Latest news with #Harron
Chicago Tribune
25-05-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
After being holed up during the pandemic, renters are now seeking spaces that allow them to connect with other tenants
Among the many lux amenities offered at the Optima Verdana apartment complex in Wilmette is a pickleball court where Helena Harron spends several days a week playing pickup matches with other residents, many of whom have quickly become close friends. After growing up in Wilmette and moving away, Harron and her family moved into the luxury apartment complex in 2023, initially planning for a short stay while she and her husband looked for the right home to buy. But they quickly felt at home in the building, and while they still hope to purchase a home in the future, they are enjoying the perks that apartment living offers. 'We are still thinking about moving to a home, but the pressure is off,' she said. 'We're very happy where we are, so it's no longer a desperate must move. Instead if the right opportunity comes around, then we would.' Harron is one of the many Chicago residents in the last decade who have flocked to high-amenity apartment complexes, drawn by the convenience and built-in community they offer. The demand for spaces to live, work, exercise and play, often alongside other residents, has become a driving factor for new building developers. Face-to-face spaces are nothing new in large apartment complexes, but growing demand for them has driven developers to be more intentional and targeted in what they offer in the last few years. And the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for buildings to offer more recreation and work spaces that can be shared by residents. The trend toward more comprehensive amenity spaces began well before the pandemic, said Meg Spriggs, managing director of development for Americas at Lendlease, which operates the Cascade in Lakeshore East and The Reed at Southbank. Shared office spaces became more prominent with the popularity of WeWork around 2013, and developers began to look more closely at how they could incorporate those spaces into their own buildings. The portion of so-called live-work-play developments — buildings that offer shared office and entertainment spaces — doubled between 2012 and 2020, according to RentCafe. In 2020, about 13% of apartments nationwide were in mixed-use developments, compared to 6% in 2012. 'When those types of very flexible spaces and community-oriented spaces started coming on the market, everyone started paying attention to how they might be able to address that in their own buildings,' Spriggs said. Before the pandemic, a trend toward making shared living spaces more like those seen in hotels and resorts also started to emerge, said Brad Lutz, managing principal and Chicago and National Multifamily Practice Leader at Baker Barrios Architects. Unit sizes have gotten smaller over the last decade, Lutz said, so the amenities have become an important accessory to tenants' daily lives. 'The unit sizes are getting smaller so we're making up for it by creating more options for them to have as their shared home space, if you will, in the amenities,' Lutz said. Apartment complexes have been expanding their amenity offerings for years, but the pandemic jump-started demand for one feature in particular: on-site work space. Remote workspace became essential. At the same time, residents who were holed up working from home also began seeking opportunities for recreation and connection in their apartment buildings. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of people working from home at least sometimes increased about 60%, and in 2023 close to 35% of American workers worked from home on some days, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tenants were hesitant about sharing spaces during the height of the pandemic, and developers initially tried to set up onsite workspaces in a way that maintained separation between residents. But people quickly became comfortable with the idea, and developers saw residents using those spaces more as working from home became permanent for many workers. 'I think in the beginning, co-working felt scary just because proximity was still sort of an unknown, but once we got through that and we got our vaccinations, we're right back to the community spaces, and plus,' Spriggs said. Now, with many residents working from home full- or part-time, developers have placed a premium on making sure shared office spaces cater to all the needs residents may have. Ali Burnham, vice president of marketing for Optima, Inc., which owns Optima Verdana as well as locations in Lakeview and Streeterville, said developers try to include a variety of coworking spaces that cater to different work styles and work-from-home needs. The buildings have multiple office spaces, meeting rooms, huddle rooms and areas where people can find a quiet corner to take calls or focus on their work. 'What we often find is in addition, people may work on the skydeck, or they may work in the party room,' Burnham said. 'And so you may find this sort of organic gathering of people or people separate. It sort of depends, and they have that option.' Developers are also beginning to offer more unique spaces, like maker spaces, jam rooms and podcast rooms, based on resident interests and a desire for more variety in amenity spaces. Many of the shared spaces developers are creating on-site have a wellness or fitness focus. Rather than having a fitness room with a few treadmills and weights, complexes will have pickleball courts, yoga studios, saunas, weight rooms and tracks, spread across multiple floors and tailored to different needs. 'I think today, life is very stressful. People's lives are demanding, and so when they're home, they want places for peace, places for exercise, places where they can focus on themselves, relax,' Burnham said. 'And so we try to provide as many of those spaces as possible.' For Harron, the pickleball court at Optima Verdana became a place to exercise, have fun and connect with other residents. Harron has made several friends she calls the 'pickleball crew' from pickup games on the court that have blossomed into close friendships. 'It's been a lot of fun to get to know people here and build a community here,' she said. 'It's a nice group. It's a supportive network, and we're even starting to celebrate people's ups and downs in life.' Harron's husband frequently uses the building's sauna and gym, she said, and her son often brings friends over to use the building's golf simulator. At Lendlease, developers make an effort to incorporate green spaces into the indoor environment to contribute to wellness and bring a piece of nature into the concrete city landscape. At Cascade in Lakeshore East, residents can spend their time in a conservatory, lush with green plants indoors and a walkway lined with rocks that feels like walking through a park. The windows overlook a green park outside the building. 'Winters in Chicago can sometimes be challenging, and it's just a really nice space to sort of feel like you're outside, but you're really inside, protected from the elements, with a lot of green plants and windows and visibility outside,' Spriggs said. The availability of green spaces also works into developers' efforts to enhance sustainability at their buildings, Spriggs said, which has become a growing demand among Generation Z residents. Developers have been paying more attention in recent years to outdoor spaces as well, building amenities that tie a building to the surrounding environment and offer more green spaces for residents. The growth in pet ownership since the pandemic has also driven developers to offer more outdoor spaces for pets to walk and play. 'I think a lot of buildings realized, hey, we need to relax our pet policies and realize that we're going to have a huge percentage of our residents that are going to want to have a pet and want to have spaces to take them,' Lutz said. When Optima Lakeview was in development during the pandemic, Burnham said the company looked for ways to make the outdoor amenities available year-round, even during the cold winter months. The building has an outdoor heated pool that residents can use all year, as well as fire pits on the outdoor terrace to keep residents warm in the colder months. Just as important as the amenities on site, developers said, is the programming that building managers offer for residents to use the spaces and connect with neighbors. Lendlease and Optima's buildings offer trivia nights, painting classes, movie nights and group fitness classes for residents to engage with the amenity spaces in ways that work for them. Building staff take input from residents on what type of events they'd like to see. 'Just because you build it doesn't mean it will get used and programmed on its own,' Spriggs said. 'And so I think that content creation and being really in tune with the community is important.' The programming also helps foster community among residents, bringing people together around shared interests, Burnham said. 'These events and clubs really give people that opportunity to very comfortably interact with their neighbors and figure out who they connect with, who has the same interest that they do,' Burnham said. 'And they start seeing each other at this class, they see each other at another event, and eventually a friendship can blossom.' Harron said she was surprised at how quickly she had made connections on the pickleball court that turned into more robust friendships. One of the group's members is a chef, and she started providing complimentary cooking classes to the group once a month, using the building's public kitchen. As she looks toward the future, Harron said she expects to maintain those friendships even if she moves out of the building. When she moves to a single-family home, she said she hopes to come back for rounds of pickleball and invite her friends in the building to her home as well. 'We've just made some really tight bonds in the year and a half that I've been here,' she said. 'We even go out once a month to celebrate each other's birthdays, and I imagine we're on our way to being lifelong friends.'
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
American Psycho: An Oral History, 25 Years After Its Divisive Debut
American Psycho arrived in theaters 25 years ago this week. In honor of that we're re-sharing the American Psycho oral history we first ran in January 2020, with no edits or updates. Enjoy.—MM When director Mary Harron first sent Christian Bale the script for American Psycho, he didn't know much about it — except that it was based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel that made people mad. 'I had no idea what to expect. I had not read the book at that time. I had heard of the controversy, people calling for it to be banned, and I was not expecting what I read,' Bale told MovieMaker. 'As I read it, I was exploding with laughter. And I didn't know if that was Mary's intent.' Related Headlines 20 Behind the Scenes Stories of Airplane, Maybe the Funniest Movie Ever Made 12 Actors Who Held Their Breath Underwater for an Extraordinarily Long Time Dr. No: 12 Behind the Scenes Photos From the First 007 Film Bale proceeded with caution: 'I spoke with her on the phone, and I said, 'I've just got to get this over with, because this might end our conversation and insult you. But I find this to be one of the most ridiculous and hilarious scripts.' And she went, 'Bingo. That's it. Please fly out to meet me.'' Lots of people aren't sure, at first, how to take American Psycho. When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, almost no one was ready to accept it. It was released in theaters on April 14, 2000. 'The amount of hostility at Sundance really did take me aback,' says Harron. 'The audience just sat there and did not know how to react. Because this little group of us, the editor, me, Christian, a few other people—we were laughing away. We knew the scenes that are meant to be funny are funny.' Adds Guinevere Turner, Harron's co-writer on the film: 'I was supposed to have dinner that night with Kevin Smith. And I was listening to a message from him—he'd gone to the screening—and he said, 'I don't feel well, I'm not going to be able to make dinner.' And I was like, oh, that's weird. And years later he told me, 'I hated that movie so much that I couldn't have dinner with you. I didn't know what I was going to say. And then I saw it on cable and I realized it's actually genius.'' Ellis has always explained that his novel American Psycho is a darkly comic satire of the shallow, greedy men he too-often encountered as a young novelist in 1980s Manhattan. Wall Street serial killer Patrick Bateman, the lead character played by Bale in the film, delivers trite Top 40 critiques and catalogues his rapes and murders in the same disembodied tone. No one believes he's a killer because he looks just like everyone else in his coterie of well-dressed, handsome stock bros. He reveres Donald Trump. But long before the rise of cancel culture, the novel stood out for its capacity to divide and offend. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem and members of the National Organization of Women strongly objected to the book in part because of leaked excerpts—removed from the context of the satire that fills most of the pages—that depicted horrific violence against women. Ellis, disappointed in the film adaptation of his first novel, Less Than Zero, was surprised anyone wanted the movie rights to American Psycho, a book he considered potentially un-filmable. 'There was not a line, believe me, of people who wanted to produce this movie,' Ellis says. And yet the book eventually passed through many screenwriters, directors and stars, from Ellis to David Cronenberg to Oliver Stone. At one point, Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as Patrick Bateman. And Harron became perhaps the only movie director ever to quit rather than work with DiCaprio. Here is MovieMaker's oral history of American Psycho. , the novel Objections to the book led to its cancellation by its original publisher in 1990. But the attention helped it become a bestseller when it was published in 1991. Willem Dafoe, who plays Detective Donald Kimball: Everyone was reading the book among my friends… I liked the book very much. It was very postmodern, it was transgressive, and it walked the line between comedy and something very grave at the same time. Chloë Sevigny, who plays Jean, Bateman's secretary: I remember my brother, it was his favorite book, in high school and I think in college. … It was very much ingrained in my psyche, that book, the cover. I thought it was a really powerful story and I guess I wasn't afraid of the controversy. I'd already lived through Kids as my first movie, and after that, everything's kind of easy breezy. Bret Easton Ellis: The media latched onto this story and turned it into something that I knew it wasn't. What was initially unsettling was to be part of a scandal that was being created that you knew wasn't true… To have The New York Times have 14 or 15 stories that are negative about you, that are painting you in a light that is simply not true and are dispensing information that is simply not true—that's a problem. Mary Harron: I was living in London, working for the BBC when it came out. And I was working on an arts show and it was a bit of a scandal… one of the producers wanted to do an item on it. I bought it and started reading it on the subway on the way to work, and as soon as I started reading it, I felt like, this has really been misunderstood. There's a kind of dark satirical work here that reminded me of Evelyn Waugh. Then when I hit the real violence, I had to stop reading for a while. Continue reading our American Psycho oral history on the next page... A Really Subversive, Feminist Movie' Producer Edward Pressman and Muse Productions, founded by Chris and Roberta Hanley, obtained the rights and sought out a team to make the film. They eventually contacted Harron, who had recently directed the 1996 Valerie Solanis biopic I Shot Andy Warhol. Mary Harron: They had had a couple directors attached before. Cronenberg had been attached, Stuart Gordon, the one who did Re-Animator had been attached, someone else had been attached. What occurred to me is that just enough time had passed to make a period film about the '80s, and say things about the '80s, and bring out the satire. And that was interesting to me. When I had my call with Ed Pressman to discuss it further, I said, 'I don't know if you can make a film of this book. But if you'll give me the money to write a screenplay, I'll try.' Because they had sent me another screenplay and I wasn't interested. I could only do it if I did my own version. Also Read: Willem Dafoe Loved Having Nowhere to Hide in The Lighthouse (Podcast) I can't remember when Guinevere came up, but pretty early, because we were already working on what became TheNotorious Bettie Page. I felt it would be a lot more fun to work with her on this. And because I had just done I Shot Andy Warhol, which was about a radical feminist, and she had just done Go Fish, an indie lesbian romantic comedy, no one could tell us what was and was not misogynist. Guinevere Turner: I had never heard of it, even. … She said they keep trying to find writers to adapt this book, and we were the sixth team to be hired. And she said you're gonna hate me—because she knows I don't like scary things—but I think we can make a really good movie out of this book. So I read it, and I was like 'Ewww, I hate you—but I see what you mean.' It's actually really funny in addition to being horrifying. And with the right spin it could be a really subversive, feminist movie. Bret Easton Ellis: I never saw it as a feminist book. It was definitely a criticism of male values that were around me, and it was easier for me, I think, to witness those male values clearly because I was gay—I am gay. And I think that gave me a distance and a perspective as to noticing them more than if I was heterosexual and participating in the society at that time. I was definitely participating, but being gay really is a distance. You are four percent of the population. You do not share a lot of the same feelings and experiences that straight men do. Certainly not in late '80s Manhattan. I think I was watching a lot of this behavior on the sidelines, and I wanted to criticize it. And a lot of it had to do with money above all else. Greed is good, the ethos of that era, that was bothering me. And just the attitude of the cocky young stockbroker, which really had spread among so many men. It was really apparent to me as a young man, struggling with the notion of becoming an adult finally, and not wanting to become an adult in that society. And then where else was there to go? Guinevere Turner: Bret, when I first talked to him about it, he seemed genuinely hurt. Like it was a big surprise to him that there was any kind of outcry, and like he felt misunderstood. Bret Easton Ellis: Hardly hurt. That is not true. I do think enough people understood the satirical element of it, and I always knew they would. … I always thought there was an audience that was going to get it. Believe me, there's plenty of people who don't. I've lived with someone for 10 years who can't finish that book. Casting Patrick Bateman Guinevere Turner: Billy Crudup was attached before Mary met Christian. He was attached for about a month and a half. And then he called Mary one day and said, 'I don't feel like I can get this character.' Which I just think is so incredible for an actor, to be that honest. Mary Harron: I sent Christian the script and then he didn't respond for ages. And then I talked to Christine Vachon about it because she was making Velvet Goldmine with him. … And so she called him and said, 'You should really read this,' and he did and he was like on a plane right away. Our oldest daughter was about three weeks old, I think, and Christian came to our place in the East Village to audition. My husband, John, had to take our daughter into the next room so that I could do the audition. Christian Bale: I couldn't finish the scenes because she was laughing and shaking the camera, and I was laughing as well. Mary Harron: It was a summer's day and the windows were open and I made him do the Paul Allen axe murder over and over. Oh my God, the neighbors. What must they have thought? This crazy yelling. Christian Bale: I think the thing that united us on it is I had no interest in his background, childhood—and she didn't either. We looked at him as an alien who landed in the unabashedly capitalist New York of the '80s, and looked around and said, 'How do I perform like a successful male in this world?' And that was our beginning point. And we didn't want to talk about why was he this way, what happened in his childhood—there was none of that between Mary and I. Mary Harron: He saw the part the way that I did, and he got the humor of it. He didn't see Bateman as cool. I sort of had the feeling a lot of the other actors kind of thought Bateman was cool. And he didn't. I met with a lot of actors about it but Christian was the only one who was right for it. Even though it was a gamble, because he hadn't done anything at all like that before. The first time I'd seen him was in Little Women. But at one point I talked to [Velvet Goldmine director] Todd Haynes about him, and Todd Haynes said, 'Christian Bale's the best actor I've ever worked with.' So I had a lot of faith in Christian. When he did the audition, I felt like he hadn't quite got the right energy, because I think he was having trouble with doing the accent because he'd been doing a different British accent—he's British and he'd done a different British accent for Velvet Goldmine, so he wasn't quite getting that coiled kind of American energy. But I thought, he's a great actor. He'll get it. Christian Bale: I don't know if you're familiar with how bloody long it took us to get this film made? I had a lot of time to practice. Dinner With Bateman Christian Bale: There was a dinner in L.A.—certainly Mary, Bret and myself. I believe Guinevere as well. Bret Easton Ellis: He was in full Patrick Bateman mode in terms of the hair, the suit and the way he was talking. And it was incredibly distracting. And amusing, but then it became less amusing as he kept it going… I told him, at a certain point, you know you can stop this. It's unnerving me. But jokingly. It was kind of like—it was unnerving in a way. I felt he didn't need to keep it up, though I think he's just that kind of actor. Christian Bale: I don't recall doing that, but I wouldn't put it past me. It does sound like that would have been fun. Mary Harron: He might have been doing the American accent, yeah. Other British actors I know do that. It's just too hard to switch back and forth, so you start in it and stay in it for a long time. That was the problem I had initially: You've got to get that American rhythm. I don't remember being unnerved. Bret Easton Ellis: If I was completely, adamantly against Christian Bale, I really hope she would not have listened to me. Because really no one knew what Christian was fully capable of, and the great performances hadn't come yet. He was still the kid from Newsies and Empire of the Sun. … This was the pre-Batman Christian Bale. He was sort of a well-known Welsh actor who I'd seen in a couple things. It wasn't like it was Leonardo DiCaprio, who was a giant international star from Titanic. Speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio In May 1998, Lionsgate (then called Lions Gate) agreed to pay DiCaprio more than $20 million to star as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Guinevere Turner: It was announced in the trades before anyone told us. And then Mary, amazingly—I always will be impressed with her for this—she's just like, if they want it to be Leo DiCaprio, I'm not doing it. I was like, you're not? He was the biggest movie star in the world. Continue reading our American Psycho oral history on the next page... Christian Bale: She really threw herself on the sword for me. I will always appreciate that, so much. She has incredible integrity and just stuck with me throughout. Mary Harron: Obviously, I think DiCaprio's a great actor, but I thought he was wrong for it. I thought Christian was better for it, and I also thought, and I think my instinct was right on this, he carried enormous baggage because he had just come off Titanic and I thought you cannot take someone who has a worldwide fanbase of 15-year-old girls, 14-year-olds girls, and cast him as Patrick Bateman. It'll be intolerable, and everyone will interfere, and everyone will be terrified. It would be very bad for him and very bad for the movie. Because everybody will be all over it. They'll rewrite the script and all the rest. And I knew I could only make this work if I had complete control over it, over the tone and everything. The other thing is, a lot of the plot depends on people mistaking Bateman for someone else. Not a lot of people look like Leo DiCaprio. They called me and said we're going to offer him $20 million, but the budget of the movie will remain $6 million. You're giving the star enormous power over this project, and basically taking it away from the director if you're making it that disproportionate. So that just didn't interest me. I'd only done one movie, so it was a big thing to do. But I'd seen lots of movies that have gone awry because they cast a huge star that they shouldn't have cast. I thought people would respect that and say, oh wow, integrity. But actually I think a lot of people thought I was crazy. So I went through a period after they fired me, of thinking, God, my career's really ruined, because everyone's going to think I'm out of my mind for walking away from this. 'There's Other People Making the Film Now' Oliver Stone came in to direct, and Cameron Diaz briefly joined the cast. Harron and Turner heard that there were plans to take a Jekyll-and-Hyde approach to Bateman, which would have allowed DiCaprio to be sympathetic in at least some scenes. Bale, meanwhile, was certain he would somehow get the role back. He kept calling Harron with ideas, and working out to maintain Bateman's ripped physique. Christian Bale: I had to. I'm English. I had never gone to a gym in my life. You lose that quicker than you gain it. I said to her, 'I'm still gonna make this, and I'm still gonna keep prepping on it.' And I would call her to talk about scenes, and she would be on a family vacation and she'd say, 'Christian, please, I'm trying to have dinner. And I don't know if you've noticed, but there's other people making the film now.' And I'd say, 'Mary, just stop being so negative. We're gonna do this.' Everybody thought I was crazy, but it became a crusade for me. Bret Easton Ellis: I think I would have regretted it if Oliver Stone had made it with him. I don't think Oliver Stone would have been the right director for this at all. Something about Mary's style—the restraint she showed—is what makes the movie effective. I don't think Oliver Stone is good at restraint. … And I don't know if Leo, who is the greatest screen actor of his generation, would have survived it. And I know that Leo really, really wanted to do it and I know he was talked out of it. Guinevere Turner: Gloria Steinem… as legend would have it, took him to a baseball game and said, 'Please don't do this movie. You're the biggest movie star in the world right now, and teenage girls are living for you, and I really don't want them all to run to the theater to see a movie where you're a man who kills women.' Also Read: Quentin Tarantino: Things I've Learned as a MovieMaker Ironically she later married Christian Bale's dad. I always wondered what those Thanksgivings were like. Bret Easton Ellis: Ultimately I think Christian Bale, in that moment, was the better choice. And of course Leo got to play a version of this as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, and he was spectacular. 'The Potential to Be Iconic' When DiCaprio and Stone opted out, Bale and Harron returned to American Psycho. Shooting began in Toronto and New York, with a cast of stars and soon-to-be stars that included Dafoe, Sevigny, Matt Ross, Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis and Cara Seymour. Christian Bale: I had the book with me all the time on-set. Mary stayed true to a majority of the dialogue within it, so every scene I would kind of be skimming through it and looking at it and finding little bits and conferring in the corner with Mary on it. Chloë Sevigny: I remember us shooting things that were more extreme so they could have that in the film to take out, and being like, 'Hmm, that's cool, that's good. That's a good strategy.' The '90s were a constant battle with the censors, the ratings board was such a big thing then—or it was just the movies I was making. Sex vs. violence. And of course American Psycho has both, so. Willem Dafoe: When I entered the movie I remember they were already in production. … When I arrived for my first scene with Christian Bale, he was fantastic. And I think he's excellent in the movie. It's one of his best roles. He was like a machine. And I mean it in the best way. … His rhythms, his clarity, his control were just incredible. Mary Harron: We were filming the business-card scene and I remember that Josh Lucas and Justin Theroux came up to me after one of the takes and said he breaks into a sweat at the same time… every time. Matt Ross, who plays Luis Carruthers: With the business-card scene, I think we all knew we were participating in something that had the potential to be iconic. Christian Bale: Josh Lucas and I did a film together recently and he opened my eyes to something that I had been unaware of. He informed me that all of the other actors thought that I was the worst actor they'd ever seen. [Laughs] He was telling me they kept looking at me and talking about me, saying, 'Why did Mary fight for this guy? He's terrible.' And it wasn't until he saw the film that he changed his mind. And I was in the dark completely about that critique. Chloë Sevigny: Working with Christian was pretty hard because I didn't know this whole Method thing. I was pretty fresh. I hadn't done that many films before, and that an actor would lose himself to such a degree and was so consumed by the part, I was having a hard time kind of… just wanting to socialize with him, but feeling that he didn't, and then my ego being like, 'Does he not like me? Does he think I'm a terrible actress?' Guinevere Turner: He was just so 100 percent committed as an actor to being this character, to a disturbing point. He never spoke in his real accent and he never socialized with anyone while we were shooting. Christian Bale: Yeah. I start laughing if I know people too well. I start laughing in the middle of scenes. Especially with a character like that. Matt Ross: I also remember that after every day he would go work out for hours and hours and hours to get into that incredible shape. I remember Mary and I talking about just what an incredible work ethic he had. Chloë Sevigny: I remember as a wrap gift I gave him a 45 of 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads, which I thought was the greatest wrap gift, in the world, ever. But then when we went to festivals and stuff after, like Berlin and whatnot, he was very friendly then. When we were not shooting, doing press and stuff, he couldn't have been a nicer guy. In addition to co-writing the film, Turner played one of Bateman's victims, Elizabeth. Guinevere Turner: When you do a sex scene with someone and they kill you, actor-wise, you learn a lot about them. There's so many ways that that could suck. And he was so incredibly great to work with. He's not a diva actor. Decisions Chloë Sevigny: I remember Mary and the DP fighting a lot, and I remember feeling really empathetic for her. … I just remember it was tense. My coverage was always kind of held for last. So I felt kind of bitter, because I was like, of course it's Christian's movie, and they should focus on his performance, but I wanted an opportunity as well, and sometimes I felt like I got the short end of the stick. And I felt like I was hyper-aware of what was going on with the camera because I was always watching that, because I was always like, are they gonna give me my due time? Which is a very actorly thing to do. Mary Harron: The date scene might be my favorite scene, when Chloë comes over to Bateman's apartment. I remember she was so upset that she only got one take for her close-up. I felt really bad for her. But she was so great in that scene. She's so beautiful and vulnerable. Chloë Sevigny: Aww, god bless her. She's so sweet. Matt Ross: The DP shot Reservoir Dogs… He seemed to be a relatively kind of gruff, tough guy. My memory of it was that I think he was setting up shots that in Mary's mind may have been cool shots, pretty shots, but didn't tell the story she wanted to. Guinevere Turner: A cool thing that Mary told me relatively recently is that in the scene where the detective that Willem plays and Christian are having lunch at Smith & Wollensky's—and it's really tense, and Bateman's sort of losing his mind—she directed Willem to do several takes where he was sure that Patrick had done it and then several takes where he absolutely didn't think he'd done it. And then she intercut the two styles. That, I think, is genius. Willem Dafoe: I remember her telling me to play it those different ways. And then she cut it together in a way that was ambiguous where she kind of had her cake and ate it too. … That lifted up the scene. Mary Harron: I've done that with a few other things… when you're really on the edge of ambiguity, when you're not sure what a character's motivation is. Guinevere Turner: There's a little thing that Reese Witherspoon does in the movie that always makes me laugh because she just invented it on the spot. They're in a restaurant where Patrick breaks up with her and he's saying I kill people and I'm losing my mind, and she's like Whaaa? But then she just looks across the room and she waves at someone and goes like this [pointing at her wrist]. She's just telling some woman all the way across the room that she loves her bracelet. Matt Ross: I asked if I could wear adult braces, and Mary very intelligently said no. President Bateman? Following the logic that Bateman is like an alien, Bale reasoned that he would have been inspired to imitate both Tom Cruise and Donald Trump. Christian Bale: I mean, look, if someone had landed at that time and he was looking around for cultural alpha males, business-world alpha males, et cetera, than Tom Cruise certainly would have been one of those that he would have looked at and aspired to be and attempted to emulate. And he's still a leading man now. So yeah, I had pictures of him inside the trailer, as I did other people, and '80s models that Bateman probably would have looked at and tried to imitate. And certainly that megawatt smile with the perfect teeth. Likewise, Donald Trump would have been somebody he would have looked at and said, 'Ah, right. I need to have a little bit of that as well.' … If Bateman were around today he'd probably be inspired to run for president. Continue reading our American Psycho oral history on the next page... The End People still ask Harron and Turner if Bateman's murders really happened, or take place in his imagination. Mary Harron: I would never answer that. As Quentin Tarantino says, 'If I tell you that, I take this movie away from you.' I will say there's a moment where it becomes less realistic, and that's the moment when the ATM says Feed Me a Stray Cat. Guinevere Turner: To me and Mary, the book left it up in the air, too, what was real and what was not real. We didn't think that everything was real because some of it is literally surreal. But we just decided, together, that we both really disliked movies where the big reveal is that it was all in someone's head or it was all a dream. We just both find that annoying. We just said we're going to make a really conscious effort to have it be real, and then at some point… he's sort of perceiving things differently, but they're really happening. Like he shoots at a cop car, and it just bursts into flames, and she just directed him to look at the gun like, Hmmm, how did that happen? But we did want it to be, at the end, that you really did think that he did these things. '? American Suck-o' Harron said a friend overheard someone on the ski slopes in Park City, during Sundance, proclaim: 'American Psycho? American Suck-o!' After the premiere at the festival, and a fight with the ratings board over the film's three-way scene, American Psycho made its way into theaters on April 14, 2000. Mary Harron: The tone just completely confused people. When you do something that mixes genres, in this case you're mixing social satire and horror… people don't know how to take it at first. I think it took years for people to think it's okay to find these scenes funny. Christian Bale: I was totally oblivious to any reaction to the film. I didn't notice. I was happy. Mary Harron: The New York Times review had a huge impact on the reception, I think. And Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman's review, that was a big thing. There were certain key reviews that were very favorable and that really helped. Times critic Stephen Holden wrote in his review of American Psycho:'In adapting Bret Easton Ellis's turgid, gory 1991 novel to the screen, the director Mary Harron has boiled a bloated stew of brand names and butchery into a lean and mean horror comedy classic.' He and added that the film 'salvages a novel widely loathed for its putative misogyny and gruesome torture scenes by removing its excess fat in a kind of cinematic liposuction.' Bret Easton Ellis: I think that could be the flourishing of woke-ness in the culture—me being the dark prince of literature, and I write this book that upsets so many people, I need to be put in my place. And what better narrative is there than that two women did it? That's very appealing. …When I first saw the movie, and whenever I see parts of it now, I like it. It's about half an experience for me, because I wrote the novel. And it's not the full American Psycho. It is kind of the greatest hits. … It's in some ways a complicated movie for me. But overall I like it. Willem Dafoe: Years before branding and recognition by your average person about how things were being sold and how society was becoming so obsessed with surface reality and consumerism… here was this strange movie about this psychopath businessman that really touched upon that. And also the ugly aspects of capitalism. So it had real politics to it, in a very present way, but not in a didactic way. … It was a movie that was weirdly entertaining and disturbing at the same time. I think the movie is a scathing critique of a certain kind of lifestyle, a certain kind of society, a certain kind of point of view, and that includes attitudes towards women. Sometimes in depicting those lives you have to show things that are ugly. It's not enough just to say, oh, this is a forbidden image, we can't show it… Sometimes we have to show negative behavior to see other possibilities. Christian Bale: Everyone had told me it was career suicide, which really made me want to do it. And I guess I was a little bit disappointed that it didn't end up being career suicide. I kind of hoped that maybe that was it, and I'd have to find something else to go do… I'm perverse. They told me I shouldn't, so of course—that's human, isn't it?—you want to even more. Harron and Turner have made two more films together: The Notorious Bettie Page, released in 2005, and Charlie Says, released in 2018. Guinevere Turner: What happened recently is our film Charlie Says premiered at the Venice Film Festival, a year ago, and our out-of-the-gate, next-day reviews were not particularly good. And Mary and I were in Venice sort of pouting in the lobby of the hotel and Mary's husband was there, and he's like, 'Hey you guys—Google, Google, Google—I'm gonna read you a review of American Psycho when it first came out.' And he read one of them and it was so similar that we were like, 'Oh! We're just ahead of our time. We have to get used to being misunderstood.' This story was originally published in January, 20 years after the Sundance debut of American Psycho. It was updated on April 14, 2020. Related Headlines 20 Behind the Scenes Stories of Airplane, Maybe the Funniest Movie Ever Made 12 Actors Who Held Their Breath Underwater for an Extraordinarily Long Time Dr. No: 12 Behind the Scenes Photos From the First 007 Film
Buzz Feed
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
The Director Of 'American Psycho' Just Read 'Wall Street Bros' To Filth As She Pointed Out How Misguided Their Hero-Worship Of Patrick Bateman Is
Mary Harron, the director of the 2000 movie American Psycho, has called out the widespread misconception that 'Wall Street bros' have about the film. For reference, the movie is based on Bret Easton Ellis's highly controversial 1991 book of the same name, and stars Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, a wealthy and successful New York City investment banker who is secretly obsessed with rape and murder. His story is an obviously satirical take on both masculinity and wealth, yet some concerning corners of society view Bateman as some kind of hero. After all, he's rich, he's handsome, and he's well-dressed. He speaks articulately and seems well-educated, and is totally devoted to a strict workout and skincare routine — all in a bid to out-alpha the other men in his circle. In 2022, GQ reflected on the new wave of men who idolize Patrick Bateman in an article with the headline: ' Sigma grindset: TikTok's toxic worshipping of Patrick Bateman is another sign young men are lost,' and now, in honor of the film's 25th anniversary, Harron has had her say on this misguided perception of its central character. Speaking to Letterboxd Journal, Harron admitted that she and her co-writer, Guinevere Turner, never would have expected viewers to consume such blatant satire so earnestly. Speaking about the way some men view Bateman as a role model, she said: 'I'm always so mystified by it. I don't think that Guinevere and I ever expected it to be embraced by Wall Street bros, at all. That was not our intention. So, did we fail?' 'I'm not sure why [it happened], because Christian's very clearly making fun of them…,' Harron added. 'But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. People read The Catcher in the Rye and decide to shoot the president.' The filmmaker went on to acknowledge that some of Bateman's popularity stems from memes and social media, noting: 'There's [Bateman] being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power. But at the same time, he's played as somebody dorky and ridiculous. When he's in a nightclub and he's trying to speak to somebody about hip hop — it's so embarrassing when he's trying to be cool.' And Harron also pointed out that the original book is 'a gay man's satire on masculinity,' and theorized that Ellis's sexuality meant that he was able to observe aspects of alpha male culture that those who are in it are unaware of. She said: '[Ellis] being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males, which is also true in sports, and it's true in Wall Street, and all these things where men are prizing their extreme competition and their 'elevating their prowess' kind of thing. There's something very, very gay about the way they're fetishizing looks and the gym.' Ultimately, Harron concluded, American Psycho is 'about a predatory society,' and while there is 'a lot of horrific violence in the book,' it's actually 'a clear critique.' 'Not just of masculine behavior,' she added. 'Of the world of exploitation and consumption and greed and reduction of people.'
The Independent
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
American Psycho director hits out at misguided idolisation of Patrick Bateman
Mary Harron, the director of American Pyscho, has said she remains 'mystified' by the enduring idolisation of the film's psychopathic serial killer Patrick Bateman. The director, reflecting on the film in celebration of its 25th anniversary, questioned the love for Bateman, particularly among the very demographic the film set out to skewer and ridicule. Speaking to Letterboxd Journal, Harron addressed the cultural afterlife of the 2000 cult classic — especially its adoption by a new generation of men on platforms like TikTok, where Bateman is often idolised in the same breath as figures like Andrew Tate. 'There's [Bateman] being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power,' Harron acknowledged. 'But at the same time, he's played as somebody dorky and ridiculous … It's so embarrassing when he's trying to be cool.' For Harron, Bateman was always a satire of toxic masculinity — not a champion of it. 'I'm always so mystified by it,' she said of the character's rebranding as a 'sigma male' icon. 'I don't think that [co-writer Guinevere Turner] and I ever expected it to be embraced by Wall Street bros, at all. That was not our intention. So, did we fail? I'm not sure why [it happened], because Christian's very clearly making fun of them.' American Psycho, adapted from Bret Easton Ellis 's 1991 novel, follows Bateman, a wealthy New York investment banker who doubles as a serial killer. Christian Bale 's portrayal, chilling and absurd, was intended to lampoon hyper-masculinity, materialism and the grotesque competitiveness of the corporate elite. That many young men now quote Bateman alongside figures like Tate — the 'influencer' currently facing rape and human trafficking charges – speaks to what GQ once called 'TikTok's toxic worshipping of Patrick Bateman', and to what Harron sees as a dangerous cultural disconnect. 'People read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. People read The Catcher in the Rye and decide to shoot the president,' she noted, pointing to how audiences can misinterpret. Part of that misreading, Harron believes, is down to a missing piece of the puzzle: 'I always saw American Psycho as a gay man's satire on masculinity,' she said, referring to Ellis's original novel. '[Ellis] being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males … in Wall Street, in sports, in all these spaces where men are prizing their extreme competition. There's something very, very gay about the way they're fetishising looks and the gym.' Harron also reflected on how the film's themes feel even more urgent now. ' American Psycho is about a predatory society,' she said. 'And that society is actually much worse today. The rich are much richer, the poor are poorer. I would never have imagined that there would be a celebration of racism and white supremacy, which is basically what we have in the White House. I would never have imagined that we would live through that.' Meanwhile, a new film adaptation of American Psycho is reportedly in the works, helmed by Challengers director Luca Guadagnino, with a script from Scott Z Burns. Austin Butler has been rumoured to take on the role of Bateman, although no official casting has been confirmed.
