American Psycho

[astroglide]

oh come on, the drunk guy in the restaurant was hilarious. i thought the movie had several good scenes.

[turnipmonster]

do you reread other books, or just that one?

I finally just got around to checking out michael connelly and f. forsyth books from the library, courtesy that thrillers thread we had a while back.

--turnipmonster

[Oski]

Ed Gein

Copy of first page out of 9:

[ QUOTE ]
Buffalo Bill and Psycho


On November 17, 1957 police in Plainfield, Wisconsin arrived at the dilapidated farmhouse of Eddie Gein who was a suspect in the robbery of a local hardware store and disappearance of the owner, Bernice Worden. Gein had been the last customer at the hardware store and had been seen loitering around the premises.




Gein's desolate farmhouse was a study in chaos. Inside, junk and rotting garbage covered the floor and counters. It was almost impossible to walk through the rooms. The smell of filth and decomposition was overwhelming. While the local sheriff, Arthur Schley, inspected the kitchen with his flashlight, he felt something brush against his jacket.



When he looked up to see what it was he ran into, he faced a large, dangling carcass hanging upside down from the beams. The carcass had been decapitated, slit open and gutted. An ugly sight to be sure, but a familiar one in that deer-hunting part of the country, especially during deer season.



It took a few moments to sink in, but soon Schley realized that it wasn't a deer at all, it was the headless butchered body of a woman. Bernice Worden, the fifty-year-old mother of his deputy Frank Worden, had been found.



While the shocked deputies searched through the rubble of Eddie Gein's existence, they realized that the horrible discoveries didn't end at Mrs. Worden's body. They had stumbled into a death farm.



The funny-looking bowl was a top of a human skull. The lampshades and wastebasket were made from human skin.



A ghoulish inventory began to take shape: an armchair made of human skin, female genitalia kept preserved in a shoebox, a belt made of nipples, a human head, four noses and a heart.

The more the looked through the house, the more ghastly trophies they found. Finally a suit made entirely of human skin. Their heads spun as they tried to tally the number of woman that may have died at Eddie's hands.



All of this bizarre handicraft made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based on Eddie, which became the central theme of the Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho.


In 1974, the classic thriller by Tobe Hooper, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has many Geinian touches, although there is no character that is an exact Eddie Gein model. This movie helped put "Ghastly Gein" back in the spotlight in the mid-1970's.



Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for the character of another serial killer, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Like Eddie, Buffalo Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in some insane transvestite ritual.

[/ QUOTE ]

[elwoodblues]

That book was so disturbing. I read it a few years ago. If I remember correctly, they don't believe he actually killed all the people to make his flesh furniture/clothing rather that he was a grave robber (and also killed people)

[Rushmore]

I have read the book probably five times.

The movie was good, but certainly not what I was hoping for.

Great bits from the book (as I recall them, as I don't have it handy):

--He's in the kitchen, making meatloaf out of some hooker or debutante he killed the night before. He suddenly stops, catching himself tearing up. He goes on to explain that he is crying because of his frustration at having "never cooked anything before."

--He's fanatasizing about being normal, meeting a woman, etc..."We go to the park, have an ice cream, we buy balloons, we let them go."

Great bit from the movie:

--He appears in the background, in a see-through MacIntosh, wearing rubber gloves, and carrying an axe. If you look closely, it's an Armani axe.

If anyone has not read the book, go out and buy it. Forget the movie for the time being. Read the existing threads on the 80's in this forum, watch an episode of Family Ties (in case nobody could tell, Ellis has an obsession with this show), then read the book. It's perfect.

[JTG51]

I do, however, love Shannyn Sossamon.

Me too. And Jessica Biel.

I wouldn't go as far as to say horrible, but I didn't like the movie either. I heard the book was good, but that was from someone who liked the movie too.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
do you reread other books, or just that one?


[/ QUOTE ]

I reread other books as well. Off the top of my head, other books I've re-read recently include Soul of a Chef, Kitchen Confidential, Fight Club, and High Fidelity. I have probably read American Pyscho at least 4 or 5 times, though, which is not something I normally do.

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
...Fight Club, and High Fidelity...

[/ QUOTE ]

That's an odd juxtaposition.

[A_C_Slater]

My favorite part in the book is when he's at the U2 concert and becomes convinced that Bono is The Devil.

It's parts like this that can't be translated into the movie that makes the book worth reading.

The only books I've ever re read multiple times are 1984, American Psycho, Hunter Thompson's stuff and all of Castaneda's. Don Dellio is good too, Ellis says he's the greatest living american writer.

[thatpfunk]

Rules of Attraction is a great book. Disturbingly similar in many ways to my college when you take away the overdone satirical parts.

Less than zero as a movie was pathetic. It is much too different than the book.

Its interesting (to me, a lit nerd) that many of the same characters show up in his books. Patrick is Sean bateman's brother, James Van Derbeek (sp?) from Rules...

Glamorama is another interesting one from Ellis. Not quite as f'ed up but he tries his best.