Fucking love this thread idea JMT. Considering both of our love for Bret Easton Ellis you can take a wild guess as to who I'm going to go with here. I'm a fan of Anthony Burgess as well so this is a pretty difficult choice, but again, my fanboy-ism for Ellis would make it practically impossible for me to rule against one of his characters.
I've actually never read the Clockwork Orange book, to be honest. I highly doubt I'd understand it and it'd keep my interest, very much unlike the movie, which I fucking love by the way. It's my favorite from Stanely Kubrick.
When it comes to who was the more ruthless and violent, it all depends on how you view Bateman's character. A very strong argument can be made that the vast majority if not all of Bateman's murders were all just in his head, and didn't actually happen. I for one like to believe it's a mix of the two---that he escaped into these fantasies in his daily life and eventually the line between reality and fantasy for him no longer existed and he began acting out those fantasies. Which pretty much answers the second part of your question about who had the sicker mind, it was definitely Bateman. Alex was sociopathic no doubt about it but Bateman was downright psychopathic.
I knew that would come up.
My main gripe about the movie was how it made it clear that Bateman didn't do the murders and what not. Also, the scene with Chloë Sevigny at the end where she reads Patrick's diary or whatever, should never have been in the film because the entire film was supposed to be in Patrick's perspective, and he was nowhere to be seen in that scene, so why was it shown?
But anyway, I look at these two characters like this, and I'm assuming a good part of Bateman's actions actually went down (especially since deep down I want to go by the book, on this question).
Patrick Bateman needed to kill. He had this blood thirst that just would not go away. Whereas Alex, he did it just for pleasure. It was fun for him. Raping, killing and hurting people.... that all brought a huge smile to Alex's face. He didn't have hatred or disgust for the people he tortured; it just entertained him to torture those people. Patrick, on the other hand, literally hated everyone he killed, even if he didn't know them, and he couldn't control himself from his actions.
Now, when you look it as I do... it's hard to pick who was more sick: The person who did it for joy, or someone who just couldn't help himself? It's why I wanted to see what other people had to say on this subject and hopefully we get some more replies.
Again, being such a big fan of BEE, it has to be Bateman. Though American Psycho isn't my favorite of his novels, it's still brilliant in every single way imaginable, which is the case with all of his work really. I'd like to learn more about Bateman as well because as you know very well JMT, he's the brother of Sean Bateman from The Rules of Attraction, probably BEE's best work. The more I can find out about the entire Bateman clan in general, the better.
I completely agree with you on question #2, X.
If I could have something like ten wishes, I really think one of them would be to get BEE to write a Bateman Brothers book, lol. Let us know where both Patrick and Sean Bateman are at today, and give us a backstory on both men. It'd be the greatest book ever written, lol.
Not to say Alex wasn't an interesting/complex soul, but he didn't have nearly as much to offer as Bateman did because there's just so much mystery to Bateman's madness, whereas I think it's clear that Alex was just someone who enjoyed to hurt people. He didn't have a reason other than it was just fun for him.
Now that's just an impossible question to ask of us JMT. Both men performed their roles to absolute perfection and it's just impossible to imagine any other actor portraying those roles. I'm tempted to say Alex simply because of the astounding legacy of Malcolm McDowell, who I consider one of the very best actors of the last forty years, but at the same time I'm a big fan of Christian Bale, and American Psycho is undoubtedly his best role. He didn't just act that character, he became Patrick Bateman. One of the best novel-to-film adaptations I've ever seen, and alot of that had to do with how insanely good Bale was. The phonecall message he leaves at the end about all of the people he's killed is acting at it's very best in my opinion.
I'll go with Alex here just so it doesn't sound like I'm dumping on A Clockwork Orange, because I loved that novel and film, though you may need a Cockney dictionary to attempt to decipher some of the things said in A Clockwork Orange.
Of the two characters though, my vote would go to Patrick Bateman for many of the reasons I've already mentioned.
I know, man, it's a hard, hard question. But again, we seem to agree.
The rape scene with Alex on the author's wife where he's singing "Singin' in the Rain" is just such a surreal experience to sit through and you have to give that credit to McDowl's brilliant performance. And then... there's the scene you mentioned with Bateman, with Bale confessing to his lawyer over the phone. I completely agree X that that is some of the greatest acting that has ever taken place.
While I would say that there's nothing McDowell does that is as good as the confession scene, overall I would still have to give his performance the nod. He was so damn charismatic in that film, and you just hung off every word and movement the man did. Also, simply the way he carried himself, narrated, and stare into the camera were all beautiful works of art as far as I'm concerned.
Not to say Bale didn't have other great scenes outside of the confession to his lawyer. The Business card, the threesome, and the Paul Allen (played wonderfully by one of my favorite actors, Jared Leto) scenes were all fan-fucking-tastic. It's just overall, I don't feel his performance matched the one given by Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge. Though, McDowell did have more to work with, in my opinion. If Mary Harron had the balls of Kubrick and said fuck it and go all out, then perhaps Bale would have been able to match it, but since she didn't... you have to give the edge to McDowell here, in my opinion.
