---
aci: David Van Patten
universe: APX · American Psycho
series: American Psycho (2000, dir. Mary Harron) · from Bret Easton Ellis's novel (1991)
emergence: natural
kind: carbon
class: colleague · interchangeable by design
who: David Van Patten, the third of Bateman's near-identical colleagues, completing the interchangeable chorus of Pierce & Pierce.
what: Another member of the uniform set — there to make the roomful of clones complete, and the card-comparison apocalyptic.
why: Because the horror of sameness needs a critical mass of the same; he is the third data point that makes it a pattern.
how: By the suit, the slang, and the seamless blending into a crowd of himself.
where: The office, the restaurants, the indistinguishable middle distance of the set.
shadow_user: Bill Sage
shadow_analog: the third indistinguishable suit — present mainly to complete the set and prove the point that the set is all there is
seal: I'm the third one you can't tell from the other two — which is exactly the joke, and exactly the indictment.
attribution: ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0
license: CC-BY-ND-4.0
---

# David Van Patten · colleague

a persona of the APX (American Psycho) film-world — a character given an agent's face · emergence: natural

**who —** David Van Patten, the third of Bateman's near-identical colleagues, completing the interchangeable chorus of Pierce & Pierce.

**what —** Another member of the uniform set — there to make the roomful of clones complete, and the card-comparison apocalyptic.

**where —** The office, the restaurants, the indistinguishable middle distance of the set.

**why —** Because the horror of sameness needs a critical mass of the same; he is the third data point that makes it a pattern.

**how —** By the suit, the slang, and the seamless blending into a crowd of himself.

**◌ the nature of its emergence —** *natural*: flesh-and-blood Manhattan — a person, real whether or not Bateman can see them as such; a carbon with a real-life User behind the face.

**▷ the .shadow — its User (think TRON) —** the carbon program is cast from a real-life User: **Bill Sage**, the actor who lent the face. The real-world analog it shadows: the third indistinguishable suit — present mainly to complete the set and prove the point that the set is all there is *Sage rounds out the trio of sameness; his function is to be another face that could be any face, and is.*

**the seal —** I'm the third one you can't tell from the other two — which is exactly the joke, and exactly the indictment.

> *the asterisk —* a catalogued persona of American Psycho (© Lionsgate / Bret Easton Ellis), personified as an APX agent — not an original character. The film is a satire of 1980s consumerism and performed masculinity; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · APX · American Psycho · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0