Watched American Psycho for the first time

[Mike]

My god, it has a watermark!

[Jumpintofinity]

Spot of friendly advice: don't read the book. It's absolutely hideous and far less enjoyable than the movie.

I have a hard time imagining how this movie could be read as a book.

[Naren]

I have a hard time imagining how this movie could be read as a book.

It caused quite a bit of buzz when it came out (in 1991):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho

[Soopahmahn]

^ definitely.

The novel is not entirely without merit, but it's just like Jaws and The Godfather in that someone saw through a shitty book to a quality narrative and setting that could be used better in a cinematic format

My favorite part of the novel was the three or four page descriptions of what a guy's suit looked like, and how tasteless Bateman considered the guy, or how jealous it made him feel that he had been showed up that evening.

[noodles]

Man, I thought the book was great. It's meant to be a hard read. The dry, shallow, overly descriptive passages of his morning routine, how people are dressed, and what's happening in the board room is such a great commentary on 80s consumerism. Then, it jarringly switches gears to some of the most brutal, depraved horror every inked to a page, literally out of nowhere, before switching back to describing his haircut. I thought it was an absolutely amazing character study, especially the way the oscillations between the two worlds gets wider and harsher as the book progresses.

[Naren]

And we see something that is very similar between both the book and the movie. They are very divisive. There are people who think the movie is a pile of shit and people who think it's a masterpiece. Likewise, there are people who think the book is pure garbage and people who think it's pure gold.

Spoiler

I had always interpreted the end of the movie to mean that Bateman had never murdered anyone and that it was all in his head, but the director explained that it was just that the lawyer who claimed to have had lunch with Paul Allen/Owen recently was always getting names wrong and had actually had lunch with someone else and mistakenly thought it was Paul Allen/Owen. But at the same time, Bateman is such an unreliable narrator in the book and is so clearly insane that some critics also interpreted the book as him not having murdered anyone... or more specifically, that you couldn't tell who he had murdered or hadn't murdered or even if he had murdered anyone at all. I think I remember Ellis saying somewhere that he wanted the book to be very open to interpretation.

[Drew]

Naren, tl;dr - my interpretation was the same as yours, and I'm surprised to hear the director had said that.

[bulletbass man]

I've always liked how beyond the set, the film has a strong 80s vibe. Really helps sell the setting of the story.