American Psycho: The Complete History of Patrick Bateman | Horror History

Patrick Bateman was born in October 1961, which we can calculate because he turns 27 in October 1988. In March 1966, when Patrick was four years old, his younger brother Sean was born. The two brothers would not get along and were opposites in many ways. The Bateman family may have lived somewhere in the south, if we're going to believe what Sean tells his college classmates. Then again, he often lies to them and tells them he's poor. Plus, neither brother has a Southern accent. They do, however, have a family home in Newport, which is in Rhode Island, their father's long term hotel suite in New York City, and their grandfather's home in Connecticut, all of which are in the northeast United States. Patrick was studious and took after his father, eventually ending up at a job with connections to his dad's circles. Sean, on the other hand, was a terrible student and was more interested in a rock and roll type of lifestyle. – [Sean Bateman] Rock and roll. Although they did not get along, the two participated in upscale activities together. like riding horses and playing tennis. What the two Bateman brothers do have in common is a natural charm with women, despite both being incredibly sleazy in their dating lives. In Sean's case, he's just an extremely selfish, conceited idiot. Patrick, on the other hand, has a better reputation, but in reality, he is a complete raging psychopath. There are many elements that make up Patrick Bateman's psychopathy. So many, in fact, that you could not fit them all on one tape. So I've collected each of them and put them together to paint the true picture of his character. If you want to hear about Patrick's life before and after American Psycho, the answer to important questions like were his killings real or imagined? And which parts of Patrick Bateman were inspired from real life? Then stick around to the end of this video. ♪ Metal Music ♪ Welcome to Horror History, the show where I fully analyze the minds and timelines of characters and villains in the horror genre. My name is Marcus Halberstam, and today I'll be covering the entire story of Patrick Bateman. Patrick is most known from American Psycho, the modern classic by Brett Easton Ellis, which was brought to the screen in 2000 by director Mary Harrington. However, his first appearance predates that in Ellis's 1987 novel, The Rules of Attraction. As usual, the books are considered canon, so I'll be analyzing Bateman's story from the page. Patrick is certainly one of the, if not the craziest, characters I've ever covered on Horror History. His psychosis becomes so bad that it can be impossible to determine what's real and what's hallucinatory when the story is being told From his point of view. One of the most asked questions about American Psycho is, Did Patrick Bateman kill anyone? Not even the author himself knows. – [Brett Easton Ellis] But it's the question that I am constantly asked at every reading I give – [Brett Easton Ellis] and there is no answer to it, because I don't have an answer to it. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I didn't have an answer when I was writing it. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I didn't know. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I mean, I thought it could go either way. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I kept flip flopping while I was writing the book, and that became to me, – [Brett Easton Ellis] something very interesting. However, after reading the book a couple of times and researching some other things the author has said publicly, I think I've come up with a pretty satisfying answer. That being said, it's still impossible to determine what is and isn't taking place in Bateman's imagination at times. So as a general rule, just to make this video possible, I'll try to take Bateman's word unless he gives us a reason to doubt him, which you'll find is quite often. Part of my analysis. In a typical episode of Horror History is figuring out the timeline of events. Exactly when did everything take place? While we have a pretty good idea for most of the story, Patrick seems to lose track of time towards the end. So at a certain point, I'll have to use other means to determine the date rather than taking his word for it. But in order to get into the mysteries of his character, I'm going to hit rewind and go back to the formation of Patrick Bateman's insanity during his early teenage years. (Impact) ♪ Christmas Music ♪ Twas the night before Christmas, 1975, when a young Patrick Bateman found trouble in the night, he got a bit too frisky and wanted to play, and it came at the expense of one of the maids. Patrick attended a school called Exeter, where he first met Christopher Armstrong, who would eventually work at his company in their adulthood. After this, he attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eventually transferring into their business school. This seems to be about the time that his homicidal thoughts and possibly actions took root. Because nobody seems to know that he's a psychopath, it makes sense that this tendency would develop once he's out on his own, where he would presumably have some more privacy. The earliest mentioned kill he makes came during his junior year at Harvard, after a freshman girl told him that life is full of endless possibilities, and he was so exasperated that he decapitated her, hung her head on a tree, and chucked her body into the Charles River. Whether his kills are real or imaginary doesn't matter when discussing the motivation behind them. Brett Easton Ellis has written seven novels, the first of which was called Less Than Zero, which is about the idea of passivity. – [Brett Easton Ellis] There's the passive man in the culture. – [Brett Easton Ellis] Is he really the sane one because of the insane chaos that surrounds him, or – [Brett Easton Ellis] is he just as bad as the insane chaos around him because he doesn't act? Taken at face value, American Psycho seems to be the exact opposite. An insane, chaotic psychopath living in the dull banality of corporate Wall Street life. Ellis states that he initially wrote the novel based on feelings of loneliness and alienation that he was having at the time. He considers most of his work to be fiction inspired by aspects of his actual life, and he interestingly cites American Psycho as his most autobiographical novel. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I think it really became a book about my problems with being a young man – [Brett Easton Ellis] with a lot of money in Manhattan. You can kind of imagine Ellis sitting at a bar and some dumb girl telling him life is full of endless possibilities, and he's just so cynical that he wants to chop her head off. But obviously he can't do that. So instead he goes home and has Patrick Bateman do it instead. Venting through his art, Bateman's outbursts in the story are often triggered by something that upsets him like this. He enjoys reading about serial killers like Ted Bundy, Ed Gein and Charlie Manson, and takes inspiration from each of them before debatably surpassing them all. It was also at Harvard where Bateman started dating a girl named Bethany. He would write long, dark poems for her, and it's possible, but not confirmed, that she was on the receiving end of some of his rage. He describes a lunch where she dumped him with her arm in a sling and a faint bruise above her cheek. Bethany leaves a lasting impression on him, and he treats her differently than all other women. There seems to be a deep yearning for approval from her, as opposed to the other girls he dates who he disrespects and couldn't care less about. It's clear that most of his targets are female, but we're never explicitly told where Patrick's mindset about women came from. But there is a line in The Rules of Attraction where Sean notes that their father is usually quite adept at picking up women, despite most likely being married. If he's willing to cheat on his wife quite often in front of their kids, it's not a stretch to assume that he's not the best role model when it comes to relationships. Both Patrick and Sean are serial cheaters in their own dating lives. There's no evidence to suggest that Mr. Bateman also inspired Patrick to take part in physically abusive behavior, but there's also no evidence to suggest that he didn't. When talking about some of the elements of American Psycho that were drawn from his own life, Brett Easton Ellis brings up his own father. – [Brett Easton Ellis] American Psycho is in many ways an autobiographical book. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I really have to look back and look at my father in a lot of ways. – [Brett Easton Ellis] His attitude towards women, which did border on the misogynistic, influenced – [Brett Easton Ellis] and informed this book. – [Brett Easton Ellis] And I think in a lot of ways, when I was writing about Patrick Bateman, it – [Brett Easton Ellis] was really a lot of it was about my dad. If Patrick did inherit some undesirable traits from his father, he may have also inherited unwanted traits from his mom. She seems to have some kind of severe mental illness as well, though we never get any good details on it other than being a psycho or a psychopath, as the title suggests, there are plenty of other disorders that seem to fit his behavior, like antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, a borderline personality disorder, and probably others. I'm not going to go through them all. It's more efficient if I just talk about the symptoms. In adulthood, Patrick works at the investment banking firm in New York City and lives in a luxury apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He probably got this job due to his upper class education and his father's influence in the industry. However, he clearly didn't want to work too closely with his dad, otherwise, he might have just worked for him directly. Patrick is also very particular about his appearance and has a detailed grooming routine in addition to a rigorous workout schedule. At some point, he had a personal trainer, but when the trainer started to come on to him, he fired him and started developing his own exercise program. The word homophobic gets used incorrectly a lot these days in place of the word heterosexist, but I am making no mistake when I say Patrick is homophobic. The exercise program is part of an obsession he has with his appearance. It's likely that this obsession is part of his desire to fit in, which is also why he's obsessed with popular culture. He rents so many movies that he becomes a Gold Circle member at the video store, allowing him to theoretically rent as many videos as he wants on a given night, provided he doesn't have any already overdue. The need to fit in with his peers also eventually results in him getting a girlfriend, a blonde named Evelyn Richards, who also comes from a wealthy family. Evelyn is an executive at a financial services company, American Express, and they most likely met through their group of mutual friends. In some ways, Evelyn is the perfect match for him because they're both extremely shallow and only in the relationship for superficial reasons. Evelyn for wealth and a fancy wedding, and Patrick for a trophy girl that he can walk all over with no repercussions. In practice, they still manage to torture each other, but they stay together for social reasons. It's practical because they both run in the same circles. We don't know exactly when they got together. In 1986 or 1987, Patrick attends the Kentucky Derby with a bimbo named Alison Poole. That doesn't necessarily mean he was cheating on Evelyn at the time, but it certainly wouldn't be above him if he was cheating on her with Alison. It wouldn't be the last time that he cheated on her at a Kentucky Derby. In January 1987, Patrick and Sean's mother is committed to a mental institution called Sandstone, and Patrick's only reaction is it was about time. Two months later, around the time of Sean's 21st birthday, he discovers that his father is dying. Mr. Bateman's face turns yellow, and he becomes extremely thin. During this time, Patrick starts to take over some responsibilities as the family patriarch. For example, he puts $7,000 in Sean's bank account, so he's taken care of at college. Do not mistake this for him caring about his brother. He's only doing this so he can hold it above his head later, which he does. Patrick turns 26 years old in October of 87 and goes to the Bahamas with Evelyn, which is a really weird time to go. I would never go somewhere that sunny during spooky season. And before you say anything, yes, LA is an exception because there are, like, 30 haunts to experience. By early November, Patrick's father is on his deathbed, so he makes arrangements for Sean to come in and visit one last time. But when Sean is late, he thinks that he must be off doing drugs and holds him in disdain for his lack of responsibility. As we will find out, Patrick has a problem with drugs of his own, and he often holds others to a higher standard than himself. As he waits in the hospital lobby, he makes multiple attempts to call Evelyn, but she refuses to come to the hospital. At one point, she claims to be asleep, but he hears faint music in the background, the earliest of his suspicions that she isn't faithful to him either. It's pretty messed up to cheat on someone who is about to be mourning the loss of a parent, but this is another example of hypocrisy, because Bateman is seemingly never faithful to her. Another hypocritical moment can be seen when Sean arrives at the hospital and Patrick grills him on his lack of direction in life, telling him he should try to become the son that his father wanted. Despite this, Patrick is planning to go against his father's wishes after his death by firing the aides that he doesn't like. He also seems to hint that he'll be cutting off funding for Sean's college degeneracy. He would be pleased to know that you're taking, let's call it a leave of absence from that place, he explains. This causes Sean to storm out, claiming he'll go to Utah or Europe before taking the limo back to his dad's place. Throughout the hospital scene, Patrick is never shown to spend any time with his father. For him, it's all about making arrangements and the business of running the family. There are a couple outbreaks on his timeline over the next few months. That Christmas, he went to Aspen, Colorado, for some skiing and violated a waitress with a can of hairspray. In the spring, he videotapes the torture and demise of two escort girls. And that takes us up to the beginning of American Psycho. The events of the novel began on April 1 988, April Fool's Day, which is a fitting day to start a story where we have no idea what's real and what's not half the time. Bateman is spending the day with his coworker Timothy Price by having lunch, playing squash, and getting drinks at Harry's, where Price continually rants about the Fisher account that Paul Owen is handling. Something about this day spent with Price seems to leave a big impression on Bateman, and from this point on, he almost seems to model himself after Price. For one, he becomes obsessed with the Fisher account. During a cab ride, Price complains about not making enough money at Pierce and Pierce, as well as all the issues plaguing their city, primarily the beggars for these wealthy Wall Street investment bankers. The world revolves around social status, which is basically dictated by money. The homeless have no money, so they're at the bottom of the totem pole. Bateman and Price look down on them as a result. I mean, the man's last name is Price. It's almost too on the nose. And speaking of name etymology, Patrick's girlfriend is named Evelyn Richards, and she's rich. Patrick himself, the star of American Psycho, has the last name Bateman, which sounds very similar to Bates, as in in Norman Bates, the main bad from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. There's even a little reference in the book when one of Bateman's colleagues goes to Phoenix. Phoenix? Janet Lee was from Phoenix. I stall, then continue. She got stabbed in the shower. Disappointing scene. I pause. Blood looked fake. But as Bateman and Price are riding in the cab, there's a newspaper story about two people who disappeared on a yacht party hosted by a New York socialite where blood residue and smash champagne glasses are found. Foul play is suspected, but it's not clear if Bateman is responsible. In truth, I'd like to talk about all of his attacks in this video, but many of them are mentioned in passing, as if they are a minor detail, leading me to feel like he doesn't even mention most of them to the reader. Upon getting out of the taxi, they tease a beggar by mockingly offering the cab up to him and asking if he takes American Express credit cards. Patrick and his associates constantly bait the homeless like this every time they see one. At the very least, it's a cruel prank, and at the worst, it's a sign of the mercilessness they have towards those they see as lower than them. In Patrick's case, this translates to a brutal lack of empathy for victims of all types. Price can be heard grumbling about how he forgot to turn the tapes he rented last night to Video Haven. And if you've seen anything related to American Psycho, you know that returning videotapes becomes a major aspect of Patrick's personality. Either he's taking after Price, or the two are being portrayed as interchangeable, once again highlighting the dull banality of the upper class. They're headed to Evelyn's house for dinner, where we see what I think is one of the most psychopathic traits Bateman has. He encyclopedically identifies what type of clothing every single character wears and what brand each piece of clothing is from each time we see them for the entire novel. This is perhaps the earliest example of Bateman's fervent obsession with material things. If I had to describe Patrick Bateman in just a few words, it would be a man driven to psychopathy in his pursuit of materialism. At the end of the day, he's really just an exaggerated product of his time. Here on this channel, we've already talked about many horror properties in the 1980s that are driven by the rabid consumer culture. Halloween Three is about a sinister salesman who uses advertising and product frenzy to brainwash and kill children. Stranger Things Three, which has not yet released a videotape like the first Two Seasons, uses a shopping mall as a cover for a secret terrorist base. The original Child's Play even presents subtextual themes of the harmful nature of product and toy mania during the holiday season. American Psycho takes a slightly different approach by making the consumer the villain rather than the victim. In short, the main reason for the boost in product sales, commercials and the commodification of material goods in the 1980s was the booming economy and in the United States, reduced taxes and government regulations. Encyclopedia.com has a page on 1980s commerce that offers the perfect explanation for Patrick Bateman's behavior. For the average American, the booming economy of the 1980s meant a rise in disposable income the money that people have to spend on items that they do not need but want. Many Americans engage in conspicuous consumption, purchasing luxury goods to show others that they're doing well. In American Psycho, we see Patrick Bateman become so obsessed with conspicuous consumption that it basically dictates every decision he ever makes In the novel, we see that he is essentially brainwashed to notice how decadent the clothing others are wearing is above anything else. I do not exaggerate when I say probably 25% of the book is just Bateman describing clothing and other luxury items. This is his primary barometer in judging people. They arrive at Evelyn's and they're greeted by her friend Courtney, who flirts with Patrick. The plan is to have a sushi night in which annoys the men because they won't be able to show off their wealth by dining out in a fancy restaurant. Eating in will not increase their social status and won't give Patrick the rush of dopamine he gets from flashing his Platinum American Express card at a busy restaurant. They're also joined by two of Evelyn's artist friends who are basically metal heads, and Bateman looks down on them, thinking the male friend would probably be unable to secure a table at Camols, which I'm assuming is a restaurant or club in New York. Getting reservations and getting into high profile events provides Patrick with a similar rush of dopamine. Due to my career as a content creator, the feeling associated with getting into VIP events is one of the few aspects of the character that I can relate to, the difference being that I don't have the social battery to go out all the time. However, I know that these people exist because I do see them. Whenever I go to creator events, there are certain people who seem to be at everyone. You know who you are. During the dinner at Evelyn's, Patrick goes on a manifesto speech about the problems currently facing their society. – [Patrick Bateman] We have to end apartheid, for one, and slow down the nuclear arms race, stop – [Patrick Bateman] terrorism and world hunger. However, many of the concerns he lists are completely hypocritical, and his actions actively say otherwise. He is extremely classist, so he doesn't care about apartheid. He even later admits that he has a pro apartheid stance. He claims we need to care for the elderly, yet his mother suffers in some kind of elderly care facility or mental hospital, and he rarely visits her. Despite claiming we need to stop crime and drugs on our streets, he commits crimes and buys illegal drugs as a hobby. He advocates for training and jobs for the unemployed and sheltering the homeless, then spends the entire book torturing the homeless for not having a job. He raves about freedom of choice in terms of abortion, but later forces a woman he's seeing to get an abortion. He says we have to curb graphic sex and violence on TV, in movies, and in popular music, and most ironically, – [Patrick Bateman] We have to promote general social concern... and less materialism. Everything he's saying just consists of talking points that he's probably heard or read somewhere, which he doesn't believe in whatsoever, but he wants to use to gain favor with his colleagues. His never ending quest to increase his social status extends beyond just flashing his money. His entire social life revolves around fitting in – [Patrick Bateman] because I want to fit in. Courtney and the two artist types leave, so Evelyn, Price and Bateman continue to chat over some drinks, where Bateman notices his vodka cranberry looking like a glass of watery blood, the very earliest and most subdued of his violent thoughts and fantasies, which we'll get into more later in his story. Price and Evelyn openly flirt in front of him, leading him to conclude that they're having an affair. He thinks Price is the most interesting man he knows, yet their conversations only revolve around the discussion of superficial things. In the hierarchy of Wall Street investment guys, Price is considered more valuable than him, leading him to believe that Evelyn would prefer Price. Eventually, Price leaves, and after 15 minutes of trying to coerce his girlfriend to go to bed with him, Bateman gives up and goes home to take care of himself. Five weeks after this, on May 7, 1988, he joined Evelyn and her parents in a trip back to the Kentucky Derby, where he cheated on her again and won a lot of money off a horse called Indecent Exposure. We next check in on him later that month as he does his morning stretches and goes through his unbelievably detailed grooming routine, showing the true extent of his obsession with its appearance, and more importantly, the money that goes into upholding his perfect image. Bateman also has a bizarre fixation with the daytime television program The Patty Winter Show. Throughout the story, we see him interact with many pop culture phenomena of the 1980s. Because his entire personality revolves around fitting in, he doesn't form any of his own opinions about pop culture, he just likes whatever is hip, a term that comes up many times throughout the novel. It turns out Bateman is not a bass man. The Patty Winter Show is the fictional equivalent of daytime talk shows that blew up in the 80s, like Sally Geraldo, and most notably The Oprah Winfrey Show. Which was probably the basis for Patty Winters. They both interviewed Donald Trump in the late eighties and share a few other common segments as well. Patrick makes note of many Patty Winters topics in his interior monologue, but they cannot always be taken at face value. This morning's show is about women with multiple personalities, which seems like a believable topic for a daytime talk host. Oprah herself covered it in 1990, but throughout the story, the segments on Patty Winters get stranger and stranger, and many have suggested that this is a reflection of Patrick's own sanity starting to slip. Patrick even admits at one point that he might have been hallucinating while watching it. As I mentioned, Bateman's reliability as a narrator comes into question at some point as his mind delves into strange and unbelievable fantasies. So the topic of each Patty Winter Show may help us differentiate fact from fantasy at times, which I'll get into later. But first, we would find out just how wild a night out on the town can get when money is no object and the drinks are flowing. Early at Harry's (Impact) ♪ Classical Music ♪ Bateman goes with Timothy Price to meet with two other associates, David Van Patten and Craig McDermott. For drinks at Harry's, they quiz him about style tips, and Bateman and Price battle to impress their friends with their knowledge of high end clothing etiquette. Price seems to have the upper hand. At this point. I'd consider Price to be the leader of the group. When another colleague, Preston, joins the conversation, Price makes a joke about blowing his moron friends heads off with a 38 Magnum. While Patrick would eventually not hesitate to say outlandish stuff like this, he is more reserved early on. It's possible that seeing Price get away with making a joke about killing his friends is what gives Bateman the confidence to openly speak out the dark thoughts going on in his brain later on. These comments always get brushed off as a joke or misheard. He definitely takes after Price in many other ways, too. In fact, just about everyone in their community is trying to be like someone richer and more powerful than themselves, which leads to an entire industry of guys in their late 20s all trying to look the same, with no personality of their own. We see this immediately after as Price mistakes a man standing at the bar for one of their coworkers. This is something that comes up time and time again the idea of mistaking a person's identity. Patrick makes a mental note and uses this to his advantage later on. The constant misidentification among colleagues satirizes the society of yuppies, or young urban professionals a term that arose in the early eighties to describe the growing culture of young adults with high paying jobs and fashionable lifestyles. In fact, if you look at the portrayal of yuppies in books, magazines, or television at the time you might have a hard time distinguishing them from something out of American Psycho. The topic of conversation changes to Paul Owen, the man handling the coveted Fisher account. Bateman calls out Preston for making an antisemitic remark about Owen and later is the only one who refuses to laugh at Preston's racist joke. Which the others chalk up to Patrick trying to take the high ground because Evelyn is part of the American Civil Liberties Union. – [Craig] Oh, I forgot Bateman's dating someone from the ACLU. After ditching Preston, they get into a cab and go to dinner only then realizing nobody has made a reservation anywhere and Patrick describes his feeling of panic when this happens. While most would not consider this a big deal Bateman doesn't want to be seen in public with no dinner reservation because that doesn't align with his high powered image. They make reservations at Pastels and when they show up a few minutes later they're able to be seated immediately because McDermott knows the maître d. Bateman is envious of this because that's the end goal for him using his power, money, and connections to get whatever he wants in life and further boost his image. The table even gets a free round of bellinis from the maître d but Price has them sent away to reestablish his dominance over the group. They're approached by yet another fellow banker named Scott Montgomery. But Montgomery's status by far outweighs their own and the group oggles over how much money he's worth and how attractive his date is after he walks away. In their eyes, these things go hand in hand. Everything, including women, is a status symbol. Bateman tries to take back some of the attention by showing off his new business card. In the book, the business card scene takes place with them still in the restaurant Pastel but in the movie, it happens in their office. So I'm just going to show that. Use your imagination. Each of the men tries to one up Bateman by showing off their own business cards to which Bateman describes himself as being overcome with a spasm of jealousy. – [Patrick Bateman] I can't believe that Bryce prefers Van Patten's card to mine. To a normal person, they all look the same. However, they're all chasing yuppy trends. Just like how their clothing and haircuts make them look indistinguishable from one another. To them, in a world where everyone in their circles is rich, everyone is good looking, and everyone has everything In terms of material goods, these subtle differences are a huge deal. Another status symbol to quarrel over. We see it affect Patrick seemingly more than anyone else. His entire self worth is shattered by not having the best card, leaving him unexpectedly depressed and causing him to have a huge angry outburst at McDermott, where he explains why the Red Snapper Pizza isn't good at this restaurant. Like his assertions about what clothing can be paired together, his knowledge of what menu items are hip comes from magazines or restaurant guides. There's no need to decide whether he likes the pizza for himself, because it would not be a good look to go against the mainstream opinion. Staying hip is all that matters. In fact, when their appetizers come, they don't even eat them before they're taken away, which I see as the men just wanting to be seen receiving the appetizers. Bateman also grabs a waitress and tells her they're planning to spend a lot of money while slipping her a $50 bill to ensure that their table be allowed to smoke cigars in the restaurant without any complaints from fellow patrons being considered. This power move impresses the other men all as well as they continue to talk while ogling at hardbody Waitresses, a term that they use to describe attractive women taken from the 1984 movie Hard Bodies, once again demonstrating the control that pop culture has over them. – [Grant ]Hard Bodies little foxes down on the beach. They receive a champagne bottle from Scott Montgomery, and Price is insulted because it's non vintage, which he sees as cheap. The forehead do a nightclub called Tunnel, where they don't meet the dress code, but Price manages to get them in anyway. Bateman assumes he does this by offering a generous tip. McDermott is still complaining about not getting the Red Snapper Pizzas, and Bateman has an urge to knife him and slice his face open. But Price sends McDermott and Van Patten away with the two VIP basement passes he received, allowing him to take Bateman to buy some cocaine. And Price knows all the right people to talk to. Keep in mind that while the characters value drugs, I am in no way promoting or glorifying them. I am simply discussing what happened in a documentary context so that I can better explain the role that they play in the character's downfall. After doing coke in the bathroom. They're disappointed with the strength of the drug and the amount they received, demonstrating that this is a very regular thing for them and alluding to the addiction problems that Bateman would eventually face, not just with drugs, but with everything that gives him pleasure, from dining out to adult films to hacking up and slashing hard bodies. He goes back to the bar to get them more drinks, and is told that the drink tickets that they received had expired and it would be a cash bar for the rest of the night. – [Bartender] Twenty five dollars. – [Patrick Bateman] I want to stab you to death and then play around with your blood. This is the first time that Patrick's Homicidal thoughts slip out, but his voice is drowned out by the music, so he faces no consequences. However, the more he does this, the more careless he becomes. So we'll come back to it. Price, who has been agitated the entire night, tells Bateman that he's leaving, which Bateman, perhaps because of the drugs, doesn't understand. No, Bateman, I'm serious, you dumb son of a bitch. Leaving, disappearing and disappear he does. Price stands up on a railing with a champagne glass and then says, Goodbye, fuck heads. Before running away into the train tunnel, after which the club is themed. We don't see Price again for almost three years after this, which coincides with Bateman spending the next three years in a downward spiral. The next morning, Patrick arrives at work and has an encounter in the elevator, where he's confused for someone named Marcus. When he arrives, he tells the secretary, Jean that he came late due to an aerobics class, which is most likely a lie that he devises to hide the hangover he probably had from the previous night. He's aware that Jean is in love with him and he thinks he'll probably end up marrying her. He is correct, but we'll talk more about that after the events of American Psycho. Jean updates him on the day's meetings, which he tells her to cancel. – [Patrick Bateman] Just say no. He instead has her make lunch and dinner reservations for him, causing her to ask if the dinner is something romantic. He tells her no, and just says he'll make them himself. The truth is that he's taking his mistress Courtney out for a date that evening. He may be shy about this because he actually likes Jean, and when she follows his orders, he even mentions how he's touched and flattered by her almost total devotion to him. There's never a point where he thinks of Evelyn in such a positive light. Despite this, he scolds Jean for the way that she's dressed and gives her specific instructions to wear a dress or skirt with high heels simply because he likes them and probably because he feels the need to control her in some way and knows that she'll comply. He spends his time at the office doing everything but working, rearranging the decor, listening to music, reading Sports Illustrated and watching TV. The question of how Patrick still has a job if he never works is never explicitly detailed. But at one point, the fact that his family owns some kind of large company is brought up, which I took as his father's company, having a good relationship with the company that he works at, essentially meaning that his job is safe. Although he has the means to quit working altogether, he continues to work in order to fit in. I don't think there is one scene in the book where we actually see a character getting work done. Apparently, this wasn't originally supposed to be the case when Ellis set out to write the book. – [Brett Easton Ellis] When I started working on American Psycho, I was actually very interested in – [Brett Easton Ellis] Wall Street, and I really wasn't interested in the business aspect of it. – [Brett Easton Ellis] And so when I started doing research on the book, I hung out with guys who – [Brett Easton Ellis] wworkedorked in firms and on the stock exchange and stuff. – [Brett Easton Ellis] I would ask them questions about their jobs. – [Brett Easton Ellis] No one really wanted to talk about their jobs. – [Brett Easton Ellis] They wanted to talk about clothing, their house in the Hamptons, who could – [Brett Easton Ellis] get a better table, which restaurant. – [Brett Easton Ellis] It was really about status. – [Brett Easton Ellis] And that's when the book began to shift for me and began to take shape. As I alluded to before. Bateman is an unreliable narrator. It isn't always clear how much time passes in between his stories or what goes on in between. It seems to be a different day when he talks about his health club visit, his trip to the video store to rent Body Double because he's turned on by the scene of the woman getting killed by the power drill and his next date with Courtney. Then I believe it's a different day when he gets a shiatsu massage and stops at a news end where the vendor alerts him that his nose is bleeding. Patrick doesn't make a big deal out of it, but I would speculate that the nosebleed is a symptom of his increased cocaine usage. The first time we see him do it, it seems like he's just trying to fit in with Price, but we would soon see him seeking it out on his own. The idea is furthered later that day when Bateman meets actor Tom Cruise in the elevator at his building and Tom alerts him to another nosebleed, which he casually tries to rectify with a handkerchief. During the elevator ride, Bateman sucks up to Tom, telling him how much he's a fan of his work. Tom acts like he doesn't really want to talk to Bateman, treating him with two or three word answers, not too different from the way that Bateman treats the coworkers that he doesn't really respect. He returns home to find messages on his answering machine from that evening's dinner date, Patricia, who wants to change the plans and take Patrick to a concert instead. He is vehemently against this and claims that he doesn't like live music. This has always struck me as strange because he does like recorded music. The Huey Lewis scene is easily the most famous scene in the movie, and there are no less than three chapters in the book completely dedicated to just Patrick reviewing music. After pondering this for a while, I don't think there's an obvious reason that he feels differently about live music. Perhaps he doesn't like the improvisational nature of it, and not knowing what to expect gives him a sense of not having control. Perhaps being a Wall Street banker, he doesn't have connections in the music industry as he does in others, and if he can't get special VIP treatment, he doesn't want to be seen in the crowd with the commoners. Whatever the case may be, he uses manipulation tactics to get her to change her mind, such as suggesting that he'll find someone else to go to Dorsia with him. Dorsia is the hottest restaurant in the city, and even Bateman has so far been unable to get a reservation there. Upon hearing this magic word, Patricia changes her tune and agrees to dinner with him, so he tells her to be over at 08:00 P.m.. After getting off the phone, he hurriedly calls Dorsia to see if he can get a table, but is unable to get anything but a busy signal for several minutes. This process gives him an adrenaline rush, which he refers to as the rarest of occurrences. We've only seen him experience this kind of emotion a couple of times comparing business cards and now trying to get a table at Dorsia. When it comes to committing crimes or talking to women, he's cool as a Manhattan's winter night. He even sends his bloody articles to a dry cleaner with no reservations about getting caught. But put him in a situation where his social status is on the line and watch the sweat beads begin to form. When he finally gets through and requests a table for two, the voice on the other line laughs at him. Bateman has finally found a privilege that money can't buy, and while most others might be turned off by the rude treatment from the restaurant worker, this only fuels his desire to get into Dorsia in the future. For the night, he gets reservations at Barcadia, which at other times is referred to as Arcadia. Actually, it's not really clear if these are two separate restaurants or if this is another example of a mental slip. Bateman accidentally misidentifying the name of it half the time. While waiting for his date to arrive, he makes a decision about her fate. I come to the conclusion that Patricia is safe tonight and I am not going to unexpectedly pull out a knife and use it on her just for the sake of doing so that I am not going to get any pleasure watching her bleed from slits that I've made by cutting her throat or slicing her neck open or gouging her eyes out. She's lucky, even though there's no real reasoning behind the luck. It could be that she's safe because of her wealth. Her family's wealth protects her tonight. Or it could be that it's simply my choice. He waits until they're in the cab to break the news to Patricia, making up a story to explain how the reservation at Dorsia got messed up. Upon hearing this, she turns away and pouts for the entire evening. The situation doesn't seem to be lost on Bateman. She was only using him to go to the hottest destination possible and for sex, and he was only using her as a good looking accessory and for sex. However, he decides he no longer wants to sleep with her because he is rubbed the wrong way by her behavior and decides to get revenge on her by taking her to the nightclub Tunnel after dinner and ignoring her there. He goes straight to the bar and gets his favorite drink, J and B on the rocks. J and B is a brand of scotch, and back then they advertised it as being a high class beverage, so it makes sense that Bateman would want to associate himself with it. I guess today people see it as more of a cheap brand. But at the bar, he realizes that the entire club is empty. We are, except for the occasional hard body, literally the only two people in Tunnel New Sensation becomes The Devil Inside, and the music is full blast, but it feels less loud because there isn't a crowd reacting to it. And the dance floor looks vast when empty. These are the same two songs that played the first time we saw Bateman at this club, right before he and Price went to purchase the coke. This makes me wonder if the empty club is merely one of Bateman's hallucinations. In particular, the song The Devil Inside by INXS brings to mind a later hallucination of his involving the devil, which we'll get to the name of the band, INXS also feels significant because the pronunciation is a phonetic play on the words In Excess and pertaining to the point I've been driving home throughout this video. Bateman is a man pushed to psychopathy by living an excessive lifestyle. He attempts to mimic what Timothy Price would do by wandering off and finding Ricardo, the man that sold them the cocaine in the basement. Ricardo is with a woman who compliments him on his wallet, and he tells her that he'd like to do unmentionable things to her and maybe cut her arms off. But again, the loud music seems to muffle his voice, but we can see that he's becoming more comfortable with the off color remarks. Again, this takes after Price's behavior, but Bateman takes it too far, and I'm guessing he takes the cocaine usage too far as well, because this is where things really get weird. After getting them drinks, Patricia comes back and goes on a long winded apology for her behavior earlier in the night. But Bateman basically tunes her out and starts thinking about expensive material things he wants in an almost robotic, methodical fashion. Patricia is never mentioned again, so it's unclear if he simply dumped her or changed his mind about her being safe for the evening. The next scene features Bateman taking bloody articles to the dry cleaners. So I'll let you be the judge. His usual dry cleaners had sent his stuff back last time, still bloodstained. So this time he goes in person to complain. He's unable to communicate with the Chinese speaking woman who works there. In his frustration, he threatens to kill her, and it's unclear if she understands him. He daydreams about firebombing the whole place. I am not condoning such an action. This is just an educational character analysis documentary. When another customer walks in, he quickly tries to recompose himself, demonstrating that he's still attempting to keep up the appearance of a sane member of society. It turns out to be a woman from his building, Victoria. He mistakes her for a Samantha. At first, the misidentification motif goes both ways, it seems. He asks her if she can try to talk to the screeching Chinese woman behind the counter, explaining that he got cranapple juice on his sheets and needs the stains removed. He doesn't seem concerned about his weak excuse for why his sheets are stained red. I think he's so cocky about his high place up in society that he genuinely doesn't believe that he could ever be suspected or caught, and society kind of proves him right. There are other similar moments in the movie, like the one where he's loading a body into the trunk of a cab and the only reaction he gets is -[Guy on Street] OOH, where did you get that overnight bag? As he's leaving, Samantha tries to set up a date with him the following week, but he makes several excuses as to why he's busy because she's a little overweight. That afternoon, Bateman's increasing frequency of hallucinations are confirmed when he mistakes a college student for a homeless girl and puts a dollar into her coffee cup. Then in the cab, he says he hallucinated the whole city into mountains, volcanoes and jungles. He describes his lunch appointment as a permanent hallucination involving waking dreams, although he never tries to diagnose what's going on with himself. This is almost certainly an example of cocaine induced psychosis. This is the process of cocaine use, altering chemicals in the brain with symptoms such as seeing, hearing or feeling things that are not there and inappropriate behavior. The increasingly severe psychosis may be reflected in the next Patty Winter Show topic real life Rambos, which Bateman sees. In the morning before having drinks at Harry's with Todd Hamlin and George Reeves. Paul Owens stops by their table and confuses Bateman for another associate, Marcus Halberstam, whose job, fashion sense and hairdo are all very similar to Patrick's, making it an understandable mistake. He gets Owen's card, and the two plan to have drinks sometime. As Owen leaves, one of his friends looks back and seems to recognize Bateman with a panicked look, which in turn makes Bateman uneasy. One evening, Courtney invites Bateman out to dinner with another couple because her boyfriend, Luis Carruthers is out of town on business. Before going out, he has Jean study the menu and prepare three different possible orders for him. In the cab, he thinks he sees Donald Trump's car. Not only is this another example of mistaken identity, but it's also one of the many examples of Bateman idolizing Donald Trump. Keep in mind, this was the 1980s, and at the time, Trump was a young real estate developer who basically achieved celebrity status due to his life of wealth and excess. He was basically the ultimate yuppie, the very thing that Bateman aspired to be. Apparently, in his later years, Trump shifted gears to become some kind of politics guy. This is still a politics free channel. I just felt it necessary to remind you that Bateman's idol at the time was known for different reasons, because this reverence does come up again later. The restaurant that they go to is called Deck Chairs, which serves Post California cuisine, and the couple that they dine with are named Scott and Anne Smiley. Also, for the first time in a while, we're given a clue about the dates because Scott mentions that he just picked up the new Phil Collins album and the song Groovy Kind of Love sounds really good. Groovy Kind of Love is on Phil Collins Buster soundtrack, which came out September 19, 1988. And Bateman does mention that it's a Monday, so the date is Monday, September 19, 1988. Scott and Anne are both graduates of Camden University. Camden is the setting of Brett Easton Ellis's previous novel, The Rules of Attraction and if you've read that novel, this scene probably felt very familiar. It contained a scene where Patrick's brother Sean and his girlfriend Lauren go out for post California cuisine with the very same couple, Anne and Scott's. The entire interaction is exactly the same. It starts with Anne deciding not to drink alcohol. Then a Bateman brother talks with Scott about his new CD player. Then Scott talks about how he just bought a new Phil Collins CD. These similarities are far too specific to be considered a coincidence, and given Patrick's psychosis, I have to believe that this whole evening is marred in hallucination. It seems that Sean told him his story at some point about his awkward double date with the Smileys and Patrick during a wild and powdery evening with Courtney somehow convinced his overly medicated brain that this was his own experience. His tendency to mix stories he has heard into his own narrative is an important clue for helping us decipher future events. We've already seen him start to struggle with distinguishing reality, like during this dinner when he tells Anne, did anyone ever tell you that you look exactly like Garfield, but run over and skinned, and then someone threw an ugly Ferragamo sweater over you before they rushed you to the vet? Which is definitely going to become my new rejection line. Just kidding. But this line does show that Patrick has definitely stopped differentiating between things that actually happened and things that he only fantasized about. We can see that much by the fact that Anne doesn't react to his rude comment. Meanwhile, Courtney is nearly falling asleep at the table due to some drugs that she's taken, and Bateman is not enjoying the evening at all. He thinks to himself that no female intimacy is worth sitting through this dinner. And his mind begins to wander. To chopping up Anne and Scott, the videotapes he forgot to return and the adult video that he watched recently, which he can't get his mind off of, like the drugs he's been taking, the adult content is starting to become an addiction, which we can see by the fact that he starts thinking about it at inappropriate times. At some point, Courtney disappears to use the bathroom, and Patrick finds her asleep in the coatcheck room 30 minutes later. This is where the best move is to make sure she gets home safely and let her beg for your forgiveness the next day. But that's not what happens, because Bateman is becoming more depraved and more deviant by the day during their encounter, later that night, he hears her say, Luis is a despicable twit, but this was partially just his imagination. She actually says, is it a receptacle tip? I think she meant, is it a reservoir tip? But as we know, Courtney isn't the smartest. They get into a huge argument about the method of contraception, something Courtney is concerned about only because it affects how she looks in a bikini and she starts crying. Patrick and Courtney's ability to be intimate with each other would soon be cut short. Luis Carruthers was coming home from Phoenix. (IMPACT) ♪ Mysterious Music ♪ Shortly after Luis returns from his business trip in Phoenix, and Bateman shows up to work hungover after another debaucherous evening. The Patty Winter's topic that morning was descendants of the Donner party. And if Bateman really is hallucinating Patty Winter's topics, it's a grim foreshadowing of things to come. Because the Donner party was a group of settlers who got snowbound in the mountains and had to resort to cannibalism. – [Danny Torrance] You mean they ate each other up. They had to in order to survive. During the meeting, McDermott, still salty about Bateman insulting his red snapper pizza at Pastels, brings in a Xeroxed article about Donald Trump where Trump claims that Pastels has the best pizza in Manhattan. Seeing this actually causes Bateman to admit how he'll have to try the pizza again now. I think this exchange demonstrates more than any other that Bateman truly has no personality of his own. Everything is dictated by what's hip and something as subjective as personal taste is treated as fact. So long as the rich and trendy agree. Bateman continues to go through his routine, and the violent thoughts become more and more frequent. He thinks about taking a hammer and ice pick to a girl at the video store and tells him masseuse that he'd like to transfuse a hard body's blood with dog blood. The Patty winter segments get more bizarre with segments like UFOs that kill. He also spends some time with Marcus Halberstan's girlfriend. Perhaps he's trying to learn more about Marcus in order to better emulate him. His next supposed victims are two black kids he saw on the subway station. And he also takes credit for killing Evelyn's neighbor, whose head he sawed off with an electric mini chainsaw before storing it in his freezer. This one is more likely to be real because Evelyn calls one night and admits she's shaken up by it and her building is surrounded by police. One afternoon, Patrick does some early Christmas shopping for himself, and everything he buys is some form of blade, a pair of scissors, a letter opener, and a cheese knife. While there's probably no limit to how early a psychopath does their early Christmas shopping for themselves, I'm going to call this late November. That evening, he has a date planned with Courtney when his actual girlfriend Evelyn calls, still shaken by her neighbor's death and demands to have dinner with him. During their meal at Barcadia, he fantasizes about seeing Evelyn with another woman. He doesn't bother to cancel with Courtney. The rumors about their affair have put a strain on Courtney and Evelyn's relationship, but Bateman doesn't care. The conversation meanders from rumors about where Tim Price has been to Evelyn mistaking another diner for Ivana Trump, which only infuriates Patrick. Evelyn starts gushing about weddings, claiming she won't settle for less than a diamond engagement ring. And Patrick says he'd want to blow her fat mother's head off at the ceremony. Obviously, he didn't really say that out loud, because again, there's no reaction. As the conversation continues, it seems that they are not connecting at all. Either Patrick is lying about all of his lines, or Evelyn isn't listening to a word he says. In reality, I imagine it's a little bit of both. On a Tuesday, Patrick is attending a black tie party. An exclusive and luxurious event like this seems like something that early Bateman would be very interested in, but he appears to have grown bored with this kind of thing and spends the whole party looking for drugs. Even running into Courtney doesn't seem to spark his interest as much, and he blows her off by telling her he has to go return some videotapes. As she tries to warn him to stay away from Luis, who apparently suspects something between the two. He ends up walking the streets, where he starts a conversation with a bum named Al. Bateman gets his attention by offering money and food, but then just ends up scolding him. – [Patrick Bateman]Why don't you get a job? You're so hungry. Why don't you get a job? – [Al] I lost my job. – [Patrick Bateman] Why? You drinking? Is that why you lost it? Insider trading? Just joking. His immediate assumption that the man lost his job for alcohol abuse is either extremely ironic or some form of self conscious projection, because Bateman has completely lost control of his life due to substance abuse and his other addictions. After offering to help the guy out, he suddenly becomes very angry because of the man's stench, calls him a loser and stabs him in the eye, causing it to burst open. He continues to go at the guy with a knife, blinding him but being careful to keep him alive. However, at this point, I have to question the validity of anything that Patrick says he does. And there's very good reason to believe that some or most of this horrible encounter with Al never even happened. But again, we'll get to that. He decides to go to McDonald's to get a milkshake. Normally, he wouldn't be caught dead at McDonald's, but he sees it as somewhere that Al would probably go. He is still supposedly covered in red splatters of crime scene evidence, but that doesn't cause him to back down. He's just that cocky about not getting caught. The high from what he did to Al begins to wear off, and he finds himself still wanting more. What we're seeing is the behavior of an addict. With any addiction. It begins when the user engages in a behavior that sends dopamine to the reward circuit in the brain. As the behavior continues, the brain adapts to it, which reduces the high that the person feels from it. This effect is known as tolerance. At this stage, the person may try to increase usage to get the same high that they once felt. And these adaptations in the brain usually cause the person to gain less pleasure from other things. The National Institute of Health uses examples like food, adult activities and social interactions. And these examples actually perfectly apply to Bateman. He used to enjoy dining out and extravagant $300 meals, but now he's bored by them and finds himself at McDonald's. We see him turn down a social function in order to satisfy his blood lust. Normally, one addiction is enough to wreck havoc on a person's life, but for Bateman, there are several addictions substances sadism spending and adult activities, just to name a few. And by the way, the only reason Bateman is getting a dopamine rush from hurting people is because there is something seriously wrong with his brain. So don't try it. It will not make you feel good. If you want to feel a nice charge, try going to the gym or subscribing to CZsWorld and leaving a like on this video. Now, I mentioned how a person may increase their usage to try to overcome desensitization. And in Bateman's case, he's able to do this by combining his addictions for a longer dopamine hit. But he's still able to maintain the appearance of having some level of control over his life, perhaps because everyone in his circles is so shallow that they're only concerned with material things and unable to recognize his symptoms. I don't think there's one scene in the entire novel where he and his friends or he and his girlfriend have an actual conversation about each other, Such as how they're feeling or how they're doing. Case in point on another day, Bateman is having lunch with Christopher Armstrong, who works with him at Pierce and Pierce, and Armstrong doesn't even know who he is, mistaking him for someone named Taylor. This must be the most egregious mistaken identity yet. The two went to school together, and they're now out at lunch. Armstrong has just returned from a vacation in the Bahamas, and when Bateman asks how it was, he just goes into this almost prepared sounding pitch. Armstrong has nothing to say about anything he or his family did in the Bahamas. It's more like he's reciting a paragraph directly out of a travel guide. It's almost exactly the same detached, passive voice that Bateman uses when talking about the things that he supposedly likes. There are three chapters in American Psycho where Bateman simply reviews the discography of one of his favorite recording artists. The subjects are genesis, Whitney Houston, and, of course, Huey Lewis and the News. – [Patrick Bateman] When Sports came out in 83, I think they really came into their – [Patrick Bateman] own commercially and artistically. – [Huey Lewis] Yeah, I actually think he's correct there. Bateman's so called opinions sound almost as if they're ripped directly out of a music magazine's critique. And they're clearly written in language that is not congruent with how he speaks in conversation or even in his interior monologue. I guess if you want to work at Pierce and Pierce, you have to be completely devoid of personality. The Patty Winter Show that day covers Toddler Tragedies, where the parents of children who are kidnapped and oft too soon are analyzed by a panel of psychiatrists. That one's got to be a hallucination. It's way too dark to ever be considered for this type of show. It seems to be an indication that Bateman is not mentally stable, which we see shortly after when he mistakes a gay pride parade for a Halloween parade. On the way to Wall Street, this morning, due to gridlock, I had to get out of the company car and was walking down Fifth Avenue to find a subway station when I passed what I thought was a Halloween parade, which was disorienting since I was fairly sure this was May. Since I've been keeping track of the dates, I can tell you it most certainly is not May. As we've established, it's definitely past September at this point, and possibly into December. Since when is anybody only fairly sure of what month it is? I might be fairly sure of the day of week sometimes, but I've never been unsure where we are in the year. That's ridiculous. I think this is another example of Bateman's psychosis, the losing track of time that I alluded to earlier. He's losing his grip on reality, and this makes him an increasingly unreliable narrator sure you could just as well argue that any of the previous mentions of the date are just as likely to be mental slips. But I believe that this is the mental slip, because as time goes on, he's getting more and more detached from reality. Plus, there is a Christmas party a few chapters later. Anyway, the cat calls from the men discussed him so much that he goes home, changes suits, gives himself a pedicure, and tortures a dog to death. All of these are coping strategies, but like I said, it's getting harder and harder for him to cope, because he's becoming more and more used to the things that give his brain dopamine when putting on the expensive clothes he's purchased no longer has the same effect it once did. He's got to move on to more extreme solutions. We see further evidence of him getting bored with his extravagant life on another evening when he cancels his dinner reservations with Evelyn because the thought of sitting alone with her for that long fills him with nameless dread. He seems to be in almost a depressive state, but that changes when he's invited to a U2 concert by Luis Carruthers. Under normal circumstances, since he's not a fan of Luis and not a fan of live music, he would probably just say no. However, I think he agrees to go because Luis is also bringing Paul Owen, who of course, is handling the Fisher account, and that's something that interests him. There are probably only a few things that keep Bateman going at this point in the story the things that money is not able to buy him, the prestigious Fisher account and the equally distinguished reservation at Dorsia. During the outing, Owen continues to mistake Bateman for Marcus Halberstem, and he even thinks that Evelyn is Marcus's girlfriend, Cecilia. Evelyn doesn't notice because she's too busy glaring at Courtney, who she is suspicious of having an affair with Patrick. Patrick seems to be keeping up this identity ruse for a reason, and sure enough, he would use the mix up to his advantage later. Despite having front row seats, nobody is interested in the concert. That is, until Bateman sees the backdrop turn red, giving him a huge surge of feeling. He thinks he's receiving a message directly from the front man, Bono. The music slows down, and the rest of the audience and band members fade away. Bono tells him, I am the devil, and I am just like you. As you may recall, this is probably not the first time one of these bizarre hallucinations makes reference to the devil. At this point, I think we can confidently say that Bateman is psycho. American Psycho! There's also another interesting parallels with The Rules of Attraction here, because at one point, Sean Bateman also sees the devil while he's tripping. After this, Patrick comes back down to reality and decides it's finally time to ask Paul about that Fisher account. If you think about it. It's funny that he wants the Fisher account so badly, yet he never actually works. It's just another status symbol, like everything in his life. Owen explains that he didn't even do anything special to get it. It just kind of fell into his lap. The next time we see Bateman, he's in the throes of a major anxiety attack. One Thursday afternoon. (Impact) Bateman finds himself running around New York. He can't remember where he had lunch or with whom. He calls Jean, his secretary, desperate for help, and when he tells her he won't make it to the office, she shows genuine sadness and concern. She may be the only one who ever shows these kinds of genuine emotions. He does so much insane shit on this afternoon that I can't even fully list everything, so I'll just mention a few. He shoplifts a can of ham and eats it directly out of the container in the lobby of a building. He obsessively states, I've got to return my videotapes over and over, and he buys five vials of drugs and eats them whole before ranting to the dealer about BMW engines. Then, just as quickly as this insanity began, it ends, and Bateman finds himself at the Yale Club with McDermott and Van Patton. They talk fashion, the gym, massages, the usual. He also sees Luis Carruthers there and has an idea to kill him, wondering if he'd be able to spend more time with Courtney if he did so or if Courtney only likes him for the thrill of going behind Luis back. He decides to go through with it and follows him into the bathroom. But when he puts his gloved hands around Luis' neck to choke him, Luis kisses his wrist and touches his face. Bateman is so shocked that he can't bring himself to choke him. And Luis, a closeted homosexual, has been pining for Bateman for so long that he's unable to interpret this as anything other than Bateman coming on to him. –[Luis] God. Patrick. –[Luis] Why here? I've seen you looking at me. –[Luis] I've noticed your hot body. Unsure of how to respond, Bateman washes his hand, the gloves still on, and he seething. Luis asks him where he's going, and he tells him he's got to return some videotapes. Whenever he experiences this kind of discomfort, he's got to blow off the steam and improve his mood by releasing some dopamine. He works out three times in one day, makes some obscene and threatening telephone calls to fuel his arousal, and walks around town with a briefcase full of knives and guns. He decides not to kill the first two targets he comes across on the basis that they're too easy. His addiction is forcing him to search for a bigger and bigger rush. Finally, he comes across a gay man walking an expensive shar pei. The man flirts with Patrick, who exchanges pleasantries until he randomly slices the dog's stomach open and disembowels him. He also stabs the owner and shoots him with the silencer to make sure he's really dead. I'm a little skeptical that this really happened, given that this takes place openly in the streets of Manhattan. This is still not enough to satiate him, however, so he goes to the store and buys some cereal with an expired coupon, which apparently gives him a thrill. His crimes are becoming more and more bizarre. He ends this rampage by running up and down Broadway with an open umbrella, screaming like a banshee. I wish they would have put that in the movie on some other evening. His craving for all things degenerate reaches an all time high after a dinner with Courtney that he refers to as infuriating. He drops her off at Nell's nightclub and tells her he'll return once he goes and gets some drugs. This does not end up being the case. He has his limo driver take him to the Meatpacking District so he can look for a blonde girl who seems suitable and bribes her to come back to his place. By the way, he seems to have no problem with his limo driver bearing witness to his illegal activities, and this is never addressed. Perhaps he's been given a generous tip to keep his mouth shut. Or maybe none of this even happens. This is one of many examples of Bateman's disregard of low paid service industry workers. Back at his apartment, he orders the girl to respond to the name Christie, then calls an escort service, and soon after, another woman, Sabrina, arrives to join them. He sits her down and gives her an expensive wine as they listen to the Broadway cast recording of Les Misérables on the stereo. Les Misérables comes up many times throughout American Psycho, 20 times to be exact. It was a popular Broadway show at the time, and it too, deals with a character who learns of the special privileges afforded to the rich by society. Eventually, things move to the bedroom. Round one is innocuous enough, but after a short rest, Bateman comes back for round two, which involves accessories such as a nail gun, sharpened coat hanger, butter knife, matches and a cigar. The next day, Sabrina leaves with a limp and Christie with scratches and a black eye. As Christmas draws closer, Bateman spends most of his time going into cocktail parties and Christmas shopping, a pleasurable activity for him because it's another opportunity to gain favor with others by showing off his fortune. He opts to do the shopping himself rather than letting Jean do it because of the rush he gets by making the purchases. Instead, he has Jean send out holiday cards and do some research on the Fisher account for him. He also mentions that he's been taking the sleeping pill Halcion in increasing amounts during the day, because even though his body has adapted to it and it no longer makes him sleep, it does seem to ward off total madness. Just not quite enough to prevent the idea of taking an escort to Evelyn's Christmas party from crossing his head. Thankfully for her, he does not end up doing that. The day of the party, he gets drinks at Rusty's in order to fortify himself, as if it's going to be that unbearable. After this, he jumps a Japanese delivery boy on a bike and gives him a surprise Christmas gift that is a slit to the throat, and this is kind of where I lose sympathy for him. Taking out motorists is one thing, but targeting an innocent boy on a bike? That's just despicable. He opens up the food boxes that were being delivered and he finds Chinese food, not Japanese, and feels not remorse but irritation because he got the wrong type of Asian in his mind. He looks at the receipt and makes a note to get revenge on the person who had ordered the food, as if this was somehow her fault, then shrugs and apologizes to the delivery boy before walking away. I don't think it's going to do much good now, though. At the Christmas party that evening, he starts to get nervous because he sees too much red and is also off put by the short people dressed as elves serving appetizers and questions whether or not he is hallucinating them. This is telling. There are probably a lot of hallucinations that he doesn't mention to the reader, considering he's at a point where he's now questioning if real things are hallucinations or not. He only realizes that they're real when Evelyn mentions that she has names for all the elves, such as Rudolph, Blitzen and Donner. Patrick corrects her. I... those are the names of reindeer, not elves. Blitzen was a reindeer, he tells her. The only Jewish one, Peterson reminds them. I think Peterson is talking about blintzes, which are a traditional Jewish recipe similar to crepes. It's not important to my analysis. I just thought it was an underrated joke. He tells Evelyn to be grateful that he came to her Christmas party when there are so many others that he could have attended. Imagine skipping out on your own girlfriend's Christmas party. The affair with Courtney is one thing, but that's just asking for trouble. Speaking of whom, Bateman sees Courtney talking to Paul Owen across the room. He has the impression that she's flirting with Paul, which honestly wouldn't be surprising given her shallowness and attraction to social status. However, she moves on, and Bateman uses the opportunity to get closer to the man who is handling the coveted Fisher account. In talking to Owen, he learns that there's a limo waiting for him outside to take Paul and his girlfriend Meredith to Nell's after the party. Paul still thinks that Bateman is Marcus Halberstam, and when Evelyn approaches them, he's under the impression that she's Halberstam's girlfriend Cecilia. So just to review, Owen is at Evelyn's Christmas party, yet he still believes that Evelyn is actually Cecilia. I don't even think I'm going to attempt to explain how this is possible. When Evelyn starts to call him Patrick, he creates a big spectacle of calling her Cecilia, then kisses her and pulls her into the kitchen. He's clearly invested in keeping up the ruse. He doesn't want Paul to find out that he's not really Marcus Halberstam. It seems that he's already planning on using Paul's confusion to his advantage in the future, though it's not clear if he's already decided exactly what he's going to do. To further sell the illusion, he asks Evelyn to leave the party with them. He's worried about her possibly tipping Paul off, or the real Marcus Halberstam showing up and shattering the mirage. Evelyn doesn't want to leave her own party, but he wins her over by saying that leaving would be daring, which she likes the idea of, and he's able to play to her desires by calling her Mrs. Bateman. And finally she agrees. Outside, he shoves her into Paul Owens limo and tries to convince the driver that Paul said he could take it for the evening. The driver doesn't believe him and tells him that this would break company protocol. Patrick considers trying to take another limo, but because he specifically wants Paul Owens, he bribes the man with $200, which is enough to get him to comply and drive them to Club Chernobyl. Once again, we see the lack of chemistry between Patrick and Evelyn. She's acting almost just as crazy and entitled as her boyfriend. She finds a present in the limo, a necklace, which Paul had left for Meredith, and assumes that it's hers. She takes a fortune cookie out of Patrick's pocket and assumes it's some kind of clue that Patrick will be taking her to lunch at that restaurant in the future. She thinks she's in a game and everything is some kind of hint, despite the obvious fact that Patrick doesn't really care for her at all and only keeps her around as a hot trophy girl. When she realizes that they're headed to Club Chernobyl, she pouts and tries to get the driver to change course to the Rainbow Room, which Patrick does not want to do because he knows he won't be able to score drugs. Then there this is textbook addict behavior. He's always thinking ahead to where he can get his next fix. When they arrive at Chernobyl, the doorman lets them in immediately because he saw that they got out of a limo. There's probably no better moment to illustrate how wealth and special privileges are tied to each other in late eighties New York. Once inside, he sends Evelyn to go get some champagne at the bar so he can go look for a dealer. After obtaining some powder, he comes across a hardbody and considers ditching Evelyn for her, showing that all of the effort and begging required to get her out here was never about spending time with her. He just wanted her to stay away from the party, and moreover, he probably liked being able to control her. However, she comes back whining that they should leave because they have the wrong brand of champagne. In many ways, I think Evelyn would be just as crazy as Patrick in terms of psychotic consumerism, if not for the whole Patrick being a serial killer thing. Looking for a private spot, he drags her to the unisex bathroom, where he gets into it with another couple over whose turn it is to take the next available stall. The other couple is in there for the same reason that Patrick is. Patrick insults the girl and calls her a bitch, to which her boyfriend just laughs and refuses to defend her. This starts a fight between the woman and her boyfriend, and that causes Evelyn to get mad at Patrick for starting it, and she tells him that she'll just wait outside. Patrick doesn't really care about Evelyn being there anymore, and he orders her to just take the limousine and leave. As he gets down to it, he can hear her sobbing to the other girl about how he made her walk out of her own Christmas party. When he finishes and walks back out to the club, Evelyn is gone and the crowd has changed. It's less Wall Street guys and more punk rockers and rappers. When he tries hitting on some girls, his social class actually works against him. One of them sneers and says, Go back to Wall Street, and the one with the nose ring says, F*cking Yuppie. He also makes an embarrassing attempt to talk to some black guys by using the words freshest and deafest to no avail, Yo! For the first time, his normally coveted lifestyle is working against him, and this is meant to show how much further he can fall when his dominant position over others is no longer a reliable source of joy for him. American Psycho takes place near the end of the Yuppie trend. It's currently late 1988, and the Yuppie lifestyle was already starting to decline after a stock market crash in 1987 reminded people how volatile the economy could be. The end was already near, and after a short economic recession began in 1990, Time magazine would post a mock obituary called The Birth and Maybe Death of Yuppie Dumb in April 1991. Lucky for Patrick Bateman, he's able to find another hard body dancing alone who is more receptive to him. That is the last we see of Bateman in 1988, and the next part of his timeline caused a lot of confusion for me. At the beginning of the next chapter, he claims it's now mid May. However, three chapters later, it's Sean's 23rd birthday, which would put us in March 1989. I considered the possibility that the story is being told out of order, but there is clearly a linear sequence of events, plus the structure of the novel almost feels like a journal that he's creating. in his head. He's journaling it all as he goes along. I think the more likely explanation is that Bateman's mind is really starting to get distorted by the drugs. We already established one instance of this when he mistook the Gay Pride Parade as a Halloween parade. According to the British Psychological Society, the consumption of drugs and alcohol has long been known to warp time experiences and many drug users support similar experiences following marijuana, cocaine and alcohol use. So I'm just going to call this early 1989 and this is supported by what happens in this chapter. He continues further down the same path he was on, being warped by his addictions and corrupting more of his thoughts. He wakes up from a dream that he describes as being lit like an adult's film where he was with girls made of cardboard, perhaps a symbol of how he sees their lives as disposable. He also meets with his lawyer about some bogus rape charges. And although Bateman is never shy about the crimes he's committed in the narration, it's not hard to imagine that these charges aren't so bogus and he's simply done so much bad stuff that he can't keep track of it all. He also describes an anxiety attack suffered in a grocery store which he worked off at the gym. His gym time seems to be increasing and ironically, this is the one healthy coping mechanism that he seems to have. But there's only so much time he can spend at the gym and it's not enough to outweigh all of the mental issues that are piling up. So he ends up beating a girl, begging for bus money because she had misspelled the word disabled on her sign. He's living a double life, switching back and forth between despicable criminal to high class yuppie in the blink of an eye. To this point, he has been able to keep the two lives separate and all of his victims are strangers. And that would all change, however, after a chance encounter with someone from his past. (Impact) ♪ 80s Music ♪ Bateman spends the day with some female models, which ends in a dinner at Nells. Where they're joined by McDermott and another associate. The models are mind numbingly dumb. They can't even name a single planet making guesses like the moon or comet. He ends up going home with this girl, Daisy. But before getting in the cab, he runs into his ex girlfriend from Harvard, Bethany, and she invites him to get lunch sometime. Since Bateman always has his mind on his next fix, he interprets this as something more. When he gets back home with Daisy that night, she admits that her ex-boyfriend had spotted them and couldn't understand why she was hanging out with a yuppie. Another example of the glamour of the yuppie lifestyle starting to wear off. After they hook up, he tells her she should leave. I think if you stay, something bad will happen. This doesn't line up with anything we've come to expect from his character. There have always been certain women who have been off limits for him because they're part of his social circle, but this is the first time that we've seen him show pity for someone. Of course, Daisy doesn't know he's a serial killer and assumes he's talking about the two of them getting too emotionally involved. So she leaves, and for a short time, Bateman resumes with normal activities, like taking in a Mets game, renting videotapes, and purchasing luxurious items. That is, until the day that would change everything his dinner with Paul Owen. At some point, he rents an abandoned loft building in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in preparation for his meeting with Paul. He also lays newspapers down over the floor of his apartment to protect the white stained oak. Using the name Marcus Halberstam. He makes reservations at Texarkana. The place is mostly dead, which Paul mocks him for, but this may be the one time that the popularity of a restaurant is not what Patrick is looking for. Owen is really drunk and out of it, and he doesn't offer anything but useless information about the Fisher account. He keeps changing the topic back to discussions of material items, which Bateman ironically, would do himself under normal circumstances. This scene certainly came from one of Brett Easton Ellis's own experiences talking to Wall Street guys in preparation of writing American Psycho. Halfway through the meal, Patrick switches from beer to soda so he can stay sober for what he's about to do. But Paul continues to get more drunk. So drunk that Patrick is able to convince him to pay the entire check, make him admit how dumb he is, and get him back to the apartment, which is staged for a gruesome scene. He takes some Valium, grabs an axe from the bathroom and puts on a raincoat. By this point, Paul is completely inebriated. The whole scene highlights how he isn't really much different from Patrick himself in terms of personality or lack thereof. The main difference is that Paul has something that Patrick doesn't, and for this, Bateman is jealous and vengeful. Paul's last words demonstrate his shallow taste in music, just like Bateman Anyway. I used to hate Iggy Pop, but now that he's so commercial, I like him a lot better than... The ax hits him in mid sentence, straight in the face. It's thick blade chopping sideways into his open mouth, shutting him up. The scene in the movie is a little bit different. Patrick puts on a Huey Lewis CD and starts to explain their discography before chopping his coworker to bits. This is a combination of three parts from the book the Paul Owen death that I just described, the chapter where Bateman reviews Huey Lewis and the News and a line that Bateman has during his facial appointment, which he may or may not have actually said about his desire to wear a big yellow smiley face mask. And then put on Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy while transfusing a girl's blood with a dog. Anyway, he takes Paul's keys and heads to his apartment, not realizing he's still wearing the spattered raincoat until he's already in the cab. He ends up destroying it, the raincoat that is in Paul's fireplace. He also changes Paul's answering machine message to say that he's gone to London, and since their voices sound similar, Bateman thinks that they'll be indistinguishable on the phone. Another example of him taking advantage of mistaken identity. One of the most often asked questions in both the movie and book is if this scene actually happened, because later on, an investigator hears that Paul Owen has actually been seen in London, and his lawyer eventually claims that he had dinner with Paul in London. Perhaps Patrick and Paul did really have the dinner at Texarkana and Paul told him that he was planning a London trip and then Patrick hallucinated the rest. This would not be so different from Patrick hearing the story about Sean's awkward double date with Ann and Scott Smiley, but then, through his hallucinations, incorporates it into his own narrative. So did he really kill Paul? I have my own theory about this, which I'll come back to when we get to the next clue. later in the story. Bateman packs some suits and travel items from Paul's belongings into a briefcase and steals a few things for himself, then leaves. Back at his own apartment, he throws Owen in a sleeping bag and drags it downstairs into a taxi and over to the loft he had rented. He places Owen in the bathtub and pours quick climb over him, a chemical compound which was thought to help dry out the subject, break it down faster and reduce the smell. Paul is later determined to have gone missing on the 24 June 1989, which obviously doesn't fit our timeline because we're most likely still in the first quarter of that year. The cloud of confusion that hangs over this time frame may be intentional because it adds to the mystery when the detective eventually comes around and none of the dates or accounts of who was with who that night seem to add up. Basically, the inconsistencies around this time can be considered a wash. Later in the evening, Patrick can't sleep, and Evelyn calls him, complaining that he never picked her up for dinner that night, which Patrick seems genuinely confused by, and he tells her that they never had plans and besides, he had to return some videotapes. She invites him to go to dinner the next night instead, which he turns down, claiming that he has to work. You practically own that damn company, she moans. What work? What work do you do? I don't understand. Thank you, Evelyn. That's what I've been saying this whole time. Evelyn also proposes the idea of going away over the summer to Edgartown or the Hamptons. Both are vacation home destinations in the region, which he actually agrees to. But before that vacation happens, Patrick finds himself in a Paul Smith store to buy a tie for his brother's upcoming birthday when he comes across Luis Carruthers, who tries to start a conversation in Luis's head. There's still a romantic connection between the two, and he confesses his love for it. Patrick quickly chooses a tie to buy and exits, but Carruthers catches him as he's trying to hail a cab, begging him to just talk. So Patrick motions his already open switchblade in Luis's direction, and he backs away into the cab. The accountant and trustee of Patrick's father both call him up shortly before Sean's birthday in March 1989 and tell him that Sean is in New York, suggesting that they use this as an opportunity to find out what Sean is doing with his life. They suggest luring him into a dinner meeting by indicating that their mother's health has deteriorated. Patrick doesn't think his emotionally numb brother will care much, so they devise a plan. They'll make it look like they need to discuss the allocation of their mother's estate. When choosing a restaurant for this meeting, Patrick thinks to himself that Dorsia is out of the question because it's booked for at least the next month and Sean doesn't deserve to go there anyways. So he's astonished when Sean calls him and tells him to meet at Dorsia, explaining he had spoken to the owner and gotten the table. This is the most embarrassing situation that Patrick could have imagined. As the older one with a career and list of accomplishments, he sees himself as being above his brother. Yet Sean is easily able to get into the restaurant Patrick has been pining over for more than a year now. Sean shows up half an hour late, and they won't seat him until his brother's arrival, which Patrick describes as his worst fear becoming reality. Sean continues to get on Patrick's nerves by ordering the most expensive combination of items possible, which consists of lobster as both an appetizer and entree, knowing full well that Patrick is going to be paying the check, then proceeds not to touch any of his food. To make matters worse, Patrick mentions that he needs to meet someone at Nell's by midnight, and Sean downplays him, claiming that Nell's isn't that hip anymore, which causes Patrick to change his story. In his insecurity, he makes up a story about going to a Trump party and acts like he knows Donald's personally. At the end of the meal, he watches Sean's eyes and makes sure he's looked at the check before allowing the waitress to take it. However, it's really a lose lose situation because Sean gets satisfaction over wasting his brother's money. If that dinner was bad for Bateman's ego, his next documented appointment would be catastrophic. He is extremely nervous for his lunch with his old Harvard girlfriend Bethany, and he even admits that it's probably because of fear of rejection. Based on the hot summer weather. This must take place in summer 1989. Before the date, he purchases and reads a trendy short story collection in case they run out of things to talk about. He also writes her a poem, like he did during their relationship but it comes out incredibly crude, racist and derogatory. He makes her read it out loud at the restaurant which is extremely uncomfortable and she has to laugh it off as a joke. He completely embarrasses himself for the entire first half of the meal shaking and twitching his way through a litany of cringeworthy jokes and loud outbursts such as his reaction to the waiter reading the specials you have. I think you mean the restaurant has. I correct him. You don't have sun dried tomatoes? The restaurant does. You don't have the poblano chilies? The restaurant does just, you know, clarify. He overreacts to everything Bethany says namely when she tells him she's dating the chef co-owner of Dorsia which, as you can imagine, has a devastating effect on him. Yes, my brain does explode and my stomach bursts open inwardly- a spastic acidic, gastric reactions; stars and planets, whole galaxies made up entirely of little white chef hats race over the film of my vision. He gets uncharacteristically jealous and basically berates her for her choice of partner which confuses her because she had been under the impression that he was friends with the guy in college. So perhaps he could have gotten into Dorsia at all of this time which is probably even more infuriating for him. He switches tactics and tries to convince her that her boyfriend is gay, which doesn't work. To cap it off, she insists on paying for lunch which is extremely emasculating for him. After lunch, he invites her back to his place. At first she refuses, but because it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside the air conditioning is broken at her office and primarily because she had too many drinks at lunch he is able to convince her to go home with him. Big mistake. She tells him he's hung his David Onica painting upside down which challenges his supposedly superior knowledge of pop culture. That's strike one. He still can't get over the fact that she's dating Robert Hall. That's strike two. And three, apparently, he gets his nail gun and when she sees him holding it, she screams and makes a run for it. But he strikes her with it and knocks her out. Then he nails her fingers to some wooden boards in the living room maces her eyes and places a coat over her head to drown out some of the screams. After covering her hands and nails, he brings out his handicam so he can film the rest of the torture which consists of him undressing her cutting off her nipple, cutting out her tongue. I'm not allowed to say the rest of it, but the point is, this is one of his most brutal offerings yet. Maybe the worst part is that she doesn't die until what I assume is the next day, Thursday, he saws her arm off and apparently loses track of the hand. It's a small detail, but if he can lose track of a hand in a sky rise apartment you'd have to think it would be pretty easy to lose track of which events have and have not really happened. Later on, his scrambled brain continues to get much worse. He also notes that Bethany's lips are bitten off. It's not clear if he did that or if she did it to herself. Before long, Bateman's ability to switch back to a functional member of society would be tested as he had to attend a high end Wall Street party that evening. (Impact) ♪ Mysterious Music ♪ In the evening, after the debacle with Bethany Bateman attends a party hosted by Morgan Stanley, another financial company. And he tells a colleague he sees there that he's trying to stay away from people and avoid speaking to people entirely. Either this is a funny excuse to just not want to talk to this particular guy or he has so little self control at this moment that he doesn't even trust himself not to kill the dude. I just love all of Bateman's excuses, though. After the party, he sits in a cab with McDermott and Courtney discussing the differences in bottled waters for, like, ten minutes. You know, I'm starting to understand why he lost it now. In his head, he contemplates how he'll dispose of Bethany's skeleton and decides the incinerator down the hall from his apartment is the best choice. They stop at an ATM, but Courtney's card doesn't work which Patrick is able to recognize as damage caused by cutting cocaine. Though he doesn't always talk about it I can only imagine how bad his own drug use has gotten because he claims this has happened to him multiple times. When he gets home that night, he examines Bethany's body and smashes her jaw open with her own arm until her head caves. That weekend, a hard body told him that rap is the only thing she listens to. So after beating the shit out of her he went to the record store and picked up $90 worth of rap CDs. The next Monday, he was sitting in his office at 8PM. Doing the Crossword and listening to these CDs trying to fathom their popularity. I can actually relate to Bateman here. I try to fathom the popularity of rap music just about every time I hear it. Although he usually just likes anything that's hip and hip hop literally has hip in the name. I think the reason that he doesn't like rap is because it's not the right 1583 01:14:01,802 --> 01:14:02,464 kind of hip. The hip that he wants to be associated with consists of expensive suits, expensive restaurants and classy bars and clubs. The music he likes seems to be high production value- Pop and pop rock. Rap in the 80s was rapidly gaining popularity but it was still far less glamorous and featured themes such as life in the ghetto, being a gangster, and even advocating for the poor. Definitely not Bateman's scene. However, despite him probably being upset about rap, he's relieved to hear that Evelyn is in Boston for the week, and his favorite guy, Donald Trump, makes an appearance on his favorite show, the Patty Winter Show. This does seem like a believable Patty Winter segment. However, the next segment of the show is about women who have been tortured. That one is probably a hallucination and an indicator that Patrick's personal account of events is not too reliable during this part of the story. He did have dinner plans with Madison Gray and David Campion that evening. But at the last minute, he discovered that Luis Carruthers would be joining them. So he canceled and decided to ask his secretary Jean out to dinner instead. He tells her to choose any restaurant she'd like, and she chooses Dorsia. Not wanting to admit that he can't get them in, he calls the restaurant, and when the maître d' inevitably tells him that they're booked, he acts as if he really did get the reservation. You didn't give a name? They know me. Patrick is more tense than ever when calling Dorsia. He can casually dispose of bodies with relative ease, but getting Dorsia reservations will always rattle him. When they arrive, he looks over the podium into the reservation book and finds the name of a couple with a table at 09:00 p.m.. His plan works, but even after they're seated, he's so nervous that the words in the menu look like hieroglyphics to him, and for good reason. Eventually, the couple whose table he stole shows up. He thinks to himself that if the couple was less attractive or less well dressed, he might have at least been able to bribe his way into keeping the table. But since everyone in the whole restaurant looks like models, he has no leverage, and he's forced to leave with Jean. Bateman is humiliated, but Jean is laughing and skipping down the streets. She thinks he's funny and spontaneous, and Patrick is surprised. He's not used to going out with women who would appreciate the fun experience of trying to steal a dinner reservation. The women that he usually goes out with would judge him on his inability to get the reservation. They end up at Arcadia with an A and are one of only five tables filled there. It's not hip, but for Jean, it doesn't really matter, and at the end of the night, she invites him up for a drink. This is an opportunity for him to satiate his bloodlust, but something stops him, and he makes up weird excuses about why he can't go up. He wants to go home and watch David Letterman, but not on cable. Realizing this doesn't make sense, he reverts to his tried and true excuse to get out of anything. He's got to go return some videotapes. As he says goodbye to Jean, he imagines the scene as a movie. I almost hear the swelling of an orchestra, can almost hallucinate. The camera panning low around us, fireworks bursting in slow motion overhead. The 70 millimeter image of her lips parting to the subsequent murmur of I want you in dolby sound throughout the date. There are signs that he really may have feelings for Jean, and maybe that's why he wants to protect her by not going upstairs. He knows her life could be in danger if he does. As the hottest months of summer roll by, he has intense dreams about vivisection, the practice of cutting open live subjects. Yeah, okay, Bateman, go ahead and blame that one on the heat. One morning in August, he's paid a visit at his office by Detective Donald Kimball. In the movie, Kimball is played by Willem Defoe, but in the book, Kimball is the same age as Bateman. Just use your imagination. Throughout the interrogation, he plays it extremely cool, a stark contrast to his behavior at lunch with Bethany. He even allows Kimball to smoke inside his office, whereas he had loudly voiced his disgust for the patrons smoking in the restaurant. Kimball has been hired by Meredith Powell to investigate the disappearance of Paul Owen. Supposedly, Paul had been spotted in London. But unsurprisingly, the witness who saw him there may have been confusing him with somebody else. Even while trying to clear his name, Bateman can't help but make up a few lies to tarnish Owen's reputation. Then, when asked about the last time he was with Owen, he concocts a story about how they went to go see a new musical called Oh, Africa, Brave Africa. His lies could easily be disproven, but Bateman believes he's untouchable because of his money. And he may be right, because none of this ever comes back to bite him, it helps that Kimball doesn't actually suspect him in the first place. He's just covering his bases. He asks where Bateman was the night that Paul disappeared, and he spouts off something about a date with a girl named Veronica. Kimball realizes this doesn't match up with the info he's already collected. Apparently, the night of Paul's disappearance, he was scheduled to have dinner with Marcus Halberstam, as we would expect, because Bateman made the reservation under Halberstam's name. Naturally, the real Marcus Halberstam denied this and said he was with five other guys that night, one of which was Bateman himself. This whole mistaken identity thing has gotten so out of control that Bateman is given an alibi at a dinner he never even attended. Or maybe he did attend, and his mind is so out of sorts that he only thinks he killed Paul Owen. To demonstrate how scrambled his mind is during this very conversation, he's thinking about a hundred different things a minute. Bateman does offer some gossip, telling him that Meredith is now dating someone named Brock Thompson. If you're paying attention. This is very different from the last time we saw Meredith, which was at the Christmas party eight months ago. At the time, she was dating Paul Owen. I wonder if Patrick and Evelyn stealing their limo and Evelyn taking Meredith's Christmas gift contributed to the breakup, seeing as how relationships in these circles seem to hinge on access to material goods. Apparently, Meredith is looking for Paul not because she is concerned about him or cares about him, but because he owes her money. If we are to consider the possibility that Bateman did not actually kill Owen, this provides some incentive as to why he might be hiding out in London. By the way, Meredith seems to be a pretty big psycho in her own right, if you're keeping track at home. She dates Price. Who dumps her? Someone named Richard Cunningham. Van Patton. Then Paul Owen. And finally this Brock Thompson. In any event, Kimball doesn't seem to suspect foul play, and ironically, he thinks Paul is the one who went nuts. After Kimball leaves, Bateman gets his phone checked for wired taps, and he actually runs into Meredith and Brock that week. She doesn't even bring up Paul Owen once. Soon after, he begins an affair with a new girl named Jeanette. Jeanette is an interesting case. At first I thought she was just a new girl that Patrick was going to prey on, but I gradually started to wonder if she was almost more of an alter ego or fantasy version of the secretary, Jean, for example. When Patrick is being normal, he sees Jean, but when he's having his vile fantasies, he imagines himself out with Jeanette. It wouldn't be so different from the whole Arcadia versus Arcadia confusion. And it also makes me wonder if there's something to the fact that Patrick earlier on dated a girl named Patricia. There are even some character names that are just slightly changed. In the movie adaptation, Paul Owen is Paul Allen. Timothy Price is Timothy Bryce. Evelyn Richards is Evelyn Williams. Jeanette never interacts with any of the other characters. With one exception. In October, Patrick accidentally double books a date, and Evelyn and Jeanette end up at the same restaurant looking for him, and Evelyn gets pissed. She knows who Jean is, but they might not have ever met in person. So this might be another one of those questions that the author did not intend on being answered. This is also the part of the book where you have to in almost everything that Bateman says, so keep that in mind going forward. He's continuing on a steady trajectory towards complete insanity. He spends the rest of the summer of 89 doing all the stuff he usually does to reflect this. The Patty Winter Show in this era consists of repeats his nightly blood lust overflows into the daytime until finally he asks Evelyn to go with him on a getaway to the Hamptons. She has the key to Tim Price's vacation house, for some reason. So that's where they stay at first. This is actually a pretty normal couple's vacation. They did things like tennis, windsurfing and breakfast in bed. Then things get weird. He bought her a dog, which she named NutriSweet and fed dietetic chocolate truffles. Maybe the dog is imaginary because dogs definitely can't eat chocolate. As time went on, everything started to feel dull again and Patrick's weird behavior would return. He found himself roaming beaches, digging up crabs and eating sand. One morning he microwaved and ate a jellyfish, then fed the leftovers to the dog. Evelyn's old behavior also crept back up. She became obsessed with her beauty appointments, traveling back to the city more and more often to have them done. Bateman longs to kill again, so he takes advantage of her time away and uses it to drown NutraSweet. She doesn't even seem to remember that she even had a dog when she gets back, so it probably never existed. But maybe Evelyn is just that self obsessed. Bateman knows it's time to leave the Hamptons when he finds himself standing over their bed one night with an ice pick gripped in his fist, waiting for her to open her eyes. Somehow he comes to his senses before she wakes up. On September 3, one day before Labor Day that year, they would return to Manhattan by helicopter. Later that month, Patrick has dinner with a model named Elizabeth and two of her friends. Afterwards, they took a limousine to Nell's, and he left her there so he could go pick up Christy, the blonde corner girl from the previous year. She is hesitant because she got so dinged up last time, but he ups his offer so that it's too good to pass up her make her an offer that she can't refuse. He promises that nothing like last time would be repeated. Technically not wrong, because he would go way further. First, he forces Christy to wait in the limo as he goes back into Nell's and enjoys drinks with the others. He's treating her like a pet because that's probably what he thinks of her. He and Elizabeth don't emerge from Nell's until 230 in the morning. They go back to Bateman's apartment, where he tries to convince the two girls to hook up. Elizabeth is against the idea until the ecstasy he slipped into her wine kicks in. Patrick directs the scene again and eventually joins in himself. He and Elizabeth tie Christie up on the futon, but Bateman gets too hungry and bites off a slice of pepperoni, if you catch my drift. Soon Elizabeth has gained enough awareness to sense danger, and she's running for her life out of the bedroom. But she slips, allowing Patrick to get her in the neck with a butcher knife. Next, he tries to recharge Christy using a pair of jumper cables connected to a battery. I'll let you figure out how those were connected between that and the array of matches he drops on her. She gets more fried than the calamari at Dorsia. Still, she manages to survive until he mashes her up with a pair of pliers, laughing as he does so. Somehow, although it does not seem possible, Patrick's mental stability continues to worsen after this. Plus, he's nearly driven to do the unthinkable. After another confrontation with Luis Carruthers, (Impact) ♪ Classical Music ♪ Bateman resorts to seeing a psychiatrist. But it's unclear exactly what goes on in these sessions. We do know that he doesn't admit his murders to the psychiatrist. Eventually, he spills everything to his lawyer, but that's not until much later. One Sunday afternoon, after having brunch with Christie's remains, he's out shopping at Barney's after being chased out of the lady's shoe department for making a scene, and he has the sense that he's being followed and discovers it's Luis Carruthers who pretends that it's a random encounter. Patrick tries to ignore him, refusing to look him in the eyes as Carruthers begs for his attention. He claims he's transferring to the Arizona branch because he can't bear to be around Patrick, and has the idea that Patrick is hiding his true feelings towards him. Luis starts crying and making a huge scene, which draws the attention of a security guard. Bateman threatens to slit his throat, but this does no good, because Carruthers cries that if they can't be together, he'd prefer to die. Bateman feels his sanity starting to fade, and it eventually gets to the point that he kicks Luis in the face and tells him to face reality, which seems to at least get Luis to stop whining. As autumn progresses, Bateman's homicidal compulsion goes up and down. He's sleeping in 20 minutes intervals, likely due to the clash of substances in his system. One day, he roams Central Park Zoo. He sees a sign warning guests not to throw coins which can kill the animals if swallowed, so he tosses a handful of them into the seal tank when nobody's looking. He believes it's the audience's enjoyment of the seals that bothers him, not the seals themselves. The bar for what triggers him is getting lower and lower. At the bird exhibit, he perceives some kind of telepathic communication from a snowy owl. Huey Lewis's sport is a flawless masterpiece. You say, OH RLY? Then in the penguin habitat, he crouches behind a trash can where a kid is throwing away a candy wrapper and stabs him in the throat, then mingles into the crowd and watches the reaction when the kid's mother discovers what has become of her child. He falsely claims to be a doctor and basically holds the child and does nothing until police arrive. After all of this, despite this probably being the riskiest thing he's done, he feels unsatisfied because he's taking a life that doesn't have much history and will affect fewer people, as opposed to taking someone in their prime who has friends, a career, a spouse and a past. This is obviously debatable because I think a lot of people are going to be more upset about something happening to a kid due to genetic instincts that drive us to protect our young. So this may be another example of him being out of touch with human emotion. He ends up just standing there and watching everything unfold as he slowly blends back into the crowd, then walks away. Even Bateman's appearances at the office start to become more sporadic. It seems the only thing he wants to do is work out and get restaurant reservations, then cancel them. He's mindlessly feeding his addiction. His apartment begins to wreak of brain pulp, which he had scooped out of Christie's head. So he uses Paul Owen's apartment to host two escort girls who he tortures with mace, a nail gun, nail scissors, a steak knife, acid and an array of power tools. I guess he felt a little self conscious when they started complimenting Owen's night's apartment. - [Christy] This is nicer than your other apartment. – [Patrick Bateman] It's not that nice Since he has other plans later, he goes about his day as normal after this, almost as if killing gives him a reset on his ability to function in society. In mid-October, he gets a bunch of new deliveries to his apartment, one of which is a replacement for his David Onica painting, which he's now decided to sell. This was the painting that Bethany had laughed at him for hanging upside down, more evidence of his yearning for her approval even after her supposed death. He's on the phone when he hears a huge rat emerge from his toilet and steal a leftover pizza. When I made the Chuck E. Cheese video. I never thought I'd be using this clip again. Actually, he specifies it's a giant rat, so let's use this one instead. He's on a lot of Halcyon, the sleep medication that wards off total insanity. So the rat doesn't bother him as much as it should. He just buys an extra large mouse trap and spends the night in his dad's old suite in the Carlisle. The next morning, he finds the rat alive in the trap and barricades it in the sink with plans to use it to freak out girls. Though freak out is probably an understatement, as you will soon find out. And that brings us to another night. This is probably my favorite book chapter that isn't in the movie because of its chaotic ridiculousness, but it also gave me an epiphany about what's really going on with Patrick Bateman, and I think it holds the answer to what happened to Paul Owen. So let's break it down. It starts at 06:30 p.m. With Bateman and McDermott discussing their reservations for a restaurant called 1500. We find out that Hamlin wants to join, but he wants to eat somewhere else, but he doesn't have a backup place in mind and he wants to invite Luis Carothers. Bateman obviously says no, then tries to back out altogether. Then he changes his mind, realizing that Hamlin might be able to supply them with drugs and Luis won't be making it after all. So McDermott goes to cancel the reservation at 1500, and Hamlin goes to make a new reservation at Zeus Bar. While he's on the other line, they realize Zeus Bar might be hard to get into and brainstorm a backup plan. Then Jeanette calls on the other line, upset, and Bateman invites her to meet them at Zeus Bar. Back in the main call, they couldn't get into Zeus Bar, so McDermott makes a 09:00 P.m. Reservation at Kaktus. Jeanette calls again and he gets confused and tells her they'll be at Zeus Bar. Back in the main call, Van Patton joins and he's going to go to dinner too. Then Evelyn calls on the other line, already aware of their plans at Kaktus thanks to Hamlin's girlfriend spilling the beans. He tells her that it's actually Zeus Bar that they're going to, which again is incorrect. He returns to the main call, where they remind him that he's already invited Jeanette, so bringing Evelyn might be a problem. Van Patton suggests canceling Jeanette and inviting Evelyn to Zeus Bar at 930, where again, they do not have reservations. Bateman doesn't want to see Evelyn, so he tries to get Hamlin's girlfriend to invite Evelyn to go somewhere else. She refuses because she now has one on one plans with Hamlin, so he just invites both of them to go with the main group, unable to remember if they're going to Kaktus or Zeus Bar. Van Patton no longer wants Mexican food and they can't remember who made the reservation. Van Patton suggests a different restaurant called 1969, but when he goes to make the reservation, it's full. It's now 830. They continue to argue for another hour, so it's 930. They've been on the phone for 3 hours. This includes them canceling the Kaktus reservation and remaking it, and Bateman getting confused and canceling a nonexistent table at Zeus Bar. 1969 is now closed. 1500 is now closed. McDermott remakes another Kaktus reservation. Then Bateman gets a call from Evelyn, who is already at Kaktus with Jeanette, and she's pissed. He tells her they'll be going there shortly. But then the men start talking about something else, and it's unclear if they'll ever actually go to Kaktus or if they just continue to improvise their plans for the entire night. The key takeaway for all of this for me is how Bateman easily loses track of who's going and where they have reservations. We even see him start to invent reservations in his head cannon that were never actually made. So if Bateman's brain can be disoriented that easily, who is to say that he wouldn't also lack the ability to keep track of who he actually killed and who he just fantasized about killing? Now, in order for this to be possible, it's very likely that he does actually kill sometimes. But he has the situational awareness not to get himself caught in the moment. So if he's with an important coworker like Paul Owen, for example, he'll create a fantasy story in his head. He knows Paul is going to London, so he fantasizes about killing Paul and making it look like he's in London. But looking back at it shortly after, he just remembers the fantasy and comes to believe that that's what he really did. As for the other victims, it's very hard to determine if any of them are real or not, because the insanity is taking a bigger and bigger hold on him. For example, that month he films himself eating a girl's brain, and The Patty Winter Show is about a machine that lets people talk to the dead. His next victim is one of his most disturbing. He's foaming at the mouth and stuffs her insides full of cheese. Then he sticks a habit trail into her you know, those tunnels for pet rodents to run in? He then unleashes the giant rat, who he's been starving for the last five days and its bone appetite. At the end, he cuts her in two with the chainsaw, which goes through her so fast that she's alive for a moment to see him remove her legs from the rest of her body. He places her femur and jawbone to bake in the oven. I would say that Halloween came early this year, but for Patrick, it seems to come early every day of every year. Speaking of which, for Halloween, the office has a Halloween party, and Bateman goes as a mass murderer using a combination of real and fake blood. Nobody knows any better. As usual, this seems to give him that mental reset, and he's able to function normally for a short while in early November. He describes this feeling as being halfway capable of being cheerful. So he accepts Evelyn's invitation to go out to dinner. And while the dinner did manage to be halfway normal by his standards, the same could not be said about dessert. That morning, he stole a urine old cake and covered it with chocolate syrup and packaged it in a fancy box. He pays the waiter to present the dessert at the end of the meal, as if he had called earlier and ordered it special, and he sees to it that her water glass is empty when it arrives. As Evelyn eats it, she tries to hide her gag by saying it was just mintier than she suspected. This could truly only work on someone like Evelyn, who favors the value of the food she's eating over how it actually tastes. She also doesn't want to do anything to upset Patrick because of what she's about to ask next. She wants him to make a firm commitment for marriage. Patrick realizes that the eye she's had on him over the last two years is rooted in something closer to greed than adoration and explains to her what's truly important to him. – [Patrick Bateman] I need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale. – [Patrick Bateman] Cannot be corrected, but I have no other way to fulfill my needs. No. Huge surprise. But she doesn't get it and thinks he's asking her to get breast implants again, which is a hilarious little detail in its own right. He tells Evelyn that it's over between them. He doesn't want to be weighed down with a commitment at 27 years old. According to his earlier comments, he would have recently just turned 28. So again, he's unable to keep track of time, not even realizing his own age. It takes a while for Evelyn to understand that he's serious about this breakup, but when she does, she becomes hysterical. Although Bateman doesn't enjoy her suffering as much as he thought he would, as she's crying and begging to know what will make him stay with her, his mind just wanders to a hundred other things. He tells her that because of her outburst, he will not be paying for the meal, and he leaves. Free from the confines of his relationship. Hh moves on to try even wilder things that would make his previous adventures look minuscule. He would make the most of the limited time remaining in the era of the yuppie, the 1980s were coming to a close. (Impact) ♪ Mysterious Music ♪ I tried for close to an hour to explain what happens in the chapter entitled Tries to Cook and Eat Girl without getting myself age restricted or yeeted off this platform and came up with close to nothing. If you need the details, go read the book yourself. I'm just gonna skip right to the analysis part. At first, Bateman kept his vices relatively closed off from one another. Then we saw certain bedroom activities combined with certain sharp object related activities. Now we are seeing his love of dining thrown into the mix as well. Then he does all of that while watching videos, just like the average CZsWorld viewer. I'm kidding. So he's combining more and more of these addictions. His hobbies are becoming one big conglomerate activity. My takeaway is that he's no longer able to get the response he used to from doing them individually. So now, in order to get that bigger hit, he's got to stack them. He also considers for maybe the first time if he'll ever spend time in prison. He can't tell if he's cooking anything correctly because he's never cooked before and he's crying too hard. Another new development. As far as we know, he's now carrying firearms around, keeping them in his locker when he goes to the gym, and bringing them on his daily errands, like returning videos, ATM withdrawals and violating NYU students. A new Patty Winter centers around a man who set his daughter on fire while she was giving birth. In addition to the Patty Winter Show segment serving as an insanity indicator, some of his meals seem to do the same. He goes to dinner with associates and they all order shark. Perhaps that is fitting because Bateman is seeing everyone around him as potential prey. Now, this is the craziest he gets. This is the absolute bottom. After midnight that night, he shoots a saxophonist performing on an empty street corner. But his silencer doesn't work, and he fails to notice a police squad car traveling behind him. At first, he tries to walk away casually, then it breaks into a run. The cop car takes off after him, so he jumps into a taxi and orders the cabby to drive, apparently just expecting that the guy will obey him just because he's so used to bossing around to blue collar workers. The guy panics, so Bateman shoots him and jacks the car, losing control into a Korean deli and knocking over the cashier. A cop charges from seemingly nowhere and knocks him to the sidewalk, and the two wrestle for Bateman's gun. But while all this is going on, all he can think about is that there should be music playing because it reminds him of an action scene in a movie. It's very reminiscent of the end of his Dinner with Jean that summer. He gets the upper hand on the cop and shoots him twice in the head. But as he's trying to get away, more cop cars show up in an alley and it turns into a huge firefight in the romance scene with Jean Patrick hallucinated, something cinematic then eventually came back down to earth. So if you haven't figured it out yet, that is probably what's happening here, because this whole Manhattan chase is pretty unrealistic, especially when this happens. He runs off to Wall Street and, noticing he's in a more affluent area, tries to steal several Porsches, unsuccessfully. So like an action hero, he somersaults over an embankment to get to his office building. Another more clear cut sign that he's in a hallucination is that he sees his office building and the lights go off floor by floor. As he approaches. However, he realizes that this is his old building before his company moved. This may be an extension of the theme of characters misidentifying one another, now expanded to include buildings, which is actually more understandable. - [Security Guard] Burning the midnight oil Mr. Smith. Ripped to the night watchman and to a janitor that happened to be watching. Patrick goes to his real office, signs in with his real night watchman, goes up to his office, and that's when the calmness returns. He thinks he may really be in some trouble this time and calls his lawyer, Harold Carnes, but gets the machine. He leaves a message sobbing as he details everything he's done 30, 40, maybe 100 murders. A helicopter combs the area with a searchlight. But just like that, night turns to day and it's morning. Bateman describes this as some kind of optical illusion, though it's probably just his psychosis. However, his voicemail message to Carnes would eventually be acknowledged. Until then, he returns to the real world. He takes Jeanette to dinner at Deck Chairs, stays home to watch Patty Winters, and then sleeps with Courtney while Luis is in Atlanta. One week before their wedding, Courtney seems depressed and tries to talk to Patrick about something, but he brushes her off, telling her she's going to marry Luis and that there's nothing to talk about. Whatever she was going to say, she keeps to herself. During a dinner at Smith and Wollensky with Craig McDermott, Bateman's mind wanders to his cousin from Washington, who recently bit a girl's earlobes off. If this is real, it's likely that Bateman's condition is hereditary, or at the very least, mental illness runs in the family. We know his mother is institutionalized for something, which we'll get to, and his little brother definitely exhibits a lot of sociopathic personality traits himself. McDermott, always one to criticize one's food choices, called Bateman a raving maniac for not ordering the hash browns. Been at PNP too long, he mutters. Another night, after seeing a musical with Jeanette, he describes another strange food order, eagle Carpaccia, which comes with a weird gazpacho containing raw chicken, something that no restaurant would ever serve for health and safety reasons, except maybe one. - [Futurama] Good, because it turns out I forgot to cook that chicken. Unlike Evelyn, who talks too much, Jeanette hardly seems to speak at all. Throughout the date, she keeps sighing and threatening to light her cigarette in the nonsmoking section. She drinks six champagne cures, and he even considers her behavior unsettling, causing black thoughts to form and expand in his head, It's almost like Jeanette is a reflection of Bateman's desires. Evelyn annoyed him. She talked too much, said the wrong things, had the wrong interests, and was resistant to almost everything he did. Jeanette, on the other hand, seems to go along with anything, and the more disturbing Bateman's headspace gets, the more disturbed he is by Jeanette's behavior. He even tells her to get a water when she's thirsty instead of more champagne. The following month, Patrick has a rare visit with his mother in the mental institution Sandstone. At least I assume this takes place in December because his mom asks him what he wants for Christmas. Patrick is under the impression that it's mid April. I'm not really sure either of them can be trusted to correctly relay the date. However, the previous events definitely took place in November. Courtney told Patrick to have a nice Thanksgiving, and we've not yet reached the chapter titled End of the 1980s. At first, it's unclear why he visits his mom. He doesn't seem to care about her at all. But throughout the encounter, he takes note of all the things he's bought her. It's likely that he's visiting to give her gifts, another win that he can hold over Sean. The next time we hear from Patrick, he claims that 161 days have passed since his night at Paul's apartment with the two escort girls. That puts us somewhere in February or March of the year 1990. That is, if you want to believe that he has his bearings. When he says 161 days have passed, I'm going to take his word for it this time because it's raining and rain during March in New York. Makes sense. Plus we don't really have anything else to go on. With no word of any bodies being discovered in any newspaper, he gets curious and starts asking peers if they heard about two mutilated women in Paul Owens apartment, which is absolutely hilarious to inquire about. He's practically begging to get caught, but nobody will throw a suspicious glance in his direction. Of course, given my theory that Paul's death was only a fantasy, he never would have acquired access to Paul's apartment, which means he never would have brought the girls there. That was also a fantasy. This is backed up by the fact that when he checks back in 161 days later, the building looks different and the keys no longer fit, maybe because they never did. A doorman lets him in anyway and he goes up to an apartment in the midst of a real estate showing. He notices the blinds are different but the furniture is the same and there are bouquets of flowers all over the apartment, which he can smell. Could this be proof that he actually did kill Paul and the realtor is using the flowers to cover the stench left behind by the bodies of the escorts? Or is that overthinking it? It is normal to want the apartment you're trying to sell to smell good. The realtor tells him that Paul does not live there, but she realizes something that causes her to tighten up. Perhaps most suspiciously, this happens. -[Realtor] You saw the ad in the Times, –[Patrick Bateman] No. Yeah. –[Patrick Bateman] I mean, yeah, in the Times. -[Realtor] There was no ad in the Times. -[Realtor] I think you should go now. This is the most compelling evidence that the murders are actually real. However, I'd make the counterargument that Patrick's behavior is just unnerving in general and she probably felt uncomfortable with him just showing up out of the blue and snooping around. She tells him not to come back and watches him all the way back to the door in the elevator, the smell of roses is overpowering, which symbolizes Patrick seriously feeling the paranoia of getting caught for the first time. But that doesn't stop him from slicing up three more women and according to him, storing their private parts in his gym locker. The chapter I mentioned earlier, entitled End of the 1980s actually takes place several months into the new year. He says the anniversary of Elvis's death was a month ago and Elvis died on August 16. So theoretically it's mid September. As always, there's a very good possibility that Patrick has no idea what the date is. But he does say on multiple occasions that this is September and the cool, sunny weather does match up. As for the chapter title, he might not be saying this is literally where 1980 ends, as in, like, New Year's Eve, but this might be the first moment where it stops feeling like the 1980s. Much like how I always say that the 1990s ended in 2003 with the release of Hey Ya. He's now having horrible dreams where rich people in lavish settings are massacred in tragic ways. He's no longer able to distinguish a dream from reality, as evidenced by the ratio of brutal accidents he sees randomly walking around in the city. He meets Jean for lunch near Tower Records, and they seem to be dating now. As they discuss plans for dinner, he mentions that he's on a diet. Jean tells him that he already looks great, to which he replies, you can always be thinner. A callback to Evelyn's you can always be in better shape line way back in Chapter one. Somehow it seems that he's still holding a grudge against Evelyn. Jean tells him they don't have to go out to dinner if it's going to ruin his willpower, and he admits he's not very good at controlling it anyways, which has got to be the understatement of the year. Over coffee, he tells her a story about a Wall Street guy he saw marking up a wall in the bathroom who wrote Kill All Yuppies. Earlier I talked about how the yuppie lifestyle was already growing out of fashion in the eyes of the crowd at Club Chernobyl, and now it appears that even Wall Street people are sick of the fad. If the date is September 1990, that means we're only seven months away from that yuppie dumb obituary being published in Time magazine. Bateman has modeled his entire lifestyle around being hip and rich, but that's about to go out of style, which can't be good for his mental stability. As usual, Jean doesn't seem to care about any of that. She tells him that they need to talk about something, and anyone who's ever heard those words knows what comes next. She thinks she's in love with him, and he gives her very mixed signals in return. Usually he's much more direct with women, which could mean that he really does feel something for Jean but just doesn't know how to deal with that. Jean is worried that he's disappointed in her for confessing her love, but he secretly thinks that he could never be disappointed because he no longer finds anything worth looking forward to. Her reasons for liking him are also completely off the mark. She sees him as someone concerned with others mysterious, considerate, and shy. Summertime is Jean. He explains the lines separating appearance what you see and reality, what you don't, become, well, blurred. He's very aware of the illusionment he's been living in over the last couple of years, and although he seems to be giving her the cold shoulder at first, he has this realization that this could be a crucial moment in his life. For the first time, Jean seems stronger and less controllable than before, which he's attracted to and thinks to himself, why not end up with her? Well, before he could consider that, there would be one major roadblock. (Impact) Sometime after he turns 29 in October, Patrick Bateman gets some news from Jeanette. She's pregnant. Something that's kind of surprising because he's been very particular about contraception in the past. On December 20, they argue about if they should carry forward with the pregnancy, which results in Jeanette getting a black eye. The next day, he gets his way and Jeanette is sobbing the entire car ride to the abortion clinic. According to Patrick, this is the fifth time he's aborted a pregnancy. With all of that being said, I can't say with much confidence that any of this actually happened, because the Patty Winter Show that day featured an interview with Big Foot. This is the last time we see Jeanette, so maybe the abortion is more symbolic. An abortion is immediate and irreversible, and he's ending his relationship with her in an immediate, irreversible way. Once again, he experiments with new ways to hurt her that don't include physical abuse. He buys a bunch of baby items a doll, a rattle, a teething ring, and a stuffed polar bear and leaves them in the back of the limo for her to find when she gets back. He's about to leave on a flight to Aspen that day, and Jeanette is going to be out of the country when he returns. He makes it very clear that he doesn't plan on seeing her again. He says Jeanette should be okay. She has her whole life in front of her. That is, if she doesn't run into me. If you want to interpret Jeanette as a fantasy version of Jean, this means he's decided to focus his efforts on being with the real Jean. If you want to interpret Jeanette as just a separate woman, then this means Patrick is just ending his relationship with her. Bateman gets back from Aspen in January 1991 and finally makes use of his piano for the first time, or at least the piano strings, which he uses on a couple of victims. The second week of February is especially unhinged. He starts drinking his own urine, sleeping under his futon, flossing his gums to bleeding, and he's nearly caught trying to send a girl's heart to her mother at FedEx. He also doesn't seem entirely done torturing Evelyn, because he sends her a box of flies with a note saying he never wants to see her again and to go on a diet... LOL. Meanwhile, his relationship with Jean seems to have blossomed. On Valentine's Day, he shows affection in the only way he knows how by having a bunch of expensive stuff delivered to her apartment. The shipment also includes hundreds of white roses. The white rose is said to symbolize loyalty, purity and innocence. I don't really know where that comes from. But if you look up white rose symbolism, a bunch of websites seem to agree on this fact. Of course, none of these characteristics apply to Bateman whatsoever. Is he attracted to these qualities in Jean? Or does he have a desire to clean up his act? Time will tell. That morning he also has his maid come in and clean up a bloody mess in his apartment. I'm guessing this is not real. Or maybe this maid is just incredibly subservient. It wouldn't be the first time that he hired someone to clean up after his carnage. He reads various articles in the Post, such as three people who disappeared aboard a yacht found hacked up and frozen in ice, and a maniac going around poisoning one liter bottles of Evian water. This is a lot like the first chapter, where Bateman and Price read about two people who disappeared on a yacht among a slew of other problems with their city. Both of these chapters take place on a pseudo holiday, April Fool's Day and Valentine's Day, respectively. We see this a lot in any traditional story structure. It's called the denouement, or falling action after the climax, where things go back to normal. Usually this happens after some kind of resolution with the main character, but Bateman stands out here because nothing has been resolved with him. And speaking of a return to the beginning, Timothy Price resurfaces for the first time since his disappearance in the tunnel at Tunnel nightclub almost four years ago. Now, early on, I discussed Bateman following in his footsteps. It's rumored that Price went to rehab, and it makes me wonder if Bateman will do the same at some point. Or maybe he already has. Price visits him in his office and has a smudge on his forehead that Bateman assumes is a hallucination. However, in 1991, the Catholic holiday Ash Wednesday was the day before Valentine's Day. So it's likely that this smudge was actually just leftover ash. Ash Wednesday is the day that Catholics give up something that they love. Maybe Price has decided to give up his use of drugs. When asked where he's been, he says that he's been back for a while, but he moved companies a callback to his complaints about his pay in the first chapter. One day after feeding portions of brain matter to dogs in the park, he passes by Al, the Hobo that he supposedly blinded in 1988. He's holding a sign that reads Vietnam Vet blinded in Vietnam. This would suggest that he was already blind and Bateman's assault on him was just imaginary. However, when Bateman goes up to him and whispers, you never were in Vietnam, the man pisses himself and begs him not to hurt him. We're constantly being shown conflicting evidence towards the validity of Patrick's outbursts. To top it all off, the Patty Winter Show that day features a cheerio being interviewed for close to an hour, and Patrick buys a chocolate bar that he claims has a bone in it. One evening, Bateman goes to a new club called World's End with Jean and another woman named Nina. When he finally runs into his lawyer, Harold Carnes, the two have not spoken since Bateman's unhinged voicemail confession. When he brings it up, it becomes clear that Carnes has, like many others, mistaken him with someone named Davis, and he thinks the whole thing is a joke. He doesn't even believe that Bateman would be capable of killing Paul Owen or even picking up an escort because he sees him as too much of a goody goody. Carnes thinks that Evelyn was the one to dump him. And when Bateman insists that the murders really did happen, he refuses to believe. -[Carnes] Because I had dinner with Paul Allen twice in London just ten days ago. Is it possible, given all the mistaken identity in this story, that Carnes actually had dinner with somebody else? Sure, but as I stated, I don't believe that Paul is really dead. To calm down. Patrick takes a halcion. He also tries to get Nina's number while Jean is in the bathroom downstairs. Even though he seems to recognize that Jean is special to him, he still has not departed from his adulterous ways. The next week, he reluctantly has a decadent breakfast with his former dealer, who got a real job and another colleague. Instead of his mind wandering to the usual degenerate stuff he's into, he thinks about helping America's schools and getting tickets to see Sting in Three Penny Opera. Just as very strange behavior for him, because helping schools sounds like something he preached about to virtue signal to his friends way back at the beginning, rather than something that he'd actually be interested in doing. And not long ago, he thought that Jeanette deserved to get an abortion because she thought Sting was cool. Is Patrick starting to gain some sensibility back? He finds himself reading the paper as he listens to his walkman in a taxi, just like he did back in Chapter One. But the cab driver keeps looking at him funny. Then the driver locks the doors and speeds down the highway, accusing him of being the guy who killed a fellow cabby named Soli. This could be the driver that Bateman took out before that big Manhattan chase scene. Perhaps parts of that scene were real. Ironically, he's finally been correctly identified, and it's by a nobody. The cab driver is holding a gun and robs him of his Rolex watch, his wallet, and his expensive sunglasses, knowing that he can't go to the police. Otherwise, the driver will just rat him out. There is no reward for turning in Bateman, so he's able to steal his stuff without repercussion. This is the first consequence that Patrick has ever paid for his actions, and it isn't much. However, he does lose his expensive material possessions, which are part of what makes him feel powerful. Before speeding off the cab driver calls him a yuppie scumbag, which makes Bateman choke up a sob. He's supposed to have power over blue collar people like a cab driver. All in all, the emotional damage to Bateman's ego probably ends up being the worst part of this ordeal for him. His insurance pays for a new gold Rolex, but his mind continues to deteriorate. He believes his ATM machine is speaking to him with weird messages, and a park bench followed him home for six blocks and spoke to him. He spends the morning making a necklace out of a girl's vertebrae and wearing it to watch adult tapes. But he still returns to his usual debauchery. One Friday, a group of guys, including Price, McDermott, Goodrich and Farrell, go back to the first bar that we ever saw Bateman go to Harry's. And American Psycho comes to a close, with the guys debating where to get dinner reservations. As everyone bombards Bateman with questions of men's, fashion and other useless topics that he's made himself an expert in, he wonders if he's become a fitness junkie. Certainly an ironic thing for an actual junkie to be worried about. His favorite group is now the Talking Heads. It's a relatively normal topic on the Patty Winter Show. Does economic success equal happiness? The answer from the guys is a resounding definitely. Even though there's been no shortage of scenes lately with Bateman crying and depressed, we see him lose track of the calendar once more when scenes from President George H. W. Bush's inauguration come on screen, which Bateman thinks was earlier in the year. The inauguration took place in January 1989, and it is now early 1991. He also says he's 27 years old, even though he's 29 now. I think I'm going to say the same thing I got scammed out of two years during COVID. They debate the pros and cons of President Bush, and conversation eventually shifts to work. The Fisher account is no longer the hot commodity. Now the guys are more interested in the Shepherd account. He sees someone who looks like Marcus Halberstam paying a check. Above one of the doors, there's a sign that reads this is not an exit, which references the Jean Paul-Sartre play no Exit, in which the characters are trapped in a room that represents hell. Bateman may go on going through the motions of his life and probably will never face time for his crimes, but he'll always be crushed under the weight of his vices. However, the end of American Psycho is not the end of the Patrick Bateman timeline, so to speak. And no, I'm not talking about the atrocity known as American Psycho Two: All American Girl. Where a little girl kills him with an ice pick and all of his crimes are exposed. No, if we're going by the canon, there were a few details about Bateman's life documented in the American Psycho 2000 emails, a viral marketing campaign used to promote the release. Of the movie adaptation of American Psycho. In our world, these emails were written by the movie marketing team, not Brett Easton Ellis. However, they were approved by Ellis, so some fans consider them canon. However, it is possible that these emails are more of a sequel to the movie than the novel, because they use movie variations of the character names like Paul Allen instead of Paul Owen. But it's easy to chalk that up to the fact that these emails are supposed to promote the movie. And other than that minor detail, the emails do better fit the timeline of the novel, because despite being set in the spring of 2000, they fill in details about what happened to Bateman right after the events of the book in 1991. Plus, they do make references to details that are only in the book, like Bateman's grandfather owning a property in Connecticut and Courtney moving to Arizona. So it's understood that this is supposed to be a follow up to the book. The emails describe Jean being there for Patrick at his lowest point, and by fall of 1991, she is pregnant with their first child. Even if it wasn't her initial intention to date Patrick for his money, she does grow accustomed to being rich pretty early on. At some point, they do get married. And in early to mid 1992, at the age of 30, Patrick Bateman would become a father. (Impact) ♪ Classical Music ♪ Patrick Bateman, Jr. Would become known by his initials, PB. As he grew up, he quickly learned to avoid anything that his father would find objectionable. He preferred browsing expensive catalogs to being entertained by the likes of Barney or Mickey Mouse. Patrick considered his son to be his best accessory. By spring of 1993, Jean started to not like the idea of flying commercially. She didn't want their son to be breathing the same air as the other flyers, and this pushed Patrick to look into purchasing a private jet. Before we get to the beginning of Patrick's email inbox, he does have two other appearances in the novels of Brett Easton Ellis. The first is in his conspiracy satire novel Glam-orama or Glamorama, I'm not really sure. That novel seems to take place entirely in 1996. So five years after the end of American Psycho, and it appears that he's still quite literally getting away with murder, the main character, a male model named Victor, is planning this big party for celebrities to celebrate the opening of a new club. Like Bateman, he lives a very glamorous lifestyle, as the title would suggest. One evening at a popular bar called Bowery Bar, which is absolutely filled with A list celebrities, Patrick is with a bunch of publicists and the sons of a well known movie producer, the first of his dabbling into the movie business. And he stops by to say hi to Victor. As they shake hands, Victor notices weird stains on the lapel of his Armani suit that costs as much as a car personally, I think that's all the evidence I need to assume that Patrick is still up to his old ways. Victor's girlfriend finds him strange, but Victor insists that he's a nice guy. I should also mention that Victor is not the smartest. Bateman does appear in one other Brett Easton Ellis book, but it's not really supposed to be canon. Lunar park is a mock memoir of the author himself, set in the late ninety s and early 2000s. Starting with the press tour for the release of Glam-orama, there are portions where Ellis interacts with his own characters, so this most likely takes place in the real world, not the Brett Houston Ellis verse. There are little information bits in the emails that fill the two year gap between Glam-orama and the main events of the American Psycho 2000 emails. In 1998, he left Jean and moved to a new apartment because he felt he needed a change. He ends up in a sky mansion in Central Park West, three floors with his own gym, sauna spa and media center. He considers this time away from Jean to be the most pleasant time of their relationship. He also makes getaways to a luxury hotel on the French Riviera and teaches PB to swim, dive and water ski at the same pavilion where he learned each of these skills as a boy. At the beginning of the new millennium, Patrick is 38 years old and PB is seven. By this time, Patrick has gotten much richer than he was in American Psycho. He has his own private jet called the Falcon 50, and he has all the latest in 90's communication technology, such as the satellite phone. Truly cutting edge. He no longer works at Pierce and Pierce. There was some kind of issue, and he explains it was better for all parties involved if he quietly left. I'd assume he just does investment banking on his own now. Despite that, he still has a new greatest rival, a billionaire from the Midwest named Davis Ferguson. He loathes Ferguson because he has stocks in a silica mining company that Bateman would like for himself. It's Paul Owen and the Fisher account all over again. Bateman has hired spies to keep tabs on Ferguson for the time being. Patty Winters seems to have gone off the air, but Bateman has found other talk shows to watch. He does not like modern music. The emails consist of personal journals that seem to be to himself and communications with a therapist named Dr. M who has been hired to do virtual therapy sessions. He thinks that having gone to therapy will help him in his custody battle over his son. Bateman clearly doesn't care what the doctor has to say about him and has instructed him to shut up and follow Patrick's agenda during their virtual sessions. Dr. M doesn't think this will be helpful and questions the ethics of it, but Bateman replies, do you want the money or don't you? And Dr. M has no further concerns. The main issue in the divorce proceedings is that Jean wants $189,000 per month in alimony, which Patrick finds ridiculous because she grew up in a $40,000 house. Patrick sends Dr. M To try to get information from Jean that could be used in the trial. As for friends and associates, Patrick has hired Marcus Halberstam to do something overseas in order to get away from New York after some quote unpleasant innuendo about Paul Owen attached itself to him. Surprisingly, Luis Carruthers is back after getting divorced from Courtney. Patrick found that Carruthers was useful at sucking valuable information out of media and entertainment figures and decided to make use of it. Price seems to have had his own brief marriage to Courtney, and Van Patton unsuccessfully tried to become a model. There's no mention of McDermott. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that by this time, Patrick has actually gotten his act together. So it seems. He indicates he's stopped doing cocaine because he sees the brand Prada as a much better status symbol. And he claims that he has mastered his rage and found better ways to channel his extreme dislike of people and things. But make no mistake, he may not go around killing people anymore, but he uses his cunning, personality, and abundance of power to torture and sometimes even destroy his victims. He is still an American Psycho. In February, PB goes to Palm Beach with friends and comes back wanting a bigger plane and a horse. He's allergic to horses, but Patrick gets him a racing horse to watch in the Kentucky Derby. The therapy sessions began on March 16. The next day, Patrick gets a call from Evelyn. Apparently, they're back in touch, and she's sorry to hear about the divorce, but uses it as an opportunity to take a dig at him. That's what happens when you don't marry one of your own. On the 24th, he meets her for lunch at the Carlyle Hotel, where she's living now. He's hungover from partying the previous night. Some things never change. She shoots her shot, telling him that she hasn't had a good time in three years. Patrick isn't surprised by this, given that all of her husbands were gay. And no, we don't know how many husbands she had. However, she gets upset and throws a Caesar salad at him. It crashes to the floor, and when he sees croutons, he leaves, telling her he can't have them due to his diet. Another major development for Bateman is that the 1990s seemed to have cured him of his homophobia. He's friends with a gay multibillionaire named Simone Derevny. On March 28, while aboard Simone's 200 foot boat, they plot against Davis Ferguson and joke about getting an even bigger boat when it's all over. Later, he eats lunch with Luis Carruthers, who is now out of the closet. Patrick has been using Luis to spy on Ferguson's son, who goes by Terry Davis and is also gay, though I'm not sure. Carruthers knows he's a spy, but Bateman is using him to get information. Ferguson was the country's largest owner of silicon mines, but the government tried to break up his monopoly in the 80s, so he sold the majority of the stocks to an offshore entity, secretly making his son Terry the chief beneficiary of the offshore company. So Terry has no idea how rich he is, and Ferguson must never let anyone find out, otherwise he's going to jail. Terry is also broke now. His father stopped giving him money after his 10th trip to rehab because of this when he received a lunch invite from the multibillionaire Simone Dereveni on March 31. He accepted, and Bateman watched the entire encounter from a nearby table. Simone handed him an envelope proving that Terry is the legal owner of the Tray Corporation, which is worth $2 billion. The next day is April 1, the twelve year anniversary of the beginning of American Psycho. Evelyn calls and tells him she's now being sued by a maid who slipped on an anchovy from the salad that she threw at Bateman. He doesn't seem too interested in talking to her, but there's a noticeable difference in how he treats her. He no longer blows up his unwanted relationships like he did in his twenties and he's clearly becoming more sly about destroying his enemies. The next day was Sunday, which is his day with PB, and the two went to the movies and saw PB's favorite, the 6th Sense. PB has excellent taste. Patrick is going to take him in the car, but the kid would rather walk, claiming he no longer wants to be seen in the car in case he runs into his friends. PB has excellent taste. It's kind of funny how Patrick's entire life is him flexing his wealth for others to see. And while his son is equally concerned by what his peers think of him, He doesn't want to be seen coming out of an expensive car. I would argue that the truly rich are those who receive the benefits of walking and public transportation. I guess 80s Bateman is superior to 2000s Bateman in that regard. Patrick asks his son what they will do if it rains, even though he clearly has a raincoat. So PB brings out some Metro tokens given to him by Jean, and Patrick doesn't know what they are, which is probably a mistake by the writers, because Patrick does use the subway in American Psycho, but we could explain this by saying that he was so coked up that he doesn't remember. On April 3, Patrick seems to be falling back into his own ways and makes this. Only this time he's motivated by his desire for a relationship with his son to keep his mask of sanity intact. On the fourth, the shares of the Tray Corporation are being sold to Simone Dereveny. Ferguson's name is not attached to these shares, so there's nothing he can do about it without exposing himself as the company's true operator and the criminal sanctions that go with that. In a moment of desperation, he calls Bateman, who agrees to meet with him at Le Cirque in New York. Meanwhile, Bateman has his place photographed for Architectural Digest New York issue, and it's a bigger invasion of privacy than he anticipated. One of the photographers says that Bateman's place is almost perfect other than the lighting fixtures, which gets under his skin. The yuppies may be long gone, but he's still fixated on having the best of the best. Davis arrives on the 6th and ends up looking foolish when he has to borrow a jacket from the Le Cirque management in order to fit the dress code. Bateman also bribes the coat girl to bring him an ugly jacket, just one of the many examples of the advanced warfare he now employs. Davis would like Bateman to outbid Simone for the trust shares, and in exchange, he's willing to share some of the revenue from the mining operation Bateman says he'll have to think about. A couple days later, on April 8, after stopping at his new favorite sandwich shop, he's held up by a beggar at the bank who asks for cash and tries to pull a stiletto blade on him. As the man looks down at his weapon, Bateman kicks him down, then kicks him in the jaw, breaking it. He stomps on the man's neck repeatedly until his trachea begins to turn pink. If Bateman really has stopped killing strangers in this new era, it seems that his killer instincts have not gone away. The next day, he goes out searching for the perfect lighting fixtures for his dining room, and he comes across the building that Dorsia used to be in before it shut down, where they are now building yet another new exclusive restaurant. On the way back, there are no cabs, so he uses one of PB's transit tokens to hop on the subway, only it makes him claustrophobic. So he gets off early and just happens to come across the perfect lighting fixtures. By the stop that he gets off at. They aren't the most expensive ones, but perhaps his son has inspired him to realize that the most expensive things aren't always the best. In the morning, Bateman is woken up by a call from Simone telling him to come over immediately. When he arrives, he learns that Davis Ferguson is dead. According to Bateman's spies around the city, Ferguson had a heart attack when his son told him that he knew the Tray Corporation shares were in his name. When Ferguson collapsed through a glass table, terry ran downstairs and told the desk man, then immediately fled to Simone's apartment. In the original American Psycho, we saw Bateman follow Tim Price down the path of addiction and obsession in the name of becoming the most respected yuppie. Remember, at the beginning of the book, he claims Tim is the most interesting man he knows. Now, in the 2000 emails arc, he sees Davis Ferguson, a man richer than him, and makes the conscious choice not to go down that path. Ferguson has a damaged relationship with his son, and that ends up being his downfall. Bateman, on the other hand, wants to have a relationship with PB, and over the course of these two months, learns to prioritize the father son relationship over his revenge on Jean. At this point, he's willing to pay Jean in order to spare PB from any more heartache. But during a lunch with Jean on April 11, the situation changes. Jean announces that she's met someone new and that someone is Bateman's therapist, Dr. Robert M. After being sent by Bateman to gather information on her, the two had fallen in love, and they were set to marry. Dr. M suggests ending their sessions so that the three of them can learn to become friends. But Bateman is overcome with rage. He breaks his wine glass in his hand and storms out. This is the closest we've seen him to losing his temper in the 2000 emails arc. arc. That afternoon, Detective Donald Kimball, who is now the police commissioner, comes over with some illegal cigars and wants Bateman to help him dispose of them. We don't know the exact nature of their relationship, but I got the idea that Bateman has Kimball under his thumb, and maybe he's paid him off to overlook certain things. Commissioner Kimball notices the cut on Bateman's hand, and Bateman jokes that he tried to kill a waiter, but the act slipped and shattered a dessert cart, and the two have a laugh about it. The final therapy email between Bateman and Dr. M demonstrates how Bateman was able to overcome his past ways and transition from serial criminal to puppet master. When asked how his doctor's relationship with Jean is going to affect him, Bateman turns on Caps Lock. Are you out of your goddamned mind? The fact that you are not, as we speak, pulling your laptop out of your, is a blinding testimony to how well I have mastered my own rage and learned to control my desire to destroy, maim, and kill, which would indicate to some that you have done a remarkable job in a rather brief time. But I think it would be safe to assume that the professional part of our relationship is over. Ironically, Bateman kind of gets what he wanted because it is Dr. M. Who convinces Jean that she should not be dependent on Bateman's alimony money in order to be happy. And with that resolved, they're able to finalize the divorce. With Jean receiving enough money to live comfortably, but not in splendor, he ends the communication with a final warning. Don't ever ask him to call you dad. That name's been taken. Ah. Bateman cares about someone. Only took 38 years. As for Davis Ferguson's fortune, his estate quickly accepted the offer that Simone made on behalf of Patrick Bateman, which I would assume puts him in the top 50 richest people in the USA, at least. The night of the 16th, Patrick is honored at the Manhattan Children's Center for a foundation gift that he contributed. Part of the event was a charity auction where A-list celebrities bid on various items, one of which was a small role in a new movie called Fashion Victims behind the scenes. Patrick has been getting into the movie business. He is applauded at the end of his speech. The next day, he leaves for a vacation in France and in his journal claims that he's at peace with himself and with the world. He goes to the hotel on the French Riviera, the one that he went to as a kid and brought PB to on several occasions. It is the one place on Earth where I can stand to be alone and in fact, welcome the opportunity to recharge, rethink, regroup, or just stare up into the sun until everything becomes white and peaceful, like in heaven. I don't recommend anyone try the stare into the sun part. It's implied that this is the coping mechanism that he's found to recharge, and it doesn't involve torture or the end of someone's life. On the plane, his steward asks if he'd like to watch a movie, and he puts in the newest release from one of the film companies that Bateman has acquired. It's described as following. The film begins with the sounds of a harp being gently plucked as drops of red fall slowly into a sea of white. You may recognize this as the opening of the film adaptation of American Psycho, which came out April 14, 2003, days before this plane ride to France. I would assume the in universe version of the movie is different from American Psycho in our world, kind of like how the Stab movies are not the exact same as the Scream movies. In this case, they probably changed the names of people a little more than just changing Paul Owen to Paul Allen so that nobody would notice the similarities. But then again, Bateman literally tried to confess his crimes at one point, and nobody would believe him. So who knows? Maybe they just left the names the same. I find it kind of fitting that Bateman ends up producing a movie about his adventures. Remember way back at the beginning of this video, I'm guessing that's like at least 2 hours ago when I discussed Brett Easton Ellis's inspiration for writing American Psycho. – [Interviewer] When you get into Patrick Bateman, and obviously you're not writing – [Interviewer] autobiographically, I assume Brett about dismemberment and murder. – [Brett Easton Ellis] But American Psycho is my most autobiographical novel. – [Interviewer] Can you explain that? – [Brett Easton Ellis] That's who I was. – [Brett Easton Ellis]I've never come clean about whether I think Patrick Bateman committed the – [Brett Easton Ellis]crimes or they were fantasies, and the book is completely open to – [Brett Easton Ellis]interpretation. You can make an argument either way about it. – [Brett Easton Ellis]There are clues that say it didn't happen, and then he was fantasizing about – [Brett Easton Ellis]this. And then there are other clues that suggest, well, hey, wait a minute, – [Brett Easton Ellis]maybe he did do these things. – [Brett Easton Ellis]But in terms of Patrick Bateman's loneliness and his alienation from the – [Brett Easton Ellis]society he was a part of, I don't think I've ever written anything more autobiographical. So Ellis wrote American Psycho as a way to vent his confusing feelings into the character Patrick Bateman. And now Bateman has made an autobiographical movie where he does the same. The film would star Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, Reese Witherspoon as Evelyn Williams, Jared Leto as Paul Allen, and Willem Defoe as Detective Kim. It looks like Christian Bale reprised his role as Bateman in 2005. Oh, wait. No. That's Batman, not Bateman. If he ever writes a memoir, he should definitely title it From Bateman to Batman. Patrick Bateman is the ultimate example of what happens when a consumer gamifies materialism. The deeper he delves into the lifestyle he wants to portray, the further his mind becomes lost. With no self worth outside of his money and his image, he hits rock bottom. When the yuppie trend dies out in 1991. Despite blowing up all of his relationships, his secretary Jean is there for him, and together they have a child. And after getting back on his feet and gaining control over his vices, he realizes that he does have someone he actually cares about. As I stated, I do think that some of Bateman's crimes were real. So it's not exactly a perfect happy ending because the killer gets away. But as the author stated, it's really up to you to decide where you stand on the issue. Let me know your thoughts on that, the whole Jean versus Jeanette thing, the canonosity of the emails, and any other theories that you have in the comments. And with that, we have reached the end of this tape. But there are many other horror villain timelines like John Kramer, Michael Myers, and Valak that I have analyzed. Just check out that playlist on the left. Remember to subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week. Ring the death bell and select all notifications, and I will see you in the next one. Assuming we both survive. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go return some videotapes.

Channel: CZsWorld

Views: 630,812

Keywords: horror, czsworld, czs world, cz's world, small details, cz'sworld, cz world, american pyscho, pat bateman, marcus halberstam, paul owen, paul allen, patrick bates, american psyco, patrik bateman, patrick batman

Id: CsxkGVhcLzs

Length: 130min 48sec (7848 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2023

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