MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > What Was the First Scene Shot for Psycho...

What Was the First Scene Shot for Psycho?


Here's a topic I've mused on...that leads to a second topic. If I may....

Isn't it interesting to think about how a movie begins its shooting , in earnest? Maybe some second unit work is done first, or some inserts, but eventually you gotta put your actors on the set and start making your movie. One thing I read about Hitchcock is that when someone wanted him to film Janet Leigh speaking as part of the first scene shot of Psycho, Hitchcock replied: "No, don't you know that the first shot you take in a movie should never have your lead actor in it?"

But what was that first scene?

One book says that the first scene shot was the cop questioning Marion off of Highway 99 near Gorman in the Grapevine Hills north of LA.

One book says that the first scene shot was Marion driving up to the porch of the Bates Motel for the first time, in the rain. (During which Hitchcock supposedly admonished someone not to set up Leigh for the first shot.)

I'm guessing: the first scene shot for Psycho -- on location at least -- was indeed the scene with the cop.

Because if you look at it: Janet Leigh wasn't there. Outdoors, 70 miles north of LA, near Gorman. Her car is parked, and the police car comes up alongside and parks well behind it. We get a nice location long shot of the cop getting out of his car and walking up to Leigh's car -- I'm pretty sure that cop IS Mort Mills, and not a stand-in. But Leigh isn't visible in the shot.

Detective work: Eva Marie Saint narrated a doc on NXNW in which she showed how Hitchocck and his cast filmed all their location work FIRST: NYC, Chicago, Rapid City and Mount Rushmore. Then they went back to Hollywood and finished the film at the MGM soundstages.

So we can figure that Hitchcock filmed the comparatively meager location scenes of Psycho first, too: The cop stop, near Gorman. California Charlie's, about four blocks from Universal Studios. Anything else? Likely not. All the Phoenix stuff was done second unit.

With the location work done, Hitchcock likely settled in for soundstage work(the interior of the Bates House, Cabin One of the motel ; the parlor -- the "soundstage" version of the Bates Motel exterior), and perhaps finished up with some backlot work out at the "outside"Bates Motel and House. And swamp.

So: the first scene filmed in Psycho was the cop stop, but not with Janet Leigh there. The first "actors acting" scene filmed for Psycho was Leigh arriving at the motel.

Which brings me to the next question:

Did Hitchcock himself travel up to Gorman to supervise the cop stop scene?

After all, he didn't go to Phoenix to supervise the second unit float over Phoenix and background plates of Phoenix streets.

But I've read that Hitchcock WAS in Gorman to direct the cop scene. He was in a car, bundled up, between shots. And I can see where maybe he felt he should be there. He had one actor to direct -- on movement; how to walk up to the car. He had some compositions to capture -- that tumbleweed in the foreground on one shot; the sweeping vista of the Grapevine Hills(still exactly the same decades later) behind the cop's car and behind him.

I've always noted that in the famous story told of how Hitchcock had the flu and let Hilton Green direct part of the murder of Arbogast, Green said firmly "He only let me film the part leading to the murder, not the murder itself." (Green and company famously shot close-ups on Arbogast's feet and hands that didn't work for a victim.) But it was important for US to be told that Hitch, and only Hitch, supervised the actual taking of Arbogast's life. That was A-list work.

So Hitchcock was there to direct Mother rushing out at Arbogast seen from above? Did Hitchcock go up there and look down to get the shot and staging exactly right? Or did he send someone else? I believe he went up there -- because of a photograph of him "way up there" to capture the overhead shots of Cary Grant on the rooftop at the climax of To Catch a Thief.

Flash to Frenzy, made when Hitchcock was old and tired(and during which his beloved Alma suffered a stroke). Word is that he let his assistant director direct some of the soundstage dialogue scenes.

But when it came time to film the arrival of the potato truck at the highway diner, Hitchcock pulled two or three allnighters, dusk til dawn like a party animal, to supervise the footage of Rusk escaping and going into the diner, and of Babs body ejecting from the truck.

Thus: it would seem that Hitchcock made sure that he was THERE to direct "the big scenes" in his movies. Second unit not apply. (And frankly, I have to think that Hitchcock personally directed a re-shoot of EVERYTHING Hilton Green shot -- the shots of Arbogast in the foyer looking around are just too dynamic in their angling, composition, and size of Arbo in the shot.)



reply

Poignant: Hitchcock's final film, The Short Night(I doubt that title would have stuck) needed extensively location filming in Finland. When Hitchcock complained of ill health and started to balk on making the movie at all, he was told both by Hilton Green AND by Peter Bodgdanovich(him again!) that they would make the long trip to Finland and film the stuff there, and let Hitchcock finish the movie on the Universal soundstages.

Hitchcock thanked them , but demurred. "I don't make movies that way," he said. He had to be there . (Or did he? Both Marnie and Torn Curtain have all sorts of location plates -- of the American East Coast and of East Germany -- that were shot second unit.) Perhaps the Finland scenes involved actors that Hitchcock felt duty bound to direct(Connery, Matthau, and Ullman were sought. Or Eastwood, Ed Lauter, and Deneuve. None were hired.) The Short Night was never made. Hitchcock retired in 1979 and died in 1980. That's the ticket!

Oh, well...I drifted from "what was the first scene shot for Psycho" to "did Hitchocck REALLY supervise all of his great scenes?" The answers seem to be: the cop stop, and "yes," respectively.

reply

TO me the most interesting shooting chronology for a Hitchcock film is on Rear Window which was filmed totally in the studio but in two halves. First, all of the courtyard shots and then everything in the apartment. So Stewart, Ritter and Corey didn't even show up until well into filming.

THis schedule was necessitated because of the sheer size of the courtyard set which needed to be constructed, used and demolished in short order. But think of the demands this schedule put on Hitchcock's creative process: he needed to be sure he had all of the courtyard shots he wanted before filming the reaction shots in the apartment; essentially he had to have the entire film edited on paper before any filming was done. A less meticulous and prepared director would have struggled with this handicap.

reply

TO me the most interesting shooting chronology for a Hitchcock film is on Rear Window which was filmed totally in the studio but in two halves. First, all of the courtyard shots and then everything in the apartment. So Stewart, Ritter and Corey didn't even show up until well into filming.

---

I sure didn't know or remember that. (I'm strong on the Psycho filming -- though not THAT strong, but not so much on the other movies.)

For Stewart's role, particularly , he had to basically "imagine" that he was seeing all those courtyard shots, and reacting to what he saw. With evidently nothing there.

---

THis schedule was necessitated because of the sheer size of the courtyard set which needed to be constructed, used and demolished in short order.

---

Amazing. Indeed, I'm always amazed at the idea that some of the most iconic rooms ever shown in movies(like Cabin One of the Bates Motel), were struck and demolished in short order. No where to put them.

It seems that the INTERIOR of the Bates House lasted long enough to be used in some episodes of Boris Karloff's Thriller but interesting: for Hitchcock's Psycho, that interior was built on Universal's largest stage - the Phantom of the Opera stage. I would think the Bates house interior had to be cleared out of that prime property quickly -- maybe moved to another soundstage for Thriller?



reply

My little bitty example of "soundstage demolishing."

On the Warners lot in the mid-70s, I watched the filming of some doctor show with James Franciscus (I used to wander the lots and watch a few things get filmed; this was before John Lennon and big security around studios.)

Anyway, the camera was pointed at Franciscus while he talked to another man. A wall was behind Franciscus. When Franciscus finished his lines, the director asked the script girl "did we finish all the dialogue on Jim from this angle?" She said yes. The director nodded to a workman who walked behind Franciscus with a chain saw and simply sawe through and demolished the wall! Good thing it wasn't needed anymore. The camera was moved to where the wall had been, to film the man Franciscus was talking to.

Speaking of James Franciscus, in addition to watching him film that scene at the studio, a year or so later I watched him film ANOTHER TV thing(a movie) at a college campus. He rode a bicycle back and forth across a school square to get some insert shots. James Franciscus was my "go to insider star of the seventies."

reply

But think of the demands this schedule put on Hitchcock's creative process: he needed to be sure he had all of the courtyard shots he wanted before filming the reaction shots in the apartment; essentially he had to have the entire film edited on paper before any filming was done. A less meticulous and prepared director would have struggled with this handicap.

---

Absolutely. Hitchcock was called "the ultimate technician of film" before CGI, and Truffaut called him "the ultimate athlete of film."

I have read the Rear Window script, and it is a VERY hard read -- reads more like a blueprint or a mathematical theorem that runs for pages. A bunch of shots marked "SHOT 102 A: Dancer spins." with alternating shots marked "SHOT 102B: Jeffries reacts." Single spaced PAGES of this stuff. The dialogue pages were a blessing to read.

Indeed, that's why I always be a little reserved about Rear Window. Modernly, it rather plays like an experiment in continuous reaction shots, its almost too brilliant for its own good.

And yet...what Hitchcock did to make that movie. All those rooms, all those camera movements, all those shots. At least the editor had a precise shot list to work from(the script!)

I might add that there are some photos of Hitchcock, Stewart and Kelly in Jeff's room with the courtyard rooms visible across the way. Perhaps the rooms weren't demolished for any of the scenes where Jeff is in the foreground and the rooms are across the courtyard in the background. Perhaps the rooms were destroyed for all the "reverse shots" looking INTO Jeff's apartment(acting scenes with Kelly, Ritter, Corey, and, eventually..Burr.)

reply

Speaking of James Franciscus
---- --- ---- -- ----- -----
Speaking of him, have you seen the 77' TV-film Curse of the Black Widow (aka Love Trap). We have another split-personality, but not with James. Patty Duke would do those chores for James to unravel, and I would be spoiling it if I gave more of the plot (not that I think you'll be tuning it anytime soon), but she does a "three" split with a who's-killing-whom. Included in the cast was the indomitable Roz Kelly, a talented actress with all the wrong real-life events. From Streisand's film 'Pussycat' to appearing on Judge Judy as herself during her last days on TV

I FLUBBED; that would be Tony Franciosa, not James Franciscus

reply

We get a nice location long shot of the cop getting out of his car and walking up to Leigh's car -- I'm pretty sure that cop IS Mort Mills, and not a stand-in. But Leigh isn't visible in the shot.[quote]


I'd like to think that the economically-minded Hitchcock used a stand-in on location for Mort Mills for the walk-up. All the shots of him with Marion, looking inside the car, checking the front license plate, are process shots. It would be a whole other shooting day for the location shots, and since the cop doesn't start talking -- acting -- until he reaches Marion, a stand-in, with dark glasses in a uniform, could easily replace Mort Mills for the three of four steps he takes before cutting to the soundstage shots. The shots of the cop at the car lot, when he pulls up in his car and cranes his neck to spot her, when he gets out of the car and slowly approaches Marion after a brief moment of eye contact before she speeds off in her new car, this requires acting, it's clearly Mills in these shots.

This, I think, must have been standard procedure in Hollywood. A particularly bad example of mismatching a stand-in with the lead actor happens in On The Waterfront, after the famous taxi scene with Brando and Steiger, a high overhead shot shows the cab pulling to a stop and Brando's character getting out, only it's clearly not Brando but a stand-in with a different build and movements than Brando, stockier and less graceful.

And in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the then child actress and now respected actress and independent filmmaker Sarah Polley has complained, rather bitterly, about a moment in the film where her character is running, in a high overhead shot, that doesn't show her face. That's because it is clearly not a little girl, but a male little person, speedily galumphing along, dressed in her clothes.


reply

Steven Spielberg once said that early in his career he insisted on doing as much second-unit shooting as he could, but he eventually realized this was inefficient and came to rely on his second-unit crews.

I think casting Mort Mills was a little joke on Orson Welles, taking two of the actors from Touch of Evil and giving them a scene together. I don't think they had a scene with each other in Welles's film.

reply

@jay440. Both QT and Chris Nolan *say* they never use second units and shoot every shot themselves. Obviously there must be lenience involved for aerial and stunt shots of various sorts, but the ideal that your A-list director has designed every set-up is pretty admirable.

reply

Jason Reitman has also said that he chooses every single camera set-up himself.

They would seem to be the exceptions, because it seems most big budget Hollywood films are nearly assembly line products, with special effects farmed out and most any shot without the lead cast done by second unit and additional second units, like stunts, establishing shots, insert shots, extras, etc., being careful to match the photographic style of the first unit.

Nolan's biggest filmmaking influence is Kubrick, who supposedly knew more about lenses and lighting than most cinematographers.

reply

Jason Reitman has also said that he chooses every single camera set-up himself.

---

Again, what IS film direction? I suppose at least part of it has to do with being there to frame the shots, judge the acting, make suggestions ON the acting, and to "hold the entire movie in your head" so that you can keep your vision.

I like the story of Hitchcock directing Barry Foster(the psycho) and Alec McCowen(the arresting cop) at the end of Frenzy. On the first take, with no input from Hitchcock, Foster hung his head in shame and McCowen barked out his line "Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie!!" Hitchcock asked for a second take and "gently persuaded" Foster to go speechless and sputtering(not hanging his head in shame) and for McCowen to read his great line with ironic calm.

THAT's the great scene we now have in the movie. Thanks to the director, this one time.

---

They would seem to be the exceptions, because it seems most big budget Hollywood films are nearly assembly line products, with special effects farmed out and most any shot without the lead cast done by second unit and additional second units, like stunts, establishing shots, insert shots, extras, etc., being careful to match the photographic style of the first unit.

---

I"'m afraid so. Its corporate filmmaking and it shows.

And how about "corporate writing"? I recall Schwarzenegger at the height of his fame(and ego), talking about how he had a small team of writers work on every one of his scripts -- one for one-liners, one for action, one for suspense, etc. Assembly line writing, and you could HEAR it in the scripts. Meanwhile its pretty famously said that most scripts nowadays without the protection that QT and Aaron Sorkin have end up given "studio notes" and punched up by people other than the screenwriter.

---

reply

Nolan's biggest filmmaking influence is Kubrick, who supposedly knew more about lenses and lighting than most cinematographers.

---

That went for Hitchocck, too. Meanwhile, I've read that directors such as Joe Mankewicz and Billy Wilder didn't much know lenses, left that to their DPs while focusing on their own script's being properly acted.

reply

@jay440. Both QT and Chris Nolan *say* they never use second units and shoot every shot themselves. Obviously there must be lenience involved for aerial and stunt shots of various sorts, but the ideal that your A-list director has designed every set-up is pretty admirable.

---

I wonder about this with QT on Hateful Eight. There are some impressive early shots of the stagecoach speeding through the snow, and alongside a river, the horses galloping away. Some crane work above them, maybe even a helicopter? QT did THAT? Well, maybe so.

Death Proof has that great climactic car chase. That would usually be second unit stuff.

---

With Hitchcock, for so many years, he worked in hermetically sealed soundstages making "inside room" movies that didn't REQUIRE second unit work -- Lifeboat, Rope, Rear Window.

Though he seems to have sent people out to film distant cities for him: Phoenix in Psycho, Newark in Shadow of a Doubt, Berlin in Torn Curtain. I think for Hitchcock, sometimes the second unit people were filming "background plates" for process work. Exclusively.

Meanwhile: it looks like Hitchcock personally directed every shot of San Francisco streets in Vertigo. It was his love letter to that city, near which he had a second home, which was also close to the Mission San Juan Bautista that figures in key scenes(even with no tower there, really.)

reply

Of course there was no second unit filming on Rear Window, but there were certainly photos of the Christopher Street red brick building where the THorwalds lived,and which is still standing. The mockup on the RW set sure looks like it.

reply

Of course there was no second unit filming on Rear Window, but there were certainly photos of the Christopher Street red brick building where the THorwalds lived,and which is still standing. The mockup on the RW set sure looks like it.

---

There's a guy named Steven DeRosa who wrote a book called "Writing With Hitchcock," which was mainly about the unprecented four-in-a-row scripts that John Michael Hayes wrote for Hitchcock(either solo or with someone else.) That in turn became a series of YouTube shorts(from website videos) by DeRosa.

I'm pretty sure that one of those "DeRosa YouTube videos" takes us on a tour of the REAL Rear Window Greenwich Village apartment building, which, as I recall, is decidedly smaller and less complicated than "the Hitchcock version." Still, there are(were?) apartments at that location.

Rear Window required no second unit or location work, but I expect the Village and other NYC locales were toured by Hitchcock and his team to decide on the best place for Jeff Jeffries to live....

reply

ecarle, I'm referring only to the autnenticity of the THorwald building, not the entire courtyard complex most of which came from the imaginations of Hitchcock and his set designers. And in the film, the T building does seem somewhat out of place compared to the more funky VIllage-type architecture of the Miss Torso building to the left and the composer's to the right.

reply

movieghoul, I feel a need to get out the Rear Window DVD and look at the layout of that entire courtyard again. You know, it took me a couple of viewings to really get my bearings as to which characters were where in that layout(was the composer to the left or the right?), and the buildings don't quite match up in architecture, do they?

I expect Hitchcock had a score of photographs of buildings in Greenwich Village to work from, and they had his art directors "mix and match" until the Rear Window apartments and courtyard took shape on that one giant soundstage on the Paramount lot.

I'm reminded that Rear Window was Hitchocck's first film for Paramount, and evidently he wanted to give them something really special for that first one. Its as if he took his time, squinted real hard, and made sure he had his "genius light' burning on this one(as he told Truffaut, "my batteries were fully charged.") And he delivered a big hit and a masterpiece first time out for Paramount.

A bit of irony: having delivered such a hit/masterpiece all filmed on one soundstage, Hitchcock immediately took his pricey Paramount contract on a "trip around the world" for his next movies -- To Catch a Thief(Monaco), The Trouble With Harry(Vermont), The Man Who Knew Too Much(Morocco and London.) I don't recall Hitchcock doing those kinds of travelogues at Warners. He returned to Warners and NYC locations for The Wrong Man, and then back to Paramount for the domestic travelogue of Vertigo. For his one-shot at MGM(North by Northwest), Hitchcock took a tour of America.

And then he finished for Paramount with Psycho...some Phoenix second unit, some California highway second unit, a coupla California locations ...and the rest, all backlot and soundstage.

Because Psycho was really a Universal-International picture.

reply

Steven Spielberg once said that early in his career he insisted on doing as much second-unit shooting as he could, but he eventually realized this was inefficient and came to rely on his second-unit crews.

--

An interesting statement. Spielberg riled a few of the Eurofilm-inspired critics who were champions of American films like Five Easy Pieces and The Godfather. On the basis of his action work in Duel, The Sugarland Express, and Jaws, one critic called Spielberg, "the best second unit director in Hollywood -- except he signs off as director." (Someone else called him the "best truck and shark director" in Hollywood.)

The issue, of course, is direction as a function of technical work versus the direction of actors and writing. The bigger issue is "what is directing?" That's why I was always intrigued that Hilton Green made sure we know that Hitchcock -- and only Hitchcock -- directed the actual killing of Arbogast, while not the build-up. Funny, though, the build-up is , in some ways BETTER directed -- without the slight embarrassment of that process shot on the fall.

Hitchcock also, of course, wanted us to know that the threw out the much of the Hilton Green footage of Arbogast's ascent. It didn't fit Hitchcock's vision.

I had that happen to me as an older teenager. My friends and I would trade off directing our little Super8 spoofs, but I learned something one time. I let a friend shoot a scene I had written and when I got the film back from processing, I found that he had filmed at a distance(long medium shot) two guys I had imagined in close-up. He didn't get my vision! Too late for a re-shoot.

--

reply

I think casting Mort Mills was a little joke on Orson Welles, taking two of the actors from Touch of Evil and giving them a scene together. I don't think they had a scene with each other in Welles's film.

---

I can't remember if Leigh and Mills did have a scene together in Touch of Evil. Touch of Evil famously inspired Hitch (Leigh, Mills -- Leigh at a motel, Dennis Weaver as a weird motel keeper) and Welles was famously angry that Hitchcock had appropriated some of his work.

But alas, Touch of Evil works first and best as an art film -- it is alternately dull and incoherent as a thriller -- and Hitchcock made HIS movie for an audience. The biggest audience of his career. Thus, Psycho made a lot more money than Touch of Evil and Hitchcock got more projects to direct. Not so for Welles.


reply

I'd like to think that the economically-minded Hitchcock used a stand-in on location for Mort Mills for the walk-up.

---

Well, I went and took a look and -- yeah, maybe that cop is NOT Mills. I couldn't be sure, but Mills does have distinctive features. Still, Hitchcock made it easy to use a double -- the big sunglasses and the big cop's hat cover up much of the facial area, and the cop is seen walking from quite a distance(its a great shot, BTW, capturing the stark beauty of the Grapevine Hills and the utter stillness of a Saturday morning in the middle of nowhere.)

---

All the shots of him with Marion, looking inside the car, checking the front license plate, are process shots.

----

And the process plates of the brushy area nexdt to the car, feel more like big still photos than "moving film." Still, somehow, it WORKS, creating a dream-like surreal quality to the scene.

--

It would be a whole other shooting day for the location shots, and since the cop doesn't start talking -- acting -- until he reaches Marion, a stand-in, with dark glasses in a uniform, could easily replace Mort Mills for the three of four steps he takes before cutting to the soundstage shots.

---

I can buy that. Which makes things interesting. A day (likely) for Hitchcock to pay attention and direct...a stand-in.

Though maybe it took less than a day. We're talking about two shots, right? The long shot of Marion's car parked, with the tumbleweed in the foreground, and then the shot of the cop taking his time to back up the car, park, and walk to Marion's car.

That could have been done in a morning. Perhaps Hitch and his crew left LA at 7:00 am, got to Gorman around 9:00 am, spent two hours setting up camera, lights and equipment....and then maybe two hours of filming. Then , pack it up and go home. Done in less than a day.

reply

The shots of the cop at the car lot, when he pulls up in his car and cranes his neck to spot her, when he gets out of the car and slowly approaches Marion after a brief moment of eye contact before she speeds off in her new car, this requires acting, it's clearly Mills in these shots.

---

Yes, even though he is across the street, the camera is "closer" to him, and by now, we have met him and studied his face. A stand-in would not have worked here. Plus, there is some "silent acting" to be done and of course -- the cop drives onto the lot himself (massive suspense here, I'd say -- the cop and California Charlie are "coming together" to discuss their suspicions about Marion.)

I recall that in Roger Ebert's review of Van Sant's Psycho, he thought Van Sant screwed up the shot of the cop across the street in some way (the arms of the cop were not folded?). Everybody picked on that remake!

reply

This, I think, must have been standard procedure in Hollywood. A particularly bad example of mismatching a stand-in with the lead actor happens in On The Waterfront, after the famous taxi scene with Brando and Steiger, a high overhead shot shows the cab pulling to a stop and Brando's character getting out, only it's clearly not Brando but a stand-in with a different build and movements than Brando, stockier and less graceful.

---

I don't recall that shot, but it seems bad decision making, you are really invested in those characters at that point, they should look right. But major stars don't always do "pick up shots."

Then again, some do. I recall a funny quote from Spencer Tracy on a scene he filmed in Sea of Grass, made to reporters on set: "I filmed a scene today that will revolutionize the industry. I took a basket of apples off a wagon and walked down the road for 20 yards. Great performance!"

--

And in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the then child actress and now respected actress and independent filmmaker Sarah Polley has complained, rather bitterly, about a moment in the film where her character is running, in a high overhead shot, that doesn't show her face. That's because it is clearly not a little girl, but a male little person, speedily galumphing along, dressed in her clothes.

---

I vaguely recall that shot kind of "standing out."

The funniest stand ins, I have found, are the stunt doubles for fight scenes in old TV shows like "Burke's Law" and "Peter Gunn." When big fights break out between two men, we get the establishing shot on the actors and then the camera cuts to a long shot and distinctively different (usually more stocky) men are seen duking it out. Then we get cuts to close-ups of the actors fighting which don't match the stunt men. Funny.

reply

One classic example of a split between "dramatic sequence directing" and "second unit directing" came with producer Irwin Allen's megaproduction disaster movie "The Towering Inferno"(1974.)

The credits list two directors:

John Guillerman (dramatic sequences)
Irwin Allen(action sequences).

Funny thing: I think a lot of the action in "Inferno" is overlong and clunky. Allen didn't have the "touch" for action. Meanwhile, I think some of the dramatic scenes -- including all of the ones with Steve McQueen -- are pretty good in Inferno. A little soap opera here and there, but more often tough technical talk among firemen , cops and an architect(Paul Newman.)

Plug: I read something about an "Inferno" scene between McQueen and Dabney Coleman that I found interesting. I posted about over at that movie's board. See, it ain't ALL Psycho.

reply

That went for Hitchocck, too. Meanwhile, I've read that directors such as Joe Mankewicz and Billy Wilder didn't much know lenses, left that to their DPs while focusing on their own script's being properly acted.
----------------
I'll be posting soon about a book-length interview with editor Sam O'Steen, who edited some of Mike Nichols' and Roman Polanski's best films, and was also an assistant editor on The Wrong Man ("I ordered the dissolve" he mentions proudly about the famous shot of Fonda's face dissolving to the real criminal's face).

He talks about an old-time editor, Doane Harrison, who edited Billy Wilder's films from The Major and the Minor to The Fortune Cookie, and who sat in on the set of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf:
"He was a brilliant guy for laying 'em out [deciding what angles to shoot], he really got some great shots...After Wilder stopped using Doane, his pictures started falling apart."

Wilder himself said:
"I worked with a very good cutter, Doane Harrison, from whom I learned a great deal. He was much more of a help to me than the cameraman. When I became a director from a writer my technical knowledge was very meagre."

Movie historian Sam Stagg has described their early collaboration, "In valuable early lessons, Harrison taught Wilder how to preplan each shot as part of a total editing scheme. The results: Time and money saved, and few protection shots required. (The term "protection shot", also called coverage, refers to footage shot from various setups and angles that may be needed for editing a sequence in the cutting room.)"
--------------
Though he seems to have sent people out to film distant cities for him: Phoenix in Psycho, Newark in Shadow of a Doubt, Berlin in Torn Curtain.
--------------
I read Hitchcock did scout some locations himself, such as Quebec City for I Confess, and no doubt he chose the camera angles while doing so, the beautiful shots of the city's architecture and religious iconography have that distinctive Hitchcock look.

reply

That went for Hitchocck, too. Meanwhile, I've read that directors such as Joe Mankewicz and Billy Wilder didn't much know lenses, left that to their DPs while focusing on their own script's being properly acted.
----------------
I'll be posting soon about a book-length interview with editor Sam O'Steen,

---

I look forward to reading your posts...

---

who edited some of Mike Nichols' and Roman Polanski's best films, and was also an assistant editor on The Wrong Man ("I ordered the dissolve" he mentions proudly about the famous shot of Fonda's face dissolving to the real criminal's face).

---

I did not know that ...from The Wrong Man for Hitch(if only as an assistant) on to Nichols and Polanski. I certainly know the name(Sam O'Steen.)

---

reply

He talks about an old-time editor, Doane Harrison, who edited Billy Wilder's films from The Major and the Minor to The Fortune Cookie, and who sat in on the set of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf:
"He was a brilliant guy for laying 'em out [deciding what angles to shoot], he really got some great shots...After Wilder stopped using Doane, his pictures started falling apart."

---

As I guessed...Billy Wilder, having come up from screenwriting....needed technical assistance from a film editor, and likely from his cinematographers, too(The Apartment won the Best B/W Cinematography Oscar over Psycho, and I must admit, there are some great, gleaming images in The Apartment , though I'd give ALL Oscars to Psycho, just because.)

Film editors like Verna Fields("Mother cutter" on Jaws and other movies) and O'Steen and Hal Ashby(who became a director himself) likely knew how to advise their directors on moving scenes around, cutting excess footage, etc.

This goes back to my hypothetical question "What does a director do?" If you are Hitchocck or Kubrick or Nolan ..you do everything. But guys from screenwriting or theater often gave their movies over to their technical team for the "movie part."

--

Wilder himself said:
"I worked with a very good cutter, Doane Harrison, from whom I learned a great deal. He was much more of a help to me than the cameraman. When I became a director from a writer my technical knowledge was very meagre."

---

So here's Wilder choosing his editor over his cameraman as an influence. I would expect it could go either way, depending on the director.

reply

Movie historian Sam Stagg has described their early collaboration, "In valuable early lessons, Harrison taught Wilder how to preplan each shot as part of a total editing scheme. The results: Time and money saved, and few protection shots required. (The term "protection shot", also called coverage, refers to footage shot from various setups and angles that may be needed for editing a sequence in the cutting room.)"

---

Hitchcock was famous for turning in very little footage to cut, very little excess. Practically no protection. Reflected HIS pre-planning to be sure, but he also wanted to stop studio execs from "re-cutting his movies." He said that Selznick called his cutting, "your g.d. jigsaw cutting!"

Bruce Dern claimed that, on Family Plot, Hitchcock would cut scenes in the middle of an actor's dialogue, if he felt he had gotten all he needed from one angle. I find that a little hard to believe.

Meanwhile, directors like George Stevens, Kubrick and...Warren Beatty were famous for shooting hours and hours of film and drawing the movie out of the morass(though I expect Kubrick was just looking for the best of 100 takes of a scene!)

One bit of movie trivia I always liked: while making The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah took his main actors out one afternoon and had each one individually stand on a platform and look in various directions, with only blue sky behind them: Holden, Borgnine, Ryan, etc. Thus was Peckinpah armed with "insert close-ups" to control any scene and allow for scenes to be cut into "anywhere"(just insert the shot of Holden looking left, etc.)

reply

Though he seems to have sent people out to film distant cities for him: Phoenix in Psycho, Newark in Shadow of a Doubt, Berlin in Torn Curtain.
--------------
I read Hitchcock did scout some locations himself, such as Quebec City for I Confess, and no doubt he chose the camera angles while doing so, the beautiful shots of the city's architecture and religious iconography have that distinctive Hitchcock look.

--

Oh, yes, particularly in his younger and middle-aged years, Hitchcock would take "location trips" which were vacations, too, like to the French Riviera for To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock also gifted his screenwriters with such trips, sometimes sending them off alone on their own vacations. But if Hitchcock himself did the scouting(as with Quebec), I expect it made for some great locations and images for his films.

The older Hitchcock likely didn't want to travel to Maryland and Pennsylvania to scout Marnie, or to even West Germany to scout Torn Curtain. But he DID scout Copenhagen and Paris for Topaz(there is interview footage of him getting off a plane in Copenhagen and talking about Topaz about to shoot there), and he DID scout his old homeland(London) for Frenzy.

reply

This goes back to my hypothetical question "What does a director do?" If you are Hitchocck or Kubrick or Nolan ..you do everything. But guys from screenwriting or theater often gave their movies over to their technical team for the "movie part."
I think that, at least historically, the big differences in directorial backgrounds corresponded to differences in how actor- and performance-centered their films were. Lubitsch, Cukor, Wilder, Kazan, Lumet etc. are all coming at things from acting/dialogue/theater perspectives whereas Griffith, Murnau, Lang, Gance, Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Bunuel etc. are visuals-, ideas for plots and edits-first. There are lots of directors between these two poles but the closer you are to the Murnau-Hitchcock pole the more likely you are these days to edit and or shoot your movies yourself. E.g., The Coens edit their own movies as 'Roderick Jaynes', and Cuaron was his own DP on his latest.

Of course, most directors who are very visual etc. do still see lots of advantages in having other people's inputs throughout the workflow... Where would George Lucas have been without his editors? Several billion dollars poorer for sure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk

reply

Of course, most directors who are very visual etc. do still see lots of advantages in having other people's inputs throughout the workflow... Where would George Lucas have been without his editors? Several billion dollars poorer for sure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk

---

I'll take a look. Certainly, George Lucas is famous for "getting away from directing." He directed the seminal first one (after having directed the hit American Graffiti fully four years earlier.) And that was it, right? Or did he direct another Star Wars?(Somehow I think he did.) Lucas seemed to content to skip the directorial career (and worship) that Spielberg and Scorsese got. It's floating in and out. Yeah, he did direct one more Star Wars. And Willow. Anything else? Not much.

In fact, when Lucas, Spielberg, and Coppola took the stage to give the inevitable Best Director Oscar to Martin Scorsese for The Departed, a little joke(with Lucas playing along) was that Spielberg, Coppola and soon Scorsese would all have Best Director Oscars...but never the non-prolific George.

reply

So: the first scene filmed in Psycho was the cop stop, but not with Janet Leigh there. The first "actors acting" scene filmed for Psycho was Leigh arriving at the motel.

---

Back to this topic.

I've been ruminating on it -- because its a relaxing rumination away from the pressures of work and society -- and: why WOULD Marion's driving up to the motel porch in the rain be the first dramatic scene Hitchcock shot?

In some ways, it doesn't make sense. Wouldn't Hitch want to get her first 30 minutes all shot, first? Not just the location work(cop stop, California Charlies'), but the stuff in the car? And the hotel room scene, and the real estate office scene?

Then it hit me: the hotel room scene may have been the LAST one shot by Janet Leigh. Because John Gavin's in it. Now, Gavin is otherwise a "Part Two" character in Psycho so: film all of Janet Leigh's scenes without Gavin first, bring Gavin in to shoot his scene with Leigh , release Leigh from the movie, and start work with Gavin, Miles, Balsam...and Perkins.

But when did Perkins start work on Psycho?

He could have waited until all of Leigh's other scenes were shot, but if they STARTED with Leigh driving up to the motel in the rain(on the soundstage) well, Perkins would need to be there for his scenes on the motel porch with her, yes?

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that I guess we can't ever really know what the sequence of shooting on a classic movie was. Unless we are told that "the movie was shot in sequence"(like Rope had to be), Hitchcock could have shot any scene, any time.

reply

This we do know: Psycho began production in late November 1959, but Leigh started in December. She was only three weeks on the film, and filmed the shower scene during the week leading up to Xmas 1959.

We know that Miles and Balsam came on for the shoot in January 1960 -- and that the bulk of the "murder of Arbogast scene" was filmed on January 19 (but likely also one other day.) We know that Psycho wrapped filming in February of 1960 (thus, it was about a three month shoot -- eight weeks, Hitchcock said.) And we also know that Hitchcock brought Martin Balsam back in February for some more shooting(likely a re-shoot of any part of the Arbogast murder directed by Hilton Green.)

One figures that Leigh, Miles, Gavin and Balsam signed on for short shooting periods, but what of Anthony Perkins? He flew to New York to rehearse the musical "Greenwillow" during the week the shower scene was filmed, but was likely on call the entire rest of the time. Its only him on screen for the long clean-up and burial of Marion sequence -- was that done AFTER Leigh left the production but BEFORE Miles and Balsam came aboard? Perkins had to be available when Leigh, Balsam, Gavin, and Miles were on the production - he has scenes with all of them. I would guess Perkins didn't join the production until Leigh had finished her real estate office and California Charlie scenes, however.

Its just to speculate. A mind game. A parlor game. The logistics of putting together a movie in which various characters appear at various times during the film, some to die and disappear(Marion, Arbogast), others to go away and re-appear(Sam), others to come in late(Arbogast, Lila, the Sheriff and his wife, the psychiatrist.) Oh, well, they all got paid lump sums....

reply

I would guess that, as an "overall organizing principle for scheduling" that:

December was given over to Janet Leigh and the cast in her part of the story ---Perkins and Gavin included-- but also Lowery and Cassidy and Caroline; the cop; California Charlie.

January was given over to everybody in the second half of the story, with Leigh the major player gone (Perkins, Balsam, Miles, Gavin...McIntire, Tuttle, Oakland...)

With November 1959 and February 1960 as 'bookend periods" of first shots and re-shoots.

There, that was invigorating...

reply

Side-note:

Whereas Hitchcock's Psycho was filmed in November, December, January and February 1959 to 1960 for June 1960 release...

...Van Sant's Psycho was shot, as I recall, in June, July and August of 1998(with maybe some work in May) for December 1998 release. (It was crazy: they opened on Friday December 4, 1998. Had they waited just one week, they would have opened on : Friday December 11!)

Somehow I sense a different "energy" to those shooting schedules. Hitchcock's Psycho was essentially filmed over the holidays and the cusp of two years(two DECADES.) Van Sant's Psycho was a "summer movie"(in filming.)

reply

E.g., The Coens edit their own movies as 'Roderick Jaynes', and Cuaron was his own DP on his latest.
Update, Cuaron wrote and edited Roma as well. Show off!

Seriously though, Roma's clearly one of the films of the year. It's made by Netflix and is going to cinemas for just two weeks before opening on Netflix early in December. It's going to be a Best Picture contender but there'll almost certainly be an over-my-dead-body-no-Netflix resistance to allowing Roma to win. Interesting times.

reply

Update, Cuaron wrote and edited Roma as well. Show off!

---

Evidently, in this age of non-union , non-studio moviemaking, and with the technology of our times, one man or woman CAN wear the main tech hats on a movie. Is Roma "small scale," or does it have challenging aspects?

----

Seriously though, Roma's clearly one of the films of the year. It's made by Netflix and is going to cinemas for just two weeks before opening on Netflix early in December. It's going to be a Best Picture contender but there'll almost certainly be an over-my-dead-body-no-Netflix resistance to allowing Roma to win. Interesting times

---

Yes, Netflix has rather turned the concept of movies -- and movie stars -- on their heads.

I keep waiting to see when the Scorsese film "The Irishman" will be released -- and how. Its like a "greatest hits Scorsese cast with one that got away" -- Pacino. And DeNiro. And Pesci. And Keitel. But its Netflix.

They're running a new Xmas movie on Netflix right now. I heard a familiar voice under Santa's beard , and chuckled to see that it was ...Kurt Russell(evidently doing Saint Nick as a variant on his grizzled bounty hunter in The Hateful Eight.) I'm assuming that Russell would not have done this on NBC or CBS. Had to be Netflix -- which likely paid him as well ,if not better, than some of his theatrical films.





reply

Note in passing: some years ago, it was announced in the trades that Kurt Russell was "in talks" to takeover the CSI origin series. The Vegas one. I remember thinking if he was announced, he was going to do it. For big money, no doubt.

But Russell ultimately turned the gig down. And has kept himself going as a movie character actor star in everything from The Hateful Eight to Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I think he realizes that he has aged into legendary status and is(along with Jeff Bridges) just the right age to take over those old guy character star roles from Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. He doesn't need a TV series...yet. Certainly not a BROADCAST TV series. He played it cool, turning down CSI. (Laurence Fishburne took that gig; is he still there? Is the show still on the air?)

reply

Is Roma "small scale," or does it have challenging aspects?
Apparently it's got some big set pieces including a massacre so it feels big and small at the same time like La Dolce Vita/Godfather 2.

BTW, I've been 'cleaning out my hard drive' by watching and deleting mediocre or worse films I've acquired over the years. I can report, for example, that the worst James Bond movies are truly unbearable: Quantum of Solace appeared to have been edited by a mad-man and Die Another Day was inept across the board. Shockingly poor. I may have to retract or modify some of the s*** I've talked over the years about Matrix sequels, Pirates sequels, and the like (even recent tepid sequels like Incredibles 2 and Cars 2 and The Last Jedi and Deadpool 2)... Charmlessess and misguidedness isn't as fatal for me as incompetence and cynicism, who would have guessed?

reply