American Psycho was all real

Cafe Society
1

One of the perennial debates around both the book & the movie American Psycho was how much of it was based in reality and how much was the hallucinations of a deluded psychopath. Having just reread the book and rewatched the movie, I have some rather strong opinions on the issue as it specificlaly relates to the movie.

My argument is that you first need to accept that American Psycho was 100% real in order to interpret what, I think is the most crucial scene in the movie, the real estate agent scene.

Consider, from the script:



INT. PAUL OWEN'S APARTMENT BUILDING - DAY

Bateman walks into the lobby of Paul Owen's building. He 
has a surgical mask in one hand.

DOORMAN 
What can I do for you, sir?

BATEMAN 
20B.

DOORMAN 
Of course. Mrs. Wolfe is up there right now.

BATEMAN 
Mrs. Wolfe?

DOORMAN 
The real estate agent? You do have an appointment,
don't you?

Bateman steps out of the elevator and walks cautiously down
the hallway. Owen's door is open. The apartment is freshly 
painted and has been immaculately redecorated in English 
country-house style: overstuffed sofas, lots of chintz. There 
are flowers everywhere, and a YOUNG YUPPIE COUPLE stands 
admiring the place talkingto the realtor, MRS. WOLFE. Bateman 
wanders down the hallway, looking for familiar signs. He stops 
at the closet where we last saw two dead girls hanging. He 
opens the door and the light switches on, but it is empty. Mrs. 
Wolfe approaches, smiling.

MRS. WOLFE 
Are you my two o'clock?

BATEMAN 
No.

Mrs. Wolfe eyes him strangely, then looks down at the 
surgical mash clutched in his hand. Her expression changes.

MRS. WOLFE 
Can I help you?

BATEMAN
I'm looking for...Paul Owen's...place.

She stares at him impassively.

BATEMAN 
Doesn't he live here?

MRS. WOLFE 
No, he doesn't.

BATEMAN 
Are you sure?

MRS. WOLFE 
You saw the ad in the Times?

BATEMAN 
No. Yes. I mean yes, I did. In the Times. But...
doesn't Paul Owen still live here?

MRS. WOLFE 
There was no ad in the Times.

Bateman is shaking as they continue to stare at each other.

MRS. WOLFE 
I think you should go now.

BATEMAN 
But I think...I want to know what happened 
here.

MRS. WOLFE 
Don't make any trouble. Please. I suggest you go.

Bateman backs away slowly.

MRS. WOLFE 
Don't come back.

BATEMAN 
I won't...don't worry.

Mrs. Wolfe glares at him as he walks down the hall, 
rattled, and gets into the elevator.

If you accept that everything in the movie thus far really happened, you can derive the correct backstory for the scene.

After a few months of lack of communication from Paul Allen, whatever bureaucratic gears would have swung in place for someone like Mrs Wolfe to go to Paul Allen’s apartment to check up on him. Upon arriving at the apartment, they would have been confronted with the exact scene that Christi, the hooker, would have seen in her frantic dash around the apartment, corpses hung in body bags in the closet, the words DIE YUPPIE SCUM scrawled in a guest bedroom.

Faced with this, visage, Mrs Wolfe (who’s name, btw, is inspired by Tom Wolfe) would have realized that reporting this to the police would cause enormous scandal and ruin the commercial value of that apartment, possibly the entire building. So instead, what she does is enact a coverup, dispose of the dead bodies herself, hire a cleaning crew to eliminate all traces of it having been a slaughterhouse and then cynically put it on the market for her own profit.

Understanding this going into the scene, you can see the nuances of the scene all point to this interpretation.



MRS. WOLFE 
Are you my two o'clock?

BATEMAN 
No.

Mrs. Wolfe eyes him strangely, then looks down at the 
surgical mash clutched in his hand. Her expression changes.

Mrs Wolfe has pieced it all together, this is the confirmation that this man was the one using this apartment as a slaughterhouse. She already knows what he did here.



BATEMAN
I'm looking for...Paul Owen's...place.

She stares at him impassively.

BATEMAN 
Doesn't he live here?

MRS. WOLFE 
No, he doesn't.

BATEMAN 
Are you sure?

MRS. WOLFE 
You saw the ad in the Times?

BATEMAN 
No. Yes. I mean yes, I did. In the Times. But...
doesn't Paul Owen still live here?

MRS. WOLFE 
There was no ad in the Times.

She’s caught him out in a lie, she’s told him that she’s well aware of who he is and she isn’t afraid of him, not even a little.



MRS. WOLFE 
I think you should go now.

BATEMAN 
But I think...I want to know what happened 
here.

MRS. WOLFE 
Don't make any trouble. Please. I suggest you go.

Bateman backs away slowly.

MRS. WOLFE 
Don't come back.

BATEMAN 
I won't...don't worry.

Mrs. Wolfe glares at him as he walks down the hall, 
rattled, and gets into the elevator.

This coded conversation becomes crystal clear once you know what each of them knows about each other. It would be more convenient for the both of them if they both pretended not to know what happened here.

Any other interpretation of the scene simply can’t explain this intricate and highly coded conversation.

There are many scenes in the movie which expose the reactions of other people in society to Patrick Bateman’s actions but this is by far the most direct. And it’s purpose in the movie is to show that, no matter how horrified we are with Patrick Bateman as a person, his evilness is overshadowed by the banal evilness of the society he lives in. The movie continually reminds you of the suffering brought about by his America, yuppie America, Reagan’s America. The homeless on the streets, drug abuse & social decay. Mrs Wolfe is the exemplification of this yuppie America that Patrick Bateman is also a part of and, when confronted face to face with it, Patrick’s own psychopathic behaviors are not only controlled, they are trivialized. Mrs Wolfe is, by far, the most evil character in American Psycho.

By viewing the story through this lens, you see that Patrick Bateman’s psychopathic behaviors merely serve as a foil to bring the rest of society into stark relief. Luis Carruthers being more interested in the overnight bag than the corpse inside of it, Evelyn self-absorbed ignoring Bateman’s confessions of mass murder, The absurd status games played with restaurant reservations.

But in order to preserve this interpretation of the world, you must believe in the consistency of the world presented. If you are to argue that anything that happens is hallucinatory, then it robs the entire social satire of it’s impact. Hence, I argue, the only correct way to interpret American Psycho is as a completely faithful telling in order to preserve it’s integrity as a movie.

2

She finds an abattoir esque scene in an apartment and her first instinct is to clean it up because it could affect the resale value of the place? One–this is New York. NOTHING will affect the resale value. Second, it seems way too out there.

Also, why would she even assume that Bateman was the killer? He’d have no reason to suddenly return to the scene of the crime now.

3

Totally agree with this, but this

need not be true. Bateman may have hallucinated some–but not all–of the scenes shown in the movie. I recognize that it might dampen the satire, but it doesn’t have remove it entirely.

Also, as far as the reality of it goes, doesn’t that guy that Bateman thinks he killed show up at the club in the end?

4

Sure it would affect the resale value. The price would double, lol.

5

She notices the surgical mask in his hand and forms the assumption. Then she asks him about the NYT ad which confirms her suspicion. Both of those details were very specifically inserted into the script (the book’s version leans more towards Bateman being mistaken although the NYT line is still in the book).

6

There are 3 specific scenes in the movie which cannot be conveniently explained away:

  1. Bateman is dragging Paul Allen in a body bag along the floor, leaving a trail of blood but a switch in camera angle shows no blood.
  2. Bateman’s killing of the hooker by dropping a chainsaw from the stairwell
  3. The chase scene involving “feed me a kitten” and explosively destroying the police cars

Two of these three scenes are intimately tied to the Real Estate Agent scene and thus, cannot be hallucinations if the real estate scene is to be real. The last one, I’m still baffled by but, to me, it makes no sense to have only a single scene of unreliable narration in what must otherwise be a completely true depiction as it undermines the faith in the entire rest of the plot.

Bateman meets his lawyer, Henry Carnes at the club and Carnes informs Bateman that the story is impossible because he dined with Allen twice in London. This is commonly cited as evidence for the “it was all a dream” school but I think it’s particularly weak proof. Just 30 seconds ago, Carnes mistook Bateman for Davis and Bateman pulled off the Allen murder by pretending to be Halberstram for dinner so the most likely explanation is that Carnes is simply confused.

7

That’s not the way I saw it, at all. It was a coverup that his father instituted, and he set up his lawyer to provide a cover story. Even though the lawyer hadn’t actually seen Paul Allen, he claimed that he had so that suspicion couldn’t be placed on Bateman.

8

I’m watching that scene again and I don’t see it. First of all, Carnes clearly mistook Bateman for Davies at the beginning and proceeded to insult Bateman which he would only have done if it was a genuine misunderstanding.

Then, when Bateman confesses again, his response is “I don’t find this funny anymore” which wouldn’t be the reaction if he were in on a coverup.

9

The movie is his fantasy life as he works up to actually being a killer. The first real killing happens after the movie ends.

10

I’ve never seen that interpretation before, what’s your evidence to support that conclusion?

11

“the surgical mash clutched in his hand.”

:eek:

12

I don’t remember the blow by blow, but that’s been my interpretation since the second time I saw it. I’ve probably seen it six times. The last time was about a year ago when I watched it with a friend specifically to demonstrate this interpretation. At the end, he agreed with me. But again, I don’t remember the blow by blow “evidence.” Basically I guess the “evidence” that it’s fantasy is peppered throughout the movie, as noted above. And the way I’ve always interpreted his final speech was that now he finally had the courage–or the insanity–to actually accomplish what he’d been fantasizing about.

13

I think you have to treat the film and the book differently, unfortunately. I think the film took a completely different interpretation - often hinting that it was all a fantasy, whereas the book did not.

14

The killings are real, his attorney is confused, and the real estate agent is involved in covering up the massacre in the apartment to protect the missing occupant’s reputation. Presumably, his family is uber wealthy and will go to great lengths to protect their son and not allow this horror to soil the family name and legacy. She is quick to realize that Patrick Bateman is the butcher, yet her task is to get rid of this apartment. It is not about money, it is about making it all just disappear.

15

I thought the book was fairly explicit that Patrick was engaged in a slow descent into madness and hallucination. Towards the end of the book, some of the interview guests on the Patty Winters Show included bigfoot and a giant cheerio. To me, the movie was far more ambiguous, not less.

16

The thing I noticed in the movie that put me squarely in the “fantasy” camp was that apparently he goes to work, sits in his office, and does nothing all day. The secretary finds his notebook with all the scary doodles – I seem to remember one of the doodles involving a chainsaw, and it hit me as the most reasonable explanation that the crazy, surreal, over-the-top implausible scenes (such as with the chainsaw and the stairwell) that we see are fantasies as he sits around his office daydreaming and doodling all day. Then the business at the end with the ATM and the police cars pretty much confirmed it.

Either way I think it works.

17

Hm, looks like my interpretation is totally fail.

Ah well. Can we get a consensus on whether Lauren from Rules of Attraction was ever really in a relationship with Victor?

18

Really, the “feed me a kitten” scene does it for me. I mean, I can see a programmer going to the trouble to make the ATM crave fresh young pussy, but having the balls to program it to actually ask for it? Too much.

19

The movie is kept intentionally ambiguous. Does Mrs Wolfe know something or are we just experiencing Bateman’s paranoia? Did Bateman really kill Paul Allen or did he just disappear off on a bender to London?

The point of the whole movie IMHO is that these people, driven only by wealth and consumerism, lead very superficial and self-absorbed lives disconnected from each other and the rest of the world. Their “significant others” are little more than interchangeable arm candy and their “friendships” little more than business colleagues and casual drinking buddies. In fact a common theme throughout the film is that they routinely mistake people for other people.

In fact, they are so self-absorbed that they pay little attention if one of their own goes missing. Their worlds are so insular that not only could one of them be a serial killer and no one notices, we can’t even tell if he really is a serial killer or just living in a fantasy world of his own making.

Well, that part rings true.:smiley:

Also, I just noticed that two actors from Big Love are in American Pycho.

20

It the book, it’s explained that his father owns the company and there’s no real reason for him to ever work. When asked why he works, his answer is “to fit in”. The movie makes a brief allusion to this but it’s far more ambiguous.