Joshua Malbin

I’ve been watching the video for Miles Fisher’s cover of Talking Heads’ 1983 song This Must Be The Place:

In the video, Fisher plays Patrick Bateman and restages several scenes from American Psycho. (Fisher also does a mean Tom Cruise and appeared as Paul Kinsey’s Princeton classmate and dope dealer in Mad Men.) The prostitute sequence in American Psycho was originally set to Phil Collins’ Sussudio (1985); I don’t think Fisher’s use of American Psycho to hold his song is arbitrary.

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb – born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun

I saw American Psycho in the theatre in 2000, when it came out. It resonated with me deeply, not so much for the yuppie satire or the narratively suspect rampage of misogynistic violence, but for this seeming truth: this was the story of a man who hates his job. His life, really, but it’s life in an all-encompassing job, a job of a life.

To me, the song, sung from alienation yearning towards warm oblivion, feels exactly like what Bateman’s character seemed to me to feel. Who do I have to murder to get fired around here?

Miles Fisher EP for free download at Amie Street. The other songs are good too.

UPDATE: I should note that I found this via Jim Emerson, who has other connections to make.

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