Guinevere Turner slashes through Screenland tonight for 25th anniversary of American Psycho

Courtesy photo

You may not enjoy the way the news looks lately, but do you like Huey Lewis and the News? Well, if you’re free tonight after The Pitch’s Margarita Experience, you should come join us at Screenland Armour, where we’ll be enjoying the music review monologues of bloody yuppie icon Patrick Bateman.

There’s a 25th anniversary screening at 9:15 p.m. of the film American Psycho, which would be reason enough to make the trip north.

As an added bonus, co-writer/actress Guinevere Turner from the film is joining the evening. Turner guests on a post-film Q&A hosted by Nightmare Junkhead—our favorite local horror flick podcast. The event is hosted as a part of this year’s Etheria Film Festival, where Turner will be presented with an honorary award for her decades of work reinventing the genre across film and television.

American Psycho is set in 1987 NYC, where a handsome, young urban professional, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), lives a second life as a gruesome serial killer by night. The small circling cast of sharks in his world is filled by the detective (Willem Dafoe), the fiancée (Reese Witherspoon), the mistress (Samantha Mathis), the coworker (Jared Leto), and the secretary (Chloë Sevigny). Against this backdrop, the Mary Harron-directed thriller delivers equal parts cold brutality and (aggressively prescient) satire of masculinity.

In a call with The Pitch earlier this week, Turner talked about her time now teaching film to college students:

I teach here in Syracuse, and I teach undergrads, so they are younger than this movie. But they all know the movie, and many of them really love the movie. At some point I had to ask: “Why do you care about this movie? It’s older than you are, and it’s satirizing something you didn’t experience.” One student of mine just said… “um, memes. It’s like the most memed movie; if you haven’t seen it, you won’t get the meme.” Still, I’m amazed by the degree to which these students are really aware of irony—they’re really aware of patriarchy and misogyny and they’re ready to fight against ideas and people that are disgusting. As much as they find their way to the material in unconventional ways, to me, I see nothing but progress. Except, well. There will always be the type of person who takes something like American Psycho at face value. There’s always going to be a part of the population that is not curious, and they’ll slap whatever they want to see on it. 

Turner also discussed Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming remake of American Psycho and her perspective on the material being passed to another creator.

There are all these big question marks around the movie, with all of these actors rumored for the role. If I were an actor in my 20s right now, I’d feel a little daunted because Bale left some big shoes to fill with that performance. Mary Harron’s daughter suggested that the two of us go on some podcasts, and talk about the remake. We aren’t going to do that, because frankly, it is a lot more fun to watch everyone writing stories online about how our movie shouldn’t be remade, or saying things like it was “perfect.” It is a lot more fun to watch those stories come out. Still, I’m really interested to see what Luca Guadagnino does with the material. He has such an intimate perspective on things, and I’ll be in the theater on opening night.

Turner has previously worked with director Mary Harron to write American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page, and the 2019 film Charlie Says. She was a writer and story editor on Showtime’s The L Word, and played a recurring character on that show. Her 2023 memoir, When The World Didn’t End, is currently in development as a feature film, and her 4th collaboration with Mary Harron, The Highway that Eats People, is currently in pre-production.

Come join us to compare business cards at Screenland at 9:15 pm, with Q&A to follow. Tickets are still available here.