<I>American Psycho</I> Drives Critics Nuts

One of the most reviled pieces of literature in American history hits the big screen this weekend and already it is generating controversy across the United States.

"It's a black comedy; it's a very black comedy," American Psycho director and screenwriter Mary Harron told CBS Early Show Contributor Laurie Hibberd.

The story of a status-obsessed Wall Street executive of the 1980s who kills people to relieve stress, American Psycho is based on a 1991 book by Bret Easton Ellis.

The furor against the book, flogged by critics for its graphic violence, was so intense that Simon & Schuster yanked it before publication and Knopf Publishing picked it up.

During filming, protests were so intense that many locations turned the cast and crew away, forcing them to shoot scenes on sound stages.

"In one case, we were going to use a real office building for where Patrick works, but the landlord got scared," Mark Urman, co-president of the film's distributor, Lions Gate Releasing, told the Associated Press.

Rock star Huey Lewis, whose "Hip to be Square" becomes music for Patrick Bateman to murder by, pulled the song from the soundtrack album. (It remains in the movie).

Harron doesn't think the movie is about a serial killer at all; she sees it as social satire and a devastating portrait of American during the Reagan years.

"I think what Ellis did in the novel is that he took almost a cliche of a serial killer and he turned it into kind of a metaphor - a symbol of the craziness and the excesses of the '80s."

In making the movie, Harron said, she faces her own fears - something she considers to be beneficial for a filmmaker.

"I don't think it will make the world a better place if you only do sort of rosy, sunny films for fear of what will happen if you put anything harsh on screen," she says.

Even without the controversy over violence, making the movie wasn't easy. Teen heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio was originally recruited for the title role, a decision Harron thought was a mistake.

"There was a point where I lost the movie," she says."Leonardo DiCaprio was going to be in it and Oliver Stone was going to direct it. And at that point, I thought, 'Oh, I'm just going to give up on this.'"

She thought using DiCaprio would change the whole feel of the film. " I think that what would have happened is that everyone would've panicked about the script" she says. "And they would have tried to soften it or make the character more sympathetic, and you can't, because he's a crazy, psychopathic, serial killer."

Ultimately, DiCaprio chose to film The Beach instead and Harron returned, choosing Christian Bale to play Patrick Bateman.

Bateman's most recent role was that of Jesus Christ in the 1999 TV miniseriesMary, the Mother of Jesus. American Psycho also stars Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon and Willem Dafoe.

Other movieopening this weekend are:

• Where The Money Is, a light-hearted PG-13 comedy starring screen legend Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino and Dermot Mulroney.

  Newman plays a bank robber who fakes a stroke to get out of prison and live comfortably in a nursing home. One nurse discovers his secret, and she and her husband are intrigued by her patient's life of crime.

  With the bank robber's help, the couple plans and carries out a robbery that changes their lives forever.

• Keeping the Faith, a comedy in which Ben Stiller and Ed Norton team up to play a rabbi and a priest.

  Jenna Elfman, star of TV's Dharma and Greg, plays Ann Reilly, the girl they both knew and loved in grade school. She is now a corporate executive.

  A romantic comedy with a twist, the film is rates PG-13.

• 28 Days, Sandra Bullock's latest vehicle about a New York writer living on the edge who is sentenced to 28 days in rehab for a driving-under-the-influence conviction.

  The comedy, directed by Betty Thomas, focuses on she adjusts to life there and a new set of rules laid down by Counselor Cornell, played by Steve Buscemi. The film also stars Viggo Mortensen, Michael O'Malley and Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Bullock's fellow rehab patients.

NEW YORK