If You Love True Crime & Problematic Women, ‘American Psycho’ Director Mary Harron Made Another Movie About Murder That You Should Watch

American Psycho remains and forever will be an iconic title for horror movie fans. But did you know that American Psycho director Mary Harron made another intriguing movie about murder? Before she brought Patrick Bateman from page to screen, Harron made I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, which tells the story of Valerie Solanas, the woman who attempted to kill the Studio 54 regular. 

For Harron, the movie, starring Lili Taylor of The Haunting and The Conjuring, came about because she fell into a true-crime rabbit hole. “I’d read all these books about Warhol, and there was just never anything about it,” Harron told me over Zoom, saying Solanas was often reduced to two lines about a “crazy” woman. “It was like a joke. She had an organization called the Society for Cutting Up Men, of which she was the only member… Which is true, she was.”

But then Harron’s curiosity was piqued when she read Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto, a critique of the patriarchy that scholars say may or may not have been satire. “I was so knocked out by how brilliant it was. So that was the question: Who is this woman that nobody has written about and nobody cares about, except that she shot Warhol?” And, like all people fascinated by murder, Harron received a lot of pushback.

“Most people thought it was an absolutely terrible thing to make a film about. It was a horror. ‘Why would you want to make a film about somebody so awful?’… Someone said to me, ‘So few films are made about women. Why don’t you make a film about a great woman artist?’” Harron recalled. 

“I don’t want to make a film about someone that everybody thinks is great,” she said. “What’s the drama in that?”