20 Things You Didn't Know About American Psycho

16. It Was Originally Given An NC-17 Rating By The MPAA

A movie as transgressive and boundary-pushing as American Psycho was always going to have some trouble getting through the MPAA's nebulous certification process, and unsurprisingly, the first cut of the movie received the dreaded NC-17 rating.

NC-17 is effectively the kiss of death for movies given that many major cinema chains won't even screen them, and so while Mary Harron argued with the MPAA over their harsh rating, they ultimately insisted she trim 18 seconds worth of footage from the movie.

Amusingly, the MPAA were offended less by the brutal violence and more the sexual content of Patrick Bateman's threesome scene, once again underlining America's bafflingly puritanical relationship with sex and paradoxical fetishisation of violence.