American Psycho

[Tycho]

Oh man am I loving this movie! Others have recommended it to me as elements in its extremism are similar to my own writing. Ummm. Not really - except that I'll take things as far as they can possibly go, like this movie does (I bought the book by Brent Easton Ellis, but still need to read it).

I perpetuate a similar misogynistic view of women as well, though one of my leading psychos in my story is a lady. Well I'd describe her as a total... word the autocensor bleeps out.

In this (Batman) Christian Bale plays the lead. A metrosexual and killer in the extreme (love how they did the axe murder and how he starts talking about 80's music, haha) and Willem DaFoe (Green Goblin, "Variable to Knife: come in") plays the detective investigating him.

I haven't finished watching the feature. I'm at the part after my hero Patrick Bateman has killed one of his law partners and mutilated several escort girls / prostitutes (oh the call girl scene was brilliant and so realistic! It was too funny actually.) Then the lawyers are sitting around at one of their posh cocktail places talking about how unintelligent and uninteresting women are - except for the obvious reason men like them.

Bateman is a heroic character in the tradition of Tom Leykus! I had to pause the movie to post how much I admire this piece!

On top of it, every self-righteous idiot will post about how moral they are - they respect other people and yada-yada-yada.

I love it. Bateman has it straight: women do what you want when you put money in their hands and their dignity is for sale. Worthless people are worthless, and while others are crying foul about abortions, and proclaiming their own morality, why limit the murdered to babies? Kill whomever won't be missed! Get the axe! The knives! KILL!

I should have watched this movie ages ago. Not sure how old it is, but I think it must have been fairly recent based on Bale's age being close to what it was in Batman Begins.

But fortunately, immorality still covers much unexplored territory and my own work is original and very different from this - if just as insulting, denigrating, debasing, and immoral.

Dang! Wouldn't homicide be a fun hobby if you could still get away with it?!

Anyway, I'm just giddy with bloodlust watching this and I hope Bateman gets away with this and takes down more targets - like some of the snobs in his office, his fiance, (I think he recognizes the futility of marriage), and perhaps those people that argued with him at the dry cleaners. A beautiful way to end the story would be to have him kill the cop who's investigating him (DaFoe) and get away with everything in the end. It begs the question "Can the killer ever kill enough that a bloodlust gets satisfied?"

I hope we find out. It would be ashame if Bateman, as "the good guy," gets taken down.

I totally recommend this movie - though I think the killings could have been filmed even more graphically. I want a full body dismemberment scene in my piece to show Cheerios and bits of undigested salad emptying out of a human victim's splayed open stomach similarly to the way they show sharks being gutted in fishing documentaries. The graphic horror of it needs to be taken to the uttermost shocking extreme. So far, in this film, that hasn't happened yet. But surely I'm going to get to more blood, so I can only hope!

[Tycho]

OK, so Patrick Bateman did NOT kill all those people? He imagined it? What a disappointment.

The dropping the chainsaw on the hooker in the stairway was an especially great kill shot! (as was blowing up the police cars).

So what was real and what wasn't? There should be a sequel where he actually acts out on his killer impulses.

And Willem DaFoe never came back into the story. I was wating for Bateman to kill the detective, too.

I still loved the movie. I can fantasize about my own sick-and-twisted ending I suppose. Grumble...grumble.

But it's definitely a movie worth seeing. I'll buy a copy of this one for handy repeat viewings.

I love his line "I'm suffering. And I want to make everyone else suffer worse than me!"

It was as inspiring as Erick Harris and Dylan Kliebold or Cho Seung-Hui! (as malpracticed in their art as they were).

Ah well. American Psycho: I give it two chainsaws up!

[JetsAndHeels]

It was as inspiring as Erick Harris and Dylan Kliebold or Cho Seung-Hui! (as malpracticed in their art as they were).

Does anyone else find this a bit disturbing, even for Tycho's mind?

Dude, I am glad you liked the film but what those people did was not inspiring, it was real murder.

[Tycho]

Does anyone else find this a bit disturbing, even for Tycho's mind?

Dude, I am glad you liked the film but what those people did was not inspiring, it was real murder.

Oh I realize that - and where their mistakes lay.

In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman comes up with: "I'm suffering. And I want to make everyone else suffer worse than me!"

I think the Columbine and VT killers operated on this principle. That was a tragic mistake - for their goals as well as the victims. Now American Psycho focuses on the killer, so that is what I'm doing with the comparison.

First, if these individuals could not fit in, murdering a bunch of people who were uninvolved doesn't solve that.

Harris and Kliebold didn't even kill victims who had specifically done them wrong.

Cho just seemed crazy. I don't know if further connections were drawn between him and the Emily girl that was his first victim, but he basically shot people he didn't even know who'd never done him wrong. Cho was insane. That was clear.

Harris and Kliebold were tactically inefficient - amongst all the other things we could say that disapproves of their Columbine mess.

Second, you need to change things within yourself to fit in, get along, whatever. If any of these school shooters could have gotten away with it and escaped, they wouldn't have made any more friends at the memorial services than they had before (that is if NO ONE knew they'd done it). Plus, whatever bullies caused them difficulties - they still didn't eliminate them. In Cho's case, he was shooting at the wrong school, many years too late - as it sounded like his problems were more acute in high school. Cho isn't even really worthwhile discussing, because he was crazy.


Now Bateman? He was crazy, but it turns out that he didn't even have a self-identity to really get to know, nor anything he really liked about himself. His narcissism was like his hobby, but instead of sharing it with others, he competed with them - like with the apartment and the business cards. I'm still confused and wondering if Bateman actually killed anyone. It seems that "Paul" was still alive at the end of the movie, and just actually off in England for real. It was confusing. I'll have to watch it again. Does anyone know?

Actually, the only commonality Bateman has with the school shooters is that they all thought that killing a bunch of people would make themselves feel better, and it didn't work nor solve anything.

[jjreason]

Dang! Wouldn't homicide be a fun hobby if you could still get away with it?!

Hoo boy.

Tycho, get some help. I'm not kidding.

[Tycho]

Hoo boy.

Tycho, get some help. I'm not kidding.

Why? I infer from your concern that you wonder if I am going to personally kill people. I honestly have better things to do than trade innocent people's lives for mine, or my freedom. (I don't really think I could get away with murder personally, nor do I have anyone I'd want to kill, and finally, random killing does nothing for the killer - as you might gather I've concluded if you've read everything I posted.) Now one can get caught up in the fun involved with the blood-lust and the dark humor with which this movie portrays it (almost Jim Carrey-like in its execution - if you pardon the pun).

On the other hand, if your concern is with my anger or disatisfaction with my present health deterioration - you'd be surprised (or not) but there are no counselors really trained to deal with kidney disease and aneurysm survival - that sort of thing. Oh they're ready if your teen won't do his homework or your wife wants to divorce you. Have a drug problem? Hate your job? Do you want to medicate your depression? These pseudo-scientific con-men with degrees that claim they understand the human brain, behavior and emotions can rack up their healthy paychecks while they are doing crossword puzzles in their notebooks and you're telling them that you're going to blow up the World Trade Center.

Both my parents died while I was in my 20's. I had an old high school girlfriend murdered. A best friend committed suicide. And I'm on Death Row (give or take an organ transplant and a possible time and date delay with the grim reaper).

I will never create a traditional family or I take the chance of dying on my own children (let alone depreciating my inheritence I can selfishly use for myself right now - and not the next gold-digger that goes after it), and even if I survive through surgery after surgery to watch my children grow, I risk them having a 50-50 chance with issues such as renal failure and worse - a brain aneurysm like I had that might (or should have) serverely handicapped most people.

No. I don't need to lose my anger. It keeps me going. I pour it into my writing. I couldn't do that if they took it all away from me because I lost my balance and unleashed myself like the Trench Coat Mafia reborn. I'm smarter than that - borderline genius if you ask me (and I'm an expert on my favorite subject: myself)

So I wonder if anyone will surprise me with what they are thinking? Or will I derive censorship again for posting outside of "the box?"

[jjreason]

It's just not healthy to be thinking along the lines you posted about above, in my opinion. But I'm no expert in anything.

I wouldn't want to pay a psychiatrist either - I'm with you on that subject anyhow - but if you're hurting, or your personal needs aren't being fulfilled.... it can't hurt to talk to someone you trust about it, openly and honestly.

Frankly, I feel your "out there" posts are attention seekers, and that you're posting for shock value.... but again - I'm no expert, especially in your favorite subject.

[Tycho]

Frankly, I feel your "out there" posts are attention seekers, and that you're posting for shock value.... but again - I'm no expert, especially in your favorite subject.

I love the attention. Today I was home in bed most of the day, a bit naseauous or overtired, it gets hard to tell. I had contact with 2 friends (SW buds) early in the morning to keep score with the toy hunt (didn't need anything so didn't go out myself) and thus I was isolated the rest of the day.

Did you know (ridiculous as it may seem) you can threaten or suggest you enjoy destructive behavior - perhaps even target certain individuals (which might win you being investigated), but you can actually be hauled away and imprisoned for making threats against certain people in high offices? That is a fact even when (indirectly or arguably - directly) they have killed thousands?

It would entertain me to be interrogated by law enforcement for the day, then sent for a psyche eval on their dime (don't want to pay for that myself - like you brought up) but it would be attention. But I have to watch the lines I cross or my idle talk will land me in real trouble. And I won't get Steve in trouble with me - for making SSG a trouble-makers' hangout or whatever. (It's been suggested that I shouldn't use the "T-word" even in a comedic group I once was starting online here to "Defeat the combined forces of Batman and the Justice League." That was a fun thread in the likes like El Chuxter's Louie the Lilac and Egghead appearances.

In any case, as a novelist, I've been extremely focused on generating shock value from my work. American Psycho tried and succeeded to do that very well I think. It was very entertaining and wraps you up with the debaucheries in the same way you revel in "the ultra-violence" in the beginning of Clockwork Orange.

Yes, there always is the individual who can't tell fantasy from reality - such as with suggestions that the Columbine kids were avid fans of the video game Doom or Grand Theft Auto (today there's actually a Columbine Massacre video game, or so I've heard). I don't know where you draw the distinction from knowing you are entertained by this sort of sick stuff, to the point where you're psychotic enough to try it.

I think, after reflection, that in American Psycho, Bateman was so wrapped up in his fantasy, that he THOUGHT he had tried it. He was so bored that he imagined and confessed to brutal murders - of people who were not actually dead. It was a brilliant take on narcissism actually.

When you think about the movie, Bateman had to groom himself perfectly, be in perfect shape, dine with perfect adherence to the latest trends, dress perfectly - the music choices he discussed also involved being wrapped up in the perfect "fad bands." So when he drops an active chainsaw 6 stories for the perfect kill - an impossible shot if you think about it after you choose to be disgusted (or not) of the idea of killing someone with a chainsaw - his perfect murders are of course imagined with the same narcissism.

Back to the comparison with the real killers, these school shooters, they were all about narcissism. In fact, the movie reveals that serial killers or mass-attack murderers (like school shooters) are narcissists. Someone else that kills for financial, sexual, or political gain is not at all the same. Sure they make a leap of logic (or lack thereof) to justify actions most deplore. But they don't revel in it the same way.

I guess we arrive at there being (at least) 2 kinds of killers - those with ends justifying the means, and those for which the killing is the ends to which they seek.

It's amazing how discussing this sort of thing in the deepest foul-smelling pit of immorality leads to some brilliant moments of enlightenment!