Member-only story
Script To Screen: “American Psycho”
A scene from the 2000 movie American Psycho, screenplay by Mary Harron & Guinevere Turner, novel by Bret Easton Ellis.
Plot Summary: A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.
Here is the scene in the script:
Here is the scene from the movie:
This is an example of an almost direct translation of what was on the page onto the screen. Notice the economy of scene description, every line specific to Bateman’s action. Lean, clean writing… unlike the way poor Paul is dispatched.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.
