Mary Harron: Celebrity and Banality
Mary Harron has directed interesting series television such as “L Word” and “Homicide,” and she is now completing her third feature film. Unlike the other case studies in this book, she has only two feature film credits at the writing of this book, yet I feel that her films are so distinctive that I am concluding the book with an examination of her work in those two films because her director’s idea is so compelling. Mary Harron’s directors idea is to link celebrity and banality. I will discuss those two films, “I Shot Andy Warhol” (1995) and “American Psycho” (2000) shortly.
First, an explanation about celebrity and banality, her director’s idea. Other filmmakers have made films about the epicenters of celebrity, Hollywood and television. Most often those films have been satires, occasionally melodramas. The satires include Robert Altman’s “The Player” and Sydney Lumet’s “Network.” The melodramas include Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights.” Other filmmakers have taken the more benign approach of situation comedy, including Sydney Pollack’s “Tootsie,” James Brooks’ “Broadcast News,” and Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” All of these films, in ways critical and less critical, address the issue of celebrity and values. Those values range from the social and political to the ethical. All portray a tradeoff between celebrity or narcissistic values and humanistic or altruistic values.
Mary Harron’s work differs from the above mentioned in an important respect. Her characters are not celebrities but rather narcissistic characters that identify with celebrity. They want and need their 15 minutes of fame, and her work explores their desperate obsession with those 15 minutes. In this sense, her characters are a part of a new phenomenon, new at least since Christopher Lasch wrote about the culture of narcissism in his book The Culture of Narcissism (1979). That culture has elevated popular music and its stars, popular art and its stars, and fashion and its stars to iconic levels. The upshot today is reality television and its centerpiece, “American Idol.” This is the cultural terrain that Harron’s characters occupy. They are intense wannabes. The inner life of these characters clashes with their outer reality. Their major talent is their desire and here they merge with the superficiality of celebrity. Harron finds the common ground to be the banality of both celebrities and the wannabes.
Whether this perception makes Harron a satirist of celebrity or whether she is simply an interested observer, she does seem to be able to take us into her character’s inner need for celebrity and into the pathology generated by the clash of inner need and outer reality. For her the gold of celebrity glitters preciously but at the same time it is false, fool’s gold. This is the tragedy of her characters. Their efforts lead only to despair and to destruction. The fact that she can achieve feeling for these unattractive characters is part of Harron’s gift as a writer and director.
In order to understand Harron’s director’s idea, it is important to examine her work within the context of a woman directing in America at the end of the 20th century and into the next. Earlier chapters examined the work of Margarethe Von Trotta and Catherine Breillat, both of whom are political filmmakers in that their subject is women in a world of men. Von Trotta focuses on the lives of her characters, while Breillat focuses on the inner life as expressed in sexual behavior. Harron is far more American (although she is Canadian) in her sociological focus. It is not the war between men and women that interests her, nor is it class. It is a different divide between the have-nots and the haves. The haves are celebrities, the Andy Warhols, while the have-nots are the Valerie Solanas characters of the society.
Among the other women directors working in America today, Alison Anders focuses on women trying to make their way in a man’s world in “Gas, Food and Lodging.” Amy Heckerling examines fashionista life for females in the fast lane of high school in “Clueless.” Mo Ogrodnik is interested in adolescent sexuality in “Fresh.” Patty Jenkins is interested in female pathology and its genesis in male/female relationships in “Monster.” Mira Nair is interested in celebrating her Indian roots in “Monsoon Wedding.” The Sprecher sisters are interested in exploring post-9/11 ennui in “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.” The perspective in all of these films is modern and feminist. How Mary Harron differs from these filmmakers is principally in her choice of genres. “I Shot Andy Warhol” is a docudrama. “American Psycho” is a moral fable or hyperdrama. (For a discussion of hyperdrama, or the moral fable, see the book I co-wrote with Pat Cooper, Writing the Short Film, 3rd ed., Focal Press, 2003.) Both docudrama and hyperdrama are genres that elevate voice. (See the chapters entitled “The Centrality of Metagenres” and “The Ascent of Voice” in my book Global Scriptwriting, Focal Press, 2001.) These genres of voice require that the director distance us from the characters and here lies the risk of these genres. These genres have a strong voice, but they do not invite us to identify with their characters. And so we watch Valerie Solanas in “I Shot Andy Warhol” and Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho,” but we do not identify with them. Indeed, they are characters we do not care for at all. By using the melodrama structure, Patty Jenkins invites us to identify and care about Aileen, the serial killer who is the main character of “Monster,” as intensely as Allison Anders does with the young daughter in “Gas, Food and Lodging” and as Amy Heckerling does with Emma in her situation comedy, “Clueless.”
To compensate for this loss of identification Harron has had to undertake compensating strategies that strengthen the experience of her films. These strategies include the use of irony and humor with regard to her characters and the environment that nurtures their narcissism. Another strategy is to have a powerful sense of time and place. In “I Shot Andy Warhol,” 1960s New York with all its subversive hedonism, is as much a character as the empty glamour of a gentrified New York of the 1980s is in “American Psycho.” Finally, Harron adopts a distinctive style that is vigorous and in line with the genre she has chosen.
Docudrama is a fiction film that looks like a documentary. A place, a character, or an issue is organized around an idea about that place, character, or issue. The organization of the narrative is the equivalent of a case for or against. The character at the center of the narrative is the vehicle for the case. “I Shot Andy Warhol” suggests that celebrity appeals to a character who is utterly marginalized by her family history and by society’s values. In the case of Valerie Solanas, celebrity is both attractive and overwhelming. She wants it but she is afraid of it, and in the end her resulting paranoia brings her the celebrity she so desperately sought. She will forever be known as the woman who shot Andy Warhol. Here, Harron used the docudrama story form to condemn the celebrity culture and its root cause, the culture of narcissism.
In “American Psycho,” the issues are similar. This time, the issue is the emptiness that the culture of narcissism yields. Patrick Bateman is a Harvard graduate, a vice president in a corporation whose function is to market. He is by society’s measure a success, but inside he is empty. As his narcissistic needs grow he fills himself with a hateful, murderous inner life that totally disconnects him from the real or external world. The moral of the story is that the culture of narcissism is empty on the inside but looks great on the outside. For Harron, that culture is destructive and she chose the moral fable to shape her cautionary tale. It is notable that “American Psycho” was released in the same year Stanley Kubrick released his cautionary fable, “Eyes Wide Shut.” The difference is that Kubrick’s treatment is genteel compared to the nightmare Harron has created. Both, however, are cautionary tales about the dangers of the narcissistic culture.
Before I describe the excerpts I will use to illustrate the director’s idea, let’s examine the strategies Harron uses to embed the director’s idea in the narrative. These strategies will contextualize the discussion to follow. If the director’s idea requires a linkage between celebrity and banality, Harron must make each appealing and repellent. In other words, she must embed in the character of celebrity an allure as well as a banality. In the banality there is so much desperation for a wish of celebrity acknowledgment that pathos for the character is created. To do so, Harron takes a paradoxical approach to character and place in her two films. Specifically, New York is an exciting as well as callow and cruel environment in “I Shot Andy Warhol.” In “American Psycho,” the environment is all about the power of steel and affluence as well as superficiality, the plastic quality at the center of narcissistic consumerism. Its very coldness is what makes New York dangerous for its inhabitants in “American Psycho.”
Similarly, in her approach to character she includes both negative and positive characters. The negative characters occupy the celebrity status in “I Shot Andy Warhol.” They are the occupants of the Factory, Andy Warhol and his hangers-on. The publisher of pornography, Maurice Girodias, is another negative character. The positive characters are the lesbians around Valerie Solanas, including the transsexual Candy Darling. Their desire for recognition and their marginal status positions them as opposites of the celebrities and would-be celebrities. Valerie herself is the narrator and witness to both sides. She provides the baseline entry into the world of celebrity in the New York of the 1960s.
In this world of celebrities and non-celebrities, extreme behavior is the norm, as reflected in “American Psycho.” If anything, the behavior becomes more extreme throughout the film. In “American Psycho,” the celebrity/non-celebrity line is constantly being redefined. On first appearance, Patrick Bateman might be considered a celebrity. He has the job, the money, the clothes, and the attitude that suggest it. But something as simple as his colleagues’ having more elegant business cards is enough to push him into the category of non-celebrity. In “American Psycho,” there is no sympathetic group; rather, the characters could be divided into groups of unpleasant and more unpleasant. Only the prostitutes Patrick uses summon a modicum of sympathy. Although Patrick himself acts as narrator, it is his secretary, Jean, who gives the film an emotional baseline. In her vulnerability and in her sense of having a moral compass, she is different from all the other characters in the narrative. She rather than Patrick is the character we are invited to stand with. In terms of linking celebrity and banality, all the characters that surround Patrick, both men and women (fiancée, mistress), are banal and well positioned enough to be considered celebrities, but their status is conditional. Each is aware of the vulnerability of that status, aware that it could be withdrawn at any moment for any reason.
Celebrity and banality are at the very heart of the characters in both “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “American Psycho.” And, in both, the place (New York) becomes an active character that breeds the desire to be or to be seen as a celebrity. Not to be a celebrity in New York is not to be seen at all. In this sense, New York acts as a metaphor, the geographical pinnacle that represents celebrity.
Finally, the voice-oriented genre Harron chooses must be combined with her approach to character and narrative incident. That approach fluctuates between sincerity and irony, inside the character and outside the character. The consequence is the creation of a satiric frame where Harron is free to shift between standing with the character and gazing at the character. The genre frame enables Harron to be gently and not so gently satiric about the world of celebrity around New York and Andy Warhol in “I Shot Andy Warhol” and about the shallow narcissistic world around the affluent Patrick Bateman in 1980s New York in “American Psycho.” For our discussion of these two films, I suggest that we use the openings and closings of each film as the basis of our exploration of the director’s idea.
“I Shot Andy Warhol” begins with the shooting of Andy Warhol (Jared Harris) in the late 1960s. It then moves back in time to tell the story of Valerie Solanas (Lily Taylor), the shooter. The flashback is framed as a case study with the examining psychologist as the lead narrator. Eventually Valerie herself will become the principal narrator. In docudrama style, the early part of the film mixes home movies of Valerie together with a filmed, stylized interview with Valerie, who reads from her manifesto, SCUM. This early portion of the film focuses on her sexual history—the fact that she was sexually abused by her father, the fact that Valerie has declared her preference for women, the fact that she made it her mission to be aggressive toward and rejecting of men, the fact that she earned tuition for college by prostituting herself.
After college studies in psychology in Maryland, Valerie moves to New York and it is here that the balance of the film takes place. It is the 1960s. New York is edgy and attractive. Valerie affiliates with a subculture of lesbians and transsexuals. She panhandles and prostitutes herself to pay her way. She sees herself as a writer. First she writes a feminist manifesto, SCUM, and then a play titled “Up Your Ass.” Both are virulently anti-male.
Life is lively but marginal. Through her own efforts she meets Maurice Girodias (Lothaire Bluteau), a publisher of pornography. She also meets Candy Darling (Stephen Dorff), a transsexual who has begun to act in Andy Warhol movies. Valerie feels confident that Warhol will produce her play, but he doesn’t. When Girodias offers her a contract for a book she accepts but immediately begins to come apart at the seams. The pressure of performance makes Valerie paranoid and she becomes threatening to the key men in her life, Girodias and Warhol. Already marginalized by Warhol’s hangers-on, Valerie takes it out on Warhol and shoots him. This brief description does not do justice to the sexual/psychological portrait of a marginalized woman and the vivid portrait of the edgy celebrity scene of the Factory, Warhol’s window on his world, and the New York it made famous.
The opening of “I Shot Andy Warhol” begins with Valerie Solanas having shot Andy Warhol. The gun is empty. A colleague of Warhol suggests that she leave. Valerie’s father sees his daughter on television, arrested for the shooting. She claims the reason for the shooting is complicated and suggests that the reporter read her manifesto to understand why she shot Warhol. Andy Warhol’s acolytes are interviewed about the shooting. His wig is retrieved. The next scene focuses on Valerie being interviewed by the police. What follows is Valerie’s personal history until she goes to New York following college. The history is described by the prison psychologist.
The film’s ending follows a series of sharp short scenes. Candy Darling, Valerie’s friend Jeremiah (Danny Morgenstern), and Valerie watch and editorialize about the Miss America pageant. The next scene is a television interview with Valerie (remember that Valerie has yearned for celebrity). The interview set up by Jeremiah proves to be a disaster. A right wing host looks only to belittle Valerie for her lesbian appearance and radical political views. He baits her and finally she physically attacks him and walks out on the interview; subsequently, she beats Jeremiah and Candy. She then threatens Girodias and threatens Stevie (Martha Plimpton) with a gun. Stevie throws her out. She visits Girodias’ office and tells his secretary that the next time she sees him she will kill him. She waits for Warhol on the street level of the Factory. She joins him on the elevator and enters his apartment. He takes a call, ignoring her. She takes out her pistol and shoots him and a colleague. When she leaves she announces to a policeman she is wanted, that she shot Andy Warhol. The scene that follows shows both Warhol and Valerie hospitalized. An epilogue explains the fate of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol, and Valerie Solanas. The film ends with a statement by Valerie on the lack of need for reproduction and future generations.
“American Psycho” (2000)
“American Psycho” opens on an elegant meal in an elegant restaurant. The food is shown being prepared, arriving at the table, and being eaten. The preparations are elegant and beautiful but somehow violent. So, too, is the consumption of the meal. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) and his colleagues are elegant but aggressive. They talk, the conversation is elevated in its sophistication, but it doesn’t go anywhere. We are aware mainly of the aggression each hurls at the other. They continue on to an expensive club where Bateman, our main character, is abusive verbally but she, the bartender, doesn’t respond. Was it an imagined conversation? It seems to be.
Patrick Bateman, the main character, narrates. He provides superficial information, including his age. We see his menacing preparations to get ready for work (morning ritual—exercise, shaving, bathing). He is all surface. Later, at work again, he is obviously superficial. He holds the position of vice president for mergers and acquisitions at Pierce & Pierce. His secretary flatters him, clearly under his influence, but Patrick could not care less about her.
We learn that Patrick has a fiancée, Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon) and a mistress, who happens to be his colleague’s fiancée, Courtney (Samantha Mathis). We also learn that Patrick can talk the talk (social concerns over materialism) to his colleagues, but in practice he is a fraud. He feels that he is “simply not there” and that his day-to-day life is out of alignment with his internal life, which seethes with aggression and need (he sees himself as a sexual and societal predator). Outwardly, however, his colleagues are far more predatory and effective.
At the top of the peer group is Paul Allen (Jared Leto), who does not even recognize Patrick. He mistakes him for someone else, a colleague who wears similar suits and glasses and goes to the same barber. Patrick’s crisis occurs at a meeting where he presents his business card to claim his status in his peer group. David Van Patten (Bill Sage) and Timothy Bryce (Justin Theroux) present their cards and each is a blow to Patrick. The final blow, however, is the obvious superiority of Paul Allen’s business card. Patrick has been put in his place. The business card incident is his Waterloo. From this point on, Patrick falls apart; he is crushed and the balance of the film is concerned with the consequences of this blow.
What follows is Patrick’s descent into a kind of mad rage. First, he encounters a homeless person. Initially patronizing, Patrick ends up killing the man. This killing is followed by an encounter with Allen. They arrange to have dinner, but Allen still mistakes who Patrick is. Later, at Allen’s apartment, Patrick murders Allen with an axe and gets rid of the dismembered body. Patrick meets periodically with Detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe), who is looking into the disappearance of Allen. The purpose of these scenes is to put pressure on Patrick for his murderous actions. Patrick’s sexual appetites grow. He alternates between his mistress and prostitutes. His fiancée seems increasingly demanding and unloving. His resentment of her grows. When Patrick engages two prostitutes for an evening, it ends murderously when he kills one with a chain saw. Patrick’s blood lust continues. He kills numerous low-level security employees at work. He tries to sleep with his secretary, but cannot do it. He lets her go. He breaks with his fiancée. He confesses murder to his lawyer. Bloodlust and overwhelming turbulence bring Patrick to the breaking point. By now Patrick is essentially in a state of emotional collapse. When he tells his secretary that he cannot come into the office that afternoon, she tells him that his colleagues are expecting him to meet them for drinks after work. He does not think he is up to it, but he does go. Meanwhile, his secretary looks through Patrick’s desk and finds his personal diary. She is shocked by the violent sketches it contains.
At Harry’s Club, Patrick meets up with his colleagues. He seems anxious and distracted. They are concerned about getting a reservation for dinner. When Patrick sees his lawyer, he approaches him, but the lawyer mistakes him for David Van Patten, another client. Patrick asks how he felt about his telephoned murder confession. The lawyer says he was amused. Patrick tries to correct his identity and verify his murderous activities, but the lawyer no longer thinks it is funny. When Patrick persists the lawyer tells him that what he is saying is untrue because he had dinner twice with Allen in London, only 10 days ago, after Patrick says he killed him. Patrick has no response.
When he rejoins his friends, Patrick is clearly deflated. The film ends on Paul’s self-deprecating inner monologue about no more barriers to cross, about how his pain is constant and sharp and his punishment continues to elude him. The confession has meant nothing. Clearly, the murders have been fantasies and Patrick Bateman’s life is empty if he cannot even be known (become a celebrity) for the abundant violence he has committed.
The opening of “American Psycho” introduces the environment, a restaurant where status and taste outweigh human values. Here, the characters are the expression of their menu choices and their restaurant choices. Only later does the main character, Patrick Bateman, introduce himself. He does so by introducing us to his elegant apartment and his precise morning routine to hone his physical appearance. He exercises and applies sundry lotions, including an herb/mint facial mask. Patrick’s focus on brand-name gels, scrubs, and cleansers implies, as he tells us, that “there is no real me, I’m simply not there.”
He arrives at his office to the beat of “I’m Walking on Sunshine.” Here, too, the image is all surfaces with no substance. He comments not on the workday but rather on restaurant reservations and makes suggestions regarding his secretary’s appearance. At that moment, her surface is more important than anything else. The opening of “American Psycho” establishes the main character’s priority (celebrity or nothing) and the tenuousness of celebrity status.
The ending of “American Psycho” focuses on the puncturing of Patrick’s violent delusions. They are real on paper, as his secretary witnesses. They are, however, a fantasy, as Patrick’s lawyer attests. Harry’s Club is banal, and Patrick’s colleagues are not content; in fact, they are quite discontent as they want to be having dinner or at least have a reservation for dinner. Once Patrick realizes that his murderous rages are fantasies, he deflates. The film ends with his narration, and the camera moves in on him, closer and closer, as he confesses that his confession has meant nothing. Not even the celebrity of murder is left him. He is banal and empty and he is in pain. There is no catharsis for this narcissistic character.
Text Interpretation
Celebrity can be seen as power, and the desire for celebrity can be interpreted as the desire for power. For Harron, banality is not a state of powerlessness; rather, she regards Andy Warhol and those around him, including the media, as banal, empty icons who have created a modern mythology of material fortune and fame together with a spiritual emptiness. Patrick uses the very word emptiness to characterize himself in “American Psycho.” In this sense, Harron is a critic of celebrity and of banality. Her characters are desperate for a better life but settle for celebrity because they know nothing else. As I mentioned earlier in the chapter, Harron’s use of voice-oriented genres, the docudrama in the case of “I Shot Andy Warhol” and the moral fable in the case of “American Psycho,” is her most important narrative decision.
A second decision that enables us to grasp her interpretation is her choice to illustrate the dissonance between the inner voice and the outer action. Both Valerie Solanas and Patrick Bateman act as their own narrators, the inner confessional voice of their narratives. The actions of the two characters, on the other hand, aggressively pursue actions that increasingly marginalize them, psychologically and socially. That is not to say that Harron wants to portray these characters as losers but rather as perennial outsiders. They are like the rest of us in a celebrity-obsessed society, outsiders looking in on what they imagine they want. It is Harron’s twist to point the emptiness she sees inside celebrity society. This ordinariness and its meanness rob the celebrity society of its romanticism, and the films suggest that perhaps Solanas and Bateman are at least feeling people as opposed to the zombielike visitors to the Factory and the 1980s glamorous New York restaurants.
A third strategy Harron uses in the text interpretation is to pepper her tragic narratives with humor. Foreign journalists interview Factory hangers-on about the shooting of Andy Warhol. The remarks, tinged with irony, point out the interviewer’s pompousness and the interviewees’ envy of Warhol’s status. The readings of Solanas from her manifesto are so inflammatory that they seem unintentionally funny, which makes them even funnier. Bateman’s retort to his racist, sexist colleagues makes him seem to be New York’s last moralist. Both the comments of his colleagues and Bateman’s moralizing are wildly funny given that in his mind Bateman is a killer of blacks, women, and vice presidents in his company.
Finally, a sense of time and place is critical in Harron’s text interpretation. There would have been no Valerie Solanas without the sex- and drug-obsessed New York of the 1960s, and there would have been no Patrick Bateman without the “greed is good” philosophy of 1980s New York, a time when junk bonds and brand names in all things from soap to suits were the epitome of making it. Harron weaves the sense of time and place throughout her films; indeed, they transcend individualism and the love–work nexus that Freud placed at the center of his interpretation of happiness. The culture of narcissism that thrived in the 1960s and 1980s is about as far away from the positive goals and attainments of those eras as is possible. And these are the worlds of Valerie Solanas and Patrick Bateman.
Mary Harron set herself quite a challenge in the characters of “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “American Psycho.” The task was to make these eccentric, unappealing characters sufficiently energetic and engaging to keep us engaged in the movies. Here casting helped. In both films, Harron cast very good young character actors. In “I Shot Andy Warhol,” she casts Lili Taylor as Valerie Solanas and Jared Harris as Andy Warhol and proceeded to surround them with the crime crème de la crème of New York actors: Martha Plimpton, Steven Dorff, Lothaire Bluteau, and Jill Hennessy. All are charismatic character actors. She cast “American Psycho” in a similar way by surrounding Christian Bale with Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Matthis, Chloé Sevigny, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, and Willem Dafoe. Again, individual charisma was key. The casting was for look, range, and energy and always for individualistic presence.
Working with her cast, Harron set the bar high. Both Solanas and Bateman had to appear as eccentric, strange, inaccessible people who operate just below the radar. This quality gives each character a remote, alienated quality. From this base, Harron encouraged energy. Solanas is always moving. She spits out bullets for words. Whether she is aggressive or anxious, movement gives her performance physicality, yet Solanas speaks with a flatness of affect that contradicts the words themselves, signaling her internal struggle. The lack of affect also implies Valerie’s disconnect from the world around her.
Playing Patrick Bateman, Christian Bale had to move between his character’s self-absorption and his aggression. Bateman watches himself in a mirror as he’s making love to a woman. His body rather than hers is his love object. Vanity, watching people watch him, creates the internal values of this character. He couldn’t care less about anybody else, and this goes to the nub of the character’s problem. He is contemptuous of others.
Harron juxtaposes these main characters with the theatricality that surrounds them. In “I Shot Andy Warhol,” Candy Darling and the acolytes around Andy Warhol are each over the top in their false-ness; they are poseurs hoping that hanging around Andy Warhol will elevate them to a celebrity that will distinguish them from the crowd. In “American Psycho,” Bateman’s peers are each over the top in their aggression and their contempt for the rest of humanity. This theatricality surrounds the main characters and challenges them to join if they can. In each case, whatever poignancy these characters generate emanates from their inability to be accepted by the poseurs who are closer to celebrity than they are.
Directing the Camera
If the director’s idea is to link celebrity and banality, how does Harron frame her shots and organize her images to support that idea? The first notable visualization of the idea is the opening of each film. Humanity and the humanness of her characters are notably absent in the opening of “American Psycho.” Instead, we see a series of close-ups of sliced duck breast surrounded by raspberries. Other close-ups of beautifully prepared food follow. The camera looks down from above on these dishes. The cutting makes the scene aggressive rather than aesthetic. The cutaways to mid shots of waiters reciting the exotic special of the day present the point of view of a paying customer who is distant and disdainful. The images distance us from the people and focus on an aggressive, disembodied aesthetic—Harron’s version of the culture of consumption.
Although “I Shot Andy Warhol” opens with the shooting of Andy Warhol, the scene lacks any humanity. Replacing narrative continuity and causality are shots of the Factory, the cowboy boots of the wounded Andy Warhol, Valerie in mid shot with gun in hand, and her leave-taking having expended all the bullets in her gun. It is a scene of consequences of actions rather than the actions themselves. The result is unstable and unnerving in its jumpy detailing. Harron quickly follows with a fragmented biography of Valerie. Home footage, black-and-white interview footage, and staged university scenes characterize Valerie as a good student who has been sexually abused. Although declaring herself gay, she could be heterosexual when she needed to be. Valerie’s notion of sex as currency is quickly established, as is her hatred of men. Jump cutting and camera movement give the scenes an observational rather than involving quality.
In both sequences, the visualization works with the idea of celebrity and banality in a particular way. Andy Warhol’s blonde wig merits a close-up; his wounded body does not. Valerie’s response to men, her anger, is worthy of a head-on mid shot, as is her promiscuous desire for a female instructor in college. The shooting of Andy Warhol, however, is not worthy of moving in this close. Similarly, in “American Psycho,” we only move into a close-up of Patrick Bateman when he applies gels and masks to his face. When we later see Patrick with his fiancée in a car, the camera shot is a mid shot. We are not even introduced to Patrick in the earliest shots of the film. The focus is on the food in the restaurant.
Harron also seems to take an almost musical approach to these introductions. Details are punctuated by other details. A tone is created, a very impressionistic one, but a character is not introduced. The result is that events supersede the character. Inanimate objects such as food supersede character, and the environment also supersedes character.
In terms of the editing, Harron prefers short, quick scenes, cutting slowly. She prefers movement rather than rapid cutting. The result is a kind of character inertia rather than a dynamic character in action. Looking at the narrative content of “I Shot Andy Warhol,” it is strange as the film opens with the shooting having just taken place. The mid and long shots of Valerie further distance us from what has just happened. In “American Psycho,” Harron chose to open with the food and eating close-ups and eventually moved out to mid and long shots of the characters. She gradually moved in on Patrick Bateman, opting for moving the camera rather than fast cutting. She closed the film in the same shot pattern.
Above all what has fleshed out her camera choices is the need to conform to the genre—the docudrama in “I Shot Andy Warhol” and the fable in “American Psycho.” Camera placement and shot choice in “I Shot Andy Warhol” have a captured as opposed to composed look. On the other hand, the images in “American Psycho” are utterly composed, even stylized, a look suitable for this stylized fable of the 1980s.
Celebrity and banality, desire and the emptiness of those who seek it—these comprise the director’s idea deployed by Mary Harron in “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “American Psycho.” The challenge Harron faced was to make us care about Valerie Solanas and the 1960s in New York and Patrick Bateman and the New York of the 1980s. By opting for genres that have a distinct style and consequent aesthetic payoff in spite of troubled and troubling main characters, Harron has displayed a courage not often seen among film directors. It is in this spirit that I commend her work to you. It is worthy of your consideration, in more than one way.