One of the clichéd things we talk about all the time in cinema is people who get the theme of movies wrong. There’s a frat guy with the poster of Fight Club, oblivious to toxic masculinity, or the people who use Starship Troopers as a pro-war rallying cry, or even how Jurassic Park is about how we shouldn’t have Jurassic Parks.

Well, directly in line with all of that are people who watch American Psycho and want to be Patrick Bateman, the character who murders a bunch of people.

Hey, we love his business card and we love to debate the ending of American Psycho, but that’s pretty wild.

– YouTube

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Recently, Letterboxd Journal caught up with American Psycho director Mary Harron to talk about the movie’s 25th anniversary.

Of the movie, Harron said, “I’m always so mystified by it. 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… 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.”

Of course, Harron understands the ease with which TikTok and Instagram personalities have been attracted to Bateman. She says, “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.”

But when it comes to Bateman himself, she thinks a lot of these bros are missing a pretty huge element that they may not like (if they’re homophobic).

In her opinion, she always saw American Psycho as “a gay man’s satire on masculinity.” That’s partially because it was written by Bret Easton Ellis.

‘American Psycho’Credit: Lionsgate

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,” the director continued, “There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishizing looks and the gym.”

What I have always admired about Mary Harron is her brutal honesty. That’s earned from not only being a great director, but also making a movie that feels so prescient now.

“It was about a predatory society, and now the society is actually, 25 years later, much worse. The rich are much richer, the poor are poorer,” Harron said. “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.”

The world is pretty insane right now, and I think it’s fun to have movies that keep us grounded and help us get a grip back on reality. So, to anyone out there unironically channeling their inner Bateman – maybe take another look.

American Psycho isn’t telling you how to succeed; it’s showing you a horrifying vision of what happens when humanity gets lost in the pursuit of having the best business card.

Let me know what you think in the comments.