For some reason, Lionsgate decided to run an Internet poll, asking movie buffs who should be cast as the lead. An Internet poll? That was Christian’s domain! We organized a Balehead campaign and he handily swept the poll, winning 93 percent of the vote—a victory covered by Village Voice and Spin before Lionsgate hastily took down the Web page.
Christian was amused at the poll results. He told a reporter: “Lionsgate did mention that, like ‘Well, well, my, oh my, that was very positive for you, wasn’t it?’ They were blindly playing into my hands, there.”
He recalled: “It is a controversial role but it’s wonderful that Mary had offered it back to me. It got written up in Variety and I had people called up and say: ‘This is career suicide.’ And I just thought: ‘Excellent, that’s great!’ I’m already getting calls from people asking: ‘You want to play Satan?’ I was committed to go all the way, which is one of the reasons Mary cast me. A lot of actors wanted to do it with a nudge and a wink: ‘I’m a really great guy.’ But I didn’t want to play it that way.
“It’s a brilliant book and a brilliant script. I’ve never met anyone who had as much faith in me as Mary. It’s obviously unlike any character I’ve done before and it’s really nice to meet a director who doesn’t just look at your past work and do versions of what you’ve already done. It was wonderful having her recognize that, yes, I can do the part and really fighting for me.”
Filming began in Toronto, Canada, in March 1999. To prepare for the role, Christian spoke to Harron on the phone before filming began, giving her his thoughts on how his version of Patrick Bateman should be portrayed.
They would have long conversations about, according to Christian: “How Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave.”
When people have asked Christian how he created the character of Bateman, he usually mentions that he had seen superstar Tom Cruise on late-night U.S. chat show David Letterman and his alien-like behavior had been his inspiration for Bateman.
There was another source for his inspiration. On his downtime, Christian channel-surfed television but was fascinated by an odd character he saw who was not quite human but obviously tried to imitate all the appearances of life.
“Who is this Mr. Data?” Christian asked me after being entranced by Brent Spiner’s performance on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He knew I was a Trekker, so I happily explained the android character and how Mr. Data differed from the half-Vulcan, half-human Mr. Spock.
“Mr. Data,” I said, “is someone who desperately wants to be human, while Vulcans are a race who have suppressed all emotions and are not interested in being human.”
Spiner’s portrayal of Mr. Data interested Christian and as he began to test voices and accents for Patrick Bateman, there was a time when he sounded very much like Mr. Data attending an Ivy League school. And to a Trekker, perhaps Patrick Bateman bears more than a passing similarity to Mr. Data’s evil brother, Lore.
Around this time while Christian was preparing for the role of Bateman, I gave Christian a number of books about serial killers and man’s inhumanity to man. He was eager to understand Bateman’s mind-set and detachment. One book I gave him was Invisible Darkness: The Strange Case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homoka by Stephen Williams. Bernardo and his wife, Homoka, were infamous Canadian serial killers. The other book was The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, which is a collection of eyewitness reports about the mass murders in Nanking by occupying Japanese troops during WWII. Christian’s interest in this book would eventually lead him to the 2012 project The Flowers of War.
He might have found his inspiration for the interior of fiction’s most twisted killer, but Christian still needed to get the exterior right. He would have several nude scenes, so he began the first of his many transformations for a movie role.
Before American Psycho, Christian had rarely worked out or visited a gym, telling a reporter: “Being English I tend to enjoy going down to the pub far more than going to the gym, so it was very unnatural for me. I just had to convince myself that I love it, which was the most difficult thing about playing this part.”
But hit the gym he did, spending six months while the casting battle raged on working out on his own, confident that DiCaprio would drop out and the part would be his. Then once he knew he had the part, Christian started working out with a trainer and taking his creatine supplements, ready to strip down and flex his muscles in the scene where he shares a threesome with a street hooker and a high-class call girl, while all the time checking himself out in the mirror.
The infamous “looking in the mirror” sex scene has been copied and aped by other actors since. In 2009, British actor Christian Cooke pulled the same posture in a naked romp for the raunchy ITV series Trinity. And American actor Miles Fisher remarkably re-created the American Psycho sex scene for his music video cover of The Talking Heads’ “This Must be the Place.” Fisher portrayed Tom Cruise in the 2008 comedy Superhero Movie.
Christian said: “The character is so vain and obsessed with his looks. While the psychology of the character was something that I could perform, you can’t fake the physicality. Working out is incredibly boring. I swear it’s true that the bigger your muscles get, the fewer brain cells you have. I found I had to stop thinking when I was in the gym because if I thought about it, I’d realise how ridiculous it was that I was pumping iron when I could’ve been out having a drink and a cigarette and enjoying some lunch.
“I did three hours a day for six weeks with a personal trainer and some time before that. I ate an awful lot during training and then almost nothing during filming.”
While he was sculpting his body for American Psycho, Christian would lift weights in the middle of the night at a 24-hour gym in Manhattan Beach. One day, he told me that he was stuck under the free weights for almost an hour before someone else showed up to rescue him.
And aside from muscle tone, he began to bake himself on the tanning beds to get rid of his English complexion, that Celtic rosacea he complained about constantly. Contrary to speculation, Christian did not take any steroids, because he was worried about the consequences. One day after a workout, Christian told me that he was in the sauna when he saw a well-known movie star walk in. This actor had recently gotten buff for a jungle movie role, and Christian reported that the fellow had “next to no nutsack!” That was enough to scare Christian off any steroid experimentation.
All of this worried David and me to no end. Lifting weights without a spotter, overdosing on the tanning bed? I teased Christian that hitting the tanning bed without sunscreen would age him prematurely but he was determined to burn away his old appearance.
Christian would be required to get naked for the threesome scene and several other scenes in the film and had to wear what’s called in the industry a “cock sock.” For American Psycho, a different kind of cock sock was created by costume designer Patrick Antosh. Antosh recalled: “There was a scene with Christian running around naked. Because he didn’t want to do full frontal nudity, I developed a fleshtone spandex pouch that fits around the entire genitalia, so he could run around without anything popping out.”
Antosh later took his cock sock design to his work on the TV series Queer as Folk. Antosh was proud to say that actor Hal Sparks called his cock sock, “Mr. Bale.”
According to one of Christian’s costars, he was so comfortable, he’d parade around the set wearing nothing but his cock sock and his shoes. Guinevere Turner, who played Elizabeth, also went as far as to mock Christian and the size of his sock as she told Fashion Wire Daily during shooting: “Christian was walking around the set with a sock on his penis and shoes and socks. It was a brown sock, more like a tiny stocking. Oh, correction, a smallish stocking!”
When he heard about Turner’s comments, Christian defensively insisted that he needed something definitely larger than a “smallish stocking.” He clai
med: “Goddamn her! Not so tiny a sock, thank you.”
But the size of his cock sock was really the least of his worries on set. Christian had to constantly keep up his American accent, and to do that he stayed in character both on and off the set.
He would even call up family and friends and leave them chilling messages in the voice of Patrick Bateman.
One friend revealed: “It was really creepy. He would call up and go: ‘It’sssssssssss Patrick!’ as soon as you answered the phone in that perfect American accent. And even if he wasn’t on set, Christian would still leave these bizarre messages on the voice mail completely in character. It would freak me out.”
Christian even stayed in character for interviews, using his accent, with the result that many U.S. and foreign reporters had no idea that he was, in fact, British. But when asked by one reporter about his dead-on American accent he revealed that for him, finding the accent was like finding the character.
He said: “I change my accent because it gives me more choice, more choice of roles. If you are born in America and have a nonregional American accent, then you are probably going to get the widest choice of roles around but still you’re going to be restricting yourself from playing roles all around the world. And very much a part of finding a different character is the voice. It’s so essential to who we are, you start taking in a different accent and you’re not going to feel like yourself whatsoever and it’s a matter of you just keep doing it until you feel like somebody again. It’s nice to make those transformations.”
But his accent and even his acting didn’t go down well with the real American actors on set. Costar Josh Lucas claims he thought Christian was going to ruin the entire movie with his “boring” performance.
Lucas, who plays Craig McDermott in the movie, told CityBeat.com: “We all thought the same thing: ‘What’s he doing? He’s really boring. Really vacant.’ All of us New York actors were looking at him like: ‘What the f***’s he doing?’”
During the shoot in Toronto, there were protesters who were angry that a movie was being made of such a notorious book. A group called Canadians Concerned about Violence in Entertainment protested when the city of Toronto was issuing film permits for the production. Leading the protests was Debbie Mahaffy, whose daughter, Leslie, had been a victim of Canada’s own infamous serial killer, Paul Bernardo. Bernardo loved books about serial killers and reportedly had a well-worn copy of American Psycho on his nightstand.
But it seemed Christian knew exactly what he was doing. When American Psycho debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2000, the buzz for the movie was so intense that passes to the screening were being scalped for up to $200 a ticket. However, the movie itself polarized audiences and critics, with some showering the movie with praise and others pouring scorn.
During the screening Q&A, Harron tried to explain the ending of American Psycho, which left the audience wondering if all the murders were just a dream of Bateman’s. She compared the ending to The Talented Mr. Ripley. “I never meant for the ending to be ambiguous,” she said. “The murders happened. Patrick Bateman discovers that he’s too rich, white, and upper class to be considered a murder suspect—even when he’s trying to confess.”
In the book, one of Bateman’s murder victims was Paul Owen. But in the movie, Harron had changed the name to Paul Allen. She insisted that her film was not making any “die yuppie scum” comment about the most famous Paul Allen in the world, the cofounder of Microsoft.
After Sundance, Lionsgate was loving the publicity that American Psycho continued to generate. Before it could be released theatrically, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) demanded that some cuts be made or else it would be rated NC-17. In the U.S., an NC-17 is the kiss of death as many theater chains refuse to screen a movie with the same rating as a porn flick. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the violence that offended the MPAA review, but the threesome sex scene. There were one too many thrusts and an implication of anal sex that supposedly put the MPAA over the edge. Once the cuts were made (later restored on DVD), American Psycho was released with the R rating.
When the movie was released worldwide in April 2000, it generally received positive reviews from critics. The New York Times called it: “A mean and lean horror comedy classic,” while respected critic Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars. He went on to praise Christian’s performance as “being heroic in the way he allowed the character to leap joyfully into despicability; there is no instinct for self-preservation here and that is one mark of a good actor.”
Bloody Disgusting also praised Christian’s performance, writing: “Christian Bale’s disturbing/darkly hilarious turn as serial killer/Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman, a role that in hindsight couldn’t have been played by any other actor . . . At its best, the film reflects our own narcissism and the shallow American culture it was spawned from, with piercing effectiveness.”
American Psycho did a respectable turn at the box office. Harron had eventually finished the movie under budget at around $8 million, an easier task to do when Christian’s salary was just scale plus ten—approximately $2,000/week in those days—far less than the $20 million DiCaprio was offered for the role, and even less than the makeup artist was paid for the shoot. Lions-gate, however, did pay for Christian’s new teeth; his embarrassing overbite was finally gone.
The film made just over $15 million at the U.S. box office and close to $20 million overseas, which in financial terms made it a very profitable movie. If Lionsgate had hoped for a bigger hit with all the press and controversy, they’d be disappointed. Sex may be salacious, but it does not sell movie tickets. In Edward Jay Epstein’s 2010 book, The Hollywood Economist, he notes: “The top 25 grossing films since 2000 contained no sexually oriented nudity. In fact, the absence of sex—at least graphic sex—is often key to the success of Hollywood moneymaking movies since it increases the potential of children in both the domestic and foreign markets.”
Given Christian’s dislike of musicals, American Psycho has an interesting postscript as it was being workshopped in September 2011 to become a Broadway musical. Imagine a Tony Award Show with Newsies competing with American Psycho!
Christian was also finally a hit with directors and producers who scrambled to cast him in their next projects. The film also changed Christian’s attitude about stardom. He told the Village Voice: “The American Psycho thing changed my view on that—simply, it was offered to someone much better known. So, I’ll get better known. Really, I didn’t want to keep fucking around and getting fucked.”
Because Mary Harron had also been with William Morris during the American Psycho casting debacle, Christian decided to change agencies, going to the Creative Artist Agency (CAA).
David was delighted at the move as he had long blamed Christian’s William Morris agent for the low pay and small films that Christian did during the later part of the 1990s. However, when David, who loved Hollywood rumor and gossip, heard that Christian’s William Morris agent was blaming his poor management skills, David lashed out. He drafted a withering memo to the William Morris Board of Directors:
October 14, 1998
Board of Directors
William Morris Agency
To The Board:
There is apparently some confusion as to why Christian Bale recently left William Morris Agency. To put the matter quite simply, his agent was not providing the service and support required of an agent. While Christian had been most patient with his agent, her indifferent approach toward his career eventually led him to realize that he would have to regain his career momentum elsewhere.
More specifically:
WMA did not capitalize on the critical and commercial success of Little Women (1994).
Sid Ganis of Columbia said that he wanted to build a project around Christian after seeing Little Women but she did not follow up.
After the success of Little Women, Christian surprisingly entered into a long period of unemployment with only voice
-over work [for] Pocahontas (1995).
In 1996, when his agent blamed Christian’s lack of publicity for his lack of roles, Christian’s staff landed him major features and articles in Entertainment Weekly, Movieline, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Detour, Blockbuster Magazine, Seventeen etc. . . . Even when faced with this flurry of press coverage, she neither acknowledged nor acted upon it.
More interestingly, when Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Movieline and other major nationwide publications were all taking note of Christian’s preeminence on the Internet—she did nothing to take advantage of this new medium.
Cathleen Schine, author of The Love Letter, sent in a letter to WMA and to Dreamworks (Kate Capshaw producing) to recommend Christian for the lead—no response from her.
The publisher of Snow Falling on Cedars sent a letter to WMA to suggest Christian for the lead. No response from her—and the part eventually went to Ethan Hawke.
She did nothing with Christian’s list of directors and actual nominated film projects.
Christian entered into another long period of unemployment end of 1996/1997.
In the case of The Talented Mr. Ripley, she did nothing for two years despite many requests and reminders.
The most recent American Psycho casting fiasco was another example of her inaction. She didn’t get a pay or play agreement with producer, Ed Pressman. And she was noticeably absent in the eyes of the industry press ever since the news hit Cannes.
She ignored Christian and Loeb & Loeb’s instructions with regard to the A Midsummer Night’s Dream contract which in effect left him with the worst contract he has ever had.
All film projects came to Christian directly from directors and producers, sometimes years in advance. All WMA had to do was to receive the details. In all his years with WMA, Christian never received any effort, promotion or lobbying on his behalf.
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