Hip to Be Square – AMERICAN PSYCHO

It’s been a month dedicated to horror directed by women, and I’m closing it out with perhaps the most unexpected, Mary Harron’s pitch perfect adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ ghastly1980's yuppie satire, AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000).    

The Capsule:

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) has it all.  Good looks, a successful job, a beautiful girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon), a Manhattan apartment, and an insatiable bloodlust.  Not for business, for actual blood.  Because, when Patrick is not cheating on his girlfriend, taking lunches with people he despises, or struggling to find the perfect business card, his favorite pastime is murder and mutilation.  Underneath his perfectly curated shell, Patrick is hollow, desperate to feel anything.  No matter how much blood he gets under his expensively manicured nails, though, no one seems to notice.  Because in his self-obsessed Wall St. world, life and death means less than getting good dinner reservations. 

It is particularly delicious irony that the story of such a reprehensible misogynist is directed by a woman.  Mary Harron doesn’t downplay any of Bateman’s woman hating tendencies, or the culture that accepts and encourages them.  It starts off casually, like the way he belittles his girlfriend for prattling on about their future wedding when he is trying to listen to the new Robert Palmer album.  The fact that he is cheating on her with one of his colleague’s girlfriends (a very medicated Samantha Mathis) is less from desire than a kind of social obligation.  Mistresses are like clothing accessories to men in his position, you can’t have the tie without the tie clip.  He's also the type of guy who orders for his date at a restaurant and tells his secretary (a very put upon Chloë Sevigny) how to dress.  Other times, she is less subtle, like when Bateman—naked, holding a chainsaw—is chasing after one of his victims, Christie (a very dead Cara Seymour).  I’d say that was the pinnacle of misogynistic imagery. 

Forget Bruce Wayne, Patrick Bateman is Christian Bale’s masterpiece performance.  Dancing between deadpan, narcissistic sincerity and near Nick Cage levels of manic excess, Bale makes Bret Easton Ellis’ misogynist business monster come alive.  It’s hard to say which is worse, Bateman’s murderous inner life, or his intensely bland and conformist outer one.  It turns out that being an amoral sociopath devoid of human emotion is a winning trait on Wall Street. Bateman spends more time and energy modeling himself on what he views to be the pinnacle of success, the 80’s NY yuppie, than he ever does on his actual job.  In fact, you never once see Bateman doing any work at all, because his real occupation is pretending. 

The big joke is that aside from his homicidal urges, Bateman is exactly like everyone else in his social orbit.  None of his friends and associates do anything other than meet for drinks, berate servers, and do drugs in the bathroom.  Patrick fits in perfectly with these corporate backstabbers, despite literally stabbing people in the back.  The key to success, specifically in Bateman’s case, but seemingly across the board, is to be as indistinguishable as possible. 

The brilliant Business Card Duel scene says it all.  Bateman and his friends smugly lay down their business cards, preening about the font, color variant, and stock thickness, only to be crushed by the next person’s imperceptibly superior design.  Except, anyone who is not a soulless douchebag would realize that all the cards look exactly the same, just plain white (or off-white, or bone) cards.  Not even the positions are different.  Everyone is a vice president of the same company, and all equally useless. 

This exaggerated uniformity leads to a big theme in the movie, mistaken identity.  Everyone is so obsessed with themselves that they barely take the time to register who they are talking to.  Paul Allen (Jared Leto), the Alpha Schmuck of Bateman’s circle (his card even has a watermark), consistently thinks Bateman is another executive named Marcus.  Bateman never bothers to correct him because Allen would never bother to remember.  It comes in handy when he lures Allen back to his apartment to off him, leaving a fake trail pointing back to Marcus.  He covers his tracks with far more care than any of his other crimes, because he thinks that—opposed to his sex worker and homeless victims—people will care if an executive disappears. 

He needn’t have bothered.  In any other movie, the appearance of Kimball the P.I. (Willem Dafoe) would mean the noose was tightening around Bateman.  Not here.  Kimball’s calculating smile and suspicious eye gets under Bateman’s skin, but Bateman’s narcissistic colleagues have unintentionally confirmed his flimsy cover story with their faulty memories.  Marcus, Bateman’s intended fall guy, even told Kimball they had dinner together the night of the disappearance.  Alibi by indifference.  Rather than being Bateman’s dogged adversary, Kimball just shrugs and goes on his way.  As the film continues, Bateman is less concerned that he will be caught for his increasingly sloppy murders, and more that no one bothers to notice. 

Bateman understands one-sided yuppie banter so well that he tosses out casual confessions during cocktails, assured that no one is really listening.  When he announces, “I’m into murders and executions,” everyone at the club half hears it as “mergers and acquisitions.”   His girlfriend never notices him scribbling bloody corpses on the restaurant tablecloth as they have dinner.  The question “did you know I’m utterly insane?” bounces off Paul Allen’s head as if Bateman had asked him about his favorite kind of cat.  Only real people, the ones outside of the glossy, upwardly mobile lifestyle, ever pick up on what he really is.  Even the most human person in the movie, his secretary, Jean, is blinded by an extremely misguided crush, until discovering his doodle filled day planner opens her eyes.

Oh, by the way, if Patrick Bateman starts talking about pop music, get the fuck out.  His worst acts of violence are usually proceeded by a dissertation about the most soulless, commercial drivel imaginable.  He lectures a couple of prostitutes on the virtues of Phil Collins before brutalizing them (thankfully off-screen).  An ode to Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All inspires even more vicious treatment of his houseguests.  Then there is his passionate, almost frenzied defense of Huey Lewis and the News as he prepares to slaughter Paul Allen.  Apparently, their early work was a little too New Wave for his taste, but they really came into their own on Sports.  Allen is more interested on why the floor in front of his seat is covered with taped down newspaper.  Bateman does have a point, as Hip to Be Square turns out to be the perfect musical accompaniment to chopping up your business rival with an ax. 

I’ve heard a few different interpretations of the ending [Spoilers].  After Bateman’s madness culminates with a random shooting binge that claims an old woman, several cops, and security guard who thinks he’s “Mr. Smith”, he leaves a detailed confession/cry for help on his lawyer’s answering machine.  The next day, the citywide manhunt that he expected never materializes.  When he returns to Allen’s condo, which he has been using as an abattoir, he finds the hanging bodies removed, the blood-soaked walls freshly painted, and a real estate agent acting like this is just another property.  His lawyer thinks the confession was joke, because he just had lunch with Paul Allen in London a few days ago.  So, was it all just an invention of a fractured imagination?

Hell no, it wasn’t his imagination.  Not only does the film’s tone point to Bateman’s murders being real, it backs up how he unintentionally gets away with them.  Would a real estate agent in this world really let a horrific crime scene stand in the way of selling a luxury Manhattan condo with a high-rise view of Central Park?  She would haul the bodies out over her shoulder if she had to.  And Kimball already demonstrated what unreliable witnesses self-centered social climbers make.  Bateman’s lawyer only thought he had lunch with Paul Allen, because all of these impeccably groomed bastards look, sound, and act alike.  He doesn’t even recognize his own client when he’s talking to him face to face.

In Ellis’ twisted satire, this is Bateman’s ultimate punishment.  He will never be caught.  He will never be stopped.  He will never be noticed.  His most extreme acts are now just as hollow and meaningless as every other part of his existence.  Nothing changes.  He is in yuppy hell.  Not exactly the most satisfying comeuppance for an unrepentant serial killer, but absolutely the most appropriate in this case.

Mary Harron does a brilliant job translating Ellis’s notoriously uncinematic and troublesome prose while keeping, and perhaps accentuating the jet-black satire.  She doesn’t attempt to judge or moralize Bateman’s actions, because that is obvious to any sane person watching.  Her depiction of Jean is more sympathetic and less complicit than Ellis’ version, but she keeps Bateman clearly in the driver’s seat, and doesn’t flinch from making it an unpleasant and uncomfortably hilarious ride.  Even more impressively, she gave Phil Collin’s Sussudio a justifiable reason to exist.  That is true directing magic.

C Chaka

A Carton Full of Crazy - THE STUFF

When the troubles of the world start weighing me down, it’s nice to take refuge in the absurd.  For me, absurdity is best consumed in one and a half hour chunks.  Senselessness in real life is depressing, senselessness in movies; pure entertainment.  It’s the only time I enjoy being completely baffled.  There are no right or wrong answers with movies, they are there to interpret as you will.  I find the most absurd movies lead to the wildest, most inventive interpretations.  Pound for pound (or pint for pint), it doesn't get any more absurd than Larry Cohen’s 1985 horror satire, THE STUFF.

The Capsule:

A slack-jawed rube discovers a spring of thick white paste bubbling up from the ground of the quarry where he works.  Like any reasonable person in that situation, he tastes it.  The stuff turns out to be quite yummy, so he takes the next obvious step of collecting it to sell to other hungry goo lovers.  An undetermined time later, the stuff—now cleverly branded as The Stuff—is a nationwide success.  So successful, in fact, that the powerful ice cream cartel hires industrial spy David “Mo” Ruthaford (Michael Moriarty) to steal the secret ingredient.  With the help of ousted cookie king Chocolate Chip Charley (Garrett Morris), guilty marketing head Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci), and child anti-Stuff terrorist Jason (Scott Bloom), Mo uncovers the real secret.  Far from being an innocent, highly addictive desert, The Stuff is really a sentient, mobile life-form that slowly takes over the body and mind of the creature who eats enough of it.  Mo and his band will have to act fast to expose the truth before The Stuff obsessed country literally eats themselves into oblivion.  

This parable of dangerous fads and blind commercialism could only come from the mind of director Larry Cohen.  The ballsy independent filmmaker was the king of the premise.  A monster baby slaughters everyone in the delivery room and escapes into the city!  An ancient, winged dinosaur bites the heads off New Yorkers and roosts in the spire of the Chrysler Building!  A reanimated cop roams the city streets imposing the death penalty for even the slightest infractions!  He sold ideas so catchy and sensational that it didn’t matter that they made no sense whatsoever.  More impressively, Cohen had the skill, vision, and confidence as a renegade director to turn those ridiculous ideas into massively entertaining movies.  He laid it on at full speed, stealing shots wherever he could get away with it, hardly giving the audience a chance to breathe until the credits.  Do you remember those old Roadrunner cartoons where the coyote would run across thin air until the moment he looked down, acknowledged reality, and plummeted to the ground?  That was how Cohen directed movies, except he never looked down.  

THE STUFF is Cohen’s most ludicrous plot by a mile.  Intelligent yogurt seeping up from the earth taking over the country through effective marketing.  Cohen’s nonstop, slam ahead pacing jumps over all the details of how this could have come to pass, with the clear message of “just go with it.”  The thing is, when you think about it, the premise is disturbingly plausible.  Tobacco and alcohol companies still do great business, even though we already know their products are addictive and dangerous.  Effective marketing can popularize even the most worthless product (AXE Body Spray comes to mind).  In the movie, all the members of the FDA who approved The Stuff (and legally protected it’s secret ingredient, just like with Coke!) have died or left the country.  The assumption is they were all taken over by The Stuff, but that might not have even been necessary in real life.  As long as the price was right, a Trump appointed FDA would have passed it in a second.  

Another byproduct of Cohen’s “to hell with the details” style of directing is near the total disregard for names.  In my notes, I referred to Scott Bloom’s character as “the kid” because no one, not even his family, calls him by his name until the last act.  The company that manufactures The Stuff is never named, despite being the focus of the entire film.  I just call it StuffCo.  I extrapolated that the head of StuffCo (Patrick O'Neal) was named Fletcher just because he said he owned some mines, and later there is a partially covered sign that says Fletcher Mine and Quarry (plus, it's in the credits).  Mo and Chocolate Chip Charley are the only people with often repeated names, which is probably just because they are used for reoccurring gags.  Most of the other schlubs in the film are just credited as Postman, Waitress, or That Guy.

It hardly matters, though, because much like his previous Cohen collaboration, Q: The Winged Serpent, Michael Moriarty owns this movie.  I’ll never understand why Moriarty didn’t become a household name.  He brings an offbeat charm to even his lowliest loser role.  Here, he plays Mo Ruthaford as something of a hayseed James Bond, confidently jumping into dangerous situations, thinking on his feet, and disarming people with his unassuming goofball act.  As he says to the ice cream consortium after totally showing them up, “Nobody is as dumb as I appear to be.”

It’s more of a consequence of the rapid-fire script, but Mo seems to have a serious commitment issue.  He never spends more than a few scenes with anyone before coming up with some excuse to part ways.  Immediately after fighting off a pack of StuffCo goons, Mo sends Chocolate Chip Charley off to contact the FBI, even though I’m fairly sure the FBI have telephones.  He saves Jason from his Stuffed up family, only to stick him on a plane to Savanna in the next scene (he escapes the plane before it can take off, though).  I didn’t realize Nicole was going to be a major character because after her flirty introduction to Mo, she disappears without a mention for the next twenty minutes.  Even after everyone bands together at the end, Mo is still telling people to run to the truck, or go set something up.  For such a social guy, he has a real lone wolf complex.  

One grave failing of the movie is not giving Andrea Marcovicci’s character Nicole enough credit for coming up with the world’s best marketing campaign.  She took what amounted to a carton of plain yogurt and turned it into the sexiest, must have product on the market.  The purple, pink, and brown color scheme for the logo is as iconic as it is simple.  You don’t even need the logo to recognize the brand.  A lot of the company vehicles simply had the purple, pink, brown stripe as a designation.  Which is good, since the company doesn’t have a real name.

The role of Nicole is an odd one, flip flopping between traditional and progressive.  She heads a successful business, and she aggressively takes charge of the negotiations when Mo is posing as a high powered businessman in need of a good PR campaign.  The next time we see her though, she is clearly involved in a romantic relationship with Mo, even after he lied to her face.   Throughout the rest of the movie, she plays second fiddle to Mo, but of course, everyone plays second fiddle to Mo.  She does get some good digs in, like when they are trying to con their way into a tour of StuffCo and she introduces him as her “male secretary”.  Plus, her quick thinking saves Mo from suffocating when she uses kerosene to burn the glob of Stuff off his face.  In retrospect, that idea is closer to “recklessly impulsive” than “quick thinking”, but it worked, so she gets the points.

The real treat of the movie is the dead on ‘80s style fake commercials for The Stuff.  Just like real commercials of the time, The Stuff spots are all clean and upbeat, with pretty, smiling people backed up by a catchy score.  Everyone is enjoying the product without ever talking about it.  They seem like a prototype for the Mentos ads of the ’90s. Come to think of it, what exactly is in a Mentos?

The commercials also give the opportunity to sneak in a lot of cameos, like Cohen regular Laurene Landon and Brook Adams (giving an INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS nod).  The nuttiest, most definitively ‘80s commercial features a bickering old couple in a fancy restaurant, who are played by Abe Vigoda and Clara Peller, the Wendy’s “Where’s the beef” lady.  And yes, she does ask “Where’s the Stuff?” 

There is also a random, uncredited cameo by Eric Bogosian as the super pissed supermarket manager who finally tackles Jason after his anti-Stuff rampage.

I tend to get this blob mixed up with THE BLOB (1988), so I’m always surprised by how little blood is in THE STUFF.  In some ways, the creatures’ behavior is completely opposite.  The Blob eats its way through the flesh of its victim, the Stuff takes over from the inside, while leaving the shell intact.      The Blob is a mindless eating machine, the Stuff is clever and insidious.  The deaths in THE STUFF aren’t as spectacularly gruesome as those of THE BLOB, but they are much more fun.  Since the Stuff’s victims (Stuffies) are hollowed out for maximum goo storage, their bodies are more fragile.  Cohen comes up with all sorts of inventive ways to burst them apart like chunky red piñatas filled with melted ice cream.  Additionally, when Stuffies have the urge to purge, their jaws stretch out to unnatural, and sometimes obscene proportions.  It’s like a super unsettling live action Looney Toons cartoon.  

One body is just as good as another to the Stuff, which leads to a great sequence where Mo meets with loose lipped FDA administrator Vickers (Danny Aiello) who is deathly afraid of his “pet” Great Dane.  When Mo leaves, the pooch unplugs the telephone while Vickers is trying to call for help and corners him under a table.  Name me another movie where Danny Aiello desperately negotiates with a dog not to barf up suffocating goo into his face.  That alone makes this movie worth seeing.  Regretfully, the Stuff dog never makes another appearance.  

Things take a strange(r) turn in the final act when Mo suddenly enlists the aid of a renegade militia group lead by Commie hating nutball Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears (Paul Sorvino, Moriarty’s soon to be Law & Order costar).  It turns out that Spears is also a successful businessman and owner of several large radio stations.  After the largely futile attack on StuffCo’s manufacturing plant, Mo and co. run to the radio station, where Spears reveals to America the truth about their favorite snack.  The craziest part is, America instantly believes him.  Mobs of angry citizens start burning all their cartons of the Stuff and blowing up the McDonald’s style Stuff restaurants.  It's that simple.  In real life, the idea that the country would readily support a sexist, racist, conspiracy theory believing egomaniac who offers no proof to back up his wild claims is totally absurd.  

Oh…right.  I guess there is something more absurd than THE STUFF.

C Chaka

 

Intern-tainment Camp - DEAD END DRIVE-IN

It's unnerving when dystopian cautionary tales, especially ones from 30 or more years ago, ring oddly prescient today.  Many are still comfortingly unrealized.  The government isn't repackaging poor people into food (though I avoid McDonald's, just in case), and I doubt anyone is going to turn the most expensive real estate in the country into a prison anytime soon.  But it's really bad when even the outrageous, batshit notions from Down Under can be disturbingly on the nose today.  Case in point, Brian Trenchard-Smith's 1986 gonzo Aussie satire, DEAD END DRIVE-IN.

The Capsule:

In the far flung future of 1995, the world has gone to shit.  Riots, disasters, and economic collapse have caused global unemployment and food shortages.  Ironically, Australia seems to have it better than most places.  Crabs (Ned Manning) is enjoying the good life, relatively speaking.  His brother runs a towing business and is big enough to fight off the other wreckers for the best salvage.   He takes a break from his delivery job to enjoy a movie with his honey, Carmen (Natalie McCurry), at the Star Drive-In, claiming to be unemployed to get the discount.  As things get steamy in the car, the cops steal his tires out from under him.  The management doesn’t seem to care that he’s stuck there, and Crabs slowly realizes that the drive-in is actually a government run internment camp for unemployed teens.  The listless teens, fed a steady supply of movies and junk food, don’t really care that much, but Crabs is determined to escape.  His lack of apathy gets him the attention of the local black market gang and Thompson, the drive-in manager, who just want things to run smoothly.  The cops take an even dimmer view of him, and look to shut Crabs down for good.

DEAD END DRIVE-IN is Brian Trenchard-Smith’s spiritual sequel to TURKEY SHOOT.  It continues his fascination with the semi-pocalyse, where society is circling the drain, but has not completely fallen apart.  Things are a little grungier than MAD MAX without going full-on ROAD WARRIOR.  There is talk of food shortages and revolts, but the biggest problem we see is unemployment.  Aimless youth roam the paper strewn streets looking to cause trouble.  Since this is Australia, everyone is obsessed with cars; which also seems to be the main driver of the economy.  Tow truck crews fight it out gladiator style for the choicest salvage, Carboy gangs swarm over wrecks like vultures.  Nobody, not even the cops, are too concerned with the bleeding occupants.  In this culture, the drive-in makes the perfect bait for the government to trap undesirables.  A roach motel for car freaks.  

Trenchard-Smith pushes the satire here even more than in TURKEY SHOOT.  It is a smaller movie, with fewer locations and no international stars.  There is much less action, little blood, and (sadly) absolutely no werewolves.  No one’s life is in danger once we get to the drive-in (at least until Crabs’ escape attempt), only their freedom.  The lower stakes of the story makes it more realistic and relatable, which in a way is scarier than TURKEY SHOOT’s more overt dystopian theme.  I could absolutely see a version of this scheme crossing some politician’s mind.

The world of The Star Drive-In is both hysterically over the top and a believable result of unmonitored ‘80’s teens.  Fantastic punk/new wave outfits are augmented with car parts, boomboxes, and any other crazy shit they can find around.  They have transformed themselves into the Warriors of the Teenage Wasteland.  There is fog, and fire, and neon lights all around.  Someone has a pet monkey.  Basically, the whole movie is one giant Duran Duran video.  

The punks look dangerous, but it’s mostly just for show.  Everyone has easy access to food, drugs, sex, and movies, so there is not a lot of conflict.  No one had that much to begin with.  The junk of the world is evenly distributed.  The most interesting aspect of this nightmarish future internment camp is that the government really seems to have figured it out.  The inmates could easily overpower the couple of cops on patrol and bust out anytime they wanted, but why bother?  Everything they need is provided.  For most of these losers, life inside is better than life outside.  

The manager of the drive-in, Thompson (Peter Whitford), could be considered the warden character, but he seems like just as much a prisoner as anyone else.  We never see him leave the camp, no one respects him, and he is filled with a resigned sadness that things are never going to be good again.  He sees that Crabs is more ambitious than the other knuckleheads, and tries to win him over with privileges like beer.  Ultimately though, he’s a cog in the machine, an efficient bureaucrat who only cares about doing his job and not bucking the system.  Crabs can’t get a straight answer out of him.  Every explanation is infuriatingly vague, like “that’s just the state of things.”  

Every time Crabs makes progress toward escape, Thompson is there to undo it.  When Crabs finds new wheels, Thompson steals his engine.  In a way, he is a much more insidious villain than the over the top Warden Thatcher from TURKEY SHOOT.  Thompson is only armed with a smile and a beer, reminding Crabs that it’s so much easier to just give up.

What makes it worse is that Crabs is totally alone in his desire to escape.  Everyone thinks he’s crazy for maintaining his car, working out, and having hope.  Even Carmen can’t understand why he doesn’t want to just hang out and have sex all the time.  She puts it on herself, thinking he’s not into her anymore.

All of his resistance only attracts the attention of the local drug pushing big shot Dave and his cronies.  It might be a rough situation for Crabs, except that this is the least intimidating gang in history.   Dave is pretty much the Australian equivalent to Francis Buxton from PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (Oi, I know you are, but what am I?).  They seem more like schoolyard bullies than a serious threat, especially after Crabs cracks Hazza, Dave's muscle (?), upside the head with a rock.  

The only real danger comes when the drive-in denizens’ kingdom is threatened by outsiders.  The government decides the drive-ins (there are nine of them around the country) are a perfect place to stash all their pesky refugees as well as unemployed hoodlums.  Everyone in the camp is worried about how this will change their idyllic existence of doing nothing all day.  The punks look at the refugees as a strange and threatening group of freaks, despite the fact they are the ones wearing all the spikes, shoulder pads, and light-up braziers.  

As usual, Crabs is the only one to step up and do the right thing.  In this case it is defending a innocent Sikh's right to use the public toilet from Dave's gang of bullies.  After this, though, Dave's gang change from harmless nitwits to something much more sinister.  They form their own White Drive-In Nationalist party.  Dave paints the refugees, mostly wide eyed Asian and Indian families, as a bunch of thieves and rapists.  The drive-in denizens are all too eager to buy into his rhetoric.  Instead of focusing their energy against the government that is illegally detaining them, the punks turn their anger on the easier targets, the people with even less power.  They live in a garbage heap, but they are determined to be at the top of that heap.

We never get to see how bad things will get.  Crabs’ last ditch escape attempt sends the whole place straight to hell.  While Crabs races around the camp trying not to get shot by the cops, the punks desperately attempt to save their sad little kingdom from burning to the ground.  In one impressive stunt, rabs launches his stolen cop car over the electrified fence, straight through the Star Drive-In sign.    

The last we see of him, Crabs is hauling ass down a desolate road, racing towards an uncertain future.  He has no idea what awaits him or if it will be any better than what he just left behind, but for that moment, he is happy as fuck to be free.  For such a depressing future, it’s a good message to end on.  Keep fighting and appreciate any success we can get.

Obviously, the events of this movie will never come to pass.  Drive-ins are obsolete and we all treat our refugees with respect and dignity.  Well, drive-ins are obsolete, at least.  So we don't have to worry about Star Drive-Ins in our near future.  I would be a little leery of the  Star Free High Speed Wi-Fi, though.

C Chaka