Bateman Imagined Everything

Welcome, everyone, to The Popcorn Isn't Real, where we discuss all kinds of fan theories, Hollywood theories, video game theories. You're here with me, Torvald, and my brother, Leif Eric. Hello. And we're going to talk about American Psycho today. Did you hear about that actress? She killed a guy. You know the actress. It's Reese. Oh, Reese Witherspoon? No, she killed him with a knife. Oh.

Hey, speaking of Reese Witherspoon, have I got a movie for you. Have you seen American Psycho? The 2000 horror comedy, dark comedy, I don't know. How would you describe it? It's a social satire. It was based on a novel, a 1991 novel by Brett Easton Ellis. Have you read the novel or anything about the novel? Because I want to read the novel, but I haven't read the novel. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you about my first experience with American Psycho. Well, I mean, this is what basically turned me off to American Psycho and made me avoid the movie like The Plague, even though everyone said it was a good movie. I was like, how could it be? When I was in middle school, so I must have been like 13 or 14. Dude, this is not a novel for 13-year-old kids to read. No, it's not. Jeez. No, a friend of mine was reading American Psycho for some reason, and he just wanted to read me some passages from it. And it was horrifying.

That kid was so edgy. And like, I actually was curious enough that later I looked through the book myself, just, you know, skimming through and was still horrified by it. Just affirmed your fears. It was a horrible book. No, no. But I will say, I didn't read the whole thing. And also, I was very young. So I've heard that the book itself is equally as much of a dark comedy social satire as the movie but from what I gathered as a tweenager reading it it was not all that satire certainly went over my head but the very gory aspects of it did not and it was it was traumatizing to say the least that's exactly what I was gonna say though because I haven't read any of the book but And it seems to me like there's a certain comedy to the movie that I feel like would be lost in literary form just because you can't like create an atmosphere as easy as you can in a movie, right? Like the atmosphere is the reader's mind and their mind is filled with whatever words you put on the paper.

So if you're just talking about psychotic death and murder, it's not going to be jovial in any way. Yeah. So one thing that the movie did really well when I once I finally watched it, it's a great movie. And it's so it's a lot less graphic than the book was. The book was like extremely graphic in all the gory details. Whereas like, yeah, how many times do we see Patrick Bateman kill someone in this movie? Right. We don't. We don't even see what he does to those like those prostitutes he hires that he presumably like tortures or something. But we don't see what happens to them, really. so like they made a wise choice to just cut out all of that and focus on the satire right yeah yeah so 13 year old me cannot recommend the book at all but i can certainly recommend the movie the movie was very entertaining yeah it was uh it was written and directed by mary heron and a movie that's also kind of about the toxic masculinity of the business culture of the 80s you know

interesting for it to be written and directed by a woman it actually had two writing credits it had three technically because of brett easton ellis the writer of the novel but the other one the other person who got screenwriting credit was guinevere turner it's got a star-studded cast i didn't used to but i have come to terms with the fact that i now love christian bale he christian bale had a quote about this movie that i thought was interesting he said um i think the movie stands on its own merits and should attract an audience that can appreciate intelligent satire it's not a slasher flick but it's also not american pie i thought that was a really weird thing to say who was comparing it to american pie i don't know is it just because of the word american yeah i mean that's the only connection only connection i'll just give a quick synopsis if you haven't seen the movie american psycho is about a businessman in the 80s named patrick

Bateman who seems mostly concerned with how he appears to others and seems very narcissistic and also after work sometimes he kills homeless people and sometimes he gets prostitutes and maybe tortures or kills them too and maybe he kills his co-workers who he doesn't like but then at the end of the film he tries to confess to everything and no one believes him And maybe he didn't do it at all, or maybe he did. And so our theory today is just going to be confirming which version of events actually happened. Right. It's going to be our interpretation of this movie. And I just want to say that no matter what your interpretation is, a few things are constant. One thing is Patrick Bateman's increasing level of insanity. Whether he's doing it or not, it's taking over his life. Just to give you guys a quick primer, my theory specifically is that Patrick Bateman, he's just a boring, insecure nobody with a lifeless job, a lifeless relationship, 100% the generic businessman just living his life.

he believes he's like a cool hot shot cutthroat psychopath murderer businessman right like murdering his rivals going on daring police chases all this other stuff that he does through the movie think about it though what does he like talk about as he's hedonizing and murdering and he talks about music where does his police chase occur in identical boring office buildings right What does he love? He loves awful, identical, boring business cards with typos that he didn't even notice because he's not actually that cool or sleek or the genius that he thinks he is, right? Like everything about him is a lie. And he is so utterly boring that even in his crazy fantasies, everything comes back to the boringness that is him. So that's my theory is that in reality he's a man who has little or no control over his life so he fantasizes about taking that control and being dangerous and being interesting and you know the reality is just that he's he's a

boring music loving yuppie stuck in a dead-end job yeah and there there have been like academic articles written on this movie and stuff about that so there's no way we can really do justice to to the full satire the social satire of the thing but but for me the opening scene sets the tone of it's all fake he's obsessed with himself he describes his daily routine and just like mind-numbing detail because this is this is what he cares about right he cares about putting on lotion and shampooing his hair and listening to music no he thinks it's cool like he thinks he's so cool and well and it's good though because i think it makes us it first of all makes him into an interesting and funny character right from the get-go but also you kind of identify with him because everyone does stupid boring things every day and yet if you asked anyone they would love to talk about their stupid boring things right because everyone has a reason for why they do

their stupid boring things no one cares but they care right so to him this is so like us right now making this podcast that no one listens to.

We love to hear ourselves talk. We're the Patrick Batemans of the podcast world.

So this scene with him getting ready, it ends with him, he says, there's an idea of Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there's no real me, only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably compatible, I simply am not there. And he peels off a plasticky facial mask that he had on. And once again, this is just like really rubbing it into your face that it's all fake. Something else that I should mention is throughout the movie, he starts saying horrible things to people and they don't react at all. And they don't react, yeah. Like, for example, in the bar where he orders a drink and just bites this girl's ear off. Not literally, but he says he's going to stab her and play around in her blood, is what he says. And she completely ignores him. She stares at him in the face and says, so what do you want?

Or something like that. So your theory there is that when he says the terrible things to people and they don't react, that he's not actually saying those things, he's just thinking them. Right. That was in his mind. And he may truly believe that he did say it. But could it conversely be, going along with the satire and critique of the business world and the businessmen of that time, could it be that like all these people are just so used to being abused by businessmen that they don't react anymore when they say something horrible? he could be doing all these things and the the society he's in just sucks so much that he's able to do these things and it doesn't affect anyone right um that's the other side of this and i also like that theory but i buy into the theory that it's all fake a little more but i mean that that theory the version you're saying kind of comes down to the whole like everyone is like moving in

a solid line but these lines never intersect right like these people never actually interact with each other they're all doing their job and that's it right like this lady doesn't even register that he says horrible things to her she's just there to serve drinks and that's all right like and everyone in his life is just there to do their own thing so they don't care what he says like even if they do notice it it doesn't it means so little to them right so that's the other side of the coin on this one he gets to his office he's chatting people up he cancels meetings he orders his secretary around like he's he's being a big shot businessman he tells her what to wear yeah but then as soon as she leaves his office puts his feet up on the desk flips on the tv and just sits back in his chair he's doing nothing this is his job he sits in his chair and watches tv with his feet up he is nothing he's a nobody but society believes he's somebody and so he is somebody and

the game continues right like i mean even uh his fiance evelyn she's cheating on him and he knows it and he acts like he's so cool about her cheating on him and i mean it sounds like he thinks we should be impressed by it he's like yeah my fiance is cheating on me with my best friend and that's okay because I'm also cheating on her with this guy's wife and I'm like this is not impressive like this is just sad in the car with his fiance uh she says we should we should do it we should get married let's have a wedding and he says no I can't take time off work and she says your father practically owns the company you can do anything you like silly you hate your job anyway why don't you just quit and he says because i want to fit in which i think is the most honest response he gives in the entire movie i think that personifies him very well that whole exchange and i actually think whenever he's talking to his fiance he's being very honest i think he doesn't

lie to his fiancee. When he says that I want to fit in line, it's completely at odds with the character we see of a guy who doesn't want to fit in, who wants to act out, who wants to be crazy, you know, who thinks everyone loves his cool music like it's better than everyone else's. He doesn't seem to have to do anything. He just sits in his office and goes out with his buddies and eats at fancy restaurants that's all he does that's all they do at the dry cleaner for example this is before we've seen him kill anyone but he's got like red stains on his sheets i'm betting that those stains are actual cranberry juice like he says but i mean just saying we haven't seen him kill anyone yet um his mistress she says she wants to go to dorcia and this is when he can't get the table he calls dorcia and he asks for a table and the guy on the other end just starts laughing yeah and then he gaslights his mistress into

thinking that she's at dorsia yeah and you know what he does when they get there he he just he knows the most idiotic mind-numbing stupid boring tidbits about things like the food like he sits her down and he starts describing her food to her and says the new york matinee called it a playful but mysterious little dish it's like why did you memorize the new york matinees review of the food at this random restaurant like he never corrects anyone ever when they mistake him for somebody else and it happens often that people are mistaken for other people in this movie every time it happens for him like when he's mistaken for marcus halverstrom uh he just timidly goes with the flow in his mind as we hear his narration he's thinking about how cool he is and how lame everyone else is but in reality he's just kind of sitting there saying uh-huh yeah okay yeah i'm marcus halverson like he doesn't correct anyone and the funniest thing to me is

the main things he is narrating at this point is how lame marcus halverstrom is the guy he just got mistaken for while describing in detail how marcus halverstrom is exactly like him like he it's so good so directly after that is the business card scene right which is just the best scene in the whole movie definitely if you don't want to watch the whole movie look up the business card scene because it's worth a watch even if you don't watch the whole movie well and that scene is entirely he's narrating the whole time but what does he do in that scene all he does is hey guys i have something to show you it's bone and the font is something called cillian rail yep and then that's i think that's all he says until the end when they're like hey are you okay you're kind of sweating well he says hey let's take a look at paul allen's card and then it gets really awkward and everyone kind of starts shuffling around and like turning away

and i think at this point he's the only one interested in seeing more business cards and nobody else even looks at paul allen's card like it gets passed directly to him and no one wants it right like i think at this point everyone kind of thought it was done like why are we still looking at business cards well business card was beautiful it was the best raised lettering and also once again these business cards aren't even good first of all they're all identical but second of all they've got typos all over them like they spelled acquisitions wrong on every single card like it's all fake it's just because he thinks it's that cool right okay so pretty soon after this is when he does his first kill uh he takes paul allen um out to like and i just have say there is absolutely zero chance that big shot businessman Paul Allen went with Patrick Bateman to like some crappy Tex-Mex place, right? And then went home with him and sat on cardboard boxes and

newspapers just waiting to get chopped up. None of this makes sense. And also, none of it is corroborated later in the movie as other characters discuss these events. Plenty of people see or think they see paul allen later on so yeah this is the first murder uh he's super giddy he's uh moonwalking around just describing all of his thoughts on huey lewis and the news hip to be square um now this is because to him like you said his opinions on music are cool and meaningful just like our opinions on movies and the song itself is specifically called it's hip to be square right like it so sums up what he is like he thinks he's so cool and he's so square patrick bateman's often listed as like a beloved horror icon and his most iconic shot is him wearing a see-through raincoat over his his suit and it's covered in blood and that's this scene where that comes from would you call patrick bateman a slasher because i've seen him described

as a slasher and i kind of take issue with that i don't know if he is christian bale would say no he's also not from american pie no i mean i definitely i had never well i hadn't seen the movie until recently and now that i've seen it no i wouldn't describe it as a slasher at all right but before you saw the movie you might call him a slasher right well it was often lumped together with with thing with just like those those kind of lists that are made of like top horrors top slasher type things you know that specifically makes me think that maybe a lot of people who watch this movie don't understand it yeah right like because it's not a slasher at all in my opinion yeah we get it our taste in movies are so good they don't understand our opinions are so interesting the movie american psycho came out in 2000 it's commonly lumped in with other common slasher movies but i think they're not looking beyond the regular analysis they need to look a little deeper and see that

this movie is actually a genius social psychological analysis of the american condition oh we're so cool we really are patrick tateman all right well so another random thing that i just want to point out about this scene christian bale played batman and he kills jared leto in this scene who played the joker in yeah and you know how you spell batman it's bateman without the e wow yeah so what is it pat man so this is fat man finally killing the joker so after he takes care of paul allen he's then dragging the body out of his apartment in a body bag just trailing blood everywhere like he's dragging him through this big reception area just leaving a gigantic trail of blood and no one cares like he's dragging a big body-shaped bag right no one cares and you know what just after the the little scene change where they're outside of the uh reception there's no blood it's all gone once again i kind of think it's uh it's all in his head

right as he's shoving the body into the trunk of the taxi his quote-unquote friend shows up i can't remember his name but he's the annoying businessman who he doesn't actually like yeah so this guy is lewis carruthers and i i think he's an interesting character because he's actually the only character in this film, who likes Patrick Bateman? He really likes Patrick. And Patrick just doesn't like him at all. He's very scared when Lewis Gruthers comes on to him, but doesn't kill him. But he shows up and just completely ignores that Patrick is shoving a body in the trunk, clearly. And he invites him to dinner, and he says, oh, where did you get that overnight bag? It's just so unbelievable that nobody would notice that he is doing such strange things unless either he's not doing them or people literally don't care about anything except for themselves, which is the other. Right, and that's the alternate satire theory.

He's a rich businessman, so no one questions him. He can get away with anything because that's just how America works. whether he imagines it this way or he actually did it this way, he drags him out trailing blood. Then he goes to his house and starts like trying to sort of hide what he did when he wasn't trying to hide what he did at all. He's not getting rid of any evidence. Anytime Patrick has to cover something up or fake something, he is just inept. Whenever he's talking to Detective Kimball, played by the great Willem Dafoe, like everything he says is just gibberish. His go-to excuse of I have to return some videotapes doesn't even make sense. Like he repeats it throughout the movie and just in weird situations, right? He tells Kimball that he went to go see a musical called Oh Brave Africa, Brave Africa, And that it was a laugh riot, which is just the most horrible lie to make up for a detective.

He's going to know that that musical doesn't exist. And if he doesn't know, he's going to find out very easily, right? Like this alone would make you the top suspect. To get out of that conversation, he says, I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable at Four Seasons in 20 minutes. First of all, he's immediately called out by Detective Kimball that there is no Four Seasons anywhere nearby. So, like, it was a horrible lie to begin with. I mean, to be fair, Rudy Giuliani also made that mistake. Yeah, that's true. Dude, but he found a Four Seasons nearby.

No, but the other half of why that's a horrible lie is because Cliff Huxtable is a character from the Cosby show. That's like if in the mid-2000s, I was like, oh, sorry, I have to go. I've got a casting call with Joey Tribbiani, right? But when he goes to Paul Allen's apartment, like, what does he do to try to cover it up? He puts some of Paul Allen's clothes into a briefcase. He leaves a message, which would clearly be his voice, saying that he's leaving, he's going out of town. What other efforts did he make to cover up his tracks? Well, he had the forethought to put on a raincoat before the murder, but not the forethought to be like, I can't drag this bloody body down the hall and shove it into a taxi cab while everyone's watching. And what you're getting at there is, to him, a cool person would never allow their cool suit that they love to get bloody. he wasn't thinking about covering up the murder he was thinking about keeping his apartment neat

and his clothes neat because that's cool for yeah and all his efforts at like maybe hiding what he did are all outward facing like they're just all about looks they're about his suit or he's putting just clothes in right because that's what he thinks about his clothes in the suitcase that's it and then just like an outward outgoing message on your answering machine well he does do one other thing in that apartment he has a moment of panic when I realized Paul Allen's apartment overlooks the park and it's clearly more expensive than mine like I love that after murdering this guy that's fine no problem I'll just drag his body out to the car in plain sight of everyone and go to his house and just you know go in but I'm panicking when I notice how expensive his apartment is he doesn't really do much to cover up his crimes if he did in fact commit any crimes so i already talked a little bit about it but right after this is when he has his first meeting with

detective kimball and an interesting thing that i've read about this movie is that they filmed every scene with detective kimball three different ways one way where kimball knew that patrick Bateman had done it another way where Kimball suspected him and another way where he just wasn't even on Kimball's radar and then they use shots from all three versions in the final film for each of these scenes like they mix them together just to make it more confusing and it was funny because the first time I watched this movie as I was watching that scene I was trying to find out I was like does the detective know and I'd be like oh he knows and then I'm like he doesn't know anything he's so clueless and it just left me like what's going on here and I think that that's how Patrick felt after that meeting I think Patrick is so unable to even envision how another person acts in real life that he can't tell if this guy suspects him or not like I think

he's just floundering at this point like in your version of events in your theory why was the detective questioning him? Is it because Paul Allen just did disappear and it wasn't Patrick Bateman's fault or what? I think it is clear from the movie that Paul Allen did just skip town and went to London. That's how I take it, is that Paul Allen left, his girlfriend got worried and hired a detective. But he is also not with the police. He is a private detective because no one suspects that any murder has occurred. He's just a private detective looking for a guy. He's just looking into where this guy went that's all like he doesn't even necessarily think that a murder happened like you said he's just trying to figure out where he went according to kimball stephen hughes saw paul allen in london but actually they mistook someone else named herbert ainsworth for paul allen that's another thing about this movie is a lot of the characters have

similar names or similar mannerisms or similar faces and hairstyles and outfits and that's very much on purpose everyone at the upper crust is kind of being the same or trying to be the same or really only caring about themselves so they don't even know the difference between each other so but you believe that that person did see paul allen in london and someone else was mistaken that it was actually ainsworth that's kind of how i took it yes that it actually was paul allen but it was like double mistaken identity okay even though there's a detective poking around his office and like questioning him directly patrick bateman decides it's a good time to go get some hookers i love this scene because patrick bateman just has no idea how to interact with people he's he's not a person he's like he's like an alien walking around in like human skin just trying his best to do what people do but like he he finally gets the hooker's attention

And she's about ready to come with him. And he's like, do you take credit cards? Just joking. Come on, get in. Like, and there's a pause that's just a little too long after he asks if she takes credit cards. And then when she gets in, he's holding his credit card, which he quickly puts away. Like, he actually believed she was going to take his card and swipe it in something and charge him. Do you believe that he actually got a hooker? So I think that probably the real Patrick Bateman is too scared and insecure to actually go out and get a hooker. I think he was just kind of imagining it. Takes a real man to get a hooker. I mean, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I think that I think he's kind of a spineless guy who just goes with the flow. And I can't see him actually propositioning a hooker, right? If he is actually getting a hooker, like if all of his sexual relations are true, like this guy's libido.

It's off the charts, right? He has a fiancé. He has a mistress. He gets hookers all the time. He's constantly renting porn and returning those videotapes. And he's also hitting on his secretary. And he's got that friend from out of town who he tries to hook up with his hooker. King Solomon in the Bible had 700 wives and 300 concubines. So, you know, people can have quite the libido. so he goes out again maybe this is all in his head he goes out he gets a hooker right yeah but he likes then he calls two girls together but he calls like a high class like he gets a hooker from the streets he calls a high class escort service to get another one i just don't understand is he trying to impress the first one by that's kind of how i took it is that he wants her to see how much money and power he has but he's also according to you actually not doing any of that right yes the reason i don't think that he actually got all these hookers and stuff is because

at no point in the movie do any of the hookers ever interact with anyone else besides him if a character exists in a bubble and the only person this character interacts with is him then it's probably in his mind it's all for our benefit we're seeing the movie to prove for him that he's what he thinks is cool so lewis gets a new business card and starts showing it off and bateman is really affected by this and he gets really snippy and angry and follows lewis into the bathroom and puts on gloves and starts to strangle him and lewis is totally into it he's like oh thank you he says complimenting him and saying how long he's wanted this and then like he said, Bateman walks away, washes his gloved hands, and leaves.

And of course, his excuse for leaving right then is I've got to return some videotapes because he just can't conceptualize anything else for him to do. And so if he's not worried about evidence, is he putting on gloves to strangle this guy so he doesn't just like mess up his hands or something? No, no, it's because he doesn't want to touch Lewis. Like, he thinks Louis is disgusting. We know that because when they were showing off their business cards right before that, Louis starts complimenting him. He's like, oh, that's a nice suit. And then he starts to feel the suit. And Patrick is like, don't touch me. For someone who seems to love business cards so much, he really seems to hate the fact that other people have them. Right. Well, it's because he loves them. He thinks he should have the coolest one, right? But everyone has cool business cards. At this point, he's talking to his druggie girlfriend.

I think her name's Courtney. And I want to know if you have any interpretation for this line or any thoughts on it. She says, if I don't see you before Easter, have a nice one, okay? Well, is this when he's like in her room and she's like kind of lying there trying to talk to him and he's just more or less ignoring her? Ignoring her, basically, yes. I took this whole conversation to mean that she's going to commit suicide and he just doesn't care. and he's not picking up on it. All right, good. So we interpret it the same way. And yeah, I think it's just another case of like, no one cares. So it's at this point that he decides that he needs a new lover and decides to start dating his secretary. She comes in and asks him if he needs any help with his crossword puzzle, but he's perfectly able to fill the whole thing in with meat and bones. So he doesn't need her help.

He's not even clever. I love that part. He can't even, first of all, he can't even do the crossword puzzle. But second of all, even if he's going to fill it in with sinister things, it's just meat and bones over and over. It's nothing else.

All right. So it's at this point that he asks his secretary out. He says he'll take her anywhere she wants to go. And, of course, she asks to go to Dorcia, the one place he can't get a reservation for. So he pretends to call them and books a table, but he's so bad at everything that he doesn't give them a name. And she clearly knows that he didn't get them a table because he's like, yeah, I'd like a table tonight. Oh, thank you so much. Goodbye. He doesn't even like say, I'm Patrick Bateman. I'll be there this time. Well, I just want to say that about his assistant, Jean, I think she's a good character. I thought she was one of the most realistic, like the only character who to me seemed real, right? Like everyone else seems really fake. One could say that perhaps that's why he doesn't kill her. Well, and I take her to be 100% legitimate. I think everything, every action she takes actually happens in this movie. So the date is just her sitting there talking to him really

tense because she's about to have an affair with her boss who she knows is engaged. And the whole time they're talking, he is taking out random weapons and thinking about killing her and even putting like a nail gun to the back of her head and she doesn't notice. And also criticizing the fact that she's going to put her spoon down because he gives her some yogurt. She's going to put her spoon down on his coffee table. And he's like, in the cup. To be fair, when she started doing that, I actually thought the same thing. I was like, don't put that yogurt-y spoon down on the table put it in the cup but so do you believe that any of this scene happens do you think he was thinking about having an affair with his assistant jean and then decided not to and then the the rest of it was just him imagining like he was thinking about killing it but he would never really do it no i i think that whole scene happened and that he wanted to have an affair

with his secretary because it's a daring and cool thing that all businessmen do in his opinion right And I think that as he was trying to have an affair with her, he was imagining killing her like he imagines killing everyone. So, yeah, third meeting with Kimball. They're at a restaurant. Paul Allen's schedule, according to Kimball, said that he was having dinner with Marcus Halverstrom the night he disappeared, which makes sense. Right, because he always mistook Patrick for Marcus Halverstrom. But Marcus said that he was at the Apollo with all their friends and with Patrick. So Patrick just kind of goes along with it. And he's like, yep, that's where I was. And I love that Detective Kimball has to spoon feed Patrick his own alibi. Patrick's just floundering so hard that he has no idea what to do until the detective gives him an out. Kimball ends the conversation with the line, to think that one of his friends killed him for no reason whatsoever would just be too ridiculous.

isn't that right patrick yeah i mean it would be too ridiculous like it's such a stupid ridiculous thing for him to have done because he didn't do it it's dumb right but i guess the question here is if this is all in his head and he is imagining his own wish fulfillment scenario where he can kill whoever he wants um and he's just got a lot of repressed you know rage or whatever Why can't he imagine himself being a good murderer? Because he's not that smart. He's not the brightest bulb, if you haven't noticed. He's kind of dull. He's kind of just stupid and inept. Like I said, he probably doesn't have any real skills. He just got his job because his dad gave it to him. We're operating under the assumption that the detective is actually questioning him and Paul Allen actually did disappear. And that the murder was something that Patrick imagined. Now, in the real world, people might imagine killing other people, you know, and not actually do it.

But they know they're imagining it. Do you think Patrick Bateman knows he's imagining it? Or does he believe he killed Paul Allen? No, that's the important thing is he believes it. Because, like I said, in his world, when people believe something, it becomes true. is that if if you play imagination long enough and if everyone else plays it with you then everything's good right then then the things you all imagine together are real but the problem in this movie is that not everyone's imagining the same things all the time right like most people are only playing the imagination game with like by themselves about how cool they are which is patrick's problem he's the only one imagining that he's doing these murders but uh yeah that's how i take it anyway. We're about to get chronologically to the, I guess I would call it the most outrageous murder of the whole movie. Basically, he has Elizabeth, who he gets high on ecstasy. He gets

them over to his house, which is actually Paul Allen's house. He has them make out while he drones on about Whitney Houston's music. I thought this is interesting that for him, the coolest thing he could do as he has like a lesbian orgy unfolding in front of him is to describe the intricacies of Whitney Houston and why her music is so great do you think he just invited his lady friend in from out of town for an evening and just bored her off talking about Whitney Houston and there was no hooker that's how I took it yes I took it as she maybe got a little high to suppress her boredom and he talked about music um but yeah it ends with a big orgy and then he like starts stabbing her and then christy notices and she runs away and he chases her around naked and you know grabs a chainsaw and basically he chases her around the apartment building that people live in with a big loud chainsaw as they're screaming and shouting and he is just butt naked right

and uh eventually he chases her down the stairs and is able to somehow drop the chainsaw so that amazing aim which is utterly impossible but you know he believes he's cool enough to do that right and so yeah and full disclosure i did skip most i didn't skip the chainsaw chase scene but like the part before that where he's like biting the hookers and stuff i just skipped that because It was giving me flashbacks to when I read the book as a 13-year-old. Yeah, no, I know that that scene in the book is one of the most graphic scenes. So you picked the wrong scene to read. I didn't pick it. So yeah, you know, to me this is his insanity is just, you know, bordering on just absolutely ridiculous levels. It's at this point that he goes out to lunch with Evelyn, his fiancée, and tries to break up with her. And once again, I think this actually happens. He seems vulnerable here. Like, he tells her they've lost touch.

And then, I don't think this happens, but he says, my need to engage in homicidal behavior is increasing daily. Like, I think that part is made up in his mind. But I do think he, at this point, admits to his fiancée that they've lost touch and that they can't be together anymore. and they break up she starts to make a scene and he has to return some videotapes so he leaves it's uh about at this point in the movie where everything stops making sense and he goes kind of off the rails so he's at the atm it asks him to feed it a stray cat he somehow thinks that he can feed it a stray cat by like wedging it in with a gun like i think i don't know what he's going to do with the cat in front of like the card reader and then he takes the gun i think he's gonna like shoot blood into the card reader maybe maybe but i just didn't see how shooting the cat would get the cat into the but anyway i don't know anyway then some lady screams at him so he

shoots her police immediately show up they're there as soon as he shoots her and he starts shooting at them every single car alarm goes off as he touches the cars which is not how cars work as he shoots at the police car as they have like a big standoff the car just explodes in a gigantic movie explosion he starts hiding in absolutely like identical office buildings um he murders the doorman who called him mr smith uh he murders a janitor he hides in an identical office building The doorman recognizes him, and he's able to sign and get in the elevator. And I think it's his own office building. Yeah, the first one wasn't, but it looked exactly like his office building. And he thought it was. And I think he thought it was until the person called him Mr. Smith. And he's like, this isn't my office. Get to my own office. So he hides under his desk, and there's helicopters outside, and police are sweeping the area.

It's crazy. So in all the theories, not a single one believes that this is real. All of them think this is fake. And the soft version of your theory is that he killed Paul Allen, but then a lot of the other murders and things that happened maybe were in his head. But like some of the murders might have been real. No, he didn't kill Paul Allen. That murder was so nonsensical. Like every murder is nonsensical in this movie, but that one especially. Paul Allen's schedule said that he was having dinner with Mark Halverstrom, which would mean Patrick Bateman. So he did have dinner with Patrick Bateman. Yeah, I think he invited him to dinner and he might not have gone. Well, what I was going to say is, do you think that it was like when he had an evening with his lady friend that he actually was talking to him about all those music? Maybe he did invite him back to his apartment to talk about music and that was it.

And Paul Allen was just so bored out of his mind, he left the country. Yeah, he actually just skipped town. He's like, my friends suck. I'm out of here. I'm moving to England. Could be. And I mean, this would be supported by how he felt throughout this whole thing. Like, it seemed like he was compensating for something. Like he needed to make himself feel better. So he murdered Paul Allen. Right. Whereas what it could have been is that like Paul Allen, like he wanted to be friends with Paul Allen. He wanted to impress him. But Paul Allen came in and trash talked his apartment. he said he started to panic when he realized that Paul Allen's apartment's even better than his and has a view of the park right like maybe Paul Allen came and he's like oh your apartment sucks you don't even have a view of the park and to compensate for this he's like actually I'm killing you that's what I'm doing

right now I'm killing you and then he felt better right so I mean that could have happened back to the movie he's hiding under his desk he calls his lawyer and just shakily confesses everything he says he killed 20 to 40 people then that's it like the scene just kind of ends and everything's back to normal after that yep it just it couldn't have happened but i do think he called his lawyer well yeah he must have right so at this point that he decides to go back to paul allen's apartment i don't know why he just appropriated paul allen's apartment no i mean i know why it's because he knew paul allen's apartment was better than his so in his mind he's like it's actually mine it's my apartment but yeah when he gets there everything's being renovated it's it's for sale and the lady just seems to want him to leave she at first thinks he's there to meet with her she's like are you my two o'clock and he says uh no is this paul

allen's apartment she says no paul allen doesn't live here did you see the ad in the times and he says yeah yeah i saw the ad and she says there was no ad in the times i don't want any trouble i suggest you go and don't come back so this is an odd scene for several reasons because like this is one of the only times where patrick bateman isn't just given whatever he wants or ignored just because he's rich like he's like in all the other scenes he can say terrible things to people they don't even care possibly because he's not saying it or possibly because he's rich but this time like you would think that like a rich business looking guy coming to the apartment you would be polite to him if you're trying to sell the apartment because maybe he wants to buy it but she's just very very weird and uh suspicious of him so what do you think of her behavior well honestly this scene is the biggest support for the other half of this theory which is that he is

killing people and society is allowing him to do it like one interpretation i've seen of it is that this high-end apartment building just wants nothing to do with this weirdo murderer and they quickly disposed of all the bodies, cleaned up the apartment, put it for sale. She realized that he is the murderer and she's just like, get out of here. We want nothing to do with this. We just want to sell this apartment, right? Which is a very capitalist take on things, right? So I have seen, or I read about this movie, something that one of the filmmakers involved said. And their interpretation of this scene was that this woman, she was afraid that he would reveal that a murder had happened here and she's trying to hide that because it reduces the value of the apartment. So she didn't think he was the murderer, but she was just trying to hide the fact that a murder occurred here. In my opinion,

whether she knew he was the murderer or not, she's just trying to hide the murder and get rid of this guy. I tend to take it that he did go there and the apartment was up for sale. Like Paul Allen moved out at some point and his brain didn't know how to process this. So he just kind of was awkward and got turned away because he didn't want to buy the apartment. So he goes out to a payphone and he calls his secretary, Jean, and he's asking and begging for help and shouting at her and swearing at her and calling her names. And she doesn't hear it when he calls her names or swears at her. She just keeps saying, what? I can't hear you. And then he hangs up. do you think he called her said nothing and then well he was imagining swearing you know getting all his frustration out yelling at his his assistant right and i think he may have called her and said like hey this is patrick bateman and then said nothing because she knew who she

was talking to um and it's at this point that she starts to be like maybe i should check on patrick bateman and she rummages through his desk and sees all of his gruesome doodles i think that he did have really gross graphic doodles of his imagination that he was you know murdering people and that she found it and she's like oh this guy's kind of disturbed yeah and do you think those doodles like that was the scenes we saw played out like he would just sit at work and that's how i took it this is his life right as he imagines it that's why it's full of fake appointments and gruesome death doodles right he goes and talks to his lawyer his lawyer thinks he's davis and this in my opinion really supports my theory the lawyer immediately is like oh that was such a great joke what a good impersonation of bateman that was so funny the one fatal flaw in the joke bateman's such a dork such a boring spineless lightweight now if you said bryce or mcdermott

but otherwise it was amusing and i believe that's exactly what the lawyer said i think that's exactly how everyone in this movie sees bateman as his spineless boring lightweight because that's actually what he is so his lawyer mistakes him for someone else davis which i think maybe calls into question the lawyer's ability to tell what reality is i don't know i think it's just showing that Bateman is so plain that people mistake him for other people like he's he's just he's he's a nobody but yeah he insists to the lawyer that it's all true and the lawyer says well that's simply not possible because he had dinner with Paul Allen twice in London just 10 days ago now like you said it's possible this lawyer is really bad at recognizing people and mistook two people in london for paul allen i think that he did have dinner with paul allen in london twice i think paul allen just moved to london yeah that does sound likely well and that's the coolest thing

about this movie is it really is up to your own interpretation and like you said people have interpreted it a lot so i mean don't take my word for it you go watch the movie and find out what you think i think it's really fun but i want to ask you one more thing so the movie ends it ends of them watching reagan ronald reagan talk on tv about cooperating when i was watching it i just saw like a guy with a skull face saying obey consume obey consume oh no dude take off your glasses quick so bryce starts uh like critiquing it he's like how can he lie like that how can he be so cool about it he presents himself as this harmless old codger but inside and then bateman says but inside doesn't matter and that's the end of the movie it's all about how you present yourself right inside doesn't actually matter like it doesn't matter that bateman inside believes he's a serial killer and a murderer what matters is what everyone believes it's the

imagination game that they're all playing together right and that's how the world works and that's how the upper crust of society does it and uh that's that's what the movie's saying so there you go yeah so so i watched this movie but i got to the end and i didn't see how there could be any other possible interpretation to this movie than that there are no murders in this movie whatsoever i agree that's exactly i don't see how there could be any other interpretation i do have to say i don't think you can paint us as like special geniuses who understood this movie after it had been misunderstood for so long. I think there's enough debate about this movie online and otherwise to show that people have different thoughts on it. But I'm just saying, I don't understand how you could come to any other conclusion. I guess the one thing is that this film is mainly a social satire about the toxic culture of the businessmen of the 80s on Wall Street.

You might say the wolves of Wall Street. Right. The werewolves of Wall Street. gosh i wish he turned into a werewolf every time he killed someone such a good title anyway um i guess if it is all in his head then to some extent it does take away detract a little bit from the commentary of he's a rich man who can get away with anything and that's the world that we live in is a world where rich men can just do whatever they want and no one cares right but it adds to the commentary that like it's all imaginary right yeah oh yeah that's the commentary that only are upper crust because they say they are right they're literally doing the same things as everyone else on earth but they say they're better right like i mean i think that's what it's saying yeah everything is in your mind and that's great that's what makes this movie stand out right because if he was actually a serial killer it's it's nothing right like it's just a movie about

it's just a horror you know an evil businessman no i mean like if you had taken the other stance and argued for the other thing like that would have been tough i don't see how you can you could possibly prove that the murders actually occur that that well and that's the funny thing is that the first time i watched this movie i was trying to prove that because i thought it was a movie about like a sadistic intelligent genius like businessman methodically going about his you know his his death work but he's not a genius he's he's not even good at this like he can't even come up with a good excuse for why to leave his crying fiance right like but dude good movie right like I love the movie I think it's so fun but I think that's it for me I don't I don't have anything else to say well thanks so much for listening the music for this episode was provided by Christine no thanks everyone I had a fun time discussing it

I hope you guys will all watch the movie thanks for joining us this has been The Popcorn Isn't Real keep on poppin'