THE WEAPONS
Bateman’s brutality shocked America. It also took Jared Leto by surprise. His look of astonishment as Bateman swings an axe at his character, Wall Street rival Paul Allen, was so convincing because Harron never told him it was coming.
“We didn’t tell Jared we were shooting the rehearsal of the murder,” the director recalls, hence Leto’s stunned look as Bateman claims his latest victim. The blood splatter as his axe drove into Allen’s torso was meant to cover Bale’s whole face, but in one of her takes, only covered half. Harron ran with it, delighted to have “a great visual metaphor” for the character’s double life, pristine on one side, bloody on the other.
Paul Allen wasn’t the only person to fall foul of Bateman’s bloodlust. “You learn a lot about someone when you do a sex scene with them in which they kill you,” laughs Turner, who on top of co-writing the film, played one of Bateman’s victims. “He goes under the covers, bites me and there’s blood everywhere. I had a blood packet taped to my thigh, which [Christian] had to bite. The shot was supposed to be blood seeping through the sheets, but we kept getting blood everywhere except the sheets! We were laughing and laughing at what a ridiculous scenario it was.”
It’s in this scene that questions begin to surface about how much of American Psycho is real, and how much is in his head. The other partner in their murderous ménage à trois tries to escape and Bateman pulls a chainsaw out of nowhere, revving it loudly. No other residents in the block step out to see what the commotion is about. As a result, fans have long theorised over whether the violence is all a fantasy.
“The idea is that some of it’s in his head. But the idea that it’s all in his head takes away from the darkness underpinning it,” says Harron. “No-one catches Patrick because no-one cares enough about his victims. It’s not in anyone’s financial interest to find out what he did.” There is some kind of retribution or punishment: “Being Patrick Bateman is his own kind of hell,” says Harron. “But no-one will stop it. There’s a lot of impunity for a certain type of white, wealthy man in America.”