Episode 98: American Psycho (2000)

Listener Request chosen by James Munro

Hey Paul! Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now you fucking stupid asshole! We’ve done our stomach crunches, cleansed, lotioned, and exfoliated to revisit Mary Harron’s sly, controversial 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ incendiary death-of-the-80s yuppie epitaph novel American Psycho.

Handsome, 27-year-old Wall Street investment banker and trust fund kid Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) inhabits a repetitive, rarefied world of gleaming, high-end restaurants, vapid clubs, and competitive jousting with his circle of Armani-besuited doppelganger friends/enemies. He keeps up appearances with a prim fiancée, Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon), who he also barely tolerates with near-total disdain, while indulging in several affairs with co-workers, friends’ partners, and sex workers. When a colleague’s superior business card inspires a murderous bloodlust in him, he sets off on a grand guignol spree of death, mutliation and savagery – but is everything as it appears to be?

Joining Gali and Matt for this Listener Request episode once again is our good friend Joe McDonald, a long-time industry professional in the lighting business. The gang discuss the novel’s circuitous path to the screen, its reception upon release, and its place in the pop culture firmament as horror, satire, and meme fodder.

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