I don’t expect everybody to love the movie; but since then, the critical response has been very good.”Those who attacked the film failed to grasp that it was satire on Wall Street and all its resident evils, while its levels of violence, although rather excessive, were certainly less extreme than in the book. “I did feel that the film was seriously misunderstood,” remembers the director now. “I always thought that the book was hilarious.”Since their release, both I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho have been allotted pride of place in the annals of contemporary classics, their deft scripts and cutting-edge wit ensuring that they remain somewhere near the top of the style pile, while The Notorious Bettie Page looks set to join them.I asked the director if there was one thread that runs through her films “I guess it’s New York,” she replies. But in true punk style, Harron had managed to create a major controversy and the anticipation was immense.

When the film actually opened, what we saw was a biting satirical take on the much lauded and criticised bestseller that, excruciatingly cool, was at once disgusting and hilarious. Who wouldn’t laugh at Bale’s lectures on the talents of Whitney Houston prior to his murders, and who wouldn’t smile as he works out to a tape of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was genius.”After it premiered at Sundance, there was this really weird press reaction,” said Harron in an interview with Anthony Kaufman at the time of the film’s release “There were so many people outside and there was so much hype, and then it’s quite a disturbing and bleak movie, and, obviously, people didn’t stand up and cheer, but I felt like a lot of the audience got it And obviously, a lot of other people didn’t like it. At first she was hired to direct the film – and then fired when Leonardo DiCaprio accepted the starring role as the yuppie narcissist Patrick Bateman. When DiCaprio left the production, Harron was rehired, but after shooting began she was denied location permits in Canada, as authorities feared that the film would attract the wrong publicity.Harron insisted on casting Christian Bale as Bateman, and all went swimmingly again – with Bale brilliant in the role – until it came to the screening when, even before it aired, some were calling it the most disgusting film ever made. “And I was sort of overwhelmed by Sundance as I hadn’t been to a festival before and I wasn’t expecting all the attention so it was all a bit scary.”I think we were best received in Cannes,” adds Harron after a pause. “And Cannes, after Sundance, was probably the most exhilarating because it is like a daydream come true.”If I Shot Andy Warhol was like a dream come true, then her next film, the adaptation of the ?-hip New York wordsmith Bret Easton Ellis’s savage satire American Psycho, must have been a nightmare.

Harron was yet again bang on the money and queues of bright young things reached round the block It was one of those films that one had to go and see. “I was surprised by how many people actually paid to come and see the film,” Harron recalls. I felt like Valerie was so forgotten and misunderstood, and had been dispatched to history as this mad woman with almost nothing written about her and so I thought I’d address that.”The film came at a time when the more informed members of the public were again realising the worth of Andy Warhol, while Brit Art artists were name-checking his neo-Dada sensibilities. “The film came at a time when I myself was feeling frustrated because I wanted to direct feature films, and as I’d had this idea years before I got to direct anything myself it came out in the writing. On its release, I Shot Andy Warhol was the hippest film on the block as it accurately portrayed New York at its most decadent, its most attractive and its most provocative. The film took seven years to get to its first screening at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, and then drew massive crowds and oodles of kudos.”I was drawn to the story of Solanis because there was this ferocious, outsider quality to her sorrow and dissatisfaction,” says Harron.