New York Times / Arts / April 9, 2000 The Risky Territory of 'American Psycho' By MARY HARRON (who is the director and co-writer of "American Psycho," which opens on Friday)
My first encounter with "American Psycho" should have prepared me for the trouble to come. This was in London, in 1991, shortly after the novel by Bret Easton Ellis was published. I was working for a BBC arts program, which was doing a segment on the controversy surounding the novel, and heard the producer in charge exclaiming that the book was vile and should not have been published. I found out later she had not read it. Curious, I bought a copy and began reading it on the subway, braving the horrified glances of other passengers. Nothing I had read about the controversy prepared me for what kind of book it was. The story of Patrick Bateman, a status-obsessed Wall Street executive who commits frenzied murders in his spare time, was not a slasher novel. It was a surreal satire, and although many scenes were excruciatingly violent, it was clearly intended as a critique of male misogyny, not an endorsement of it.
At the time, I had no thought of making a movie of "American Psycho." When eight years later I was asked to do just that, it seemed to me that enough time had passed for the story to be seen as a commentary on the late 80's, and I hoped that by excising those graphic torture scenes, I would allow the novel's true meaning to appear. Of course that was naïve, for if the forces of outrage had not bothered to read the book, why would they wait to see it on screen?
Before the film was even edited, the British tabloid The News of the World got hold of some innocuous photos of the actors standing around the set and published them with the headline, "The most disgusting film of the year!" Recently Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, announced "There are no redeeming qualities to a misogynist product like this" -- without having seen it. And a lawyer in Florida threatened a lawsuit against "American Psycho" while admitting he had not read the book or the script, or seen the film.
Recently some critics have attacked the film for not being violent enough, but that hasn't slowed the controversy. I had not anticipated how panicky and confused the atmosphere around American movies has become since the rumblings from Washington about voluntary codes and the threatened lawsuits over "Natural Born Killers" and "The Basketball Diaries." After "American Psycho" was shown at Sundance this year, I was asked over and over: "Aren't you concerned about violence in entertainment?" and "How can you release this film after Columbine?" -- although even the novel's harshest critics have never accused it of causing violence in high schools.
This attempt to blame Columbine on entertainment seems to ignore the fact that America's culture is now the world's culture. Teenagers all over the globe now play exactly the same video games and watch exactly the same movies, and yet students in Belgium don't shoot up their high schools.
Perhaps other social factors -- such as the Belgian teenager's lack of access to automatic weapons -- might explain why.
At Sundance, the question I found most disturbing was this: "How would you feel if someone saw your movie and went out and killed someone?" I dislike the question because there is no way to answer it without sounding pathetic -- "I would feel terrible" -- and because I think it is unfair. When did a book or a film alone turn someone into a murderer? And what about all the other movies, books and television dramas about serial killers? Would they be to blame too? But unfair or not, the question is still haunting. Because someone could commit a crime after seeing "American Psycho," and blame it on the movie. Rightly or wrongly, I would have to live with that.
This issue came to the fore when we were in pre-production in Toronto. Before we started shooting, a group called C-CAVE -- Canadians Concerned About Violence in Entertainment -- sent a fax to local newspapers calling on concerned citizens to oppose the shooting of this "hideous and disgusting movie" in Toronto. Needless to say, they had neither read the script nor talked to me about what kind of film I intended to make.
The fax was headlined "Movie Version of Bernardo 'Bible' to Be Filmed in Toronto." This was a reference to Paul Bernardo, Canada's most notorious rapist and serial killer. Although C-CAVE sent its fax to all the Toronto newspapers, at first only one, the tabloid Toronto Sun, picked up on it. The Sun's article reported that the book had been found by Bernardo's bedside and that it had inspired and acted as a "blueprint" for his crimes.
These initial press reports did not mention -- although it was on the public record -- that Bernardo's crimes had begun in 1987 with a string of particularly violent rapes, and his first killing took place in 1990, while the book was not published until 1991. Whatever effect "American Psycho" may have had on Paul Bernardo, it did not turn him into a monster; he was one already. It didn't matter. The mere name "American Psycho" set off a conflagration.
On the morning the Sun article appeared, we were on our way to do a technical survey of our main location, which was to represent the office where Patrick Bateman works. Ten minutes after 9 the producer's cell phone rang with this message: "Don't bother showing up." The Sun article had reported that street protests against the film were being threatened, and the bank that owned the office building was scared of the potential bad publicity. It refused permission, as did all the rest of Toronto's financial institutions.
We were never able to find another office, and ended up shooting the scenes on a sound stage. Over the next two weeks, we fought to preserve the rest of our locations as restaurants and nightclubs began having second thoughts at the prospect of screaming demonstrators. We were nervous enough to take the film's title off the call sheet and parking permits.
We hired extra security and braced ourselves for the first day of filming. No protestors turned up. Not that day, or the next, or the next. During the whole of our seven-week shoot, not one person turned up to protest the filming of "American Psycho." But it doesn't matter. Everyone I know in Canada, and every journalist I talk to, is convinced that the filming of "American Psycho" in Toronto took place surrounded by enraged crowds. When I got back to New York, I was met with concerned phone calls asking how I had coped with all the protests on set. As so often happens, a tabloid frenzy had been mistaken for real life.
This being Canada, most of the press coverage of the controversy was eminently reasonable, with critics rushing to defend our right to film and even The Sun printing articles in favor of freedom of speech. The media frenzy subsided, but in Canada the name Paul Bernardo became permanently attached to "American Psycho." One day in the ladies room I heard two extras discussing the film and realized they thought they were appearing in "the Paul Bernardo movie."
In fact, Stephen Williams, the author of "Invisible Darkness," the most detailed book about that case, says that the copy of "American Psycho" belonged not to Mr. Bernardo (who was barely literate and is unlikely to have read a word of it) but to his wife and accomplice, Karla Homolka. In their police interviews neither she nor Mr. Bernardo ever described the book as their "bible" or as the "blueprint" for their crimes, or attached any special significance to it. Ms. Homolka was a voracious reader of all kinds of true crime books and crime fiction, and the prosecution tried to have two books from her collection introduced into evidence: "American Psycho" and Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." The judge rejected both submissions as irrelevant to the case.
As absurd as it sounds, including "Crime and Punishment" in the prosecution's evidence is logically consistent with the current arguments for censorship, which revolve around the question of representation, and claim that portraying violence on the page or on the screen is enough to corrupt the audience, regardless of intention or message. It is a sign of how unfocused the debate over violence in entertainment has become that this violence is never defined. "Crime and Punishment" can be described as a violent work. So can movies as various as "The Godfather," "The Wild Bunch," "Scream 2" and "Saving Private Ryan"; in fact, before it took on "American Psycho," C-CAVE campaigned against "Saving Private Ryan."
Once you accept the idea that the representation of violence is in itself harmful to society, much of the finest world cinema could be banned, from Eisenstein to Kurosawa to Kubrick and Polanski to Coppola and Scorsese. Most genre films would have to go too: film noir, horror, gangster films, westerns. This form of censorship, taken to its logical conclusion, clearly means the end of art. However, it does have a point, because no matter how moral or ironic or satirical a filmmaker might think a work is, he or she can have no control over how a member of the audience will receive it. No sane person could watch "Taxi Driver" and decide it was a good idea to shoot the president -- but an insane person did. And who is to say that your audience will always consist of the sane? On the other hand, should you censor your own work because a fool or a madman somewhere might get it wrong?
In the end, as uncomfortable and disturbing as the process of making this film has been, I do not regret it. Although when I set out I thought I was making a social satire, it was only during filming that I realized how much I was drawing on my own deepest fears. I began to see "American Psycho" as a scenario of female terror, with Patrick Bateman as, quite literally, the date from hell. It is the fear of motiveless evil that lies at the heart of all horror movies -- and in fairy tales and legends from time immemorial. There is something to be said for bringing those fears to light. Movies, after all, express not just our communal dreams but also our communal nightmares, and the director has responsibility for both.
If entering this territory is too risky, then what is the solution? Don't show violence, don't show evil, don't show any of the aspects of human nature that most frighten and distress us. In which case cinema and literature and drama will have to give up on providing a true reflection of society in favor of endless variations on life-affirming Robin Williams movies. And does anyone really believe that serial killers and violence against women and teenage shootings would then disappear?