Stage Door: American Psycho The Musical

In the Stage Door column we review theatrical productions, often with one eye on their movie origins or connections.

We first alerted you to the glorius full bodied talent of Benjamin Walker way back in 2011 writing:

You're in for such a treat when you see him on the big screen. Major charisma he has. Big stardom awaits.

The movie career didn't happen quickly in the way we imagined despite a couple of lead roles (The Choice, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) but that major charisma is still blinding on stage. It's impossible to miss even when the strobe lights are flashing. And flash they do in his latest show. He's recently returned to Broadway as soulless Patrick Bateman in American Psycho the Musical. Yes, that American Psycho. The best selling 1991 novel turned initally troubled 2000 arthouse horror flick turned cultural mainstay and now a Broadway musical. We recite all the history to remind ourselves that American Psycho has never been a property to elicit universal praise in any iteration. Instead, it's always greeted with a mix of  "worst ever" / "how amazing!" And so it's gone with the Broadway musical...

Click to read more ...

Tony Nominations: Hamilton, The Color Purple, Etcetera

In what we're choosing to interpret as a "changing of the guard" moment, two Book of Mormon stars (Andrew Rannells and Nikki M. James) announced the Hamilton Awards this morning. Or, rather, the Tony Award Nominations though the bulk of them went to the hot show of the now, Hamilton. In fact it busted the previous record of most nominations which was 15 (held jointly by The Producers and Billy Elliott) by 1 nomination.  Shouldn't Rory O'Malley have been present, too, in this announcement since he's the only Tony-nominated Book of Mormon alum in Hamilton (having just replaced Jonathan Groff)?

The Tony Awards will be held on June 12th and broadcast on CBS at 8 pm EST.

Most Nominations Musicals:
Hamilton - 16
Shuffle Along - 10
She Loves Me - 8 

Can Jessica Lange add a Tony to her trophy shelf for "Long Day's Journey Into Night"? She already has 1 SAG, 2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, and 5 Golden Globes

Most Nominations Plays:
Long Day's Journey Into Night - 7  
The Humans - 6

All the nominees (including several Oscar players) and some errant thoughts come after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Let My People Link

The Daily Beast the Coen Bros on diversity vs the Oscars. But they don't take kindly to complaints about Hail, Caesar!'s whiteness
Decider Joe Reid ranks the top 50 performances in Coen Bros movies. Much to argue with but also to agree with. The #1 is indisputable.
i09 Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) signed as the male lead of X-Men spinoff tv series Legion who may or may not be insane
Variety Jake Gyllenhaal's Boston Marathon bombing movie is a go  
Decider "Let My People F***" amusing piece on the conservative sexual morality of the Duplass Brothers filmography 

IndieWire Viggo Mortensen's new film Captain Fantastic, which sounds intriguing, will open on July 8th. It co-stars Frank Langella, Kathryn Hahn, and George Mackay (who played the young photographer in Pride)
Theater Mania Mark Rylance, fresh off his Oscar nomination, returns to the New York stage with Nice Fish (and possibly Farinelli and the King)
THR Bel Powley and Martin Wallström who both broke out this past year in Diary of a Teenage Girl and Mr Robot, respectively, will costar in WWII drama Ashes in the Snow
Playbill Oooh, look. They're putting up the marquee for American Psycho on Broadway. Benjamin Walker, currently in theaters in The Choice (and who is a singing charisma machine onstage) is playing Patrick Bateman 
Interview Peter Dinklage interviews Paul Dano 

DANO: I just did this film, called Youth, that Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel and Jane Fonda are in. And I have to tell you, Michael Caine is so happy. Happy and healthy. I think he enjoys life. I think he's 82 now, and I have no clue if I'll be working at that age, but it was amazing and inspiring to see him bring it, because you know that the search never ends. I talked to Jane Fonda about acting and about what we want to work on, and I was like, "Jane Fonda and I are talking about how to be better actors."

DINKLAGE: It never stops. 

DANO: Which I also find so beautiful and healthy to see in people who have had so much success. They still have skin in the game. 

Women's Pictures - Mary Harron's American Psycho

Anne Marie continues a special horror month on "Women's Pictures"

Fun fact: American Psycho was the single most voted for film for the horror edition of Women's Pictures. Despite that, I almost didn't include it. This isn't because of some sudden onset of squeamishness on my part, or dislike of the film. American Psycho simply isn't a horror movie, at least not by conventional standards. American Psycho is director Mary Harron's dark Juvenalian satire of American consumerism, materialism, and the crisis of masculinity in the turn of the 21st century.

Though set in the 1980s, American Psycho is one of a handful of films from the late 1990s and early 2000s that violently pokes at the concept of modern masculinity. Like American Beauty and especially Fight Club, American Psycho confronts the idea of modern man chained to a desk, unfulfilled and overburdened by contemporary consumerist definitions of success. The titular Psycho is Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a music-obsessed Wall Street broker in the decade where everything, from hair to shoulder pads to paychecks, was bigger. Bateman has all of the plastic markers of success: trendy apartment, good haircut, designer cloths, WASP fiance, the right friends, and a killer business card. But under his flashy, fake veneer, Patrick is all id. He wants to kill. He wants to fuck. He wants to possess. [More...]

Click to read more ...

Interview: Mary Harron on "American Psycho" & More

The actress Cara Seymour is guest blogging for the day! Please enjoy. - Editor

The following is an interview with director Mary Harron with whom I've had the great honor of working with twice in American Psycho (2000) and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005). Mary has more guts than anybody I have ever worked with and she's a profound humanitarian.  After I did the threesome scene in American Psycho she sent me a bouquet of flowers because she knew just how scary that was to do.

I sent her a few questions and she sent me back these fabulous answers...

Myself in The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) and Director Mary Harron

CARA SEYMOUR: Is there a film you return to as a source of inspiration?

MARY HARRON: I go back repeatedly to the films I saw when I was a child and teenager. Luckily my parents took us to a ton of art house films and old movies with no regard for whether they were suitable for children or not. I saw 8 1/2 when I was ten, and my sister remembers my mother arguing with a movie theater over the phone because they wouldn't let her take us to see Last Year at Marienbad. I think we were 9 and 11 at the time.

Rosemary's Baby and Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise are two films I go back to. Night of the Hunter is a special favorite. Kind Hearts and Coronets. Anything by Howard Hawks and Sam Fuller and Fritz Lang. Drugstore Cowboy and Blue Velvet had a big effect on me when they came out because they showed me you could tell a really different kind of story in American film. But what I look at for inspiration really depends on what I'm working on at the time.

CARA: Are there any movies you've rediscovered, that you're loving right now?

MARY: The Bill Douglas Trilogy.(My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home) I saw My Childhood when I was 18 in a church hall in North London and it burned itself into my brain. It was one of the most intense film going experiences of my life. I saw the whole trilogy again a few months ago at Light Industry and it was just as amazing as I remembered. In these three films Bill Douglas recreated memories from his childhood with poetic clarity and such fierce accuracy that they seem more real than life itself. I guess they are a distillation of life. He used the same actors, filming his trilogy over seven years, taking his young hero from a child to a young man, Yes, this was forty years before Boyhood, and it saddens me that no critics mentioned that Bill Douglas did it first. As did Satyajit Ray in the Apu trilogy - I just saw the first film in the series, Pather Panchali at Film Forum in a gorgeous restoration.

CARA: How do you feel about the lasting impact of American Psycho?

MARY: I'm kind of sick of it by now, but at the same time of course I'm grateful that it has had such an effect on people. When something hits the zeitgeist like that it is like winning the lottery. And it's curious because it took many years for it really to become a success. I don't think it made a single critic's top ten list when it was released and Christian didn't get any nominations in the US for his amazing performance. People didn't know what to make of it, so it had a kind of delayed reaction.

CARA: Would you make another dark satirical comedy?

MARY: I would love to but it's hard to find the right material. Good satire is rare as hens teeth. And I never get sent anything like that. I just get endless generic serial killer scripts, which really isn't what American Psycho was all about.

Salvador Dalí & GalaCARA: What are you doing next?

MARY: A film about the last years of Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala. That has some dark comedy in it. They are both so outrageous.

CARA: If there were no financial restraints what kind of dream project would you make?

MARY: I would have an infinite amount of money for production design, wardrobe and locations. I would shoot chronologically, and go back and reshoot anything I wanted!