I Love American Psycho Vet Chloë Sevigny's Pitch To Return For The Remake, And Am Amused By How She Referred To The Director's Now-Dead DCU Movie
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Directors who remake already great movies always get some suspicious side-eye from yours truly, but Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and core protagonist Patrick Bateman are perhaps more uniquely suited for bizarro vampings. With the adaptation-worthy stage musical, the lore-expanding Sumerian Comics series and the literary meta-verse of Ellis' Lunar Park and other works as proof of concept, I'm not so nervous about Luca Guadagnino's upcoming take on American Psycho. Even less so if OG co-star Chloë Sevigny is involved.
The Oscar-nominated actress is currently promoting her star-studded upcoming 2025 movie After the Hunt, which happens to be her third and latest collab with Guadagnino. Given their closeness, she's not only aware of his ties to American Psycho, but also his DC movie that was recently put on hold, and she shared some A+ thoughts on both while talking to IndieWire.
I realize I didn't yet say that I think Chloë Sevigny is as brilliant and talented as they come, and her penchant for taking on offbeat projects from the very start of her career continues to win me over. Amusingly enough, Patrick Bateman's secretary Jean is one of her less out-there roles, and I might even go so far as to call her adorably square. Which makes her ideal as one of the film's key survivors.
That survival is itself key to how she'd appealed to Luca Guadagnino to return for his American Psycho project, despite the fact that it would be a fourth-wall breaking return. As she put it:
I pitched to him that I should play Jean again, and that they do that reverse-aging on me. I thought that would be something that he would be into, conceptually having the same actress play the same part. But I don't know. He said he was going to think of something else for me.
Perhaps the director just couldn't see a proper way to factor "reverse-aging CGI" into the budget. Though I'd dare say Sevigny wouldn't need such drastic measures to play Jean again if that were the only sticking point.
But even if she won't be back in secretary form, I can't wait to see how she ends up playing into whatever version of American Psycho makes its way to theaters.
In expressing her interest to work with Guadagnino again on the psychological horror novel's adaptation, Sevigny noted at the time the interview took place that she wasn't sure if he would be working on that or the DCU film Sgt. Rock, which the filmmaker was set to film with Colin Farrell before it was recently put back into the development cycle, making it the first canceled-esque project for James Gunn's DCU.
The timing wasn't great, but the way she referred to the comic book project was splendid:
I thought he was doing a World War II picture.
To be sure, Chloë Sevigny is presumably telling no lies in making the connection between World War II and the character Sgt. Rock's origins as a WWII soldier, and the various war-centric comic arcs that he factored into for decades. And I'll cop to Luca Guadagnino being the kind of director who can step into any genre and create a "film" as opposed to anything resembling schlock.
But Sgt. Rock went on to engage in lots of clandestine conspiracy-tinged stories well beyond on-the-boots warfare. And the team-up he probably associated with the most (beyond the military) was horror squad Creature Commandos. Speaking of, horror fans should absolutely check out Bruce Campbell and Edward Risso's six-issue miniseries Sgt. Rock Vs. the Army of the Dead.
With all that in mind, I can't help but chuckle at thinking of anything in James Gunn's DCU being dubbed "a World War II picture," as if it were meant to share conversational space with The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Thin Red Line, or Schindler's List. Not wrong, but not quiiite right.
Should American Psycho Actually Be Remade? With Remake In The Works, OG Film Creatives Speak Out
Sevigny and Luca Guadagnino previously worked together with romantic cannibals on Bones and All and the coming-of-age HBO miniseries We Are Who We Are. And After the Hunt could very well be their biggest team-up to date, with Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri also heading up the cast. Sevigny says the college-set thriller will be 'polarizing,' so expect some fun convos.
At this point, that's the only actualized film that audiences can look forward to seeing in the near future, while development continues on the others. Meanwhile, she can also be seen in a pair of indie films — Amalia Ulman's El Planeta and Durga Chew-Bose's Bonjour Tristesse — which are currently in theaters.
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In what was "perhaps the world's first conspiracy theory", said the BBC, in 1797 Jesuit priest Abbé Augustin Barruel wrote a four-part history of the French Revolution, which he attributed to the secret work of the Illuminati and Freemasons. Because of this Barruel is "generally regarded as one of history's most famous conspiracy theorists", according to The Conversation. Across the Atlantic, the order was the "bogeyman" of the fledgling US republic, said The Associated Press. George Washington himself wrote a letter saying that "no one" was more "truly satisfied" than him that the threat of the Illuminati had been avoided. Third president Thomas Jefferson was also accused of being a member. While the conspiracy theory has partly survived due to its links to the mythology of the founding fathers in America, it was the Russian Revolution that led to the Illuminati being the 'monster' theory it became, illuminati expert Michael Taylor told the BBC. 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"We are constantly on the lookout for both patterns and agency", as both are essential for our survival. Politicians are not immune, either. In 2018, Canada's former defence chief Paul Hellyer told the Lazarus Effect podcast there was a "secret cabal that's actually running the world". Four years later, then US president Joe Biden unwittingly fanned the conspiracy theory flames when he referred to a coming "new world order" during a speech. "He was referring to the shifting sands of geopolitical relations in response to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine", said The Independent. However, for conspiracy theorists, such comments are seen as further evidence that there is a "puppet-master overlord, hell-bent on global domination and busy manipulating international events to achieve his villainous ends". Illuminati believers also tout theories about the "New World Order", "a shadowy elite force" which, they claim, wants to bring about a "totalitarian world government", said the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank. This "grand ongoing conspiracy" to exert control over the media, civil society and democracy is often blamed for global events and disasters. Supporters of the New World Order theory believe "even the powerful US government is now just a puppet government", overshadowed and overpowered by the Order, said Modern Diplomacy. The New World Order is "not so much a single plot as a way of reading history", said New York Magazine. "Suspicions surrounding a shadow Establishment" can be traced all the way back to the rise of Freemasonry in the 1700s, but it was "the past century's global wars, political realignments, and media innovations that gave new purchase to this age-old paranoia". The New World Order theory has resonated with right-wing extremist and militia groups – some claim that increased gun control in the US is proof that the Order is forcing the government to restrict individual freedoms, said the ISD. With its "language around elites", the theory is often mixed with antisemitic tropes, reinforcing the "narrative of Jewish people controlling global agendas". Not long after Barruel's history of the French revolution was published, he was "sent a letter by a man called Jean Baptiste Simonini, who alleged that Jews were also part of the conspiracy. "This letter – the original of which has never been found – continues to shape antisemitic conspiracy thinking to this day," said history professor Claus Oberhauser on The Conversation. The belief that the Illuminati had "infiltrated the ranks of European Jewish bankers in the nineteenth century" fed into the creation of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", the "transcript" of an invented meeting of Jewish leaders plotting world domination published in Russian in 1903, said the UCL historian Michael Berkowitz. This hoax document in turn led to the idea that "bankers/Jews/Illuminati were behind the Bolshevik Revolution – as well as the creation of the Federal Reserve system in the US". These conspiracy theories became particularly prevalent in the interwar years, said the American Jewish Committee, when "fascist propaganda claimed the Illuminati were a subversive element which served Jewish elites who were behind global capitalism and Soviet communism and were plotting to create a New World Order". Numerous pop-culture icons have been accused of having links to the Illuminati over the years, including Madonna, Kim Kardashian and LeBron James. Beyoncé was accused of being a member after making a diamond shape – a so-called Illuminati sign – with her hands during her performance at the 2013 Super Bowl. Her husband Jay-Z is also said to be part of the order and allegedly hides its symbols in his videos. Even Taylor Swift's love for the number 13 is seen as proof that she is a member. Some musicians seem to enjoy deliberately playing with symbols connected to secret societies. For instance, Rihanna has incorporated Illuminati images into her music videos and even jokes about the theories in the video for "S&M". It featured a montage of fake newspaper headlines, with one declaring her "Princess of the Illuminati". David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Jacob Rothschild and Queen Elizabeth II were all rumoured to be members. Katy Perry once told Rolling Stone the theory was the preserve of "weird people on the internet", but said she was flattered to be named among supposed members: "I guess you've kind of made it when they think you're in the Illuminati!"
