[00:00:10] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Cloud Atlas listener polls and preview American Psycho.
Hello and welcome back to this Film is Lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's another prequel week.
Lots of notes, lots of feedback. Let's jump right into it with our patron shoutouts. I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why. No new patrons this week. But we do have our Academy Award winning patrons and they are. Nicole Goble, Harpo Rat, Nathan Vic Apocalypse, Mathilde Cottonwood, Steve. Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier. Gratch.
Just Gratch. Shelby says, isn't that corrupt?
That darn skag and V. Frank. Thank you all for your continuing support. We really appreciate it. Katie, let's see what people had to say about Cloud Atlas.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man. The people on Patreon had quite a bit to say.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: We had two votes for the book and two for the movie.
Kelly Napier said, this book was long. This movie was long.
So my thoughts were going to be long.
Since the book is broken down into sections, my thoughts will be too.
Story number one, the Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing.
My ranking number four of the six stories. My mostly ranked low because the racist language was really hard for me to read. Fair my verdict better in the book. I liked that the reveal of the goose poisoning Ewing doesn't happen until almost the end of the story. I was truly surprised. As Brian mentioned, I just assumed the fact that Ewing wasn't getting better was because medicine at that time was truly terrible in practice. I didn't like in the movie that it's literally one of the first things we learn about the story.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree with that because I. Yeah, it also was a surprise to me. I was, I assumed he was just giving him bad medicine. Not, you know, not intentionally so initially.
Story number two, even when I realized it was cocaine, I was like, he probably just think like, they just gave people cocaine for everything.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, Like, I was like, sure, right. You go to the doctor and they tell you you have ghosts in your blood and they give you cocaine.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Well, it's also particularly weird because he, he gives him cocaine in the book initially. At least I assume that's what it is. And then he starts po poisoning him in some way. Like, so initially, I guess he gives him the cocaine initially because to like lure him in. Like, oh, this makes me feel better. Yeah, so this will work. And then he starts poisoning him. I don't know.
It's interesting.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Story number two Letters from Zettelhelm.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Zettelhelm.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Zettelhelm.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: There's no L at the end of.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: The oh, you're right, there's not.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: I had the same issue. I wanted to say Zettelhelm but it's not spelled that way so I don't.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Know my ranking number two of the six stories. My verdict Better in the book. I think the movie did a huge disservice to Frobisher's story by not including Ava as her rejection of him. Read to me as the last blow to Frobisher's fragile psyche leading to his demise at his own hand.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: That is definitely the case in the book. That is what shoots him off down the self destructive kind of manic path that he heads on before he kills himself.
So yeah, for sure that is. But I mean I think you could do it without her. I think the movie doesn't like the change it makes of what spurs him. The falling out between him and Vivian Ayers and then why he leaves and everything is okay in the movie. But yeah, the book's version is just a lot more fleshed out and makes a lot more sense for his particularly distraught emotional state.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Story number three half lives the first Louisa Ray mystery.
My ranking number one of the six stories. I would 100% read this as a.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Standalone novel that I would agree with. I think it's by far the one that was the most like I remember I had a similar thought reading the book of like this one I would be interested in seeing just as a full story on its own.
I think I felt the same way about a couple other ones but that was probably the number one. I don't know if it was my favorite story but it was definitely the one I was like this has the most meat of like seeing this expanded to a full length book or movie or something would be the most compelling of the stories.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: My verdict? Better in the book. Maybe it was because of the way the movie decided to tell the story through editing, but I felt like the storytelling power of her story was lessened by not being told in a more linear fashion. You see right at the beginning of the movie her car go off the bridge but since you don't know who it is or what landed her in that situation, there isn't any emotion connected to it.
I also largely preferred Joan Appier. No relation in the book. The book did a better job of building up their relationship to each other and and why he would put everything on the line to help her.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: I completely agree with that. And now I just realized maybe I should have been pronounced. I called him Joe Napier in the But I have one reference for.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Is that not how they said it in the movie?
[00:05:42] Speaker A: It probably is.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: I think it was.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: I think that is a pretty common pronunciation. I think Kelly's maybe is less common potentially. I don't know.
Cause that was. I was surprised finding out that Kelly's name was pronounced Napier and not Napier.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Story number four, the Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. My ranking number three of the six stories.
My verdict? Better in the movie. I adore Jim Broadbent and he was living his best life acting out this farcical story. He managed to play the character in a way that while still highly self involved, came across as bumbling instead of just annoying. So I wanted to root for him.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: I think that's fair. He's definitely more root forable in the movie than he is in the book, which is fun, but it's just in a different way.
It's more fun for sure. And I liked a lot of. I think that story translated very well to the film. I would agree in terms of being an entertainment piece, but I do think there is a little bit in the book of the kind of person, whatever Timothy Cavendish is, that is kind of fascinating that the movie just doesn't address really, which is fine.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: An Orison of Somni 5451.
My ranking number five of the six stories. My verdict? Better in the movie. I had a hard time following her story in the book and this one was better told in the movie. To me, being able to visualize what she was telling the archivist helped me get a better grasp on what the world she existed in was actually like.
While I understand why he did it, I didn't really like how Mitchell used corporate names for common things. It's a movie, not a Disney. And why not an MGM or a Paramount?
[00:07:33] Speaker A: I mean, because the mouse consumes everything. I thought that was actually an incredibly, you know, apartment or not apartment but slightly prescient.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the foresight.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Yeah, the foresight. Because he wrote this book long before. I mean Disney was obviously a powerhouse for decades and decades, but it did not own everything in the way that it does before.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Disney had bought out 20th Century Fox and Marvel. Marvel and Star wars, the Muppets and like everything.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: And so to me that felt very. Because that is a huge aspect of that story is the conglomeration and it's an aspect of multiple of the stories. It's also Mentioned specifically in the Timothy Cavendish story. But that is a big part of it is the consolidation of or the monopolization of industries by single companies just owning everything. And so me, I totally bought that one. You would have a thing that happens similar to like where tissues became Kleenex. I could imagine that in a universe where. Or in the future a universe where, you know, movies and other stuff like that go by. Especially in a universe specifically, that is a corporate run government. It is a corpocracy. It is literally corporations are like the Godhead, like they are. And it's also like, it is like vaguely religious in the book as well. Not only are they the government, it's like this weird kind of theocratic government, like corporate order thing where they have like the people who run the things. It's all very cult like. And again, so that totally tracked to me in a way that was just like, absolutely.
Movies all being called Disney's. I was like, yes.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: I also 100% believe that in a future where Disney just owns all types of entertainment that they would try to make it be called a Disney and not a movie. I 100% buy that.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. And it's just. It also to me sounds the most like slangy, like a Disney. Like, it just works. Saying I'm going to see an MGM doesn't work the same way that a Disney does, in my opinion. But I also just think, like I said, it's fairly prescient in the sense that, yeah, Disney just owns everything. Of course, we would call movies Disney's 150 years from now when our society collapses into a corpocracy.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Story number six.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: The other note I wanted to talk about that is that I could totally see how the movie would help you visualize what she was talking about more. I did not have that issue at all in the book. I think that may have just been. That's probably more of a personal what you've read and watched before thing.
The world of the San MI451 story immediately tracked onto a million other things. My brain immediately went to Blade Runner and any sort of cyberpunk type stuff. And just a million properties where I immediately knew like, okay, I get what this universe is and what they're doing and what like the whole point of this is. And so I had a very. I for the most part had a very easy time kind of like visualizing what that world looked like.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Story number six, Slooshes Crossin and everything. After my ranking number six of the six stories, my verdict better in the movie. Man, did I struggle to read this chapter in the book. Constantly having to work at translating what their version of English was to my version of English is very hard for me.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: I also found it very difficult. It was the.
As I did it more, it grew on me. But I was frustrated the whole time and I liked it more and more as it went and I got more used to it. But it was a thing. And I also think if it was a thing where I wasn't reading for a deadline, maybe it would be less frustrating because I'm trying to get through it quickly, but I have to like slow down and parse.
But that being said, I completely agree it was frustrating to read through.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: I also agree with Brian that marinem's reason for wanting to go to the mountain makes a lot more sense in the movie than in the book.
Also, one thing I never saw the answer to in either the book or the movie is why they worship Somni. How did the recollections of a Fabricant become the preeminent religion of these people?
[00:12:00] Speaker A: To me, I assumed it was just that she was the revolutionary figure.
She kind of. I totally bought her becoming the central figure of a religion in the same way that like Jesus would, in that she presented this revolutionary political narrative that ultimately, and we don't know when, but ultimately at some point sparked a revolution that brought about the downfall of the entire governmental system that existed at that time and thus from the ashes of it, and probably led to some form of which they were already catapulting towards, but probably hastened the apocalyptic scenario that led to.
Not hastened. That's not the right word. Because the corpocracy is what caused the.
The over consumption of the planet is what led to the apocalyptic scenario that we see in Seleucious Crossing. That is made very explicitly clear in the book. But that revolution kicked shit off even more. And then things, you know, degraded in a way where.
Yes, and then probably degraded and then the re. Established society probably initially she started as more of like a political figure, which I think is also probably. Well, that's not true of Jesus. But you know, at their time they were seen more as political figures maybe than religious figures in certain ways. But then as time goes and myth grows and blah, blah, blah, and the stories get passed from generation to generation, that slowly transforms into a religious narrative more so than a political narrative. And that totally tracks to me about like, you know, the stories of Sun Mi being the one who showed people they had a soul and cause that's a Big part of it was like the idea that fabricants have a soul and blah, blah, blah and all this sort of stuff. And so I think the idea that like she. Well, her teachings kind of get perverted into something religious over the decades and centuries.
And so, yeah, it didn't surprise me at all for her to be like their religious figure. That like, I was like, yeah, that tracks. That makes sense.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Overall, thoughts? I think the movie made a bad decision by splicing all the stories together instead of telling them one at a time like the book does. It was very hard to invest in the characters when we kept getting pulled away from them. When Memento was released on DVD for the first time, there was an Easter egg on the disc where you could watch the movie in chronological order. I wonder if anyone has spent the time putting this movie back in the order the book has it in. I would be interested to see that.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Did we talk about that in the episode? Because I. I think that was a thought I had. I was like, I wonder if you even could feasibly edit this back into the book order. And I'm not. You could to some extent. It would be a mess.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: You could put it all in the.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Right order, but with the score and everything. It would be. Cause the score is running concurrently.
Yeah. Under like as we're cutting from scene to scene.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah. You would have to take the score out.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Like the score would become a mess. You would have to rejigger that somehow. But like.
Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it's super genius and you can in fact put this. Put it in the order that it would still. And the score somehow still works. That would be super impressive.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Only one way to find out.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: But I do wonder if somebody. I would have to look on YouTube to see if somebody has. Cause you could. It wouldn't even take you that long really to just take all to like splice it up, splice it back and rearrange it again. I don't think it would work. I think. Cause again, the movie was constructed specifically to work cut together between the three stories or the six stories. I just. My guess would be if you did that, there would be a lot of weird jumps and cuts in the self contained stories where you'd be like, what's going on here?
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah. There would be some transitions that were not particularly smooth, I'm sure, but it.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Would be interesting to see for sure.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: My husband watched this one with me and I had to pause it at about 15 minutes in and explain the basic concept of the book to him. Because he was so completely lost.
That being said, he stated after we finish it that he has never enjoyed a movie so much while also being completely lost the whole time.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: There you go. It sounds like he hit the Roger Ebert phase where he was like I just this second time I watched it, I stopped trying to figure out what was going on and just enjoyed it.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: I loved the nesting build of the book and found myself looking forward to uncovering how the next story compared to the first. And like I said before, I would have read and enjoyed the Louisa Rae story as a standalone book.
My verdict on the stories alone would lead me to declaring this one a tie, but since I didn't like the way they edited the movie, I'm giving this one to the book.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: There you go. Fair enough.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Cottonwood Steve and Steve was the patron who requested Cloud Atlas versus and Steve said, sorry I suggested such a long and difficult read, but it is one of those books that really clings to you after you have read it for the first time.
I will give the book its due, but ultimately I chose the movie.
In regards to the film, I still consider it one of the great movies of the past 20 years.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I would not say that I liked the movie a lot and I think I would be. I wonder. I would be interested to know Steve. Let us know maybe you say it later in the comment if you read or watched first.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: I feel like Steve might mention that, but we'll see if it's in here.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: But anyways, I would not even get close to considering it one of the greatest movies of the past 20 years, but I do think it was quite good.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: The editing is always what brings me back for more due to the cleverness that Brian mentioned from one era to the other with each actor bouncing into a different role. This continuity was quite satisfying, especially the scene where Somni451 speaks about the afterlife being a door with Daniel Ewing.
That is Chang meeting her in the 1849 timeline.
The music was also amazing.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: I think he named those characters wrong, it is Adam Ewing.
I. E.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yes, I think you're right.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Chang is a character in the book and he might be in the movie, but it is not that character. That character is Haeju. I'm pretty sure. Anyways, so I just double checked and the character's name in the movie is Haeju Chang because they combined two characters from the book, Haeju Im and a character named Chang.
So they gave him the last name changing. So I was kind of correct in that I was thinking of the book where his last name is not Chang, but Steve was correct, he is Chang in the movie. I just always referred to him as hey Joo because that was what he was always referred to as in the book.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: The music was also amazing considering the trio that worked on it had mostly done electronic music and hearing them flex their muscle through classical style music was quite amazing for me. If you really excel at these two elements, a three hour movie will zip by in a flash. And much like with other extremely long films I love like Magnolia, the Thin Red Line and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
While some might say the happy endings in Timothy Cavendish's story and Plushes Crossing Slushes Crossing are somewhat derivative, I felt the story could use some upbeat emotions considering how overwrought the other stories ended up being.
I will say I find it unbelievable that Jim Broadbent's Cavendish could land Susan Sarandon.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: That's very fair.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that is. That's. He looked a lot older than her when they showed them at the end.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Significantly older.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Significantly older.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: And the Timothy Cavendish we know in the book is also kind of a dick. So it's not even like he's a super great guy.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: One thing that really makes the story stronger is the small additions the directors made. Sarandon's character in the 1849 timeline was a welcome addition as well as the gender bending which happened for multiple characters.
I've eased up on the awful Asian makeup over the years, but I still stand by my original critique that I made years ago on IMDb that it might have been better to have minimal makeup.
Yes, it would be weird of Adam Ewing being a random South Korean woman. Or why are these Asian characters are suddenly non Asian. But I think you could have succeeded either way.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: I actually think that might have been interesting. Just don't do.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: If they hadn't tried to make them look like different races.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah, just have them play.
And now maybe that's. I don't know. Yeah, maybe that wouldn't have been obvious enough what was going on, that these are different people. Maybe that would have been too confusing for general audiences. Like why is Sanmi451's character just this Korean woman is just like a colonial. Not colonial, but like in 1849. Like, yeah, the wife of an American lawyer. Like I can understand that being confusing, but yeah, that might. I might have worked. I don't know. It's interesting.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: I also appreciate the biggest change that being the Neo Soul timeline. What Mitchell did in the book will lead into my critique now. I Love the book. There is a reason why I chose it. Clever, stylish and incredibly well written. David Mitchell really worked to create multiple styles of writing as well as put together worldviews which were differentiated perfectly, complete with their own slang and nuance.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that was what was really compelling to me was just I was so impressed with the amount of research.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like a massive amount of research and work went into this book.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Like creating like slang and languages and even when you're not creating languages like in the 1849 version, just doing all the research to know how to write in that style is.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yeah, to make it sound as authentic as possible.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Again, I don't know for sure that it is completely authentic, but it sure sounds like it is and seems like it is.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: My only complaint is Mitchell really struggled to end some of the stories, at least in my opinion.
I preferred Frobisher in the film because in the book I felt he mistreated Sixmith with his dalliances and in the book made Sixmith seem pathetic hanging onto the letters of someone who obviously used him as a backup plan.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: I mean that is definitely true, but I thought that made Frobisher's character interesting.
Like I think it made him a very tragic, complicated protagonist who is both compelling and we want to see him succeed because he's kind of brilliant. You can tell he's brilliant and clever and has some interesting thoughts, but also is kind of this obnoxious self absorbed asshole who uses people, even people that he loves, he still uses them. Which I thought was interesting.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: I absolutely loathe the Sanmi 451 part. It should have been a more straightforward sci fi section, but it seeped off into too many avenues, which I guess was brought about due to the limitations of the format.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Mitchell wrote in I man, I did not feel that way at all other than this next line. I agree with that. As I talked about in the episode.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: The rather ridiculous It's a government false flag is what really dates the book for me, considering it was most likely a response to the post 911 conspiracies that were spinning around the stratosphere in 2004.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Could be.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: It would have been better if Sanmi 45451 just reluctantly stated unanimity is going to twist and co opt her words.
And then of course Lucius Crossing was the one in most need of some sprucing up, which I felt the film really improved upon overall. I can't say one is better than the other when introducing the material to someone, but I will always Marvel at the film. A $100 million art film is a rarity. And much like the In Universe media and the story, I think this film will have a greater appreciation in the years to come. And as well as the book, because I think some bored conservative is going to read this and like Brian said, seek to get it banned.
They certainly have a case, since there is not one but two cases of rape in the book to illustrate the evil of toxic patriarchy, regardless if the main characters denounce it wholeheartedly.
But who knows? Books have been banned for far less.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: And a new it won't get banned for that. It'll get banned because it's. It's gonna get banned because it's like, hey, fucking kill your oppressors revolution. Like that. It's a very leftist text about destroying capitalism and how capitalism is destroying the earth and global warming is a result of our overconsumption and a million other things. It won't get banned. I mean, sorry, it could also get banned because there's rape scenes, like, whatever that. That is a thing that traditionally the conservative right has, you know, sexually explicit stuff, which it's not even sexually explicit in the book. But I. I don't think those would be the reasons necessarily. Again, I think it'll be banned for more explicit thematic reasons or specific thematic reasons.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: I will end on a funny note at least for I am surprised you didn't catch the Princess Bride reference.
Right after heyju beats up an impossible number of agents and blows up a ship. Sanmi451 says, who are you? His answer might as well. Might as well have been no one of consequence. Like all union agents could pull that off.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: So I went back and watched this because I was like, did I miss a Princess Bride reference? And I will have to slightly disagree with you here, Steve. I would not call this a Princess Bride reference. To me, this is more of a general movie thing.
It's a movie cliche that it's referencing. But to me, it did not remotely feel like a direct, intentional or otherwise reference to the Princess Bride. Because what happens in that scene is he destroys all the stuff and. And then she says, who are you? And he says, I am heyju whatever. First some engineer of the union or something like that. Which to me is not remotely similar to no one of consequence. Like, I don't know.
It just did not feel like a reference to Princess Bride to me. But maybe I, you know, I don't know. It's just. I. Because I went back and looked. I was like, really? There's a and I and when I went to watch that scene again, I was like, I think it's a stretch, I guess I'll say to say it's referencing Princess Bride.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Steve closed out by saying, thanks for choosing this book and I'm glad you took a liking to it.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Thank you for recommending it. I'm very glad I got a chance to read it.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Diane Takaki and Diane said, since I'm still in a hold line for the book at the library, I can only talk about the movie.
When the movie came out back in 2012, I dismissed it unfairly after hearing so many negative things about it.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: So did I.
Exact same experience I heard like this movie's weird and doesn't it's bad. And I was like, well, just write that one off.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: It became one of those movies that I figured I would never see and one that I eventually forgot existed until now. I checked out the DVD from my local library, excited to get my hands on a copy, but then feeling almost a feeling of dread going into it.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: That is often the case with a three hour movie. You're like, oh boy, am I going.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: To be able to get through a three hour movie that sounds like a mess. Will I be able to follow it? Will I be bored? Will I understand anything?
Well, the answer is yes to all of the above. Except the bored part. I was never bored.
I honestly have nothing profound or deep to say about the movie. All I know is that it kept me hooked for three hours. It surprised me. It moved me. Hearing Brian talk about the book makes me even more interested to read it. But I'm actually glad I watched the movie first.
The visuals of the movie were exquisite, particularly the new soul scenes, which was probably my favorite story of the bunch.
I'm glad I got to see all of that in my head to take with me as I begin to read the book, as I think that will make the book a little easier to get through.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: It may. I don't know. That's interesting because I definitely thought that having read the book made the movie easier to parse.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: But I could see it the other way. That having read the or seen the movie that you'll be primed for. It'll be a definitely a different reading experience because especially having listened to the podcast episode.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Talk about how the book is structured and everything and spoil that.
Yeah, it'll change the reading experience, but I think you'll still enjoy it. There's a lot more in the book. There's even stuff that I didn't talk about in the episode in the book that is all really compelling in lots of different ways.
And I think it may help having watched. What I think it could help is having watched the movie first. When you get to the Seleucious Crossing part, you may be able to get the, like pick up the reading of that quicker after having heard it, heard it and like kind of seen it in that context a little bit. May help you get through that a little better than it took like me and Kelly when we were talking about it.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you'll have to come back and let us know after you read the book.
But most importantly, the movie has what the book doesn't. A glimpse at the luxurious head of hair on Ben Whishaw's Robert Frobisher. My God, he's got great hair in this movie.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: He does. And I will say that I thought I was like, man, I feel like I never see this dude in anything because I thought he was as much as I thought the character of Robert Frobisher was more interesting in the book. I thought Ben Whishaw did a great job at, at the performance and I was very moved by his performance. And I wish they had given. I think he could have crushed it if they had given more of the personality of Frobisher from the book to him in the movie.
That was one. When I was watching the movie where so reading the book, I was like, man, this Louisa Ray story could be its own fun pulp detective drama thing, corporate espionage mystery film thriller kind of story as a standalone. But when I was watching the movie, even though I didn't like the character Frobisher as much, I thought Ben Whishaw was so good and I liked the, maybe the aesthetic, I don't know, something about that story, the Robert Frobisher story. I was like, I would love to see this as a movie, just this story, standalone, as a movie.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: But anyways, anyway, thanks for giving me an excuse to watch this movie I had previously written off. I absolutely loved it.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Awesome. That's fantastic.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Our next comment is from Nathan who said, beg pardon if this is too late, but I just now finished the movie.
For me, neither the book nor the movie is very good.
Honestly. I would say both are bad overall, but a few of the component stories are good.
I think the film works better as a single narrative piece, but it's still a real mess.
I went into the book knowing nothing specifically about the book, but I had heard talk about the movie involving the leads playing multiple characters across time, so I had some sense of multiple narratives going on.
When I got to the break in Ewing's diary, it only moderately surprised me due to how abrupt the stop was. I flipped ahead to see how far I had to wait to get back to that narrative, and doing so spoiled the matryoshka doll format.
I get that the book was trying to make a point about how history rhymes, but in application it just felt disruptive.
I found the Samni and Luisa stories to be the best early narratives, and both suffered from the disruption of having an unrelated story shoved inside them so that when I got back to them, they had lost their urgency and interest.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: So I will say that I don't entirely disagree with that.
While reading the book for like the first half, as we kept doing that, I did have the experience of finding it slightly frustrating that the story I was getting invested in was being interrupted to start a new story when I was like compelled to, like, want to learn more and know more about what happened in that.
But once it then got back around and I figured out what was going on and what the book was doing, it was clever enough and interesting enough that it stopped bothering me and I went on the ride that the book was taking me on. And in that. So like, I did have that initial experience of like, this is kind of annoying and frustrating and weird. But then as I kind of tried to really meet the book at where it was at and what it was doing, I enjoyed the experience a lot more. And especially after I, like, I would say about half, literally the halfway point through, like the Sluices Crossing story, after I had really kind of like gotten up to speed with reading that section from there to the end of the book, I was really just on board with what it was doing. I will say preface that. And I've said this before many times on the podcast. I am an easy mark for things that are clever.
If something is clever in a way that I think is particularly unique or interesting or like compelling, especially I think in this instance it's clever to serve a purpose. I don't think it's just clever for clever sake. I know some of our other comments. I think maybe Miko had a note about it being kind of feeling maybe more on the gimmicky side than revolutionary. And I don't even necessarily disagree with that in the sense that I don't know if it's revolutionary because I don't think I would say this should be how we should write books going forward or this should be A new paradigm in how we write books. It's definitely gimmicky in the sense of that's how this book should be written. And maybe, like, you can find a different, similar, interesting way to tell some other story, maybe.
But it. I. Yeah, because it was so clever and to the purpose of what the book was trying to do.
You know, exploring the way history is cyclical and repeats itself through these interspersed narratives. I was like. Once that all kind of fell into place, I was like, all right, I. I'm on board. Like, I get it and I dig it now, but I can all. Like I said, I did have that experience, so it's not like I don't understand at all where you're coming from.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: The book also picked by far the least interesting story, Ewing, as its opening and closing, which made it both very hard to get into and anticlimactic to finish.
Honestly, I thought Frobisher was nearly as uninteresting. So we were almost 100 pages in before I found a story that made me want to read it.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Interesting. I could see that for Adam Ewing story because he's not particularly super compelling protagonist. I just found Frobisher to be very interesting, and so I thought that story was very interesting. I loved the Frobisher story in the book.
He's just so messy. And I thought it was very fun to read. Like, I just. He's such an interesting, weird, messy genius, that I was like, I'm into this.
And I don't disagree that maybe the Ewing story is, like, the least interesting. That's probably true. But I also felt like, because, again, I had bought into what the book was doing by the time I was getting to the end of it, that it just felt fitting to end on that story where we started, which is with this very obvious and understood historical atrocity, which was like, the slave trade and the enslavement and genocide of people in the Chatham Islands and all this sort of stuff that all felt very like, okay, we're all on the same page. That was bad. So then we're using that kind of as our framework for exploring oppression through different eras and specifically eras that, like, once we get into the future, stories completely fabricated narratives in a.
In an imagined future, I thought, grounding the story in this very real. And again, because not only is it, like, historic or, like, set in the past, it's truly based on, like, actual history of this real genocide of these real people in the Chatham Islands and the.
And the, you know, the transatlantic slave trade and all of that.
So it just felt very. And colonialism and everything.
It just felt like the right place for what this. The theme that this story is exploring.
That story felt like the right place to begin and end for me, even if it is maybe the least interesting.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: I also thought the meta bits tying together the tales was incredibly lame.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: And that's where I could not disagree more.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Far from being clever, it almost felt to me like the author had six separate short stories in their head and at the last second decided to connect them.
The meta nature interfered with telling the stories as we had to bend over backwards to find a way to fit them together.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: I did not feel like it was bending over backwards at all. It felt completely natural the way the stories intertwined with Frobisher finding the journal, et cetera, et cetera. That all just felt completely like, oh, yeah, that tracks. And it didn't feel like. It really did not feel to me like he was going out. Like Mitchell had to, like, construct this really, like, weird, misshapen thing. It's fine. Weird, misshapen thing to fit into a. You know, I didn't feel like he was trying to fit a round peg into a square hole or square peg into a round hole at all, but okay.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Most glaring was Frobisher, who, at the ending is mailing his suicide note and yet takes the time to include a full copy of the ooing diary. Why on earth would he care about that?
I guess the answer is because he somehow knew it was his own soul story. But that's not very well developed.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: I don't think that's the reason. I think the reason is because, again, it goes back to the type of character Frobisher is. It maybe makes less sense in the movie, I'll give you that. In the book, Frobisher has lost his mind. He's like this.
He is completely manic. He's not sleeping.
He has lost it. He's.
So it doesn't really make sense, but also it does make sense because this is a thing he got obsessed with. Like, he's. He's an obsessive personality to begin with. Like, that you kind of have to be to be the level of, like, musical genius that he is, or at least wants to be, is. He's obsessed with. He becomes obsessed with things. And so he was obsessed with the story that he found that was only half there, and then he found the rest of it. And so obviously it's this thing he's been talking to. To Sixmith about. I did not remotely question the idea that he would send it to him as part of his suicide note. Like, sure, he hasn't slept for weeks. He's suicidal.
Why would I even question his motivation behind that? And I don't think it has anything to do with him knowing. I mean, I think you could maybe make that insinuation somewhere that he knew that it was his own soul story, but I do not think you need that to be part of it. For why he would send that, it's because he was losing his mind and an obsessive, weird person already.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: I think in general, the book does a lot of telling, not showing. Like, I get that Luisa should recognize the Cloud Atlas sextet because she wrote it, but I only know that because of the context of the book.
It's not because it seems in any way resonant with the character.
So much of the book seems motivated by the meta bits. If that ever dovetailed naturally with the plot, it would have been cool. But it didn't. I'm with Katie and the disappointing nature of the Frobisher story.
I don't know if I said it was disappointing.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember you saying that. Maybe he meant Kelly. No, she didn't say. I don't know. Yeah, never mind.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: I was just confused in the movie about why he was committing suicide at the end.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Um.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: I don't think the book did it any better, just different. I did find it interesting how the portrayal of Forbisher changed, as he seemed like an insufferable entitled prick in the book, but a genuinely damaged artist in the movie.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: He's both in the book. He's both of those things in the book. The movie just only makes him the damaged artist and gets rid of the insufferable entitled prick, which is what makes him interesting in the book, in my opinion.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: This very much shaped my read on his ending. Was he a spoiled rich kid who sowed the seeds of his own destruction because he slept with his boss's wife repeatedly, or a genuinely tortured artist who was wronged by the world because they weren't able to deal with his genius or his sexuality?
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Both. It's both. The answer is both.
I don't know. To me, it's very clearly both. He is a spoiled rich kid who absolutely was the cause of his own downfall through terrible decisions that he made, but also was a genuinely tortured artist who was wronged by the world in other ways because they weren't able to deal with his genius. The sexuality is more of a movie thing because it's not as his sexuality is not really, like, leveraged against him in the book as the way it is in the movie by Ayers. Because it never comes up with Ayers. It's about sleeping with his wife thing. And it's also not that they weren't able to deal with his genius, but it's also his downfall in falling out with Ayers is because it's this weird clash of who is responsible for the art that is being created.
Ayers is taking credit for it and Frobisher thinks he should be getting more credit for it. And it's this interesting dynamic of, like, when two creative people are working together and especially when one of them has seniority and, like, has all this power over Frobisher, he can just take credit for it because Frobisher has no way to. Yeah, he has no recourse, no recourse against it. And I thought that was really compelling.
And that is part of what leads him down this path because. And what makes him start losing his mind because he.
I don't know, I.
You know, art hits people differently. It's just. I thought Frobisher's character was fascinating in the book because he's all of these things. I didn't.
I think you're trying to pigeonhole him too much, maybe.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Having said that, makes me realize that I think the movie version was actually much better and maybe actually worthwhile.
So the movie version of Frobisher.
So the movie dropping the narrative structure of the book is an odd choice and one that definitely makes it less artistically interesting.
It did make it much easier to watch as the viewer could follow a normal three act structure with multiple parallel climaxes rather than the ups and downs created by the book's format.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: I agree with that.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And we actually, we had a conversation following recording the episode where I said that I thought the movie changing the structure might have been what helped me stay interested for the full three hours.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Yes. And I agree with that.
It definitely makes for a better, like more traditional, as you said here, a normal three act structure with multiple parallel climaxes and stuff. It turns the structure of the story into something that is more traditional movie structure, film structure, and thus makes it more digestible.
It's just. Which is not bad necessarily. But it is, again, the thing to me that was most interesting about the book.
Maybe not most interesting, but, yeah, I would say most interesting about the book is that structure. And so losing it is just like, well, you know, okay, it's fine. It's just. Yeah.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Since I got Very little from the book's format. I prefer the film.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's fair. If you didn't like the books format. If the books format, you didn't think it was clever or meta. The meta narrative of it worked well, then obviously switching it up would work better. And I will say, because I was thinking about that too, even if you.
I still don't know how well keeping the traditional structure of the book or the original structure of the book would work for the movie. Because I do agree that I don't know, like, if it would feel as satisfying, like, and pacing wise, how it would work. I just don't know. Like, it may just truly not have worked like, at all as a film. You might have been like, this is boring. It doesn't. We're restarting again. And then like, it just doesn't feel like it. Yeah, I don't know. I could totally see, I could totally believe that if you did the movie the way I, like wanted it to be done and like envisioned it being done, that I could watch it and go, nah, actually that sucks. The other version's better. Like, I could imagine that any goodwill.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Gained from that was squandered totally by the inexplicable choice to repeat the whole cast between the various stories. Stories. It muddies the reincarnation ideas of the book and also leads to a lot of white people in Asian facial prosthetics and makeup, which was a really bad idea.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: I, I don't entirely disagree with that. We discussed it in the episode. I don't think it's inexplicable. I think you can explain it.
I just don't know if it's a good explanation. Like, I think it. Because as I said, I think it does kind of mess with the whole point of like, okay, so the idea is that these souls are carrying through specifically of our main characters is like same person being re. Same soul being reincarnated. Well then if we do that, okay, you would think the idea would be that the same actor is going to play the main character and all of them. But that's not what we do. We just have the same actors playing different characters. And, and so it's. You get to a point where like, well then what's the point of having it be the same actors? I think there is a point there in the idea of what we talked about in the episode of the. And even with the, the race swapping and gender swapping is trying to get at this broader idea of we're all just people.
And that is kind of the point of the book is this, this like Sunmi says it in her story, like, you know, in. In corpocracy. In her time, everybody is divided by whether they are consumers or. And what level of consumer they are versus fabricants versus blah, blah. Like a caste system based on capitalism basically, and how much you spend and how much money you have and all that. Whereas in previous times it was your skin color or your sex or your gender or whatever, blah, blah, blah. All these different things. And so the movie or the book and the movie are both really trying to say none of that matters. All of that is bullshit.
We're just people at our core. Our souls, our.
Our essence is just as people, regardless of what gender, race, ethnicity, creed, sex, whatever we are.
And so I think that's the idea behind. So let's just take all the same actors and have them all recur through these different time periods. Because I think they would imagine the idea that sells the idea of people are just people because you're seeing the same people playing all these different characters. Again, I do kind of agree though that it muddles the reincarnation idea a little bit.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: A few final thoughts. I think I ranked the stories from Best to Luisa Cavendish, San Mi, Zachary Frobisher and Ewing.
The Cavendish story started slowly, but the ending with a mini heist team of old folks escaping and then the use of Scottish rugby hooligans as an escape ploy was genuinely fun and clever.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: I agree. That was a lot of fun.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Sanmi's tale seems heavily Matrix influenced in the film, especially during the gunfight on the walkway during San Mi's first recapture.
Generally, any view we got of Neo's soul made me think of the real world in the Matrix.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's the Wachowskis. Yeah, definitely, you know. Yeah.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: All right. Our last comment on Patreon was from Kevin Smith, not that one, who said I voted for the book, even though I thought a few of the characters stories weren't original. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing had similar vibes to English Passengers by Matthew Neal. Letters from Zeldham was the Sorrow of Young Werther, Half Lives A Louisa Rae Mystery was the China Syndrome and Orison of San Mi was, as you mentioned, Soylent Green and Sloosh's Crossing and everything after was like Terry Pratchett's Nation all tied together like Italo Cavino's if on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
So actually, why did I vote for the book? Is it too late to change?
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I don't know any of those stories.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: I've never read any of those stories.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Enough to know how similar these stories are.
But the little bit I know about Soylent Green, which is the one I know the most about, which is just that I've culturally osmosed a little bit about it, I don't think it's that similar, other than the idea that at the end we find out that they're repurposing. They're repurposing people into food product, which is part of the San Mi story, but is such a minimal. Not a minimal part. It's an important aspect of it. But the story is about so much. So many other things and so much other stuff happens that it feels a little reductive maybe, to be like, well, it's just. It's sun, it's Soylent Green, and these, like. I don't know. I would have to actually read all of those stories to see how similar these other stories are to them.
I could believe that they're similar or, you know, in some way.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: Similar stories happen all the time.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Yeah. But I think the idea of, like, well, it's all these different stories, completely different than, like, you know, inspired by or similar to these other stories, but then packaged in its own very specific way that is this other book. Like, yeah, that's a new thing at that point, to where I don't feel the need to, like, denigrate it, I guess, or I don't know if I would go, like, you know, to the point where I'm like, oh, so why am I voting for the book? Because it's just all of these other things in the shell of this other thing. It's like, well, yeah, but that's like a whole new thing.
That's a different thing. Like, if you do six different stories and then combine them in the framework of another different story, you don't really have, like, it is now greater than the sum of its parts, in my opinion. But I don't know.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: All right, over on Facebook, we had two votes for the book and two for the movie. And we had one comment from Paige, who said, sometimes this podcast is how I figure out a movie is based on a book.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: Us, too. That is our experience a lot of the time.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: I am definitely going to go to the library to find this and read it. I wish I would have kept up with y' all on this episode because I remember really liking this movie. Little did I know the directors were the same as the Matrix. So that was a nice added Surprise.
I can't choose which is better right now, but I'll hop on Patreon to give a true verdict after I read the book.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: We're holding you to that.
You better come back and give us that opinion.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Oh, we didn't have any comments on Instagram, but we did have two votes for the movie, none for the book this time.
[00:52:00] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: And over on Goodreads, we had one vote for the book and zero for the movie.
And Miko said Cloud Atlas turned out to be one of those stories that I get but don't feel the story did not feel larger than the sum of its parts. That is, I think I would have enjoyed the six individual stories equally well had they been totally unconnected.
I didn't dislike the book, but I would put it closer to the gimmick end of the scale.
Some of the connections felt so tenuous and like, how did the Louisa Ray story shape Henry Cavendish? You could say he was inspired to turn his ghastly ordeal into a script after reading Half Lives, but you could equally well remove everything to do with Rey from Cavendish's section and it would not make a single difference.
[00:52:53] Speaker A: This is interesting because now I'm reading this and this is a similar thing to what I think it was Nathan was saying of like, you know, like, how does the connection of them being the same reincarnated soul. I guess part of what is making this difference for me is that I didn't really read the book that way. Like thinking like, okay, how does the previous experiences or life of the previous character influence this character? That was not how I read it at all really. To me it was more of.
I was viewing it. What I found fascinating about the structure was the way that the, the book used it as commentary to, or as a way to comment on the cyclical nature of history and systems of oppression. And not so much about like.
And not so much as a way to explore the idea of how reincarnation affects the main character, if that makes sense. Like. So I was not like, while reading the book, I was not remotely thinking about the effect that Louisa Ray in a previous life was Robert Frobisher. That was not even in my brain reading her story. What was in my brain was okay, like exploring again the different ways like, oh, so like when we get the aside of where they go into the, the, the sweatshop and the, the migrant workers are being exploited to produce cheap knickknacks or whatever. But also the way that intersects with racism and that the lady seemingly running that is like she Kills one of the. The bad guys because he's racist. And, like. But also. And so, like, we're rooting for her, but she also seems to be running this weird sweatshop, which is a different side. Like, I. Like, I was much more interacting with the book outside of. Or not interacting, but kind of more interested in what the book was talking about outside of the main character, I guess. And I just. I thought the main characters were interesting within their individual stories, but I didn't really care about how they related to each other, like, from the previous story at all. That was not. I cared how the stories related, again, in terms of the way history works and all that sort of stuff. And thematically, I thought that the structure was interesting, but not at all. Didn't even cross my mind to think about, like, that continuation for the main character. That was just. It's interesting because I think that maybe that is part of what. For some of the. Some of our listeners didn't connect in the same way because they were viewing it more of that. Like, oh, let's see how this narrative structure affects the main character in each of these. Because we know it's like this character is reincarnated. And to me, it's like, well, you're just starting over. They're like a blank page, basically.
Because to me, that's how I read reincarnation in the book, to be fair, is that I don't think you really keep.
Other than, like, maybe vague, nebulous.
Like the idea that Luisa Ray, like, kind of remembers the Cloud Atlas Sextet music. Like, it seems familiar to her, but she doesn't have, like, her morals are not shaped by Robert Frobisher's morality in any way. I guess I would say she may have some, like, echoes of his life bouncing around in her head, but it's not like his. His moral arc influences her moral arc. I don't know.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: The language used in Zachary's story was a highlight, even in the translation.
[00:56:32] Speaker A: Yeah, a highlight.
That was interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I remember reading this earlier and thinking, oh, God, they had to translate that into other languages.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: I'm never not impressed with translators, especially.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: With something like that. Oh, my goodness.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: The film felt similarly. Okay. I think the riffle shuffle approach for the storylines works in the movie, contrasting the similar moments in the different tales. I might even like it more than the structure of the book. Then again, I felt that reusing the same actors and doing the reappearing birthmark somewhat muddled the tale.
I really do not have strong feelings one way or the other. But I will give this one to the book, if only due to the use of language and the future storylines.
All right, so our winner this week was the Movie by a Hare, with six votes to the books. Five.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Sweet. I feel like we had more comments than we got votes did.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:57:29] Speaker A: Didn't we?
[00:57:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: Okay, so some of our commenters didn't vote.
That's fun.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Well, on Patreon, I have, like, a hard end for the actual poll, but you can keep. So that I can.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: So like Nathan was.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but you can keep commenting after the. After the literal poll is shut down.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: That makes sense. Okay. I was trying to figure out how that was even possible, but. All right. Oh, thank you all very much. I, again, always love responding to stuff. Even if it feels like I'm arguing with you. Please know that it's out of love, because I. One, I love arguing. I think it's a lot of fun. But two, it's just. I think discussing art is interesting and we all have different opinions on it, so it's fun to talk about it.
All right, Katie, no learning things segment this week because we got some pretty big previews. So let's preview American Psycho the book.
New card. What do you think?
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Woohoo.
[00:58:26] Speaker A: Very nice.
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Patrick. He's so sweet.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: Gene?
[00:58:35] Speaker B: Yes, Patrick?
[00:58:36] Speaker A: Would you like to accompany me to dinner?
Sabrina, why don't you dance a little? Christy, get down on your knees.
We're not through yet.
[00:58:50] Speaker B: American psycho is a 1991 satirical horror novel by American writer Brett Easton Ellis.
I learned so much about this book reading the Wikipedia page. I have not started it yet.
[00:59:05] Speaker A: Are you dreading it now?
[00:59:07] Speaker B: Because I've heard not dreading it.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: One of the research I was doing about the movie, I was reading stuff about the book. I was like, oh, boy.
[00:59:14] Speaker B: But I don't know if it's something I would have picked on my own per se, but dreading it per se.
In regards to the novel's concept and inspiration. Ellis stated in a 2010 interview quote, Bateman was crazy the same way I was. He did not come out of me sitting down and wanting to write a grand, sweeping indictment of yuppie culture. It initiated because of my own isolation and alienation. At a point in my life, I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself, but it just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself.
That is where the tension of American Psycho came from.
So I thought that was interesting.
And then, in a 2024 interview, Ellis discussed the novel's title, revealing that while on a visit to a Multiplex in the mid-1980s, the theater's marquee simply read out American Psycho because the titles of American Anthem and Psycho3 would not properly fit on it.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: There you go.
[01:00:28] Speaker B: The novel's protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is often used as an example of an unreliable narrator. In a 2014 podcast appearance, Ellis stated that Bateman's narration was so unreliable that even he, as the author of the book, did not know if Bateman was honestly describing events that actually happened or. Or if he was lying or even hallucinating in regards to themes, many critics consider American Psycho to be largely a critique of the shallow and vicious aspects of capitalism.
The spookiest thing for spooky season.
[01:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:01:09] Speaker B: The characters are predominantly concerned with material gain and superficial appearances, traits indicative of a postmodern world in which the surface reigns supreme. This leads Patrick Bateman to act as if everything is a commodity, including people, an attitude that is further evident in the rampant brutalization of people that occurs in the novel.
[01:01:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:01:32] Speaker B: Speaking of the high level of violence in the novel, let's talk about how it was received.
Not well.
The novel actually almost wasn't even published at all.
It was supposed to be published originally by Simon and Schuster, and they got cold feet and withdrew from the project because of, quote, aesthetic differences.
And the novel was then picked up and published by Vintage Books.
It also received mostly negative reviews. The one good review that appeared in a national publication was from the Los Angeles Times and resulted in a, quote, three page letter section of all these people canceling their subscriptions. According to Ellis, Ellis also received numerous death threats and hate mail after the novel's publication, which I think is so human.
We hate how violent your book is. Go die.
[01:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah. I don't know what's in the book. So.
[01:02:38] Speaker B: In the United States, the book was named the 53rd most banned and challenged book from 1990 to 1999 by the American Library association, which I didn't know. But that actually makes this episode timely because this week is Banned Books Week in the US that it is.
In Germany, the book was deemed harmful to minors, and its sales and marketing were severely restricted from 1995 to 2000.
[01:03:08] Speaker A: In Australia, to be fair, it is not a book for children.
[01:03:12] Speaker B: No, it's. I mean, it's not.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:03:16] Speaker B: In Australia, the book is sold, shrink wrapped, and classified as R18 under national censorship legislation, I. E. The book may not be sold to those under 18 years of age.
The novel has also been connected to a few real life crimes, including Wade Frankham, the perpetrator of the 1991 Straightfield map massacre, and Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo.
[01:03:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:03:44] Speaker B: Aside from the 2000 film that we will be discussing, the novel was also adapted as an audiobook in 2009 and as a stage musical that originally starred Matt Smith as Patrick Baker.
[01:03:56] Speaker A: I remember hearing about that at the time.
[01:03:59] Speaker B: In 2023, Sumerian Comics published a sequel comic adaptation that included new narratives surrounding his murders. I'm not really sure what, but if you're into this story, maybe you want to check that out as well.
And in April 2021, Lionsgate Television chairman Kevin Beggs confirmed that a TV series is in development.
However, Ellis has apparently not involved and has stated multiple times that he doesn't know anything about it.
[01:04:30] Speaker A: That doesn't surprise me based on the very little I know about Ellis. Like I he didn't even want the movie to be made. Why would he want a TV show to be made later? Like it's like we already did it. I didn't even want it the first time. Why would I want anything to do with the second one?
All right, let's now learn a little bit about American Psycho, the movie.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: That's a wonderful suit.
[01:04:54] Speaker A: It looks so soft.
I don't think I can control myself. If you stay, something bad that will happen.
[01:05:05] Speaker B: I feel lethal on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.
[01:05:15] Speaker A: American Psycho is a 2000 film written and directed by Mayor Mary Herron, known for the Notorious Bettie Page. I shot Andy Warhol and Charlie Says, among other things. And it was co written by Guinevere Turner, who co wrote with Mary Heron a lot, who also wrote the Notorious Bettie Page the movie Bloodrain, which I thought was funny, Charlie says, A handful of episodes of the L Word and other things.
The film stars Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis, Matt Ross, Bill Safe, Chloe Sevignai, Kara Seymour, Justin Theroux, Guinevere Turner and Reese Witherspoon. It has a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 64 on Metacritic, and a 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb. It made 34.2 million against a budget of 7 million.
So development started on the film in 1992, just a year after the book came out. When Johnny Depp expressed interest in the film, which I thought was hilarious.
Producer Edward R. Pressman was, according to Easton Ellis, obsessed with turning the novel into a film when he bought the rights to it. At one point, David Cronenberg and Brad Pitt were attached to direct and star in the film, with Ellis himself penning the screenplay.
Ellis's first draft of the screenplay was very different from the novel, as he had grown bored of the original story by the time he was working on the script. And in his early version of the script, the film ended with an elaborate musical sequence atop the World Trade center set to Barry Manilow's Daybreak.
I assume that's not in the book based on that note, Cronenberg did not like this draft and so brought it to a guy named Norman Snyder to write a version of it, but he disliked that draft even more, so he left the project, which I thought was very funny.
Ellis then wrote another draft in 1995, but at this point the movie kind of had entered production hell and was not really happening. Nothing was really moving on it.
Then I shot Andy Warhol, became a huge success at the Cannes Film festival in like 96 or 95, whatever year that came out, I can't remember.
And Mary Heron was called by Roberta Hanley, who ran the production company, who at that time owned the rights to American Psycho, and she offered her the directing gig. Heron apparently had tried to read the book when it came out, but thought it was too violent.
Then she reread it in the late 90s when she was called about this, and she realized then just enough time had passed to produce a period film set in the 80s to bring out the satire and comment on the era.
So she decided to move forward with it because the other offers that she. The other film offers that she had received after I shot Andy Warhol came out, she thought were way too safe and boring. So she had liked elements of bretti Stanilis script, but wanted to do her own version. So she brought Guinevere Turner on, who she had worked with, who also thought that the novel was, quote, unsavory, but thought, quote, with the right spin, it could be a really subversive feminist movie and interesting.
So Billy Crudup was at one point attached to the main role, but he left because he felt that he didn't understand the character.
And so then they started auditioning a bunch of other people.
And Heron of the auditioning process, Heron thought, quote, I had the feeling a lot of the other actors kind of thought Bateman was cool, end quote. Bale, she said, did not.
Lionsgate ultimately wanted a more well known actor than Christian Bale. This whole thing with Christian Bale is fascinating. They Wanted a more well known actor in the lead role, suggesting either Edward Norton or Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio was interested, but Heron wasn't a huge fan because he thought he was too boyish for the role. Then at Cannes in 1998, Lionsgate just announced that DiCaprio had been cast as Bateman and Heron was fired after she refused to direct without Christian Bale in the role.
They then hollered, hired Oliver Stone to make the movie.
Stone and DiCaprio and Lionsgate or multiple people clashed over the script a ton. And apparently Bale was so confident that he would eventually get the role back that he turned down other opportunities to continue preparing for this role. He was so convinced that DiCaprio would eventually drop out that he was like, he wasn't. He didn't take other roles in the meantime.
Then the role. DiCaprio did eventually drop out and the role was offered to Ewan McGregor, but he turned it down because Bale called him and asked him not to take it.
They then tried to offer the role to Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ed Norton, as mentioned earlier, and Vince Vaughn, before finally agreeing that they would just hire Christian Bale for $50,000, which is basically nothing on a movie. I don't even know if that's scale. It must be scale, I guess. That's insanely cheap.
So Bale, when preparing for the role, thought this was hilarious, kept Images of certain 80s figures that he felt Bateman would emulate in order to kind of really get these were. He kept these images in his trailer.
Also, Bale is a big method actor, so he was always in character when he was doing this.
But the images, the people that. The photos that he kept in his trailer, two of the ones specifically mentioned Tom Cruise and Donald Trump.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds about right.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: He used Tom Cruise a lot as reference for some elements of Bail, apparently.
[01:10:56] Speaker B: That's so funny.
[01:10:58] Speaker A: In his review for. So getting into some reviews now. In a review for the Los Angeles Time, Kenneth Turner, and this has all kinds of reviews all over the board. Kenneth Turin wrote, quote, the difficult truth is that the more viewers can model themselves after protagonist Bateman, the more they can distance themselves from the human reality of the slick violence that fills the screen and take it all as some kind of cool joke. The more they are likely to enjoy this stillborn, pointless piece of work.
Newsweek's David Anson wrote. But after an hour of dissecting the 80s culture of materialism, narcissism and greedy, the movie begins to repeat itself. It becomes more grisly and Surreal, but not more interesting.
Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers compared the film favorably to the book, saying, Heron responded to the satiric rather than the slasher elements of the book, resulting in a quote, uneven movie that nonetheless bristles with stinging wit and exerts a perverse fascination.
Writing for Slate, David Edelstein also noted the toned down brutality and sexual content in comparison to the novel, saying that the moment where Bateman spares his secretary is when this one dimensional film blossoms like a flower.
Owen Gleiberman gave the film an A for Entertainment Weekly, saying, by treating the book as raw material for an exuberantly perverse exercise in 80s nostalgia, Heron recasts the Go Go years as the template for the casually brainwashing consumer fashion image culture that emerged from them. She has made a movie that is really a parable of today, end quote.
Times Magazine's Richard Corliss said, quote, heron and co screenwriter Guinevere Turner do understand the book and they want their film to be understood as a parody, as a period comedy of manners, end quote.
And then before we get to Ebert's note, I wanted to say talk about what Bret Easton Ellis thought of the movie, which I thought was interesting.
He said, quote, american Cycle was a book I didn't think needed to be turned into a movie as the medium of film demands answers, which would make the book infinitely less interesting. He did, however, appreciate the film, clarifying the humor for the audiences who mistook his novel's violence for blatant misogyny, as opposed to the deliberately exaggerated satire that he says he had intended. And he also liked that his novel, that it gave his novel, quote, a second life and introduced it to new readers.
Ultimately, he said the movie was okay, the movie was fine. I just didn't think it needed to be made, end quote.
[01:13:29] Speaker B: Fair enough, I guess.
[01:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I thought it was interesting that he explicitly pointed out that audiences mistook the novel's violence for blatant misogyny, because that is definitely like the main critique of. I think both the book and the movie to some extent is that it is misogynistic. And that gets lobbed at Ellis a lot and to maybe varying degrees of accurateness. I don't know. Ellis seems like a complicated guy.
[01:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I read a little bit of his Wikipedia article too, and he seems very interesting and complicated.
[01:14:01] Speaker A: I mean, we talked a little bit about him back when we did Fight Club forever ago, because that's.
[01:14:06] Speaker B: I don't even remember that.
[01:14:07] Speaker A: But that was so long ago that I don't even remember like, anything about him or what we talked about or anything like that was literally like six years ago at this point or something.
But he has always struck me as a dude who is interesting, very talented artist obviously, but like you can never, I was never quite sure like what his actual deal is.
[01:14:30] Speaker B: What is his deal? Yeah, not sure.
[01:14:33] Speaker A: Not sure.
So Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised the female perspective that was brought to the film by Herron and Turner because they depicted Bateman not as a psychologically disturbed aberration, but as a certain type of selfish, ego driven male behavior taken to an extreme. He also liked Bale's performance or also described Bale as being quote, heroic in the way he allows the character to leap joyfully into despicability. There is no instinct for self preservation here and that is one mark of a good actor. End quote. So Ebert was a big fan.
So as always you can do his favor by heading over to Facebook, threads, Instagram, bluesky, Goodreads, any of those places interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about stuff like we just did at the beginning of this episode. Can also write us a review on wherever you listen to us. That also helps. And you can Support
[email protected] ThisFilmIsLit get access to bonus content and other stuff. Katie where can people watch American Psycho?
[01:15:29] Speaker B: Well, as always you can check with your local library or if you still have a local video rental store, you can check with them.
Or you can stream this with a subscription to Amazon Prime, Fubo, Peacock or Paramount Plus.
Or you can rent it for around four bucks from Amazon, YouTube, Fandango at Home, Spectrum or Apple TV.
[01:15:53] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah, no, as I mentioned previously that I'm excited to watch this finally. So I can be like, checkmark my list of seen it, you know, famous movies that I've never seen.
[01:16:05] Speaker B: I am interested and discoursed movies that I've never seen. Yes, discoursed movies in fact. And that is primarily the reason that I'm interested in to tackle this one because I do feel like based on what I know of the discourse and like the type of people who are into different aspects of the movie in particular, it feels like one of those ones that's like similar to Fight Club Fight Club where like people on the.
[01:16:36] Speaker A: Left or sorry, go ahead.
[01:16:38] Speaker B: Where people who are wanting to emulate the main character and think he's super cool and super awesome have wildly misunderstood the point and misread the satire element of it.
[01:16:51] Speaker A: But equally, I think there's critics, maybe from a progressive side or from a feminist side that maybe misinterpret the movie the other direction.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: Yes, I agree.
[01:17:02] Speaker A: Or maybe not misinterpret, misinterpret that it gets the same direction, but criticizing the movie because they agree with the assessment that the weird incels or whatever. You know what I mean? They're actually, I guess, assessing the movie in the same way, whereas a certain type of person looks at it and it's like, as like aspirational and cool and awesome and sick and good or whatever. And that is not what the movie's saying. But then I think sometimes there are maybe feminist critics of the book who also think the movie is going, this is sick and cool and good and awesome and, and go. And that's bad.
And that's not what the mix, you know, so it's like, it's very. I'm very, very interested to see how it feels in that kind of place because it does feel very similar to.
[01:17:47] Speaker B: Feels very similar to Fight Club. And I'm, I'm. And I, I'm aware of the, the charges of gratuitous violence in the book. In the book and different types of violence. And I'm, I'm interested to dive into the satirical aspect of that and see if I actually think it's a gratuitous.
[01:18:04] Speaker A: It feels gratu. Because you can. Yeah. And we'll get into this more in the episode. You can, you can intend something to be satirical and, and try to be doing like, satirical violence, but it can just get to a point where you're like, but you're just doing.
[01:18:15] Speaker B: Yes, you're just doing violence.
[01:18:16] Speaker A: Like violence in a way that is not like, sure, it may be satirical, but like, it's also just kind of pornographic. Like, you know, you can do both. Like, it's. There's a weird line there to ride and be interested to see how the book handles it and how the movie handles it, but we will discuss that in one week's time. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.
Sam.
