25 Years Later, ‘American Psycho’ Director Has Message for ‘Wall Street Bros’ Who Idolize Patrick Bateman

American Psycho has been a part of the cultural conversation for nearly 35 years, beginning in 1991, with the release of Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial novel about Patrick Bateman, a spoiled Manhattan yuppie who spends his days pretending to be an investment banker and his evenings eating butter soup with smoked duck at Dorsia… and possibly murdering people.

In 2000, Mary Harron directed a jet-black adaptation of Ellis’ novel starring Christian Bale. And she has spent the past 25 years trying to figure out how Bateman, and Bale’s depiction of him, became a role model to the very same “Wall Street bros” he was satirizing.

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“I don’t think that [co-writer] Guinevere [Turner] and I ever expected it to be embraced by Wall Street bros at all,” Harron told Letterboxd Journal. “That was not our intention. So, did we fail? I’m not sure why [it happened], because Christian’s very clearly making fun of them… But, people read the Bible and decide that they should go and kill a lot of people. People read The Catcher in the Rye and decide to shoot the president.”

While Harron realizes that the memeification of Bateman is part of the character’s enduring appeal, she also seems to think that that’s where some of the understanding about his story may have been lost in translation. Because “there’s [Bateman] being handsome and wearing good suits and having money and power,” says Harron. “But at the same time, he’s played as somebody dorky and ridiculous. When he’s in a nightclub and he’s trying to speak to somebody about hip-hop—it’s so embarrassing when he’s trying to be cool.”

The cringe of it all seems to be what some people are missing.

“It was very clear to me and Guinevere, who is gay, that we saw it as a gay man’s satire on masculinity,” Harron said. “[Ellis’s] being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males, which is also true in sports, and it’s true in Wall Street, and all these things where men are prizing their extreme competition and their ‘elevating their prowess’ kind of thing. There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishizing looks, and the gym.”

Unfortunately, according to Harron, the book and the movie have only become more reflective of the current day. “It was about a predatory society, and now the society is actually, 25 years later, much worse,” she says. “The rich are much richer, the poor are poorer.”

“I would never have imagined that there would be a celebration of racism and white supremacy, which is basically what we have in the White House,” Harron continued. “I would never have imagined that we would live through that.”