Watching the Remake with an Open Mind

After seeing the original, the color scheme of the 1998 version started to look simply inappropriate to me.

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One of the great "what ifs" over the first 23 years of its existence(1960 to 1983) about Hitchcock's Psycho was "what would it have looked like in color?" It was hard to imagine, but a lot of us TRIED.

Came 1983 and "Psycho II," we finally saw the house and motel in color at least. (We couldn't get the Janet Leigh scenes re-done in color.) Interestingly, the green-and-orange interiors of the house in Psycho II were based on the green-and-orange interiors of the flat of Hitchcock psycho Bob Rusk(Barry Foster) in Frenzy. Those colors repeated in Psycho III(1986) and Psycho IV(1990) but by 1998, Van Sant elected to re-do everything rather in total. And thus -- courtesy of the art directors and the highly respected DP Chris Doyle -- we got a kind of " pastel Psycho" with an emphasis on pink and orange and brown -- plus a little green. Its rather a "pretty pastel" Psycho.

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So many little things in the remake seem uncalled for: from Heche's red nail polish -- to her stupid orange umbrella that she bothers using to protect her skin from the sunlight while she's meant to be distressed running from authorities;

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Hah! That parasol seemed to be an ultra-cute affectation and it destroyed the characterization.

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from the ultra-fancy shower curtain and showerhead (in a cheap motel)

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The shower curtain material was also used to make...the buttons for Anne Heche's dress! Which reflects, perhaps the "art school affectation" of the costumes in general. Like : William H. Macy's necktie has a lumberjack on it(an allusion to "Fargo"), and all the men who wear ties, wear rather stylized satin neckties.

Also, that stylized "diamond pattern shower curtain" ruined Hitchcock's effect of Mother approaching as a CLEARLY-SEEN shadowy figure -- we can make out the human monster as it approaches. In the Van Sant, Mother approaches as if an unfocussed blob of shadow.

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The most random little thing is probably the Mother's long fingernail in the shower scene -- you can see it when the knife is "stabbing the screen".

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Can't say I remember that...but YOU saw it, which makes it noticeably too much. Norman wouldn't have long fingernails.

ecarle, I'm curious to ask you something. Do you ever feel that it's not exactly accurate to call Van Sant's version "a shot-for-shot" remake? The more I hear people calling it that -- the more differences I notice every time I watch the remake.

My point is, if Van Sant's main intention really was to make an identical film, a "carbon copy" -- then he probably could have done much better, because the two films are simply not very identical, they are too different from each other.

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You've hit upon one of the reasons that the Van Sant Psycho is actually a rather fascinating artifact. For part of the "experiment" that the film created was...an experiment UPON Gus Van Sant, upon his ability to "simply reshoot the original" without making changes. Turns out -- he could not bring himself to do that. He was too much his own man. But it ALSO turns out, sometimes he COULD NOT MATCH what Hitchcock did. He said so himself. Even with a DVD of the original on set, he could not match Hitchcock camera moves or camera angles or figure out "how he did that"(for Hitchcock had lots of tricks by which to manipulate his images, like building tables taller than usual so they would show in the frame, etc.)

Among the changes Van Sant made:

DELETION: He took out the entire scene with the sheriff at the church!

DELETION: He cut the psychiatrist scene roughly in half(removing the stuff about transvestitism and about Norman having killed two other women before Marion.)

DELETION: He started the scene with Sam and Lila meeting the sheriff and his wife at home LATER in the scene(no more introductions from Sam.)




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- You have something that most girls don't have.

- I have?

- There's not a name for it, but, uh, it's something that puts a person at ease.

- Well, thank you again.


This piece of dialogue comes right between Norman asking her to call him "Norman Bates" instead of "Mr. Bates" -- and him offering her to have dinner with him.

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Aha. Yes, that's it!

And it was weird. If you know the dialogue in the movie(not the script) by heart, you listen to this Cabin One talk and when THOSE LINES appear, you are jarred: "What? What are they saying?" Off to the original screenplay for a read...and there are.

If I were to compare Psycho to Mona Lisa, then I would say the 1998 version looks like Mona Lisa with unnecessary colorful makeup applied to her face, red nail polish and breast implants... with orange umbrella in her hands.

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Hah!

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But despite my endless critisisms towards Van Sant's film, I totally get your fascination with it, ecarle -- because I'm fascinated with the remake as well! Yes, I hate it. Yes, it's sort of painful to watch it. But I keep rewatching it -- because it's a fascinating experiment. This movie is not good -- but it makes the original look even more powerful than it seemed before.

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I agree with everything you said there.

Its kind of sad for Van Sant -- clearly he was obsessed with Psycho as millions of others, and he was SO obsessed that he "cashed in a golden ticket"(the backing the powerful Universal production company Imagine) from "Good Will Hunting"(he was Oscar nommed for it) to make...Psycho. It turns out he had been trying to remake it for years -- he pitched a version in the 80's with Timothy Hutton as Norman and Jack Nicholson as Arbogast. Which would have been great casting but I don't think he coulda got Jack OR Hutton(who was called "a young Tony Perkins type" when he debuted in Ordinary People.) Anyway, Imagine bosses Ron Howard and Brian Grazer were power players who finally got the Universal brass to give the Psycho rights to Van Sant.

Consider, BTW, the power of the success of Good Will Hunting: An Oscar for Robin Williams. Writing Oscars for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. STARDOM for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. And "Psycho" finally achieved for Gus Van Sant.

That Harvey Weinstein sure had the Midas Touch!

It's a rare cinematic failure that makes me want to analyze it shot by shot, line by line.

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I think first of all, this is because I don't think we have seen -- or will see -- as classic a movie as Psycho remade. Van Sant went to the top of the list here -- imagine Casablanca or The Godfather or Pulp Fiction remade -- and that bugged people.

But Van Sant noted this: Psycho was such a "bare bones" story -- so simple in its scene by scene, shot by shot tightness -- that you could not HELP but notice each and every change made to it. I lost my lede there: one reason that Van Sant remade Psycho is because he found it so "simple" he felt it would be EASY to remake. Far easlier than, say, North by Northwest(said Van Sant.) He was wrong.

I only read a few comments by Van Sant after the film got roasted, and there were rather bitter.

Here's one: "I was shocked by how right wing people got about my remaking Psycho." Right wing? Uh, I don't see that.

Here's another: "I personally made more money off of my Psycho remake than any other movie I ever made." He said that in some triumph. He made more than he made off of Good Will Hunting. More than he made off of that Sean Connery mainstream film he made. And certainly more than off of any of his indies. So, Psycho was good for him THAT way.

And the more I analyze it, the less I want to call it a "shot-for-shot" remake. It's not really. What makes me keep saying that?

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I'm reminded of Vince Vaughn hosting SNL in December 1998 to promote Van Sant's Psycho.

He announces it as "the shot by shot remake of Psycho" and Darrell Hammond as the Ghost of Alfred Hitchcock stomps out to exclaim:

"The what by what what of WHAT?????!!!"

Psycho is "shot by shot, line by line" rather in comparison to what I consider the two worst remakes ever made: The Manchurian Candidate and The Truth About Charlie(from Charade), in which director Jonathan Demme(sadly, and RIP, and his other films were great) allowed the scripts of the originals to be re-worked, thrown out, turned upside down, and converted into movies that were nothing like the originals.

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It's the fact that Psycho 1998 is not the only "shot-for-shot" remake in film history -- there are other films like that, so we can compare Van Sant's daring experiment to other movies of this kind.

The finest example of a shot-for-shot remake ever made is probably the 2007 film Funny Games starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth. It's an American remake of a highly-controversial Austrian film of the same name from 1997. What's interesting is that the American version was made by the same director -- and it does seem to be a 100% shot-for-shot remake.

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I am familiar with both Funny Games, but -- having only sampled part of the remake on cable -- I just don't have the stomach for them. "Too much suspense," too much cruelty, no way out.
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And just like the Psycho 1998 experiment, the remake of Funny Games was also a failure. It failed to emulate the feeling of the original -- the chemistry was different, that elusive "movie magic" was gone despite re-creating the original film practically shot-for-shot.

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Now THAT is really interesting. Even with "legitmate" shot for shot-ness -- it didn't work. There is something to be said, I think for how a good to great movie "comes together" in elements not found only in the script or camera shots.

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As I mentioned somewhere around here, I have sometimes liked remakes very much. In the 2010s, two of them were favorites:

True Grit: A more polished production than the John Wayne original, with Good Actor Matt Damon taking over for Bad Actor Glen Campbell. The famous "bold talk for a one-eyed fat man" scene is the same in both films -- yet not:

Wayne: "I aim to kill you now or see you hanged at Judge Parker's convenience...which will it be?"

Bridges: "I am to kill you now or see you hanged at Judge Parker's convenience...which will you have?"

There are about 10 scene matches from original to remake; but the remake also has about six newly created scenes that make it "original." I favor the Wayne original for its two touching final scenes -- both removed from the remake in favor of the dour anticlimactic conclusion of the book.

My favorite of 1998? "Saving Private Ryan," which, among other things, took the violence level begun by Psycho up to a whole nuther place. And was a great story as well.

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I belatedly return to compare Saving Private Ryan ..a bit ...with Psycho. The FIRST one.

If Psycho famously took screen violence farther than it had ever been taken before(how LONG Marion is stabbed; the slash to Arbogast's face, and the scream-inducing terror of both scenes), it does seem that there were a few -- only a few -- movies to follow that took violence up to the next levels:

Bonnie and Clyde: How everybody bleeds in the gunfights(especially cops); how an elderly bank clerk gets shot point blank in the face as a coda to a slapstick scene(shades of Arbogast); but most of all how Bonnie and Clyde get massacred in a slow-mo massacre at the end. Technicolor, slo-mo, a hail of bullets -- Bonnie and Clyde left behind the black-and-white suggestive knife play of Psycho.

The Wild Bunch: Peckinpah was out to best Bonnie and Clyde -- and he did. The slaughter of Bonnie and Clyde paled before the massacre of scores of Mexican soldiers(and four suicidal Americans) at the end of Peckinpah's gore Western epic. Slo-mo AND other varying film speeds left B and C far behind.

Dirty Harry: No slo mo -- just a fair number of cheerable gunbattles and Harry's 44 Magnum delivering justice. The increase in violence here marked the cop movie becoming the ultraviolent action thriller -- Dirty Harry is as much a horror movie as anything else.

Halloween and Friday the 13th: Back to the Psycho knifeplay, but now with far more blood and far more brutality(though Halloween has almost as many stranglings as stabbings). Come to think of it, Halloween isn't all that bloody. Psycho is bloodier. Friday the 13th? A different story.

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