American psycho

2000 / 102min

DIRECTOR: MARY HARRON

Q&A with screenwriter Guinevere Turner and  Jordan Crucchiola, Editor at Vulture

New York City in 1987, a handsome, young urban professional, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), lives a second life as a gruesome serial killer. This biting, wry comedy examines the transformation of a man into a monster. Writer-director Mary Harron and writer Guinevere Turner’s adaptation of the novel by Bret Easton Ellis transcends its source material to offer a sexy, stylized, and terrifying satire that tackles the toxicity and excesses of late capitalist misogyny. In addition to a career-defining performance from Bale, this "lean and mean horror comedy classic“ (Stephen Holden, NY Times) also features a stacked cast including Willem Dafoe, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Jared Leto, and Chloë Sevigny.

Mary Harron studied English literature at Oxford and worked as a journalist and documentary filmmaker before making her first feature film, I Shot Andy Warhol in 1996. She also wrote and directed the films, American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), and The Moth Diaries (2011). Her film Charlie Says, about three of Charles Manson's acolytes, just premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival.

Screenwriter Guinevere Turner transformed one of the most controversial books of all time into an intentional declaration of feminism.  She played the notorious Gabby Devoux in The L-Word in which she was also a writer on,  Diana in Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman.  She also  has cameos in both Chasing Amy and  Dogma and an amazing cameo in American Psycho!  She's a frequent collaborator with Mary Harron and a champion of LGBT cinema. 

Jordan Crucchiola is a Los Angeles-based editor with Vulture. As the publication's staff specialist in horror and dark genre cinema, she works to uplift the work of filmmakers and performers who don't regularly catch the attention of mainstream news outlets, and has a particularly strong interest in the roles gender and sexuality play in suspense films. (All the better if those movies can include extremely complicated female friendships and instances of robots playing people playing robots.) Jordan has been a culture journalist for more than ten years, having previously worked at Wired at Rolling Stone, and has yet to experience any decline in her enthusiasm for talking to people about the art they make and the art they love. 

SHOWTIME

Saturday, October 13th, 2018

9:35pm

Please arrive at least 10 minutes early as screenings & panels will start on time.

VENUE

The Downtown Independent

251 S Main St, Los Angeles, CA 90012