When initially turned over to the MPAA, "American Psycho" was slapped with an NC-17 rating, which the studio appealed and lost. This left Harron no choice but to scale back a scene involving Bateman (Christian Bale) sleeping with two prostitutes. They were cool with Jared Leto being hacked apart with an ax, though (per The Guardian).
Mark Urman, then co-president of distributor Lions Gate Films, said they argued the threesome scene was not titillating and was modest in the context of the movie, but his arguments fell on deaf ears.
"We tried to emphasize that the scene is completely defensible within the context of the movie, and that it is not just there to be titillating, but the MPAA didn't really get it," he said in 2000 ahead of the film's release (via the New York Post).
The scene itself is relatively mild. No genitalia is shown, making the MPAA's objection even odder because the following scene in the movie includes Bateman literally dropping a chainsaw down a flight of stairs to kill a woman.
In the end, an unrated version of "American Psycho" ended up being released on home video anyway in 2005, right as Bale took his career to new heights as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" (per Sun Sentinel).
