American Psycho director Mary Harron admitted that the cult classic film is just as relevant today as it was when it was released in 2000 while celebrating its 25th anniversary during a conversation with Hasan Minhaj at the 2025 Tribeca Festival on June 7.
The horror film, which takes place between 1987 and 1989, follows investment banker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) as he deals with murderous fantasies. Harron told Minhaj she believed that Wall Street employees were “dinosaurs” at the time of filming and that we would “never see” men like that in the future.
“Not that there wouldn’t be rapacious Wall Street behavior and greed,” she continued. “It was true, actually, for a few years after the film came out. It was much better hidden.” However, Harron pointed out that people are still “reveling in bad behavior” and “the joy of being overly racist” today. She continued, “I would never have thought you would see that.”
Minhaj said that Bateman seemed to say “the quiet part of loud” in his voiceovers, while people in the present day seem much more comfortable using hateful and offensive rhetoric. Harron agreed and explained that she viewed Bateman more as a symbol than as a person. “Patrick Bateman is like if you took everything terrible about, like, 20th century capitalism and about the Reagan era,” she said, listing cruelty, despising the poor, sexism and racism as some of the issues he wasn’t afraid to glorify. Meanwhile, she said that the character also represents the “triumph” of “male dominance and money.”
When Minhaj asked if “reality now is oddly mimicking” the plot of the movie, Harron admitted that her views of the world have changed since it was made. “I would’ve said when we were making [the] film, you know, the arc of history bends towards justice. And now I think maybe the arc of history is like a corkscrew or maybe it’s a rollercoaster,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t just bend towards justice. I would like to think that we’ll get through this and find better times.”
After noting that she never would have imagined the state of the world would look like it does in 2025, Harron added, “It’s so much worse than when I was making the film. You know, open fascism.” She also pointed out that the direction of today’s society may be “why people still like this film” today.
Harron, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Guinevere Turner, reflected on the popularity of Bateman today after Minhaj pointed out that there are some people that view the character as aspirational. “I know the film is very popular with Wall Street guys and Guinevere and I were, ‘Wait, what? Like, we’re making fun of this,’” she said. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”
She then theorized that people may find the character to be aspirational because he “has everything materially that a person would want” and that he “does whatever he wants.”
The movie also includes several mentions of the Trump family, while Donald Trump is mentioned in the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name that the movie is based on. “It was as a quasi-celebrity,” she said of Trump being mentioned, noting that Bateman’s fiancée Evelyn Williams (Reese Witherspoon) complained about his obsession with the now-president. “That, I thought, was part of his dorkiness, really. ‘Cause Donald Trump in the 80s, you know, New Yorkers did not really think of him as cool. He was just, like, he was kind of a joke.”
Also during the interview, Harron reflected on why Bale was the perfect person to play Bateman after the role was re-cast several times. “It was very strange because he hadn’t actually done anything like that before in his work,” she said, adding that Leonardo DiCaprio briefly had the role.
Harron explained that Bale was the only actor up for the role who viewed the script as “funny” as she did, which gave her confidence that he was the perfect person to play Bateman. “It was basically that we had the same sense of humor,” she said of why he ultimately got the role. “The other actors I met, some of them well known and certainly better known than Christian at the time, I could tell that they thought Bateman was sort of cool. And to me, it’s like there’s nothing cool here. We’re not doing the coolness. We’re doing the absurdity of him. So, I knew that it was very important we be on the same page.”
The conversation concluded with Harron recalling how difficult it was to get the film made until Lionsgate agreed to produce it. “I would never have imagined that it would be so embraced,” she said of the film’s legacy.