Focus 580; Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

In the first hour of the show today we'll be talking about the life and the work of one of the most influential film directors of the last 50 years. Alfred Hitchcock a man who was well known for creating films that were both very well made and also very entertaining. He was also due to the fact that he was a true self promoter one of the perhaps most recognized or recognizable film directors I expect we went out on the street and showed people pictures. They would know who Alfred Hitchcock was. At the same time. There were questions about just who he was and whether this persona that he created related to his real self and how that might be tangled up with the themes that he explored over and over again in his films this morning in this part of the show. We'll be talking with Patrick McGill again. He's the author of a new biography of Hitchcock which is titled Alfred Hitchcock a life in darkness and light published by Reagan Books which is a division of Harper Collins. Our guest Patrick McGill again has written a number of biographies of

people involved in the business of making movies. He's written biographies of the directors Fritz Lang and George Q. car as well as Robert Altman and also written books about several actors Clint Eastwood Jack Nicholson and James Cagney. And if you have questions this morning I'm sure that the guest would be happy to talk with you. They like to call and join the conversation. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that was good. Anywhere that you can hear us and that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 W I L L and toll free 800 to 2 2 W while Mr McGuigan. Hello good morning. Thanks for talking with us. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. Well thanks and same to yeah. From one Westerner to another I guess I was going to mention that you live in Milwaukee I think probably not all that often that I actually talk to somebody in the same part of the country that I am you know.

Well you know I think probably it is probably the case with many many artists that it is difficult to disentangle them from their art. And certainly it is true with Hitchcock and probably complicated as I say by the fact that he did create a persona for himself that may or may not have reflected who he really was. And there is always this temptation to look at the themes that he explored in his in his movies some of them dark themes and think that that was a reflection of his inner being. How how does one disentangle the work from the man. Well I think in both cases there's truth. I mean there's truth to the persona. Guy just that he adopted he adopted it for that reason it gave him tremendous pleasure to put on a performance and pretend to be a certain kind of person and that kind of person with all of its dark darkly humorous quality especially you I think you see it sort of at a Zenith around the time of the television series and the great his greatest

films from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s that he was enjoying himself to the hilt and also that you know then became all he would tell us about him you know that little disguise and I think that's also true of his films in other words you did a lot of truth to the fact that if you analyze his films and look at them and understand them that you get a good sense of the inner person just by the way is part of his life story and it evolves by degrees. And I did a lot of that. For a biographer and a fund for a biography is to separate out the truth from from the illusion or that you are just supposition and dumb as I was told us if we get the elements of mystery in both cases in terms of the person on the film. Did you ever though feel hostage to the persona that he had created for himself. Absolutely and I wouldn't really say to the persona but it certainly felt hostage to the

stereotyping of himself as as a suspenseful director I mean you see it way back early in his career in the 1940s and his personal letters. He saw what was happening he facilitated it happening I mean he went back again and again to Jack the Ripper type films and the special films partly because that was how he could sell a project to producers and the studios that was a very easy sell for him whereas it was very difficult for him sometimes to mount more ambitious Weisel life stories and he had several that he intended to do over a period of time and was frustrated. So yes some of it you know I'm history. It is full of setbacks and disappointments and you know various ways in which he was supported as well as a great triumph. He was attracted to the the film industry when he was young and when it was young he started working in motion pictures when they were silent. What was it that about movies and movie making that drew him

so. I think it was the great escape from real real life and I think he makes that point in US films over and over again that it shows you aspects of real life and sometimes glimmers of real life events or the times and at the same time as I was reminding you that hes giving you an escapee. Thats one of the reasons why he appears in a still very very modern sophisticated idea to let you know that theres the wizard behind the curtain you know pulling all the levers and it creates distance from what you're watching allows you to be entertained even if it is sometimes very dark material. You have to say he wasn't only attracted to film he was attracted to America I mean he was watching American films he was interested in America maps and methods. He liked to describe himself as a word you court coined in America file. And so I'm from the moment he got his first job and in film he was working for an American branch studio in London. I'm studying under studying how to write scripts under

American women who were brought over to write the first scripts. I working with Kodak and American camera equipment and American cameramen and so he really you know he's right. He was very ambitious. He wanted to get out of the British film industry which has always been a kind of weak sister commercially as well as artistically to some extent. And he knew that Hollywood was open open door to the world and think it's probably striking that one of the that he really began as a writer not so much as he began with stories and writing stories and then went from that to learning the craft of making will make a very important theme of the book actually. I mean one of the discoveries of the book is that I went back and found out something like eight short stories he had written as a young man for the first company that he worked for during World War one up until 19 20 21

and already as a young writer he's showing the full range of his imagination you see in these really pieces you see romance you see triangular you just see the spend and grew some comedy and you see trivial and quite quite amusing plays on words all the kinds of things that he became famous for later on. And actually he was a writer and initially he answered as someone who could sketch the title and then write the captions and then. It's also a production designer who became an assistant director but he was always the writer of his films often with his wife as a collaborator I got a very important part of his life story that the switchback was satisfied for over 50 years and that her skills were before his were both in continuity editing and script work and U.S. film by film all the way through the British period how he's guiding the scripts the men how he makes a very concerted decision to take his name off the screen as a

writer. But all the way through his Hollywood period is also bringing in writers as well as obscure that drone as well as very young people and working with them almost from page one it wasn't fun for him unless they could start on page one and spend a lot of time working on the script and the story which was always for him a kind of rehearsal for the visualization of what he would do once it became a film. The just to to pick up on one thing is the first thing that he did when he was working for the studio was writing title cards and assuming that this is in a silent film. Occasionally there is script screen which is the only way of them really to to do exposition or tell you what's going on that's what we're talking about. Absolutely and the goal of the title the title card writer was. To write a clubber title and try to skew is possible and often to scotch a little a little a funny little picture that went along with it when he made at the time he made I think I have this correct at the time he made his his last film. He was the only director still working that had

started in silent films. I don't believe that we know about in the English language he was working in the English language at that point in time and he you know that was in 1976 and 1972 he made friends here which is about as good a film as a 70 year old director ever made in his seventies so yeah he had outlasted other people all of us peers who had started in the silent era. And actually what's really amazing about Hitchcock's life story because as I said there are degrees and stages to all of the things that we're talking about that he really peaked in the mid 1950s starting really with the 1950s strangers on a train as the press fell of that decade and you know films like Rear Window I mean you know what. Probably the three greatest films that a director ever did in a robe for their excellence and their variety Vertigo North by Northwest and psycho so he was peaking with this talent with his competence and with his power. At a point in time when the rest of Hollywood

was really falling apart and already most of the major directors of that era were retreating or retiring. One of the things that I'm curious about is to the ways in which hid the fact that he started in silent films influenced his style and continued influenced style in a way that he made movies even into the era of sound can absolutely see many many of the great directors who started in a silent era ended up you know preferring I don't know. All the way through to the end of their careers. And would you sometimes construct their films around you know beautiful relatively silent visual sequences I mean they have to stop the plane chasing after Cary Grant North by Northwest. I mean all we hear are sound effects and it's one of the greatest sequences in cinema even the shower scene that you know psycho you know we hear music but that set and screams and that's it and that's what you would sometimes hear behind the greatest often you would hear just behind the greatest Hitchcock sequences only natural noises

unintelligible dialogue screams or music. And he would often choose the subject take a look at various available projects take a look at various develop a story and seize upon a scene or two inside those books or inside those possible stories that would bend themselves to that. The kind of treatment and then spend more time in the preparation and development stage. The script as well as the storyboarding and that particular sequence that most directors spend on an entire film. He can't have a long association with a film composer Bernard Hermann who has got to be on anyone's list of the great film composers people who made music for movies. He would have to be very high on the list if you know some people might put him number one. People what I think and you certainly in so Hitchcock obviously really understood this was important and if you see the movies you know you see how important it is how who can who can think of the shower scene or hear that music that that Herman wrote without thinking about that. The two things are

so you'll never get those two things apart. And it's interesting because you know Hitchcock was actually very sophisticated about music and early on in his career. Usually what is. Sometimes would leave music entirely out of a film so we don't have to deal with studio composers because studios controlled their people who did the music and then they would control the score so for example lifeboat a film he made at 20th Century Fox only had a little music under the beginning credits and the opening credits and the whole rest of the film is just natural noise wind waves to people talking birds very very very very radical. And so he would always try to minimize the studio composers and then sometimes because he had a great knowledge of popular songs he loved Broadway musicals. He would throw in a particular song and then construct much of the entire plot around the song or use the song for one of those proper euro sequences I mean the best example is The 39 Steps. There's a little song running through Robert on that head through the movie and he can't remember where he heard it but where he heard it is absolutely essential to solving the storyline. So. But it

wasn't until Bernard Herrmann which is that Paramount in 1954 that he got together with a composer that he truly admired who really was simpatico with his work and who began to work with him from the script stage so that he could feel totally confident about turning over whole sections of the film to him and most people think of Bernard Herrmann wrote his greatest film music under its character with that's cock. Our guest in this part of focus 580 Patrick McGill again he has written a lot about the movie business and about people who make movies both actors and directors he has a new book out that's a biography of Alfred Hitchcock It's titled A Life in darkness and light. And people have questions comments they want to join the conversation that's certainly welcome. If you're here in Champaign-Urbana where we are the number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us around Illinois Indiana if you happen to be listening on the internet as long as you're in the United States you can use the toll free line that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5

5. We do have a caller here to talk with someone in Pyatt County and that is on our line number four. Hello I have a question. I was reading one time the short story that I came across that hired her and I believe it has. Adapted I think that was the basis for his movie but it is very different. And I mean it has determined the first attack of course but I just wondered if he was involved in the adaptation of that hour or how he had often heard that any summary or in the short story or if he just knew anything about that and I'll hang up and listen for it. Yeah actually I said he'd like to be involved from the beginning but that was a that was a long short story that had originally been published in the 1950s and then republished in one of Hitchcock mystery magazines and follow Jesus. So yeah I think it's very unsung what he did because the entire story takes place in England and he moved it to the San Francisco Bay area he moved a great

number of films and stories to the Bay Area and I think it's a relatively you know under appreciated how much work that was and even before he had hired the screenwriter Evan Hunter he knew the site he knew where he wanted to put the scenes he knew something about the characters and so he knew who he wanted to be in the movie. In the film so he knew all that before he sat down with the writer for the first and said Now what will happen in the first scene and he will. To have the story told to him by the writer from the beginning. Over and over again until he felt that he was both comfortable with it and there were no problems with it and that he had rehearsed it and they would do a lot of talking before they started writing but the Byrds as it is a great example of a film and he moved across the Atlantic made very American. This is the story the same with Vertigo which is a prince novel moved into the bay all the way across the Atlantic in time to because that's that in the World War Two period in Paris the Mustang.

Other questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. When you read about his his method of working there one of the things that you see over and over again is just how carefully he thought about what the film was going to look like before he put anything on film. He very carefully thought sort of shot by shot plotted out the story and there are quotes where he says he's quoted as saying that by the time that that process was all finished it was an anti-climax for him because he felt he'd actually made the movie and he said Now I have to go out and shoot the damn thing. At the same time you also read about his his willingness once the film was made that his once it was committed to film and they got to the to the editing process to to tweak things and not be so rigidly committed to what he started out with to say no it's done. I knew what I was going to do I knew how it was going to go together and that's that. It seems that those two things are a little bit in conflict with

one another but I think they're both true. Well there's truth in both truisms but they're also both part of the pause a part of the pose. I mean his longtime script assistant Peggy Robertson and I quote her in the book saying that one of the problems with saying that you know under the scripts so faithfully is that we rarely had a script by the time we went into production. And it's one of the very interesting subtext of his career that it was a struggle for him. He was working against time and money often for most of his career he was a low budget director I mean none of the films that he made in England would qualify as a budget on Hollywood grounds and it wasn't until he gets to Paramount again in the 1950s that he has more time more money. To do the kinds of things that he wanted to do so I find when I write about it in the book that first of all it's almost like a boxer working out for the big match he saw. He works out he's very disciplined he plans things and then if he's thrown a punch that he's not expecting then he adapts because he's

he's very rehearsed and he's very disciplined. And you find him all the time improvising improvising both on the set as well as improvising in the editing room shooting alternative endings shooting alternative cuts you know what everybody says that everything is storyboarded so perfectly for something like the shower sequence and psycho Well there were cuts there were shots and then the shower sequence that he dropped including some very controversial ones which he dropped the liberally to to mollify the censors. Let's talk with someone else we have a caller normal over there. Lie number four. Hello. Oh yes you know what. I've seen the psycho Alfred Hitchcock movies but what I remember most of his first television from the case. Oh a program what's what. How much of he was involved

with those who Or they were put on earth the production of other auto directors her. Yes this television series actually began at the same time that I'm talking about the mid-1950s which was in the period of amazing work and creativity for him. He actually when it came time he would try to lock tried to launch himself on radio as the net as the host of a national regular weekly series of suspenseful stories. And then when that didn't work out because it was Selznick opposed it he started to do book anthologies already in the mid 1040. So by the time his agent Lou Wasserman comes to him and one thousand 53 or 54 and says Would you like to be on television I think I can make a fabulous deal for you. He was already he even had a backlog of materials. So it's one of the things I talk about in the book it hasn't been appreciated. I don't think until now how much he threw himself into that series. He loved the little acting things he did at the beginning and end of the show where he would make

fun of the advertisers and do everything from being one of the Beatles to being a scarecrow in a cornfield where the birds are pecking at him. He would do any. He would take any deer you know for his little acting vignettes and then he directed three or four episodes a year and some of those episodes you know there's a couple of them that are mini masterpieces and most of it is a lab. Groundwork and preparation for what we see a cycle a culmination of a certain style a darkly humorous or terrifying story. He used the crew to shoot it you know etc. and he was OK. The story's hiring the directors for the first series for the first year we produce everything and then after that he brought in his longtime associate dating way back to England Joan Harrison and they collaborated very closely on the entire rest of the series so that the tone would always be it's cock you know phrase that you know critics throw around quite recklessly nowadays but that it would be very personal. Thank you.

All right thanks for the call again others questions or comments are welcome 333 W. Wilde toll free 800 1:58 W while I'm in I'm just thinking about who we were talking earlier about the fact that he really started as a writer and his and that isn't very important when you think about him and his work. His interest in story in creating story is very important. I'm also thinking about the you know the famous comment from Hitchcock that story Innes in a sense story doesn't what the story's about doesn't matter that much he had this famous term that he coined the MacGuffin and he said that was the thing the thing that. Lee drives a story it could be a thing that people are chasing after or trying to figure out. And he said something like in a way it doesn't really if it doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter it doesn't almost doesn't matter what it is. It's the thing that is the it that drives the story and the plot and that's where what really is important. And if it doesn't totally sense you know by stories and by yeah I'm it's explained at the end of some of them it

doesn't make any sense. Yeah I remember right. And he doesn't really he doesn't really care I mean you know to some extent he was an absurdist and I think that was a very sophisticated attitude he said later on he didn't know what was up in that airplane attacking Cary Grant and he didn't care nor does the audience nor do we care. And film after film he starts with this conceit early in you know sort of midway through the 1930s really and as Brits don't early in his British career where in films like 39 Steps we have no idea what the secret is that the spies are after and by the time it's finally explained it's very difficult to recall or even very even think that it was all that important because so many other things are going on. His his films if you look at the stories fall into three main story lines and the one that probably. Who dominates I think it's this story let in we've you just mentioned titles of two films that fit into this category. Thirty nine steps and North by Northwest this is the story of the innocent man wrongly accused or suspected of a crime who has to then

himself go out and figure out who was responsible in order to clear his name. Yes and often involving spies saboteurs or political terrorists of some sort. What about the what is it about this wrongly accused this reg a sort of regular guy wrongly accused just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What what was it about that that theme that that interested him so much and made him want to return to it again and again. Well as you saw I think the answer with its caucus is several things not just one thing. I mean I talk about in the book for example that before he turns 21 he's already known one of England's most notorious murderesses who was wrongly convicted and executed as well as one of England's most. The Tory of political assassins and Ira nationalists who killed a high government official and was rightly arrested convicted and executed and that this influenced the whole idea I think of the wrong man is very personal because he is someone who is always judged by the way he looked he looked very odd he was short he was Stumpy he was bald at a

young age and you know he wasn't he didn't look like Cary Grant. And yet you know he's very grand to say that it's got to look like Cary Grant and I think he wished he did look like Cary Grant which is like Cary Grant and and Jimmy Stewart are two of his most frequent and greatest male stars. So he he was a very conscious artist and he saw things that way which is that people judge by appearances that appearance is they're often deceptive that he could use this very simple idea which was very personal to him and use that as a major conceit of his films I think it got very sophisticated. We have several callers here again and we're going we have somebody else cell phone so we'll get to them on the line. One. Well I'll pass. I'm only about a quarter to write the book. Just actually be covered and that your own book you mention in early thirties I believe. And yet it actually was turned in Roman Holiday Undernet or

any other objects that were helped me realize and settled by other directories that you know it's not made at Dover for whatever reason and not here yet. Well I don't think there are examples of famous film that it's cock passed over and then other directors took up. And that's largely because with only one or two exceptions he began on every project at the script stage and even when something went terribly awry as it did for example when I confessed and then the eleventh hour the script was gutted by the studio and new leads were forced upon him. He nonetheless shrugged his shoulders being a very practical artist and moved ahead and made the film. So there's not there's not cases of projects that he worked on very long that were inherited by other directors. However there are many examples. In the book a film said he wanted to make up stories that he dreamed of making. That he worked hard on at various points and couldn't get produces interested in them. Part of the time because it involved too much expense and too

much ambition and part of the time because they said but that's not a Hitchcock type film you know they didn't see him as directing it. So I think most of the films that he ended up doing I mean he was a very and I think with true folk particularly you know relatively candid and pragmatic. He'd shrug his shoulders if the film he took to fruition didn't work out he'd be happy. Some people like that if it made Bonnie or if it was any awards. But he didn't you know he was very practical. So he very practically tried to work on something with a good contract from beginning to end and otherwise. That didn't work on many things that were inherited by other directors. Next caller is in Southeastern Illinois on our toll free line one for I would guess that he didn't so much published in the practice area Grant as he wished. Madeleine Carolyn the subsequent blonde Saudi the black Cary Grant. I'm not trying to bring him down or anything because the book was a giant and there's no

getting around that. But I think he he benefited from the way that people look at that movies and his day compared with the way that people look at movies now. I mean many people and I'm one of them if you like a movie you watch it over and over again I mean it comes up on television at that time and again where you buy a copy a baby all of it and you watch it time and time again and I think of many of the movies that I thought were so wonderful when I first saw them they don't stand up under repeated use dealing because and so many are and I and you know you get so many that this is not doesn't include all of them but many of the more notorious and some of the others. Here's what women want to be's main attractions to me come across as automatons they don't seem to have any vocation. I mean he often went I think for an effect and the first time you see it it's a fact in the days

you watch the movie few time he realizes that he is doing better and that's an interesting guy. I put sample on one of the movies that is generally I think considered a bad one and that is Marnie but you can watch Marnie over and over again and that gal has a will of her own I mean she's a little you know she's not cried Stevo but she does have a will and you compare with her. Tippi Hedren in the birds and there you have more. The automaton in fact. I understand there was a story where one point she's going up into the attic the actor says and she asks why she is going up there you know the birds are up there why would she why would she be crazy you have to go up there and he says because I'm guessing you do. That's what she would often say to any actor actress if they came from any particular difficulty and the same because sometimes they didn't understand the entire context. I'm not sure I agree. Because you mention a Tory Assen automaton has a pretty strong

word you know. Frequently I see the women as endangered heroines or you know in the tradition of Mary Pickford which remembers the tradition that he grew up in but also up lonely and just going down you know the river on an ice floe who fight back are very plucky very resourceful and you know it turned out to be the heroines you know one way or another in the film. And it may be true that they don't seem to have the will of that you might wish they had but the men you know at the same time are up and bit and almost always impotent unable to resolve a problem or fleeing from the police who are always hapless and often everybody else around the women's decisions in the women's action. So the solution to the story which is probably you know good drama. Even you know more than it's any particular insight into Hitchcock. They're wonderful movies but I've sides as I said women.

You wonder why they seem to be doing what they do. Their actions seem to be outside of the South and they don't seem to be coming from a from from inside and out I mean I as I say I I don't make that is sweeping statement and all movies because you know many of the 39 Steps in fact that I mean that I I get that I get that impression and many of the more brainless wins. Thank you. All right thanks for the call. We're a little bit past the midpoint here in fact we have about 15 minutes left. Our guest is Patrick McGill again. He has authored biographies of a number of important figures in film history including the directors of Fritz Lang's George Cukor Robert Altman and he's also done biographies of Clint Eastwood Jack Nicholson James Cagney his new book is a biography of Alfred Hitchcock which is titled Alfred Hitchcock a life in darkness and light and is published. By Reagan Books which is a division of Harper

Collins is in bookstores now if you're interested in reading the book so you can head out there and take a look at it and of course questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I think over the years people have commented on Hitchcock's relationship with his leading ladies saying that he was perhaps not altogether healthy and had a strange sort of psychological dimension that you see played out in the movies. Can you talk about that would you do you feel that you had to have an understanding of what that was about. Well I don't agree. I think in general you had wonderful relationships with this leading lady you gave them a lot of leash if you like them you know they didn't like them he often would fight with them to varying degrees. He had a great variety of leading ladies. You know everybody from the little backyard to angered Bergman to Grace Kelly I don't think anybody would place any of those people you know in the same category.

Comments or people and he was tremendous good friends with the people that he worked with most often because he liked to work with people that he was friends with and so for example Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly who were in more Hitchcock films than any other leading ladies were were very very close to the family. You know came and stayed with him up north because he lived in the Bay Area on weekends. I went to the dinner went to the house for dinner he he planned and worked on scripts and films especially for them they visited him on his stuff. So I think that there are opposite examples but you know and Tippi Hedren during Marnie has won and I think it's one of the reasons why it's it's an arguably good film. I'm when I show it to my film class people chuckle because it seems very quaint and dated. So there's definitely you know there's definitely instances where he had trouble with his leading lady and with his leading man. But for the most part he was

really beloved by actors and and gave some of those people opportunities for some of their greatest performances I mean you talk about people like Grace Kelly or Ingrid Bergman. They were never better than when they worked with Hitchcock and the same goes for Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart Well those were certainly I think those those four actors in particular who were favorites of his and he made movies with them over and over again. And I wonder what it was about them. Particularly I guess about the men that about and I guess you know me. Maybe that's a silly question because you look at Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant and you can see in them a kind of big sort of old fashioned movie star power screen presence in different ways. One the sort of the very appealing every man kind of figure in the other the the sophisticated guy that we would all wish we could be. Right. So you know maybe there's a there although I may have maybe I've answered the question there what it was about he felt about them that was so

appealing and made them. Well I don't know if I would get ruined his career with that. You know it was almost a struggle for him with casting because he didn't control the casting of the stars up until the 1950s. I mean even out of money he wanted he preferred Grace Kelly and I had written the script for Grace Kelly who backed out at the last minute. So there are a lot there were a lot of frustration seesawed a kind of perfectionist thought a kind of actor and a kind of actress I think an actor you wanted somebody complex neurotic. Screen but very well behaved and businesslike as an actor off the screen and he beats out of certain beautiful perfection and his leading ladies but also somebody who could give him a lot of emotion under certain circumstances and certain scenes. So you can't do better than Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart in their day they were considered absolute you know models and great box office draws. By the way besides being a great actress and he took all of us into account so I don't think there are simple answers to why he gravitated towards this kind of person and that kind of person often it was a combination of things. And he had to like the

people you normally when he worked with somebody once and didn't get along with them. Thinking of Sylvia Sidney back in the mid-1930s he never wanted to work with that person again. There's no question about it. You know what I mean director. We have as I say we have about now about 10 minutes left and if people have questions certainly they're invited 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 I'd like to give us a call. I guess I'm going back to this this issue of him of the actresses and perhaps some that he had difficult times with and I suppose the one that stands out in my mind is port Tippi in the birds and this famous story about how when he shot this climactic scene where she was being attacked by the birds this it's a very short scene and yet they spent I think five days on it throwing birds at Tippi who initially thought they would be using either mechanical birds or as you know she didn't think that some that she would have to spend their stand there for five days having people throw live seagulls at her. But that indeed was the way that it worked out and it it begins to

look like torture. You really wonder what what was Hitchcock doing and why did it take all that to shoot what in the movie is actually a very short sequence. Well I spent two weeks shooting the sorest sequence. I don't think it's any more torture than a little Liam just going down a river on the ice floe with D.W. Griffith's filming her and doing it in real life and real crime and risking her life. It's a great tradition. On the cinema they have these scenes where people suffer terribly either real and realistically because they're actually doing it or with some kind of illusion and special effects. There's also a lot of allusion and special effects in that particular scene I think one of the things that makes the Byrds great and I think it is a great film or certainly a near-great film is that this moment the suffering and horror seems very very real and Hitchcock I counted on that and you know to say that Tippy didn't know what she was doing. I don't know it was in the script. You know Hitchcock himself at various points thought they might be able to do it with mechanical birds. There's no evidence

that he was particularly hurt and old the animal trainers and handlers and casting crew were going to the hospital every day with lights and couches that was a very very difficult film. But nobody was seriously hurt. We talked. Hear about the fact I mention the fact that his movies fall into these three main themes and we've talked about some of them and in fact your nominees for the his three best movies won. It's one of each of these from each of these categories. Vertigo North by Northwest and psycho The one is the film of the common man mistakenly accused of a crime the other is centers around a woman who involved and then which involves a man and that ends up she ends up either destroying him or being saved by him. The third is is the Psycho movie movies like Psycho or rear window or rope. Those kinds of films that involve

psychopathic killers. This is the one and again going back where we're talking about the beginning about sometimes the difficulty of disentangling the person with the art. These particularly I think people have a use them to say now this is really a reflection of Hitchcock's dark inner psyche in fact I think there was I was an author who wrote a popular biography that at least caught a lot of people's attention some time back that that went as far as to suggest that if Hitchcock hadn't been able to make these movies about psycho killers he would have been one at it again I guess I want to get back to this idea of what what he was inside and how that related to the kind of movies that he made particularly the 80s those those that fit into that. Well first of all you have to keep in mind that he grew up in an area where Jack the Ripper preyed upon people and was never caught and that this was a common subject of conversation when he grew up. Believe me we know who again is and

Jeffrey Dahmer is up here and Wisconsin it kind of overshadows things when topics get around to crime or murder. So he really got this deeply rooted in his boyhood and it was a real fascination with crime which was very English also. And he followed this through because it was a strong suit for him from his first greatest film the lodger up through the psycho in frenzy. But I think it's a little bit like saying to Stephen King go out at night and kill people or do horrible things in order to get his inspiration it's kind of silly. He knew what his strong suit was. He drew on real life used his imagination and he was a tremendous hard worker with great craftsmanship which is one of the reasons why he is so admired today among filmmakers and is really considered a kind of you know gold standard among filmmakers and that he applied all of this to various subjects but I think if you look at his career closely I think most generalizations about him are just generalizations. I don't find anything terrifying about North by Northwest. It's a funny richly

romantic very Kafka esque film that you can see over and over again without feeling the slightest for a zone of fear except maybe on behalf of Cary Grant in the cornfield. I don't accept the vertigo as a very typical Hitchcock film In fact I find it very atypical. There are a lot of themes. It's very self-referential like all of his work is. But at the same time I think one of the reasons why critics around the world think of it as the greatest Hitchcock film and it gets no end in sight and sound's poll is the second greatest film of all time not even the second greatest Hitchcock film but the second greatest after Citizen Kane. Yes because it's so unusual because it takes a lot of what you think you know about Hitchcock and a lot of what you might be familiar with in terms of his ideas and themes and reworked them in a completely unusual contacts the same psycho I don't find you know everybody has a high cost area like where were you when John F. Kennedy was shot and people are still terrified by that film. But that's just one branch of his work and I think his work is much more rich and

diverse than that and that's one of the reasons why people really admire and love to receive his films. Well we have another caller in Chicago one for Hello. As you mentioned the film the birds and I had a question about the birds and it struck me as almost an apocalyptic type of film. You know I'm just wondering does good Hitchcock intend this is social commentary almost like nature striking back against me and was that part of the theme in there. Well there was a big. Read about it while they were working on the script and then all the way through the film and you know Hitchcock. If he had time and he had and I mean production time and he had enough time to think about a topic it would usually get darker and more complex. The treatment of it on the screen. You have to say that that's definitely a boring story which is very apocalyptic and you want to let you know to the end to a very similar ending and you can form your own conclusions as to whether or not the birds are seeking some kind of revenge on mankind. And Hitchcock I wouldn't

mind if you came up with that solution to what exactly is he's trying to say at the end although they considered saying that very clearly having a character say that very clearly in the script and cut it out so that the ending would be more ambiguous and actually be more faithful to death you know Mario who does exactly the same thing the birds are massing for another attack as that story ends. He would thank you things you mention just a moment ago that a lot of people believe that. I would say that Vertigo was his greatest movie and that this famous poll of people when they were voting but the best movies of all time always Citizen Kane comes up number one but her vehicle comes up into number two. So do you and I know this is hard every poll around the world when it comes out. And it's hard when you look at someone who's made as many movies as he has but I wonder for you Do you have a personal favorite. No I really don't and that's why I mentioned those three in a row because that's what I tend to think of when people ask me about my personal favorites and I don't write about people because they're my personal favorites or because their

films are my personal favorites and I think I could be you know the man who called and said well we get to receive his films over and over again. Oh yeah. I'm not sure films are meant to be seen that way. I don't think you should see films over and over again looking for their deficiencies. You know most of the great films that we're talking about now North by Northwest Vertigo psycho certainly in the case of vertigo and psycho Hitchcock only them at the time of his death and they hadn't been shown on television or rereleased. He didn't like the idea that people would pore over these films. You know that's one of the ways in which they could come back and say well there's no logic to the ending you know because there might not be a logic ending I think you'd be you know kind of amazed that people sit around and watch these films over and over and over again you know hundreds of times or the critics are naming Vertigo The second greatest film of all time. I'm not sure he would call it his greatest film. Well it certainly is a great movie on the theme of obsession. It's a great film. And I just went from calling it the second greatest film of all time or that he would say so or that I would say oh you know that I've done it's my favorite or anything like that.

So you know the mood I mean you know just take those three films. You'd have to be in a certain mood to watch North by Northwest in a certain mood to watch vertigo. Different very different modes. Yeah and I think I'm not sure I would be ever in the proper mood to watch Psycho to have seen the movie and I guess I've probably seen it more than once but I think probably I've seen it enough so I don't think that was one of the will personally I would go back to you know what hundreds of times that makes me nervous or doesn't you know and people watch them frame by frame you know people have written frame by frame and off of some of these films. He was not at the end of his life was was he was he happy that he feels satisfied with what he had accomplished. Obviously it seemed that he was not happy that he came to a point where he felt that he couldn't he couldn't. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're you have this lingering suspicion that he had some kind of unhealthy attitude towards life. He had a very hard and starting with the birds. He had a debilitating health which got worse. His wife had a

stroke she was his best friend and creative partner. Many of the people who you know to put it in his inner circle either died or quit. So it was very isolated. I made a series of missteps miscues with films like Topaz and Torn Curtain and he thought his life was film and he saw his life slipping away and does so. There were before that period of time this tremendous happiness and tremendous joy of life and joy and life and tremendous triumph and really the last 15 years. And I think he sort of rebounds with frenzy but really the personal side of his story for the last 15 years is very very hard very tragic. At the end when he can no longer work he goes home and his doctor told me he was healthy enough to have lived longer with good care and not such a bad life that there wasn't anything he wasn't dying. But he was so despairing and so depressed over what had happened to him that he turned his face to the wall many you know literally will themself to death and that's what is his position who is the only person saying I'm on a

day to day basis at that point told me well there will have to. I'm sorry that's the note we end but and we must because the time is up again for people who are interested in reading about the life of work about Hitchcock you can look for the book we mentioned by our guest Patrick McGill again Alfred Hitchcock a life in darkness and light. And thanks very much for talking with. Thank you very much.