for women. Whether or not they're blonde.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker B: Yes. Whether or not they're blonde.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker A: The movie touches on.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: That's very important to him. He almost never talks about their lives unless it pertains to work.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because he doesn't care. He's not.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker B: Half the time, he doesn't even know their names, but he always knows what brands they're wearing and the luxury items that they have.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker B: In a similar vein, I think the book did, like, a slightly better job of showing just how shallow and inane his life and world are. I think the movie does.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker A: I think the movie does a really good job.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker B: I think the movie does a really good job. But I. The book. And maybe it's just a question of there being more right in the book.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker B: That's probably because, like, with the exception of his one very short conversation with Geneva, he does not have a single meaningful discussion with anyone in the entire book. Like, Like I said earlier, at, like, 30 pages in, I made a note that I would also probably become completely psychotic if I had to hang around with these people all the time because they're just having the most boring, inane discussions all the time, constantly.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it's brutal.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker B: It's the worst.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's the worst. They're all the worst. One thing that I thought was interesting is the conversation with Gene that you're talking about. The one where she's at his apartment.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker A: He's, like, asking her, like, what she wants.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker B: What she wants to do. Yeah.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker A: The thing that I thought was particularly funny in that scene, or maybe not funny, but is that that scene in the movie is, like, the one real conversation he has in the whole movie, but also the way it ends is by them having two different conversations.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker A: Whereas he is saying, like, you need to leave. And he's like, oh, you need to leave, because I don't want to hurt you. And she assumes what he's talking about is, like, emotionally, like a romantic hurt. Yes. Like, oh, we'll end up together, but then I'll have to break up. You know, like, he'll break her heart emotionally or whatever is, like, what she assumes that conversation is about where he's actually talking about killing her. And so I thought it was funny that even in that scene where it Is like, the one real conversation he has in the entire movie. Even that one, it's not.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker A: By the end of it, they're having two different conversations.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker B: And I do think, like, the. The movie heightens that scene.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker B: Like in the. In the book, he's not literally, like, walking behind her with the nail gun, thinking about shooting.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker A: Right, Right. But I. To be fair, in the movie, I don't know if he actually is either. If that's.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker B: That's true.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker A: That could be fantasy. But.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, but in. I would say that the conversation is pretty similar in the book, and that, like, they're kind of having two different. Different conversations. And that's still the closest he gets to a real conversation in 400 pages.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's. Yeah, that's very fascinating.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker B: Another detail that got dropped by the movie, and maybe this is mentioned one or twice, but it is constant in the book, is how Bateman and the other men don't even refer to women as women or even females, really. They call them hard bodies.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know if they ever say that in a movie. Maybe once or something.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker B: The attractive ones.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker B: The unattractive women don't even register.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker A: They don't exist. Yes.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker B: And it's this, like, more insidious detail of dehumanization that then, like, dovetails with his violence really effectively.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker B: One other thing that the movie dropped that I wanted to talk about is there's a scene where Bateman reconnects with his college girlfriend, Bethany. And that was a really interesting chapter because initially it seemed like Bethany might be the only woman or person even, that Bateman genuinely likes. But then he finds out she's in a relationship and he ends up killing her because he's mad that he can't possess her.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. That tracks.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker B: And the last thing here is a small critique of the movie. I wasn't sure about Gene finding his sketchbook at the end where he's, like, sketched out all of these violent fantasies.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker B: I think if we have to have a scene like that, it should be Jean.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker B: But I also think that an important part of the point is that no one ever really, truly realizes who he is. Everyone around him is so shallow. And no one ever sees past the fact that he's rich, handsome and successful.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker A: Even Jean in the movie doesn't really ever seem to, like, clock that.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker B: She doesn't.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker A: Until she finds.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, she doesn't in the book. And that's why I'm kind of, like, on it.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker B: Because I do think that an Important part of the point is that he never really gets discovered.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. Although I do wonder. I would have to go back and watch, like, what her reaction is. I thought I had a memory of her reaction to finding that being strange, like, almost that she thought it. I. I would have to go back. I. I can't really.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker B: I just thought she looked horrified. That could be, like, that's. That's the only really, reaction that I remember.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker A: I'll take your word for it. That's probably true. But I do wonder what we're. Well, assuming that's the case that she is horrified, which I think is probably true, but I would be interested to see, like, what. Or one. I wonder what the movie. What the intention of, like, what she would. Yeah.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker B: I'm not sure, like, what we're supposed to assume she does because of that. After that, like, does she just put it away and pretend she never saw it? Because I think that would work really well within the overall, like, message.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker B: Or does she, like, quit her job or.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker A: I don't know. Yeah, that. That is interesting. Yeah, it would be interesting to know, like, what.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. But I'm not.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker A: What the movie, like, imagines.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker B: And I don't recall any implication or, like, anything that I felt like I was supposed to assume would happen after.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker A: She did because we don't see anything else. That's all. Isn't that happening, like, concurrently with, like, his speech at the end, basically? So the movie just ends, like, we never.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, that would be something that, like.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker A: I bet maybe, like, director's commentary or something.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker B: Director's commentary. Or what's the director's name?
• 1:13:05
  Speaker A: Mary Heron.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker B: Mary Heron. If. If you ever, like, listen to this.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker A: If you listen to our podcast, let us know.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker B: Or, like, you know, stumble upon this episode at some point, like, yeah, let us know.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker A: Like, what's your head canon?
• 1:13:17
  Speaker B: Yes. What is your head canon for, Gene?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker B: After she finds the sketchbook.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker B: We talked about the scene where he insults and threatens the bartender at the very beginning. I liked that he was talking into the mirror when he did that, because I don't recall that being mentioned in the book. And I thought it was interesting that he's also talking to himself in that moment, whereas, yeah, he's like, you're the worst. I hate you.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker A: Blah, blah, blah. That's true. But it's also Kind of a classic film language thing to sometimes in the mirror, when you do a shot like that in a mirror, what we're seeing is not actually happening. That is not an uncommon thing where a character will look at in the mirror and then the mirror becomes kind of this portal almost inside their head.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. To what they're imagining.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker A: To what they're imagining. To what? Even though we're seeing physically him say this because we're seeing it in a mirror, we're supposed to as kind of as film language, interpret like this is what is in his head kind of in that moment. It depends. Yeah, but. But it also sets up in the movie. It's very explicitly setting up kind of the Unreliable narrator.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, the unreliable narrator. And also his, like, self loathing.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. But also. Is any of this real? Like, because in this moment we're like, well, wait, did he. He didn't actually say that, obviously, because she would have hurt him. But so, like, what's. You know what I mean? Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker B: I. I liked that. Courtney doesn't realize that they aren't at Dorsia.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker B: He can't get into Dorsea, so he just takes her to. Takes her to a different restaurant.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker A: You see it on the menu in big letters.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker B: And she's. But she's so like. She's on like Quaaludes or Valium or something. Yeah. She doesn't even know that they're not at Dorsia.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker B: We see the Christmas party scene when he goes to the Christmas party at Evelyn's house. In the book, she has hired a bunch of little people to dress as elves to be servers at her Christmas party. And I was totally fine with the movie not going through with that.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker A: I mean, there is a level of humanizing.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker B: There is a level. Yes. And obviously that's the point in the book. But I was like, you know what? I'm fine with them not doing. I'm fine with it. It. There's other stuff. I'm fine with it. I liked the movie Breaking the Kimball.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker A: Like, police interrogation.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. The. He's like a PI when he comes to talk to Bateman. That's all one scene in the book where he just comes to his office and talks to him. The movie breaks it into multiple interviews, keeps coming back. I liked that. I thought it heightened the tension. It gave Bateman more of a chance to, like, break down a little bit.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we get more Willem Dafoe sprinkled throughout the movie instead of just in one scene.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker B: I liked the scene where he doesn't kill Jean. I thought it was more interesting in the movie. I also really liked the line he gets out a roll of duct tape and she's like, what's that? And he goes, duct tape. I need it for taping something.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. He can't even come up with an excuse.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker B: Can't even come up with a good law. I liked that the movie shortened the breakup scene with Evelyn.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker B: A lot of it was accurate to the book, but the book kind of dragged it out, and I thought making it a little shorter was more effective. One last little detail that I just wanted to mention. When he's in the shootout with the cops and he, like, he's got, like, a pistol.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker B: And he shoots and one of the cop cars explodes.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker B: And the way he looks at the gun after that happens was so funny.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker A: Very good. And again, it's because it's breaking down. It's like he doesn't even know what's real. Yeah.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker B: Like it explodes and he just, like, looks at the gun in his hand. Like, what?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what the movie nailed. As I expected.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker B: Practically perfect in every way. Okay. This is like a smattering of random things that we didn't talk about already. Obviously, not everything, but.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because the answer is a lot.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker B: The answer is a lot of things, but some specific things. The line, they don't have a good bathroom for doing coke here.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker B: Bateman does tell Jean to wear skirts and high heels to the office.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. That she's too pretty.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. She's too pretty to wear pants. She's too. Too pretty to dress like that. A small change that I did love, though, was that after they have their, like, date. Yeah. And it doesn't, like, go anywhere, she goes back to wearing pants at the office.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker A: I didn't notice that when she, like.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker B: When she finds the sketchbook, she's wearing, like, a pantsuit.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker A: I did not notice that. That's very good.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker B: Yeah. The specific line, somebody. I don't think it's the same person in the book versus the movie, but someone mentions, like, I don't know why you work because you don't even have to work.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker B: And Bateman is like, I work because I want to fit in.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker B: Which is kind of a thesis for the whole thing.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker B: When he tries to make a last minute reservation at Dorsea and the guy on the phone just, like, laughs at him.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker B: The line, your compliment was sufficient.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker A: When was that? I do remember that line.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker B: I think he's talking To Lewis, maybe. I don't remember, but, like, somebody compliments him and then, like. Like, makes, like, another overture, and he's just, like, your compliment was sufficient.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker B: He does record an away message to make it look like Paul went to London. You know, allegedly, he does that. The whole conversation about there are no girls with a good personality. That whole conversation is from the book.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker A: And just. Boy, timeless. Timeless ass conversation.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker B: Bateman does try to strangle Lewis, but then Lewis thinks he's coming on to him.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. There's also a lot of. That's something we didn't touch on this at all is there's a lot. You could read a whole. There's a whole queer reading of this.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker A: About, like, his closeted homosexuality.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker A: Like, that is a whole. I'm sure there have been much.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker B: Yes, I'm sure there has been.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker A: That we have. Not that we did not go into, but, you know, like, him, you know, admiring and flexing himself in the mirror while he's having sex with women. And, like, the whole thing with Lewis and all of that, there's very much. There is a lot of textual stuff going on with that. Yeah.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker B: And then immediately after that, when he washes his hands with his gloves still on.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker B: That's also from the book. Little detail. Courtney does sleep in her bed with a stuffed animal cat.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. Bateman does fake getting a reservation at Dorsia with Jean. The movie cuts out that they then actually go to Dorsia and, like, take somebody else's reservation and then end up having to leave when those people show up. But it was not super important, so I was fine with cutting that. And then most of the conversation that happens with the scene with Kristy and Elizabeth, like, before they have sex, and then he murders them brutally.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker B: But they're just, like, when they're sitting around having a conversation and he's trying to con.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker A: He's trying to convince them. He's like, you should make out or whatever.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. He's trying to convince them to, like, have sex with each other.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker A: And Elizabeth is like, no, I've never been with a woman.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. She's like, I'm not into that. What would make you think I would be into that? And he goes, well, you went to Sarah Lawrence for one thing.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was a funny line. Yeah. All right. That was it. We have a handful of odds and ends before we get to the final verdict. I was dying. That the. The meme of Patrick Baitman, like that, like, where he's, like, looking smug, and then he like flicks something that I see that gif everywhere and it's like five seconds in. It's like the opening shot of the movie almost. And I, I was just surprised it was that early.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker B: I had no idea there was voiceover narration in this movie.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker A: I didn't either.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker B: I was caught off guard.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, I, I also had no idea that it was, it had that voiceover, which I thought worked.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker B: I thought it, Yeah, I thought it worked. I thought it was, it was used sparingly enough.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker B: That it didn't become an issue as voiceover.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker A: It didn't feel like a crutch. It just felt like. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I generally, and like I said, I, I enjoyed it, especially by the end. I really came around to, like, overall, I thought the movie nailed the landing. But even, like, even while I was unsure if the movie was going to stick the landing and really, like, hit it home with the message, I was enjoying just the pace. And like, it's, it moves like we're like an hour in and I was like, oh, my God, movie's almost over. And, like, it didn't feel like it was.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker B: It moves really good.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker A: Like, it just really moves. Like, it doesn't waste any time with anything. Everything you see, even though we're watching big, long, meticulous or, you know, lengthy montages of him doing his morning routine, which you would think would be very boring. It's not. It's very. Because it's all very funny. And it's played especially now, watching it again with just like, through a modern lens of just like, it's, it's. Time is eternal, everything's the same, nothing changes. You know what I mean?
• 1:23:10
  Speaker B: Like, we just keep rebranding the same.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I thought that was fascinating, but it's also, it's very funny. There are a lot of great jokes throughout and it's just, it's, it like a timelessly poignant. Just like, will never not be relevant unless, hopefully it won't be one day.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker B: But unless a whole lot of people get really cool really fast.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, let's. A lot of people get real cool real quick. This movie will always be relevant.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker B: Speaking of his morning routine, I thought the way that the camera objectified him during that scene was a really fascinating, like, additional layer onto, like, the way that he objectifies. Yeah, everything.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The camera work in this in general is just really good. It's really compellingly shot. I, it takes big swings. Like, like, not only thematically, but just the commitment to the bit of the whole thing, like, it's a brave movie to like really be like, no, this is what we're doing. We're doing this. Like, it, it, it reminds. Oh, there was a movie we just watched. Oh, oh, like Crybaby. Not very, very different thing, but just like creating this ridiculous hyperbolic universe to discuss these, you know.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker B: It also reminded me a lot of Heather.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just that ability or that, that, like I said, courage to stick to this bit and just not at any point be like, what are we doing? You know, but just be like, no, this is what we're doing.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker B: And it feels so, like fresh now.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker B: Because so many modern movies have to feel like they have to do this like, meta thing where they step back from the bit and be like, ha, ha, ha. We're aware of the bit.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker B: No, just commit to the bit.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker A: Do it. And the movie just does it and it does it great. And again, it helps that it's beautifully shot, it's compellingly. Everything about it. The. The performances are all great. And yeah, it's, it's very good. It's a very good movie. Similar to some of the other movies you watched recently. I think it was very, very good. I wouldn't say it's like an all time classic. I don't know if it quite rises to that level in some ways. Primarily it was just that there's elements of it that feels, once you get the joke and like what it's doing, it's not that it becomes repetitive or anything, but it's. I don't know, it didn't. I guess. I guess the way to say it is it didn't stick with me the way some movies do in terms of like, really like, man, that was a masterpiece. But I did, I do. When we finished, I was like, that was really good. That was really well put together. Really enjoyed watching it. And I think it's saying really interesting things. It's just. I think maybe that's the other thing is that it's not a super. What it's saying is not super unique, especially anymore.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker A: Like it's at this point like this same type of thing has been covered so many different ways that it's just another one of those kind of. But it's a very well done.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker A: Exploration of extra hyper capitalism and consumerism and. And all that sort of stuff in a way that is. Yeah, it's very, very good movie. All right, before we get to the final bird too, we want to remind you you can do us a favor by heading over to patreon.com thisfilmislit support us there. Get access to bonus content. All kinds of good stuff. We'll be putting out our October bonus episode on the Rocky Horror Picture show here in just a few days, so look out for that. You can also do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places. Interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about American Psycho and you could drive us a five star rating. Write us a nice little review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. We would really appreciate that. Katie it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker B: Sentence fast.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker B: That's stupid. Saying that a piece of media is good can mean a lot of different things. It can be commentary on the quality of the piece, or on how entertaining it was, or how impactful. Or it might just mean that the person enjoyed it. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis was good in the sense that it was well written and impactful. It was a truly unique piece of media. Was it good in the sense that I enjoyed reading it? No. I struggled through every word. I did enjoy watching the movie, so it was good in that sense as well as being well made and I think impactful. I'm not sure it was as impactful as the book. Both are satirical, but the book went all out doing social commentary. The movie is also doing social commentary, but it leaned a little more into the black comedy aspect of its satire. For me, that lessened the impact a little. However, the book is not particularly accessible at this point in my life. I am an incredibly well practiced critical reader, and even I struggled to get past the content and see the larger meaning. So I have to ask myself, even if what the book is doing is more impactful than what the film is doing, does it matter if the majority of readers aren't going to be able to reach past the content content to get to that impact? And I think the answer is probably not. In the prequel to this episode, we talked about how a certain type of person ends up misreading this film and idolizing Patrick Bateman, which neither the movie nor the book wants us to do. But I'll be honest, I don't think that's the movie's fault. It's doing largely the same thing as the book, but it's more accessible. And for that I'll give this one to the movie.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker A: And yes, I will completely agree that it is not.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker B: It is not the fight club.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker A: I can kind of understand. Yes Something. Even still, for my memory, it's pretty obvious that what it's doing this one, it. If you're intentionally misunderstanding this movie in order to like idolize.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker B: Come on, man.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker A: It's not. Come on. It's not subtle at all. At all. Explicitly at the end as a monologue about how miserable his existence is and how he's trapped. It's not.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker B: You're not supposed to want to be him.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker A: No. It's not even remotely misconstruable. Unless you're doing it maliciously. Katie, what's next?
• 1:29:42
  Speaker B: Up next, we're doing I a more traditional Halloween.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker B: Horror movie, I think. I don't know anything. I don't know anything about this movie other than the main, like, villain guy. Yeah. So we're going to be talking about Hellraiser.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker B: Which is based on the Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. So he wrote a little novella and then he made it into a movie. So look at that. Hellraiser. That'll be our Halloween episode this year. In two weeks time we'll be talking about Pinhead and the Lament Configuration or whatever the fuck other.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker A: I know a little bit about the story. It's an interesting. It's an interesting premise for a horror movie or story from what I know of. We'll obviously talk about that more later. But it is interesting. I'm very interested to see. I don't know. The movie has always been a meme to me. Just because it's like Pinhead. Like I don't know what the movie's about. It's just that guy.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's all. I mean, all I know about it is that guy.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker A: Right. But now, yeah, I. Now I'm blanking on what those. The species is called. They're like. Anyways, we'll get into all that in later episode or in the next episode. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome. Sam.