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Hitch from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.
This film short, designed and produced by Felix Meyer, Pascal Monaco and Torsten Strer, tells you exactly how to cook up films like the famed director. It’s sprinkled liberally with Hitchcock references, from the MacGuffin martini to the chocolate syrup used for blood in the Psycho shower scene. And the voiceover is just perfect.
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San Francisco: Jimmy Stewart’s Vertigo apartment
Hitchcock fans no doubt remember Jimmy Stewart’s San Francisco apartment from the iconic Vertigo. AV Club’s Pop Pilgrims series has discovered that it’s still around today and largely looks the same. You can join them for a little tour in the video above, but if Hitchcock isn’t really your thing, they’ve also hunted down the church from The Graduate and Pat and Lorraine’s Coffee Shop from Reservoir Dogs.
Happy Alfred Hitchcock Day! In honor of the great filmmaker, here are five things you may not know about the legendary director, courtesy of Stephen Rebello, the author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.
1. Alfred Hitchcock never won a Best Director Oscar, yet sixteen of his films garnered fifty nominations, his 1940 classic Rebecca won Best Picture, and he was nominated as Best Director for Rebecca, Suspicion, Spellbound, Lifeboat, Rear Window and Psycho. “Always a bridesmaid,” he philosophized, “never a bride.”
2. Although Hitchcock, who once called actors “cattle,” was not considered an “actor’s director,” such stars as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Robert Walker, Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren gave some of their finest performances in his films.
3. Hitchcock admired the work of fellow directors F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, but he also repeatedlywatched guilty pleasures Smokey and the Bandit and Benji; the latter 1974 stray dog hit reportedly made the dog-loving Hitchcock cry.
4. Hitchcock married his screenwriter-editor-assistant director wife Alma in 1926 and they remained constant companions and working partners until he died in 1980. Their only child, actress Patricia Hitchcock appeared on Broadway and in her father’s Stage Fright, Strangers On a Train and Psycho.
5. Hitchcock was famed for his wry, very British sense of humor which often expressed itself in practical jokes: pretending to lose the key to the handcuffs that bound together for an entire day his The 39 Steps stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll; giving an elegant dinner party at which every course, from soup to dessert, was bright blu
e; and switching off the lights on the set of Strangers On a Train and stranding his daughter Patricia for three hours at the top of a Ferris wheel.
Stephen Rebello is a screenwriter, journalist, and the author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, which has been bought by Paramount Pictures and The Montecito Picture Company for production as a dramatic feature film. Get more Hitchcock news from Rebello on Twitter at @HitchandPsycho.
Director Alfred Hitchcock was a busy man. He had a lot of projects going at once, and many had to be abandoned along the way due to inadequate budgets, scheduling conflicts, and other reasons. Mental_floss takes a look at a baker’s dozen of those movies that were never completed, such as Flamingo Feather.
In 1956, Hitchcock bought a story called Flamingo Feather from South African author and diplomat Laurens van der Post. The plot involved a Russian scheme to train South Africans for nefarious Communist purposes. When Hitchcock went to South Africa to scout shooting locations, though, the project quickly fell apart. The director wanted Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly as the leads, which would be pricey, and he felt he needed fifty thousand Africans to act as extras. Hitchcock didn’t love the look of the country’s terrain, and it became apparent that even in South Africa it would be tough to get together 50,000 African extras when most of the country’s population worked long hours at farming jobs.
Posters by Matt Needle
Remembering to keep it simple, Alfred Hitchcock fan/artist Matt Needle re-imagined a series of posters for the films of Hitch. As you can see, the only differences are an iconic image from each movie placed in the director’s famous profile, and the titles.
This week is Custom Con 22, where toy customizers get to show off their latest creations. So far, my favorites are Luke Porter’s set of Psycho Minimates. Other particularly strong entries are Sillof’s Victorian Avengers and action figures based on the movies of Terry Gilliam.
Psycho - Shower Scene (may not be suitable for younger audience) [YouTube
Link]
Motion picture decency standards in the 1960 didn't allow for things like nude women being stabbed to death in showers. Consequently, Hitchcock was forced to create the impression of nudity and violence without actually showing a breast, a buttock, or a knife puncturing skin. The result is a terrifying masterpiece of a montage. And even though it's probably the most analyzed (and parodied) 45 seconds in film history, we're willing to bet the following tidbits slipped past you.
Forget the bloody corpse in the bathtub: what really got "Psycho" censors worked up was the toilet. Just before stepping into that fateful shower, Marion tears up an incriminating note and flushes it. Hitchcock's close-up of the swirling commode water was the first ever allowed in an American film.
What looks like blood funneling down the drain is actually Bosco chocolate syrup. Hitchcock thought it looked more real in black-and-white than the fake stuff. Tastier, too.
The scene is composed of more than 90 shots seen in 70 different camera angles. It took Hitchcock and his crew an entire week to film it. To put that into perspective: The entire film took only six weeks.
The woman who played Janet Leigh's body double in about half of the shower-scene shots was named Myra Jones. In a sad case of life imitating art, Jones was stabbed to death in 1988. Her killer? A mentally disturbed handyman who targeted older women. He'd murdered at least one other before her - that police know about.
After the release of "Psycho," Hitchcock received an irate letter from a man whose daughter had refused to take baths after seeing the French thriller "Les Diaboliques" (in which a man is drowned in a tub). After seeing "Psycho," she refused to take showers as well. Hitchcock's reply? "Send her to the dry cleaners."
Although popular with most audiences, "Psycho" was reviled by ophthalmologists. Eye doctors everywhere pointed out that a corpse's pupil dilate, yet - in a stark close-up of her face after her supposedly deadly shower - Janet Leigh's eyes remain contracted. Ever the obsessed technician, Hitchcock listened, using dilating eyedrops for stiffs in all future films.
The article above was written by Ransom Riggs, as part of a longer article Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in the Nov-Dec 2006 issue of mental_floss, published here with permission. Visit mental_floss for more fun stuff everyday!
The following is reprinted from The Best of The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. From Hollywood's earliest days, directors have sought to leave their individual marks on their films. Some have devised small "signatures" that identify a film as their work. Can you spot them? MAKING THEIR MARK The French have a word for it: auteur (author). It's the name for a theory of filmmaking - the idea that a film director is like a book's author and is responsible for the film's vision, form, and content. Many director's films are easily recognizable as theirs, based on the themes and style that recur in their movies. But some directors also add small signature touches or in-jokes that - if you recognize them - add to the audience's enjoyment. FRANK CAPRA In the Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Jimmy the raven sits on Uncle Billy's desk in the Bailey Building and Loan.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK Psycho: About four minutes into the film, Marion (Janet Leigh) returns to her office. You can glimpse Hitchcock, wearing a cowboy hat, through the window. Don't blink or you'll miss him - he's only on-screen for a few seconds. Rear Window: About 30 minutes into the film, Hitchcock is winding a clock in the songwriter's apartment. Dial M for Murder: This one is of Sir Alfred's trickier cameos. Roughly 13 minutes into the film, a class reunion photo is shown. That's him on the left of the picture. Strangers on a Train: Right at the start of the movie, Hitchcock can be seen boarding the train, carrying a double bass. Lifeboat: Hitchcock appears briefly as the "before" and "after" pictures in a newspaper ad for weight-loss program. Around the time of this movie's filming, Hitchcock had crash dieted and dropped 100 pounds. QUENTIN TARANTINO Each also has an ad for Red Apple cigarettes (a fictional brand.) Tarantino almost always has one or more of his characters barefoot - it's Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies. MARTIN SCORSESE Cape Fear: Scorsese's mother plays a customer at the fruit stand. The Color of Money: Scorsese is walking a dog in the casino scene. The dog was actually his own dog, and received a credit as Dog Walkby. Goodfellas: Scorsese's mother plays Tommy's mother. The director let her ad-lib her entire scene. His father plays the prisoner who put too many onions in the "gravy" (tomato sauce). Raging Bull: Scorsese can be seen asking Jack to go onstage. Also in Raging Bull, Scorsese's father is part of a mob at the Copa Nightclub. Taxi Driver: Scorsese is sitting in the background of the campaign headquarters as Cybill Sphepherd walks in. |
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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of the Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. The Bathroom Reader Institute handpicked the most eye-opening, rib-tickling, and mind-boggling articles from everything they have written over the last ten years and carefully crammed them into 576 pages of the book. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute.
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Previously on Neatorama: Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos
Capra
had a pet raven named Jimmy, and he found a place for him in several of
his movies, starting with You Can't Take It With You (1938).
Probably
the best-known of all director signatures, Hitchcock famously placed himself
in many of his films - his unmistakable profile appears briefly in 37
out of 54 of them. To help you out, we've sniffed out Hitchcock sightings
in some of his most familiar films.
Tarantino
is best known for violent films with a healthy dose of black humor. And
there are several signatures to watch for: Each movie contain a "trunk
shot," during which the camera is set deep in the trunk of a car
so it can capture the actors as they lean in and over it. 
Taking
a leaf from Alfred Hitchcock's book, Scorsese appears in cameos in almost
all his films. Going Hitchcock one better, Scorsese also puts many members
of his family in small roles.
