fuckyeahwomenincinema:

Director Mary Harron with Christian Bale on the set of American Psycho (2000)

Two scenes featured unexpected improvisation by Christian Bale. When Bateman is jumping rope, he starts to skip and cross his jump rope as a schoolgirl would. Bale surprised director Mary Harron even more by starting to dance as Bateman was preparing to kill Paul Allen (Jared Leto). That time, she says in interviews and the commentary, she collapsed with laughter.

A sign reading “This is not an exit” is shown in the closing scene. These are the last words of the novel.

The events that Bateman mentions in the phone message to his lawyer are events that transpired in the book by Bret Easton Ellis, but not in the film.

There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.

During production, Christian Bale followed the morning routine that his character Patrick Bateman describes toward the beginning of the film.

To block the three-way sex scene with two prostitutes, Mary Harron and Christian Bale watched x-rated tapes. In her commentary, Harron says Bale made stick-figure drawings of the positions he thought would work best.

In the DVD commentary, Mary Harron says that during the first shower scene with Patrick Bateman, all of the women on set gathered around to watch Christian Bale shower.

During the shooting of the film, Christian Bale spoke in an American accent off set at all times. At the wrap party, when he began to speak in his own British accent, many of the crew thought he was speaking that way as an accent for another film - they had thought he was American throughout the entire shoot.