American Psycho

American Psycho is set in the late 1980s, mainly in Manhattan. The novel describes roughly two years of the life of Patrick Bateman, the first person narrator. Bateman, 26 years old at the beginning of the story, may or may not be a serial killer and cannibal. Coming from a rich WASP background, Bateman has studied at Harvard (he is one of the class of '84) and has turned into a seemingly prototypical yuppie. He works as a Wall Street banker at the firm of Pierce & Pierce.

A film adaptation of American Psycho debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000, starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Bill Sage, Chloevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Dafoe and Samantha Mathis. Mary Harron, who had previously directed I Shot Andy Warhol based on the story of Valerie Solanas, directed the film and co-wrote its screenplay with Guinevere Turner. This screenplay was selected over three others, including one by Ellis himself; according to Turner, Ellis's script ended with a giant musical number. When she asked Ellis about this, he admitted he had been unable to think of a good way to end his script. (This story is supposedly untrue; rather, Ellis simply suggested ending it this way when a studio suggested a more concrete ending.) Turner claims Ellis' only complaint with the movie was Bateman's dancing before killing Paul Allen (who is Paul Owen in the novel).

- Less Than Zero (1985)
A raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation.

- The Rules Of Attraction (1987)
A startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future--or even the present--who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.

- The Informers (1994)
A chilling, fascinating, and outrageous descent into the abyss beneath L.A.'s gorgeous surfaces.

- Glamorama (1998)
In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret Easton Ellis takes our celebrity obsessed culture and increases the volume exponentially.

- Lunar Park (2005)
Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution.

Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964 in Los Angeles, California) is an American author. He is considered to be one of the major Generation X authors and was regarded as one of the Brat Pack. His novels feature a "flat affect" and a glossy, empty style that garners him extremely polarized reviews. He has called himself a moralist, while he has been pegged as a nihilist. His characters are young, generally vacuous people, who are aware of their depravity but choose to enjoy it. Ellis prefers to set his novels in the 1980s, utilizing the overt commercialism of the entertainment industry of the decade as a symbol. The novels are also linked by common, recurring characters, and dystopic locales (such as Los Angeles and New York).