Director Stuart Gordon Talks ‘American Psycho’ and the Time Bret Easton Ellis Dissed Him Brutally

Stuart Gordon, who’s directed such classics as Re-Animator, From Beyond, The Pit and the Pendulum and Dagon once found himself itching to turn Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho novel into a movie. Gordon, an obviously accomplished genre director may or may not have been the right man for the job, but that would essentially prove irrelevant.

According to Gordon, who wrote a lengthy piece on the matter over at TheTalkHouse, Ellis didn’t seem to have much respect for him as a filmmaker. Check out Gordon’s recollection of Ellis’ brutal dismissal.

He referred to me as a schlocky horror movie director who would ruin his book by turning it into a bloodbath. The fact that his book was already the bloodiest thing anyone had ever read seemed to somehow escape him. But what really infuriated me was that he also put down Johnny Depp, calling him a lightweight actor who was too old to play the part (Johnny was 28 at the time). Any differences between Ellis and his monstrous creation suddenly vanished, and I felt like one of Bateman’s unfortunate victims, crucified with a nail-gun.

There’s a great deal of additional info over at TheTalkHouse, and we strongly, strongly recommend you head over to the site and give it a read. Gordon seems like a hell of a guy, and his personal account of things is mesmerizing.