Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!! Because it’s Women In Horror Month, I decided to pick the classic horror/dark comedy, American Psycho! American Psycho is crazy, intense, disturbing, and it definitely has its entertaining moments. So, don’t forget to return those videotapes, throw on some Huey Lewis And The News, and enjoy these fun pics and bits of trivia!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com and IMDb.com)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• During filming, Christian Bale followed the same morning routine that his character, Patrick Bateman followed in the film.
• While working on his character, Christian Bale came across and old Tom Cruise interview with David Letterman. According to the film’s director, Mary Harron, Bale saw in Cruise this very intense friendliness with nothing behind his eyes. Bale ended up basing his character on that factor. Ironically, Cruise was mentioned in the novel this film is based on. He lived in the same apartment as Bateman and they met in an elevator and discussed Cocktail, which Bateman mistakenly called Bartender.
• During filming, Christian Bale never dropped his American accent, even when the cameras weren’t rolling, so everyone believed he was American. At the wrap party, he finally talked in his native British accent and the crew thought he was speaking that way to prepare for his next film.
• The biggest costs went to purchasing the rights to the songs used in the film.

• There were many issues regarding designer brands being used in the film. Cerruti allowed Christian Bale to wear their clothes under the condition that he didn’t wear them when his character was killing someone. Rolex let everyone EXCEPT Patrick Bateman wear their watches. Calvin Klein pulled out of the film and Perry Ellis provided their underwear at the last minute. Comme des Garçons refused to have one of their overnight bags be used to carry a corpse, so Jean Paul Gaultier was used instead.
• Many people warned Christian Bale that taking this role would be career suicide. This only drove him to do the part more and it ended up being considered his breakout performance.
• While filming his famous chainsaw scene, Christian Bale didn’t get redressed in between takes. He just wore a sock on his penis and tennis shoes.
• Before filming began, Christian Bale insisted on getting the approval of the novel’s writer, Bret Easton Ellis. Bale set up a meeting with Easton Ellis and he showed up dressed and groomed as Bateman. He even introduced himself to Easton Ellis as Patrick Bateman. Ten minutes into the meeting, Easton Ellis begged Bale to stop, saying his hands were shaking and he couldn’t take it anymore. He later said this was the single creepiest moment of his life.

• The head that appears in Bateman’s refrigerator was real and achieved by the actress sticking her head through a hole on the shelf.
• Ewan McGregor was offered the role of Patrick Bateman, but Christian Bale urged him to turn it down.
• To accomplish the three-way sex scene, Mary Harron and Christian Bale watched x-rated tapes together. Harron mentioned that Bale made stick figure drawings of the positions he thought would work best for the scene.
• For Willem Dafoe’s (Donald Kimball) scenes, Mary Harron instructed him to play the scene in 3 different ways: as if he knew Bateman was guilty, as if he was just suspicious of Bateman, and as if he didn’t suspect Bateman at all. The scenes were later cut and spliced together to make audiences unsure what Dafoe’s character was really thinking.

• In the film’s commentary, Mary Harron stated that during the shower scene, all of the women on set gathered around to watch Christian Bale wash himself.
• Leonardo DiCaprio asked for $21 million to play the role of Patrick Bateman. This would’ve shot up the film’s budget to $40 million. DiCaprio quit and Christian Bale did it and the budget was brought back down to $7 million.
• After the film was completed, Christian Bale was relieved to not have to do his punishing gym and healthy lifestyle anymore. He told the film’s co-writer, Guinevere Turner (Elizabeth) that he was “so f***ing sick of having to eat chicken breasts.”
• Whitney Huston refused to allow any of her songs to be used in the film.

• When Elizabeth asked Patrick why he thought she’d be into lesbianism, Patrick responded by saying she went to Sarah Lawrence College. Funny enough, Guinevere Turner did in fact go to Sarah Lawrence College and is a lesbian.
• Reese Witherspoon (Evelyn Williams) was three months pregnant when she worked on this film. Mary Harron was also pregnant during filming.
• Christian Bale also drew inspiration from Nicolas Cage’s performance in Vampire’s Kiss.
• In the novel, Patrick Bateman was way more misogynistic, racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic. Although these characteristics were still present in the film, they were toned down quite a bit to make the character more tolerable.

• Keanu Reeves was also offered the role of Patrick Bateman.
• Justin Theroux wore blue eye contacts for his role as Timothy Bryce.
• One of the reasons why Chloë Sevigny (Jean) was interested in the film was that she has a brother who also works on Wall Street.
• Cara Seymour is Mary Harron’s friend and the role of Christie was written specifically for her.

• Drew Barrymore and Liv Tyler were approached to play unknown roles in the film.
• Mary Harron and Christian Bale tried to convince Winona Ryder to play Evelyn, but she turned it down.
• Christian Bale improvised his moonwalk with the ax. He also improvised skipping like a schoolgirl when he was jumping rope. Both scenes had Mary Harron collapsing to the floor, laughing.
• Patrick Bateman’s crazed confession to his lawyer was done in 14 takes. Mary Harron felt that each take was better than the last, so she had Christian Bale do it over and over again. Bale was also fueled by cappuccinos during the whole thing.