criterionforum.org

Earlier this year, Hollywood Elsewhere reported on Ryan Murphy's plans to make a Hitch biopic, focusing on the making of Psycho. Anthony Hopkins will be playing the title role, and has now confirmed the news. Here he is describing the film's opening sequence and doing a bit of his impression of The Master of Suspense.

Interesting. Since Ryan Murphy wrote and directed Running with Scissors, I guess he has a sufficient mother-son conflict to appreciate Psycho.

The last few weeks I've been watching Season One of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show(1955-56). The very first episode, titled Revenge, features Vera Miles and Ralph Meeker, and is directed by Hitchcock. Fairly nasty and hard-hitting for mid-50's TV. It seems that AH Presents brought a more adult, movie-style sensibility to the small screen. Hitchcock was supposed to direct alot of the episodes, but instead directed only 3 or 4 per season (4 of 39 Season One episodes.

Also, AH Presents creates the template for future anthology series such as The Twilight Zone -- quirky recognizable theme music, intro and outro narrated by idiosyncratic host, using stories from famous and hot young writers, using well-known movie stars and up-and-coming actors, etc. In fact, there seems to be a good deal of overlap between the writers and actors used in AH Presents and the slightly later Twilight Zone (first season beginning 1959).

The standout for me has been the 8th episode, Breakdown, with Hitchcock directing an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story. Joseph Cotten plays a hard-hearted executive who gets paralyzed in a traffic accident, with everyone thinking he's dead. Some great visuals, including some Psycho-esque editing.

I also like the 50's time-capsule effect of the show. Breakdown features a guy falling apart after Cotten fires him (he thought it was a job for life and pleads that even his children feel part of the corporate family), a prison work gang repairing a highway, and old-style race relations (when two prisoners, one black and one white, find the presumed dead driver and strip him of the clothes, there's no question who is in charge and will get the one set of clothes).

I hope the Ryan Murphy film captures that 50's element and the tension between what was allowable on the big and small screens.

I'm always pretty cautious about director biopics, mostly because, since they direct, they're not often in the limelite and it's a little more difficult to paint an exact picture, or at least an accurate one. Nonetheless, I look forward to Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit.

Lemmy Caution wrote:The standout for me has been the 8th episode, Breakdown, with Hitchcock directing an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story.

I really love Shopping For Death, another Bradbury episode.

Hitchcock started filming today. Here is the press release.

The film will star Academy Award® winners Sir Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock and Dame Helen Mirren as his wife, Alma. Sacha Gervasi, whose big screen debut, ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL won the 2010 Best Documentary Feature prize at the Independent Spirit Awards, will direct from a screenplay by John McLaughlin, revisions by Ryan Murphy, Stephen Rebello and Sacha Gervasi, based on the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello...

HITCHCOCK is a love story about one of the most influential filmmakers of the last century, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife and partner Alma Reville. The film takes place during the making of Hitchcock’s seminal movie PSYCHO.

The film will also star Scarlett Johansson (LOST IN TRANSLATION) as Janet Leigh, James D'Arcy (MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD) as Anthony Perkins, Jessica Biel (THE ILLUSIONIST ) as Vera Miles, Michael Stuhlbarg (A SERIOUS MAN) as Lew Wasserman, Toni Collette (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) as Hitchcock’s secretary Peggy, Michael Wincott (THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO) as Ed Gein, Kurtwood Smith (TO DIE FOR) as Geoffrey Shurlock, Richard Portnow (GOOD MORNING VIETNAM) as Barney Balaban and Danny Huston (THE CONSTANT GARDENER) as Whitfield Cook.

That's some damn good casting though I wonder how Gein is going to fit in and why there is no Bloch mentioned.

"Ivan Reitman will produce." Ugh.

"Revisions by Ryan Murphy." Double ugh.

I'm curious who's playing Robert Bloch and Bernard Herrmann, as they surely must figure in a film centered around the making of Psycho.

The Narrator Returns wrote:"Revisions by Ryan Murphy." Double ugh.

Dylan wrote:I'm curious who's playing Robert Bloch and Bernard Herrmann, as they surely must figure in a film centered around the making of Psycho.

"I've got a great idea. Wait for it...wait for it....BAM! Bernard Herrmann on Glee."

Anvil! is a great film, but it offers few clues as to how Gervasi will handle this project. The track record for this kind of dramatized inside-dopery isn't exactly heartening, but the Alfred / Alma relationship is an intriguing and under-explored hook. Good luck, I guess!

There's tons of good material in the source book, so I'm optimistic for now.

Rebello is on a listserv I read and is over the moon about the script and casting, so while I long had some misgivings about this project I'm cautiously excited for now.

I'm glad they shortened the title (from 'Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho') but I think the minimalistic 'Hitchcock' is too vague -- it suggests a straight biopic, which honestly would interest me less than this does.

Not mentioned above: Jeff Cronenweth is DP.

Here's something I'd like to know: are they filming in B&W?

If only Fincher was directing it.

A bit off topic, but if I was, say, a film producer with gobs of money and clout, I always thought it would be fun to do an omnibus of Hitchcock homages. I really think filmmakers in general have a lot of fun "doing Hitchcock" and the best ones mimic him so well. Forget about DePalma for a minute and look at Scorsese's wine commercial, or some of Polanski's work in The Ghost Writer, etc. Those two, plus Fincher, the Coen brothers...Hitchcock's style is so familiar to so many, I wonder if they'd all do a note perfect imitation indistinguishable to the next, or if they'd still hover around something in Hitchcock's films that connects their own work to him. Might be a good auteur exercise in some way.

Jack Phillips wrote:Here's something I'd like to know: are they filming in B&W?

I doubt it very much. What would be the point?

MichaelB wrote:

Jack Phillips wrote:Here's something I'd like to know: are they filming in B&W?

I doubt it very much. What would be the point?

Ed Wood sure looked gorgeous in b&w and that's also the account of a real life movie director making (arguably) his most famous film. Also, with The Artist winning the Oscar, I can't see as much balking at b&w now from the studios. More than anything, it would be great to see more new b&w Hollywood movies, and it wouldn't be inappropriate for a film with this subject matter to be shot like that.

Jack Phillips wrote:Here's something I'd like to know: are they filming in B&W?

Is the movie called Van Sant?

Dylan wrote:More than anything, it would be great to see more new b&w Hollywood movies, and it wouldn't be inappropriate for a film with this subject matter to be shot like that.

Black and white worked in Ed Wood because it's as much a personal tribute by Tim Burton to Wood's highly distinctive worldview - but if Hitchcock is a straightforward adaptation of Rebello's book it's attempting something quite different, and I really don't think black and white would suit it.

He should play the whole movie in profile.

That's a convincing fat suit.

I still think she looks far too young to be Janet Leigh, and the makeup isn't helping. But eh, you're never going to find someone exact.

Why can't they make the movie with holograms?