American Psycho - How has Bateman become a poster child?

Fact 1: there are tons users on WSO who have some version "patrick bateman" in their name, or at least christian bale's photo as their pic.

Fact 2: his character (some will argue) was a crazy killer and the fact that he worked in M&A is largely irrelevant to the story.

Question 1: has bateman's character inspired young monkeys to become investment bankers?

Question 2: how has bateman become a "poster child" for bankers

(Note: american psycho is one of my fav books/movies and i was bateman for halloween two years ago.)

 
MoneyKingdom:
My poster banker was Harold. Yes Harold from "Harold and Kumar". My life inspiration was to be an insecure asian banker.

Uh, this is actually a two-part question. I'm applying for a summer internship at Brewster Keegan, and I was wondering a) what it's like being an investment banker and b) if you would write me recommendation.

 
iambateman:
MoneyKingdom:
My poster banker was Harold. Yes Harold from "Harold and Kumar". My life inspiration was to be an insecure asian banker.

Uh, this is actually a two-part question. I'm applying for a summer internship at Brewster Keegan, and I was wondering a) what it's like being an investment banker and b) if you would write me recommendation.

I'll tell you what it's like being a banker. Well it is 1:35 AM and I cannot get my model to balance. I have a bust somewhere and cannot find it, so I log on here for about 10 or 20 mins so I don't punch my screen. As I mentioned in another post, one of my collegues from SEO is a moron, and I was unfortunate to get stuck with him on this deal, so I am working longer than usual (not sure why).

I was happy with my bonus. I got 45k. After tax that is more like 29, but who cares, I have been broke since I got to NY. The hours suck balls, but if you are a stud you can still manage to grab NY hotties while waiting for your cab.

Overall I like the job. Even more though, I like that other people like my job. Banking is not hard, it's just annoying.

Oh and uh.. no I won't write you a letter of recommendation, ask a professor.

Back to Excel.

 

I think it completely depends on the person. There are plenty of douchebags out there that actually aspire to be like Bateman to a large extent. Then there's the guys who realize it's a satirical film.

It's like the Leveraged Sell-Out. You can't take it seriously, as it exploits the greedy-douche stigma that accompanies so many young bankers.

 
MoneyKingdom:
iambateman:

Uh, this is actually a two-part question. I'm applying for a summer internship at Brewster Keegan, and I was wondering a) what it's like being an investment banker and b) if you would write me recommendation.

I'll tell you what it's like being a banker. Well it is 1:35 AM and I cannot get my model to balance. I have a bust somewhere and cannot find it, so I log on here for about 10 or 20 mins so I don't punch my screen. As I mentioned in another post, one of my collegues from SEO is a moron, and I was unfortunate to get stuck with him on this deal, so I am working longer than usual (not sure why).

I was happy with my bonus. I got 45k. After tax that is more like 29, but who cares, I have been broke since I got to NY. The hours suck balls, but if you are a stud you can still manage to grab NY hotties while waiting for your cab.

Overall I like the job. Even more though, I like that other people like my job. Banking is not hard, it's just annoying.

Oh and uh.. no I won't write you a letter of recommendation, ask a professor.

Back to Excel.

Haha dude he was quoting the Harold and Kumar movie (yellow party scene).

 
Best Response
ARD45:
MoneyKingdom:
iambateman:

Uh, this is actually a two-part question. I'm applying for a summer internship at Brewster Keegan, and I was wondering a) what it's like being an investment banker and b) if you would write me recommendation.

I'll tell you what it's like being a banker. Well it is 1:35 AM and I cannot get my model to balance. I have a bust somewhere and cannot find it, so I log on here for about 10 or 20 mins so I don't punch my screen. As I mentioned in another post, one of my collegues from SEO is a moron, and I was unfortunate to get stuck with him on this deal, so I am working longer than usual (not sure why).

I was happy with my bonus. I got 45k. After tax that is more like 29, but who cares, I have been broke since I got to NY. The hours suck balls, but if you are a stud you can still manage to grab NY hotties while waiting for your cab.

Overall I like the job. Even more though, I like that other people like my job. Banking is not hard, it's just annoying.

Oh and uh.. no I won't write you a letter of recommendation, ask a professor.

Back to Excel.

Haha dude he was quoting the Harold and Kumar movie (yellow party scene).

haha glad somebody is paying attention

 
iambateman:
MoneyKingdom:
My poster banker was Harold. Yes Harold from "Harold and Kumar". My life inspiration was to be an insecure asian banker.

Uh, this is actually a two-part question. I'm applying for a summer internship at Brewster Keegan, and I was wondering a) what it's like being an investment banker and b) if you would write me recommendation.

To be honest, its pretty awf- ...awesome.

 

iambateman, classic.

I read American Psycho before I saw the movie. The entire point is that it's a satire of the yuppie culture of the 80s. It's just extremely easy to use the picture of Bateman because he's about as iconic as Gordon Gecko, Randolph and Mortimer Duke, Lawrence "Larry The Liquidator" Garfield, Jim Young and Michael Brantley.

And no, he never inspired me to become a banker.

Honestly, I took my cues from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Boiler Room, Wall Street, Trading Places, Other People's Money and Glengarry Glen Ross.

 

Honestly, I think the Patrick Bateman / American Psycho obsession is a joke. While the movie was entertaining, it hardly deserves the recognition that it has on wall street. There are a lot of people out there that swear by the movie and without a doubt use it as their inspiration for becoming a wall street professional.

Now, to justify my icon. Yes, its Christian Bale. Christian Bale has starred in a number of very good (and very bad) movies. My icon is from the movie Equilibrium which is one of my all-time favorite movies. I highly suggest anyone who likes futuristic sci-fi type movies to check it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~ CompBanker

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

what Wall Street did for mine. I'll be totally honest. All I had to see was that toolbag Charlie Sheen cranking out his own pasta before banging Daryl Hannah is his penthouse apartment and I was sold.

Plus we had Milken knocking it out of the park year after year and making the regulators looks like the fucking idiots they are. The 80s were a balls time to be a banker. I didn't start until the early 90s, but it was still good then. As long as you were willing to step on a guy's throat while you grabbed his wallet, you could get rich. It was a free for all.

 

for males that sacrifice most of their 20's for the pursuit of the $$...

is it surprising that a film whose main alpha male character glorifies this materialistic consumerism gone berserk, is so appealing to bankers? (the fact that it is presented through this black humor (satire) is almost irrelevant... how many hicks love the movie Talladega Nights, how many people cracked up every time clint eastwood says something racist in gran torino, ect ect) not to mention bateman is tragic, almost sympathetic, character that probably some bankers reasonably identify with (the whole pulling off the face peel at the beginning while looking in the mirror in a moment of self reflection, ect).

not to get onto the topic from earlier, of the guy that hated his job and just did it to please his own friends and families expectations of success and wealth, but given the central themes of the movie, and its ridiculous popularity with bankers, i think its hard to argue that there isn't more there...

now, i'd just like a good explanation of why some of the girls that I know absolutely love the movie? rape fetish? i dunno...

 

An incredible book, and a very very well done movie.

Patrick Bateman is one of the better developed and well though out characters of recent literature and cinema.

Bale does such a good job in the movie portraying Bateman, especially during the first couple of murder scenes.

 
m.c.trader:

Patrick Bateman is one of the better developed and well though out characters of recent literature and cinema.

Uh, I'm guessing you don't read much literature or see many movies. Bateman is a caricature, an archetype used to further the movie's satire. Almost by definition, he is not a well-developed character. That's not to say he isn't a good character for what he's supposed to be, but "one of the better developed ... of recent literature and cinema" he is not.

 

Its about a crazy banker who kills people. Its well written and Bale does a good job acting in it. Oh, and Bateman drops a chainsaw from four stories and kills the girl who is about to escape...what's not to like.

"Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."
 
TheKing:
I never got that into it. If Bateman were a power lawyer instead of a banker, I doubt it'd be as hyped.

It would way more hypped, are you kidding? Look at all of the movies about lawyers, now look at all of the movies about bankers. There are alot more movies about lawyers.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

P. Bateman is an homage to the "good days" when IB was a WASP/Jewish safety career (unlike now, it wasn't even respected; it existed for below-average Ivy grads who couldn't get better jobs) and most jobs were sinecures, rather than now, where IB is better respected but hypercompetitive and miserable.

The professions were entirely different places to work in the 1980s. In the old days, professionals stressed out over trivial shit like their golf games and the breaches of minor social rules, rather than rent, laundry, and sleep deprivation. They worked less than the 40 hpw of a normal blue-collar worker. (Probably 25-30 hpw, if one were to discount social time, was the norm.) They worried about politics, reputation, and positioning rather than basic health and well-being, because they didn't live in a world where even what was required for modest success exceeded the stamina of over 90 percent of the population.

 

LOL. What does diversity have to do with this? Are you seriously saying that IB is more misrable because of a wider range of people pursueing it?

Man. Get a clue.


On the subject of batemen type bankers. We have a senior banker here who is one of those sinecure bankers mentioned on this thread. He has been finding it hard to adjust since the late 80s (always talks about it nostalgically), especially after 2001.

He has never pulled an all nighter (midnight was the longest he's ever been in the office - was for a closing). He cover's his overhead, but I doubt that we would higher a banker like him again. It's a different business now. More competition (on a firm level and the individual level).

Having said that, I've seen batemen-type personality traits in many of our professionals (myself included, to a small extent).

 
2x2Matrix:
Maybe they can make a sick sequel like Wall Street 2. Oh, wait...

Inorite! Can you imagine how much money it would make if you could also talk Michael Douglas into it?

More is good, all is better
 
ivoteforthatguy:
The 2000 movie sucked. They cut out so much material from the novel the whole point was lost. They should have produced it as a 9-part pay-per-view miniseries.

that would be a fucking bad ass mini series. It would be like Dexter with a Wall Street twist.

 

it's not surprising news, and no it's not a remake of a 10 year old movie... if you read anything about the micro-financed project, it's a re-imagining of a 10 year old movie. Basically, it's an update from the ideal 1980s yuppie culture of the book to today. It will be interesting, but without more details (casting, major changes in the script and of course, a serious discussion about Nobel Jones, David Fincher's protege), it's hard to really comment.

 

My first thought was that this was going to be a train wreck but Frieds makes some great points. It's not a sequel, it's a reboot, so there could be a ton of appeal with an updated NYC backdrop and more current satire. Obviously it has a lot to live up to and there will be a very high hurdle for it to garner the acclaim the original did.

It's probably also worth pointing out that this hasn't been greenlighted for production, just a rewrite...so it may never be made. Anyways, Hollywood has become so unoriginal that I would prefer them to remake the movies I liked as opposed to recycling the scripts for the ones I never cared for.

Regards

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
 

In the early light of a May dawn this is what the living room of my apartment looks like: Over the white marble and granite gas-log fireplace hangs an original David Onica. It's a six-foot-by-four-foot portrait of a naked woman, mostly done in muted grays and olives sitting on a chaise lounge watching MTV, the backdrop a Martian landscape, a gleaming mauve desert scattered with dead, gutted fish, smashed plates rising like a sunburst above teh woman's yellow head, and the whole thing is framed in black aluminum steel. The painting overlooks a long white down-filled sofa and a thirty-inch digital TV set from Toshiba; it's a high-contrast highly defined model plus it has a four-corner video stand with a high-tech tube combination from NEC with a picture-in-picture digital effects system (plus freeze-frame); the audio incldues built-in MTS and a five-watt-per-channel on-board amp. A toshiba VCR sits in a glass case beneath the TV set; it's a super high-band BETA unit and has a built in editing function including a character generator with eight-page memory.... -AS

needs some updating.... and now my hands hurt from typing

 
SpacemanSpiff:
Not happy about this

How can Bateman return his videotapes? Netflix streaming renders that moot

Red Box. He doesn't wanna be hit with $1 per day charges or god forbid, $25 when you keep it past 25 days.

My name is Nicky, but you can call me Dre.
 

Bro, after the 69th hour of the working week, anything Patrick does seems ordinary.

love the scene where he watches himself fuck the chics hahahahahaa... he like does not give a fuck about the girls and just stares at himself hahahahah priceless!

.
 

It is extremely narcicistic, vain and down right horrifying but I seem to be apathetic to the torture Bateman does.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 
heister:
It is extremely narcicistic, vain and down right horrifying but I seem to be apathetic to the torture Bateman does.
Work stress sucks, but you might need to check in for some therapy dude. The story, like the SAW movies, makes an effort to get you to see through his eyes, but he's still a sick fuck and the stories are intentionally mean sprited with no good outcome for the main character. Please get some sleep and rethink your life.

Oooooooooooorr just mosey on down to the nearest watering hole and befriend some people who are a bit more....human.....than you at this point.

Get busy living
 
Matt the Tiger:
I hated reading the torture scenes, I ended up skipping them after the first few paragraphs.

Why on earth would you sympathies with him during the torture scenes?

In the book he looses interest in the tortures, they dont thrill him any more. Similarly I dont feel horrified by his actions like I did at first. Its almost like im apathetic to what he is doing. It has become mindless ramblings like the Patty Winters show.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

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"Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on 'income distribution', the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: it is earned." -Thomas Sowell
 

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The answer to your question is 1) network 2) get involved 3) beef up your resume 4) repeat -happypantsmcgee WSO is not your personal search function.
 

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Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

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