Let movies be white.

On Luca Guadagnino's American Psycho remake

American Psycho cover via Literary Hub.

Fan casting is often a way to go viral on the internet. It immediately invites agreement, rage, or an opportunity to cast roles yourself. Such was the case yesterday when Variety published a piece titled, “Who Should Play Patrick Bateman in the New ‘American Psycho’ From Luca Guadagnino?” In the spirit of diversity, or probably rather, the hopes that they wouldn’t be accused of racism for listing a white-only cast list, Variety included actors completely wrong for the part like Dev Patel, Lucien Laviscount, Charles Melton, and even women like Margaret Qualley among their top choices to play Patrick Bateman in the remake of Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial 1991 novel American Psycho.

The first film, released in 2000, starred Christian Bale and was directed by Mary Harron. It turned the novel into a cult classic. A critical darling. And made Patrick Bateman a pop culture staple. There’s no doubt you’ll run into at least one Patrick Bateman every Halloween. Reports of Guadagnino’s take state that it will not be a remake of the 2000 film. Instead, it will be a new interpretation of the novel written by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Informant!, The Bourne Ultimatum).

Christian Bale in American Psycho.

The film has occupied so much of the book’s space in pop culture that it’s easy to forget (or maybe you never knew!) that people did not like this book! In fact, Simon & Schuster canceled publication of the book at the last minute and it was instead published by Sonny Mehta, the head of Vintage Books and Alfred A. Knopf. The book was banned in several countries. Reviews savaged it, like The New York Times’:

“The folks at Vintage seem to me to be the special scoundrels of our tale, whether they are being cynical and avaricious or merely tasteless and avaricious. Either way, they must have a mighty low opinion of the public's ability to distinguish between art that is meaningfully sensationalistic and junk. No one argues that a publishing house hasn't the right to print what it wants. We fight for that right. But not everything is a right. At some point, someone in authority somewhere has to look at Mr. Ellis's rat and call the exterminator.”

Bateman was an attractive, wealthy, investment banker who lived a double life as a serial killer. The book was violent. It was vulgar. He drank urine in it. He murdered children. He violated women. And also, it was told in the first person, so it indicted the reader in its chaos. This is a tactic used in most of Ellis’ books, like his most recent novel The Shards. That book, about a serial killer in Los Angeles in the 1980s terrorizing a gay Bret Easton Ellis and his friend group, is just as violent. But no one’s offended by books anymore. At least, not books like this. Books about race get banned, sure. But no one is really banning books based on their content anymore. That would require people to read!

And somehow, I doubt most people fan-casting a new version of American Psycho have read the novel. Bateman is a racist. He’s homophobic, probably a repressed homosexual. (This is also why casting Cooper Koch, the fantastic actor from Ryan Murphy’s Monsters series like Variety suggested and he’s campaigned for, prob won’t work. One thing I love about Koch is how openly gay he is, in his voice, his mannerisms, and how he speaks about his partner. But he’s not giving Patrick Bateman.) But above all, he is a white man. The novel is about white privilege. It can’t be divorced from its setting. It wouldn’t make sense if Bateman was a woman. Or non-white. That would be a completely different story. Variety states, “Considering Lionsgate has confirmed that the new “American Psycho” will not be a remake of the Bale-led movie, but a fresh adaptation of the book, there’s room to interpret the story — and character — differently.” Let’s certainly hope not.

Also, I doubt that Ellis, who is notoriously protective of his work and also wrote a memoir titled White would be very much into a non-white Bateman anyway. Because what would be the point of even making the story anyway? We shouldn’t divorce art from its themes and context just in order to cash in on existing IP. There are plenty of new stories to be told about how a lust for power and influence and a perfect body can drive us to become monsters — take a look at the excellent films The Substance and A Different Man this year — we don’t need to slap the name American Psycho onto a story that has nothing to do with Ellis’ original text. Even if a lazy Hollywood couldn’t care less.

Granted, I’d still have rather seen Guadagnino’s interpretation of The Shards, but it seems like he crawled around in Ellis’ head and couldn’t shake what he found. And so he had to tackle his work something. Guadagnino has never been a filmmaker who has completely thrown out the source material. From Call Me By Your Name to Queer, he presents his own interpretations, but he stays true to the text.

I have to imagine he will do the same for American Psycho. In fact, I’m sure it’s crossed his mind that the one person perfect to portray Patrick Bateman is his former leading man, Armie Hammer. But then, it would have to be a documentary.