Watch to Watch Flashback: American Psycho and the battle to cast Christian Bale

The film studio behind one of Christian Bale’s most memorable roles desperately wanted anyone but him to fill it.

American Psycho is available to rent or purchase on digital platforms.

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Every week we take a look at a classic movie that’s endured in the cultural landscape, and remember why we were all so obsessed with it in the first place, and why it’s worth another look today.

One-time enfant terrible literary sensation Bret Easton Ellis famously declared his seminal and controversial novel, American Psycho, was unadaptable for the big screen.

In Australia, the book had to be sold shrink-wrapped and slapped with a R18+ sticker. You needed ID to buy it. Ellis said he received death threats over the book. Some critics decried it as akin to snuff.

A satire about 1980s consumer excess, greed and narcissism, Ellis’s book was as violent and repellent as it was sharp and hilarious. Its protagonist, the deeply insecure, vain and materialistic Patrick Bateman, has endured as one of the most memorable pop culture creations in the three decades since he poured out of Ellis’ imagination.

The transgressive tale depicted, in graphic detail, scenes of manic violence as Patrick descended further into madness, slicing up those he envied and those he dripped contempt towards. The blood splatter was generous.

But the immutable question which still hangs after three decades was whether any of it happened or was spiralling in Patrick’s head. Which did make the proposition of adapting it into a movie near-impossible.

Almost.

The infamous business card scene, and the appreciation of quality card stock.

How do you transfer a character so provocative and evocative from a medium as intimate and burrowing as a novel? Especially when it’s unclear just how unreliable the unreliable narrator is.

How do you adapt for the screen passages describing in lurid detail the process of skinning a woman with a steak knife while she screams, begging for mercy in her “high, thin voice”? And that’s nothing compared to the paragraphs that follow.

The movie rights to American Psycho were snapped up almost immediately after its publication. Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, directors David Cronenberg and Stuart Gordon were all attached at some point.

Ellis was even asked to write the screenplay and, according to The Guardian, the producer described one version Ellis turned in as “completely pornographic”. The producers passed on Ellis’ script.

In 1996, Canadian filmmaker Mary Harron, who had won acclaim for her film I Shot Andy Warhol, was asked to helm the adaptation.

Harron understood the movie version had to emphasise the book’s satirical bent and the scathing critique of Wall Street yuppies and the obsession with surface seductions. And she knew to dial up the dark humour, almost caricaturing the book’s gratuitous violence.

Harron had considered a few actors, including Billy Crudup, but she knew exactly who she wanted to play Patrick Bateman: Christian Bale.

The studio desperately wanted someone else to play Patrick Bateman.

At the time, Bale wasn’t the A-list thespian he is now. This is well before Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, before his committed and transformative performance in The Machinist or his Oscar win for The Fighter.

In the mid-90s, Bale was mostly known as a former child star in Empire of the Sun and as Laurie in Gillian Armstrong’s version of Little Women.

Harron revealed at the time of the film’s release that when Bale took the part, the English actor had a flurry of messages on his answering machine that American Psycho would be the end of his career.

“That only made him more excited, that’s sort of how I reacted too,” Harron said.

But Bale wasn’t a big enough name for the studio, Lionsgate, which, according to Harron, would’ve taken almost anyone else. And Lionsgate definitely had someone else in mind.

By then it was 1998 and Leonardo DiCaprio was the biggest star in the world, sending teen hearts aflutter after sizzling turns in Romeo + Juliet and Titanic.

The studio offered DiCaprio, then 24, $US20 million to take the role and, surprisingly, he said yes. It was even announced at that year’s Cannes Film Festival and every teen magazine in the world went to print with the news of DiCaprio’s next project, without really commenting on how inappropriate it would be for his fans.

But Harron knew.

“Leonardo wasn’t remotely right,” Harron told The Guardian.

“There’s something very boyish about him. He’s not credible as one of these tough Wall Street guys.

“He brought too much baggage with him. I did not want to deal with someone who had a 13-year-old fanbase. They shouldn’t see the movie. It could’ve gotten us into a lot of trouble.”

She reiterated to Vulture on the 20th anniversary of the film: “I felt like it was a terrible idea for him, for the movie, and for me.”

American Psycho is a critique on vanity and materialism.

Harron wouldn’t even meet with DiCaprio, and she was dropped by the studio. DiCaprio wanted Martin Scorsese or Danny Boyle and eventually Oliver Stone came on and flirted with it.

Eventually they all walked away when DiCaprio and Stone couldn’t agree on the right creative direction. That left the door open for Harron to come back in. But the stipulation was that she only had $US10 million to make it – half of what was offered to DiCaprio as salary alone.

And the studio still didn’t want Bale so Harron threw out some names she knew wouldn’t take it – Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Ewan McGregor among them. Affleck and Damon both passed quickly and Bale called McGregor, his co-star in Velvet Goldmine, and asked him to turn it down if the offer came his way. Harron also fended off Vince Vaughn and Edward Norton.

Harron was also told she had to cast higher profile stars in the supporting roles, which ended up going to Reese Witherspoon, Chloe Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto and Bale’s Little Women co-star Samantha Mathis.

Not surprisingly, Bale’s salary would be so much less than DiCaprio’s. Less than even the film’s make-up crew.

He revealed last year to GQ: “They had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me. I remember one time sitting in the make-up trailer and the make-up artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them.

“Nobody wanted me to do it except the director. So, they said they would only make it if they could pay me that amount. I was prepping for it when other people were playing the part. I was still prepping for it. And, you know, it moved on. I lost my mind. But I won it back.”

Harron said in a separate interview Bale was paid $US50,000.

Christian Bale was paid less than the make-up artists who worked on the movie.

Harron’s film, which she co-wrote with Guinevere Turner, was released in 2000 and it wasn’t without controversy. There were those who immediately understood her vision and could see the irreverent horror-comedy lens through which she reframed Ellis’ story about the extreme excesses of materialism and vanity.

And there were those who loathed it. Audience polling by Cinemascore (similar to election exit polls) gave it a D. The New York Post called it the biggest bomb of Sundance.

One of the stories that went around at the time – courtesy of a press release from the production – was that Huey Lewis, whose track “Hip to be Square” was used in the film, wouldn’t allow the song to be included on the soundtrack release after he saw the movie.

Lewis later debunked this claim. He said he declined its inclusion because he felt it wasn’t right to charge fans for the soundtrack if it had just his song, “one other song and a bunch of source music”.

He still hasn’t seen the movie – the PR stunt had “pissed him off” and he boycotted the film – but he has watched the sequence with “Hip to be Square” and thought it was great.

In the 23 years since, American Psycho has become a cinematic classic remembered as much for its priceless, withering take-down of American culture as its controversies.

They even made a stage musical out of it.

American Psycho is available to rent or purchase on digital platforms