There would be no safety in this film

March 5, 2024 3:15 AM

There are no rules on literary adaptation. You’re trying to keep the plot. And obviously there are key plot things that we do keep. And we keep almost all the dialogue: apart from one big scene, with the secretary and the date, almost all the dialogue’s from the book. Because I think Brett has a great ear for dialogue. But as a novel, American Psycho is quite experimental. It’s very slippery. It shifts unexpectedly from first person to third person. It’ll go from something very realistic into a sort of dreamscape or something very hallucinatory. from On adapting ‘American Psycho’ by Mary Harron [LRB]

Previously

posted by chavenet (6 comments total)

let's see paul allen's adaptation
posted by lalochezia at 5:35 AM on March 5 [22 favorites]

One of the great weird crossovers on the Internet is Miles Fisher's cover of Talking Head's "Naive Melody (This Must be the Place)' in American Psycho cosplay/drag/cover.
posted by knile at 5:38 AM on March 5 [5 favorites]

I've been going through some episodes of the Script Apart podcast that interviews screenwriters. Has some interesting adaptations like Poor Things and All Of Us Strangers.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:19 AM on March 5 [2 favorites]

That Miles Fisher video is definitely NSFW. But also awesome and off-putting!
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:53 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Mary Harron is a genius and she created a truly great interpretation of a difficult text.

(oh and someone made a musical about it.)
posted by ovvl at 5:11 PM on March 5 [5 favorites]

That Miles Fisher video is a trip. Now I kind of feel like I know what it would've looked like if Tom Cruise had played Patrick Bateman instead of Christian Bale playing Tom Cruise playing Patrick Bateman.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:44 PM on March 5 [2 favorites]