MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Does Anyone Actually Do This???

Does Anyone Actually Do This???


Does anyone else get into the shower before they turn on the water like Marion did? Don't most people turn on the shower before they get in, make sure the heat is on and the water is at a comfortable temperature? What if Norman had forgotten to pay his gas bill and heat got turned off? That would have been almost as much of a jolt to Marion as having Mother show up.

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Does anyone else get into the shower before they turn on the water like Marion did?

Not really, except perhaps if I'm in big hotel or motel complex and can just know that there'll be instant, effectively infinite hot water. Marion's confidence that the water will be instantly hot/warm in a small, out-of-the-way motel does seem misplaced. Maybe then she's just a hardy soul!

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Although we were locals, we treated ourselves to a weekend at the Disneyland Hotel for a Star Trek Convention held there in the mid-'80s. Don't know what it's like now, but the service was top-notch.

There was one brief glitch: returning to our room one afternoon, we found that there was only hot water, no matter which tap you turned on. Not just hot, but scalding; steam was rising from the toilet bowl. They had it fixed in an hour or so, but it made the visit especially memorable.

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I'm not much for amenities and stopped at a crap motel on the Coast. Even with my low standards, I did not like this place but paid before I went to the room. Didn't realize how crummy the room would be. I resigned myself to staying there, but when I discovered there wasn't any hot water, that was my excuse to get my money back. They said they'd fix it, but I said when I want to take a shower I expect to be able to. I did leave a buck or two in the room just because I used a drinking cup and maybe sat on the bed. That was about it.

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"I'm not much for amenities..."
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That weekend was a bit of a splurge. There was so much to enjoy at the hotel and convention that we never even set foot in Disneyland proper.
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"...stopped at a crap motel on the Coast."
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Of which there are many all throughout the western states. While none of us has motel horror stories to compare with Marion Crane's (or we wouldn't be here), I'm sure we all have our cheap lodging tales to tell. Or even not-so-cheap ones. About a month after Disneyland, we were in Las Vegas for a wedding at what was supposed to be one of the better, established and just-renovated hotels on the Strip, and everything - food, service, amenities - was third-rate. And at a higher price.

At the opposite pole of the rate scale, there was the motel in Klamath Falls, OR, for one night on a road trip from CA to WA, where the floor slanted, leaving your head lower than your feet in bed. Neither of us could sleep that way, so we finally reversed the bedding so we could put our pillows (and heads) at the other end.

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I never hear anyone say anything good about Klamath Falls. The ones I meet who are from there seem to apologize for it. Other than Crater Lake, not much to say about Southwestern OR. Even less to say about SE OR.

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One of those time-saving "movie things," like not saying "g'bye" at the conclusion of phone conversations, ordering food or drinks in restaurants that nobody eats or drinks or, in the case of Arbogast, sliding across the front seat to exit a car from the passenger side.

Although I first saw Psycho in 1967, it looked weird to me then, but it was nevertheless reflective of any number of soap commercials of the time, in which people would happily step into their showers and confidently douse themselves under an untested spray.

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One of those time-saving "movie things," like not saying "g'bye" at the conclusion of phone conversations, ordering food or drinks in restaurants that nobody eats or drinks or, in the case of Arbogast, sliding across the front seat to exit a car from the passenger side.

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Ha. Yes, I think as a matter of "clean style and story-telling efficiency," Hitchcock wasn't going to give us a scene of Marion standing outside the shower testing the water with her hand for awhile.

It is EXACTLY like the reason Arbogast(twice) and Marion(once) slide across the seat to get out of the car. No extra camera set-ups needed.

Here's one I noted in North by Northwest after, I dunno, about 20 viewings:

At the Mount Rushmore cafeteria, before he meets with James Mason, Cary Grant gets in the cafeteria line. A female server awaits him with a full cup of coffee and hands it to him. He hands her a bill already in his hand, and walks away. No excess footage of coffee being poured, Grant rifling his pocket for a buck -- no cash register, no making of change...

I suppose with the coming of "realistic cinema" and realistic method actors, all these mundane details had to be provided. But Golden Age filmmaking allowed for a smoother process.

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There's also this, with Marion in the shower, I think: audiences INSTINCTIVELY are wincing when she just stands there waiting for the first spray to hit her. Won't it be too HOT? Or too COLD? I think we are being "prepared" for the greater attack on her that is coming. We're on edge.

I've also always noted -- in later prints, at least, with remastered sound -- the very loud and very crisp sound of Marion tearing the wrapping paper off the soap. In some ways, this is just a great "Hitchcock sound detail," but it, too , has a feeling of ominousness, for some reason. Its "Hitchcockian."


Here's a thought: try to imagine some audience member in 1960 who had NOT seen Hitchcock's trailer with the shower scene in it; had NOT seen TV commercials that had the shower scene(I think they existed); had NOT read Robert Bloch's book; had NOT been exposed to anything about Psycho and were watching it as total virgins.

Marion gets into that shower. She unwraps the soap. She stands dangerously right under ths showerhead. Plus all those "preparation shots" of her entering the bathroom, stepping into the tub, pulling the shower curtain closed.

You have to figure, no viewer would watch and listen to those opening moments without feeling that SOMETHING was going to happen. Surely, Hitchcock wasn't just going to show Marion take a shower, get out, towel off.

...no, I daresay all those serious "preparation shots" were a warning of the unknown: something bad is going to happen. Its just a question of WHAT.

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Although I first saw Psycho in 1967, it looked weird to me then, but it was nevertheless reflective of any number of soap commercials of the time, in which people would happily step into their showers and confidently douse themselves under an untested spray.

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Hmm...i guess that happened in commercials, as well...though it seems that often those showering people were "joined in progress" already at it.

Whether Psycho or Dove, I suppose the real deal was: that water had already been run and run and run, to be nice and warm(not hot) when it was turned on. "Technical preparation."

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There was one brief glitch: returning to our room one afternoon, we found that there was only hot water, no matter which tap you turned on. Not just hot, but scalding; steam was rising from the toilet bowl. They had it fixed in an hour or so, but it made the visit especially memorable.

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You see? Had Marion stood under THAT showerhead...Mother would not have needed to knife her.

I hate when that happens....no hot water or not cold water. Especially in the morning when you NEED the shower.

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"Here's one I noted in North by Northwest after, I dunno, about 20 viewings:

At the Mount Rushmore cafeteria, before he meets with James Mason, Cary Grant gets in the cafeteria line. A female server awaits him with a full cup of coffee and hands it to him. He hands her a bill already in his hand, and walks away. No excess footage of coffee being poured, Grant rifling his pocket for a buck -- no cash register, no making of change..."
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Great example of the things we see, over and over, that don't (pardon) register, and to which films condition us: characters tossing a couple coins onto a bar or flipping some bills onto a restaurant table without being told by the barkeep or server what they owe; getting into car and driving away without fumbling for keys (unless someone or something intent on killing them is hot on their heels).

I like to talk about "the language of film," and the way things like dissolves indicate a passage of time, and how audiences instinctively understood cross-cutting from the very beginning in spite of its having no relation to how we perceive events in life with our own eyes. There's obviously also something we might call the "business" of film (in the sense of the way actors and directors use the word).

In 1954's A Star Is Born, Esther makes a pre-dawn visit to her friend Danny's bachelor apartment to tell him she's leaving the band because Norman Maine has promised her a screen test. Moving to the edge of frame at screen right in the semi-darkened room, she pulls out a tray and does some other business with her hands that's unclear and lasts no more than five seconds, after which she moves over to his bed and they talk. After a couple minutes of conversation, she gestures back over to screen right and says, "Coffee's almost ready." As Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, boy, if life were only like this. To which I'd add, how different my mornings would be.

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"Marion gets into that shower. She unwraps the soap. She stands dangerously right under ths showerhead."
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And the SMILE! Perhaps I was just too much a child of television (speaking of conditioning), but it was that broad smile of hers that put me in mind of a TV commercial back in '67 (people always smiled while using the product); that would have been just the point at which she'd beam into the camera and say, "It just isn't a shower without Lifebuoy!"

Flashing ahead about 20 years from that viewing (and mindful of some of the secrecy surrounding Psycho's production), I can't help but think of the trouble Dallas producers went to, spending a day shooting a supposed soap commercial at a rented studio (for Irish Spring, I think) with Patrick Duffy, just to yield the three or four seconds of footage of him in the shower, turning to camera and delivering a smiling "Good morning."

What a well-kept secret that was. The Monday following air, the question each of we employees had for one another was, "Did YOU know?" Working in post, I knew where to go to get a "Yes:" Fred, the senior film editor, who cut the shot into the broadcast master just hours before its satellite uplink to the network.

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"Marion gets into that shower. She unwraps the soap. She stands dangerously right under ths showerhead."
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And the SMILE! Perhaps I was just too much a child of television (speaking of conditioning), but it was that broad smile of hers that put me in mind of a TV commercial back in '67 (people always smiled while using the product); that would have been just the point at which she'd beam into the camera and say, "It just isn't a shower without Lifebuoy!"

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Many a film writer on "Psycho" has noted that the opening actual showering in the scene IS very reminiscent of a TV commercial of the time -- the happy, pretty woman happily scrubbing away. So I suppose that THAT quality is there as much as any "menace." As with the rest of the scene(the actual murder), the sexy and the horrific co-mingle in a very disturbing way.

Speaking of sexy: one male friend of mine who watched Psycho on my recommendation said "boy that sure was an erotic shower before the killer came in." Yeah, that's there too. As I've mentioned, in 1998 the LA Times put photos side by side of Janet Leigh showering and Anne Heche showering(in advance of the release of the Van Sant) and..no contest. In an older, Hays Code movie, Janet under the shower (mouth suggestively open, eyes suggestively closed) was erotic; Anne Heche was...well, just takin' a shower. (Not to mention: Leigh looked better with her hair all wet down on her head.)


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Flashing ahead about 20 years from that viewing (and mindful of some of the secrecy surrounding Psycho's production), I can't help but think of the trouble Dallas producers went to, spending a day shooting a supposed soap commercial at a rented studio (for Irish Spring, I think) with Patrick Duffy, just to yield the three or four seconds of footage of him in the shower, turning to camera and delivering a smiling "Good morning."

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Ah, yes...your Lorimar days! That's a great story. Keeping it all secret by making it look like a commercial!

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What a well-kept secret that was. The Monday following air, the question each of we employees had for one another was, "Did YOU know?" Working in post, I knew where to go to get a "Yes:" Fred, the senior film editor, who cut the shot into the broadcast master just hours before its satellite uplink to the network.

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Just hours! Well, I guess the film editors know all. Recall that Hitchcock actually had a small team of editors working on the Psycho shower scene.

A scholar interviewed one of those editors for a book on the shower scene:

Interviewer: So when you first saw the shower scene coming together on your Movieola for the first time, what did you think?
Editor: I thought "this movie is going to make more money than North by Northwest."

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That "it was all a dream" change to Dallas(and bringing back Bobby at high prices) was one of the more amusing things I've ever seen happen in "filmed entertainment." Just change the story back! Its almost meta. (And recall that, after a pretty bad season of SNL back in the 80's, Madonna hosted the next season opener and said "Last season was all a dream.")

When the producers of Knots Landing learned that viewers hated a story about Nazis in the wine country, they wrote a scene where all the Nazis went into a cave and got blown up. End of story.

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At the Mount Rushmore cafeteria, before he meets with James Mason, Cary Grant gets in the cafeteria line. A female server awaits him with a full cup of coffee and hands it to him. He hands her a bill already in his hand, and walks away. No excess footage of coffee being poured, Grant rifling his pocket for a buck -- no cash register, no making of change..."
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Great example of the things we see, over and over, that don't (pardon) register, and to which films condition us:

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And I've given further thought to this Rushmore cafeteria moment, and I figure: the cup probably didn't REALLY have hot coffee in it -- you don't want to risk spilling hot liquid on your superstar. Probably...ice tea?

Sudden flashback to Ingrid Bergman yelling at Hitchcock on a set(this really happened) and destroying some small props with her hands: "It's all FAKE, Hitch! Everything we do is FAKE!"

Well, stylized?

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characters tossing a couple coins onto a bar or flipping some bills onto a restaurant table without being told by the barkeep or server what they owe; getting into car and driving away without fumbling for keys (unless someone or something intent on killing them is hot on their heels).

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Well, we the viewers not only accept it, I think we're looking to be "given that break." We don't want the details, we don't need the details.

However, just the other night I was watching the 1966 Paul Newman detective flick, Harper, and this bit with him and a bartender:

Newman: Keep the change.
Bartender: There isn't any change.
Newman: Well...keep it anyway.

So there, they lingered on the transaction...for a good one-liner.


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I like to talk about "the language of film," and the way things like dissolves indicate a passage of time, and how audiences instinctively understood cross-cutting from the very beginning in spite of its having no relation to how we perceive events in life with our own eyes.

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That's right. Though I do find it interesting -- using Hitchcock as the model -- how the movies eventually gave way from "dissolves" between scenes (think Marion leaving her hotel tryst with Sam and dissolving to her entrance to the real estate office, with Hitch out the window) and straight "cuts" between scenes. (I don't recall Hitchcock in his 70's films using dissolves, just cuts.)

Of course, if a director is really thoughtful, he/she can use cuts in some places, dissolves in some places, and "fades to black" in other places. Hitchcock rather favored fades to black in "Rear Window" and "To Catch a Thief," it gave those movies a kind of quiet, dreamy sense(and Jeff Jeffries IS sleeping a lot.)

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There's obviously also something we might call the "business" of film (in the sense of the way actors and directors use the word).

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Yes, "bits of business."

Hitchcock trivia: In Family Plot as we have it, when the cops come to question Arthur Adamson at his jewelry store about ransom diamonds, he plucks a piece of (unseen) lint off the lapel of one of the cops. Its rather condescending.

Devane said that Hitchcock said "don't do that," and re-shot the scene without the business. ("It's unclear.")

But some weeks later, Hitchcock wanted a re-shoot of the scene -- to have better chinaware in the cabinet behind Devane!(What a detail; Hitch still had it.) This time, Devane picked the lint off the other actor(a personal friend whom Devane had gotten a role in the film)...and Hitch didn't notice it. Its in the film.

I like ALL the elements of that story. Devane getting his friend a small role in the film. Devane doing his "lint picking business." Hitchcock Vetoing that business. Hitchcock coming back to re-stage the entire scene with "better background chinaware." Devane GETTING AWAY with the lint business this time. Such is the "detail work" that goes into a Hitchcock film...even a last, minor one.

(Which reminds me: the opening scene in Frenzy, with the medium-tight close-up on the crowd watching the body being retrieved as one bit player talks about Jack the Ripper("'e used to CARVE 'em up").....was shot and then RE-SHOT a few weeks later because, watching the daillies, Hitchcock didn't like his extras in the scene. He filmed again with new extras! Its like the chinaware business in Family Plot. Or maybe Late Hitch was OCD.)

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Moving to the edge of frame at screen right in the semi-darkened room, she pulls out a tray and does some other business with her hands that's unclear and lasts no more than five seconds, after which she moves over to his bed and they talk. After a couple minutes of conversation, she gestures back over to screen right and says, "Coffee's almost ready."

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Ha. Coincidentally, I read that after completing the preparation of a cup of coffee for myself. "Truth is stranger than fiction."

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As Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, boy, if life were only like this.

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A great line in a great movie. (The Marshall McLuhan scene, yes?)

A sadder such note in the movie: we glimpse Woody's play at the end in which the Annie Hall character breaks up with him(as we have seen in real life in the movie), and...the Woody character wins her back.

If life were only like this.

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To which I'd add, how different my mornings would be.

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Having just taken the time to make a cup...oh, yeah!

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I always get into the shower first and then turn on the water. I wait until the water coming out of the bathtub spout is a comfortable temperature, then I pull the lever to divert the flow up to the shower head.

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I always get into the shower first and then turn on the water. I wait until the water coming out of the bathtub spout is a comfortable temperature, then I pull the lever to divert the flow up to the shower head.

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That's another way to do it. I do it that way in ...motel rooms, a lot. Run the water through the bathtub spout(a huge gout of it) until its warm, then convert to shower.

But I'm still usually outside the tub....

Anyway you cut it, I'll bet audiences could not BELIEVE that Janet Leigh would just stand under the spout like that...risky.

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That's how I do it.

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Is this an American thing?

I'm in the UK, and I can't imagine turning the water on before I get into the shower. Surely you need to get into the shower, and close the shower door? Otherwise you get water on the bathroom floor.

Though, I do get in and stand away from the water until it gets hot.

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I thought you were going to ask, does anyone actually think they're their mother and go around killing women because of it. I would say no. As for your question, yes, I get in the shower before turning on the water. Guess it depends on certain factors. Looks like everyone else is agreeing with your point: I don't.

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I thought you were going to ask, does anyone actually think they're their mother and go around killing women because of it. I would say no.

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I guess that's not an "American thing."

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As for your question, yes, I get in the shower before turning on the water. Guess it depends on certain factors. Looks like everyone else is agreeing with your point: I don't

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What an interesting thread this is becoming. We're all revealing our shower habits! Recall that one reason the Psycho shower scene is so famous -- other than its landmark violence and terror and sexual overtones -- is: everybody takes a shower sometime. Its a universal act.

Now I'm thinking what's "scary" is that Janet stands RIGHT UNDERNEATH the shower head before the water pours down on her. Perhaps if the scene began with her standing back a couple of feet...

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"What an interesting thread this is becoming. We're all revealing our shower habits! Recall that one reason the Psycho shower scene is so famous -- other than its landmark violence and terror and sexual overtones -- is: everybody takes a shower sometime. Its a universal act."
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Hits everybody where they live. Not only for the routine each of us follows, but for the sense of vulnerability, especially for bathers with no expectation that someone else will enter, like a single guest in lodgings or someone living alone.

Getting out of the shower one very warm day in the ground-floor Hollywood apartment I had 30-odd years ago, I heard sounds from the kitchen and, walking out to it with only a towel around me, I found a young, down-and-out guy who had just climbed through the open casement window over the sink...in which there was a drainer full of dishes, including some knives. Clearly defenseless and feigning as much calm as I could, I said while moving to the front door, "This way out, please." As I held it open, he grinned sheepishly as he walked past, saying, "Okay, chief." Whew!

Back to the topic, it all speaks to more "movie conditioning." Each film creates its own universe. It may be an otherwise recognizable modern one in which we accept that 3000-year-old mummies incongruously resurrect; it may be a 19th-century China in which warriors can float through the treetops in battle. Psycho, for instance, creates one in which the leading players don't exist, as do all films with modern settings featuring recognizable stars: nobody says to John Robie or Roger Thornhill, "Y'know, you look and sound just like Cary Grant."

NORMAN: "You eat like a bird. By the way, did anyone ever tell you you look just like Janet Leigh?"
MARION: "Funny you should say that. I was just thinking you look exactly like Anthony Perkins."

I'm not sure where that leaves Hitch in his Stetson.

Cont'd...

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For a good 15-20 years, we've had instant, on-demand hot water heaters. So, in that fictional 1960 universe, in equally fictional Fairvale and environs, maybe they already had' em. Maybe Sam even sold 'em. Or else Marion's just a hardy sort who enjoys a bracing cold shower. Come to think of it, that bathroom never does steam up, does it (unlike Cary and Myrna's in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House)?

And even more conditioning: we'll accept things in a comedy we won't in something more serious. So, describing Ralph Bellamy's character in His Girl Friday, Cary Grant can say, "He looks like that fellow in the movies...you know, Ralph Bellamy." See? In that universe, Ralph Bellamy exists. Grant can also make a passing reference to Archie Leach. On the other hand, Jerry Lewis can play himself arriving at the real-life Fontainebleau Hotel employing a bellboy who's a dead ringer for him, and nobody remarks on it.

But we'll also bend the rules for some serious stories too: those floating warriors again, or Van Helsing explaining, "The strength of the vampire is that people will NOT believe in him."

To paraphrase Nancy Reagan, we make our little rules; we break our little rules.

And I'm still not sure where that leaves Hitchcock in his Stetson.

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Hits everybody where they live.

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Recall that Hitchcock read a review in the New York Times that praised Bloch's new novel Psycho. I've read that review(its by their resident mystery book critic Anthony Boucher, who also wrote mysteries himself.) And it is MINISCULE. About a paragraph long(other books are reviewed in the same column.) Nothing is said about a house or a motel -- and certainly not about a shower.

But Hitchcock was intrigued enough by the review(which called the story "icily terrifying") that he read the book on a flight from Los Angeles to London (probably finished it before the flight was 1/3 over), and upon landing in London , called his assistant Peggy Robertson and said "We've got our next project. Psycho."

Just like that.

But this: isn't it very, very likely that once Hitchcock reached that shower murder (at the end of chapter three), that he knew he had his hands on a horror hit(not necessarily a classic, just a hit.) Because: everybody takes a shower sometime. He told Truffaut that the shower murder was the "only" reason he decided to make the movie. I don't quite believe that(it has other great elements), but I do think it was the big thing.

Recall that Hitchcock had been aggressively searching for a horror project ever since Diabolique came out(he bought the same authors novel that became Vertigo, but it wasn't horror fodder) and that the William Castle movies were also grabbing his attention. He wanted to do HIS Diabolique, HIS William Castle movie and when he read that book Psycho on that plane -- he knew he had it.

Because of the shower scene.

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Not only for the routine each of us follows, but for the sense of vulnerability, especially for bathers with no expectation that someone else will enter, like a single guest in lodgings or someone living alone.

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Yes. One thing about the Psycho shower scene is that it particularlzes the situation for MAXIMUM terror. Marion is at the motel alone(except for Norman and Mother up at the house.) No other guests. 15 miles from any town. ("No one can hear her scream.") And that house up the hill lends menace to the atmosphere.

And then somebody comes in that bathroom with her...

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Getting out of the shower one very warm day in the ground-floor Hollywood apartment I had 30-odd years ago, I heard sounds from the kitchen and, walking out to it with only a towel around me, I found a young, down-and-out guy who had just climbed through the open casement window over the sink...in which there was a drainer full of dishes, including some knives. Clearly defenseless and feigning as much calm as I could, I said while moving to the front door, "This way out, please." As I held it open, he grinned sheepishly as he walked past, saying, "Okay, chief." Whew!

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That's a scary story and a situation I think about a lot these days. I live in an older neighborhood where "the homeless" are becoming more and more visible just walking down suburban streets. I watch them with a mixture of pity, guilt...and yes, some annoyance. Its like a quiet invasion. And I've thought about this: these people(my fellow human beings) are fairly harmless looking on the street in the daylight...but what if one appeared in my home? At night?

Sounds like you lived what I've worried about.

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Back to the topic, it all speaks to more "movie conditioning." Each film creates its own universe. It may be an otherwise recognizable modern one in which we accept that 3000-year-old mummies incongruously resurrect; it may be a 19th-century China in which warriors can float through the treetops in battle.

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Those are the big glorious examples of what the movies can be, I think.

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Psycho, for instance, creates one in which the leading players don't exist, as do all films with modern settings featuring recognizable stars: nobody says to John Robie or Roger Thornhill, "Y'know, you look and sound just like Cary Grant."

NORMAN: "You eat like a bird. By the way, did anyone ever tell you you look just like Janet Leigh?"
MARION: "Funny you should say that. I was just thinking you look exactly like Anthony Perkins."

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Ha. No, that could happen in ANY movie, and unless its a broad comedy, it doesn't.

One movie that played with this idea was Ocean's 12, the second Clooney one. Julia Roberts was playing a fictional character who comes across the REAL Julia Roberts in Cannes, and starts passing herself off as "Julia Roberts." Complications ensue when the REAL Bruce Willis arrives at Cannes and embraces the "fake" Julia Roberts(played by the REAL Julia Roberts) as a fellow superstar who must be with him vs "the civilians." But Bruce starts noticing that THIS "Julia Roberts" doesn't remember things they did together as stars. It was all very confusing.

Another movie that played with the idea was "The Last Action Hero," where a LITERALLY fictional movie character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger enters the real world and meets... Movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

They don't do this too often --its just too confusing.

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I'm not sure where that leaves Hitch in his Stetson.

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Well, that's an interesting point too. Because even if we are going to accept Psycho as being about "real people"(Marion, Norman, Lila, Sam...the real estate office people), here is "producer-director Alfred Hitchcock" inserting himself into the story and HE can't be playing a character, can he?

This is why, said Pat Hitchcock, Hitchcock turns up so early in Psycho(second scene, the first one where he CAN appear) to get the "stunt" out of the way so that Psycho can proceed on its terrifying nightmarish journey without Hitchcock invading the terror. My childhood memories of Psycho -- as told to me and as read by me - is that it was an absolute nightmare of a story -- one advanced into its world in ever growing terror . A Hitchcock cameo would have been disastrous once the nightmare was under way.

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For a good 15-20 years, we've had instant, on-demand hot water heaters.

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Its been hit or miss with me. I've lived in older homes, so sometimes yes, sometimes no.

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So, in that fictional 1960 universe, in equally fictional Fairvale and environs, maybe they already had' em. Maybe Sam even sold 'em. Or else Marion's just a hardy sort who enjoys a bracing cold shower.

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I like how this thread has moved -- with some posters -- from "of course its crazy that Marion stands right under the showerhead " to "of course, she CAN stand right under the showerhead. All assumptions can be attacked (like the assumptions in that crazy ol' psychiatrist scene.)

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Maybe Sam even sold 'em.

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Sam running a hardware store(likely the ONLY hardware store for miles) brings up all sorts of connotations. Did he sell Norman the knife that killed his girlfriend (There are knives on the wall of Sam's store.) Has the Bates Motel been built (or be-built) using Loomis Hardware materials? Has Norman fertilized the motel grounds with Sam's product?(On the looks of things, likely no.)

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Come to think of it, that bathroom never does steam up, does it (unlike Cary and Myrna's in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House)?

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No, it doesn't steam up -- and in Bloch's novel, it did. The room was filled with steam and "Mother" poked her head out of the steam THROUGH the shower curtain to stare at Marion -- "As if the head were suspended in mid-air". Its a scary vision that Hitchcock could not replicate in his film, needing to keep Mother's face in shadow.

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And even more conditioning: we'll accept things in a comedy we won't in something more serious. So, describing Ralph Bellamy's character in His Girl Friday, Cary Grant can say, "He looks like that fellow in the movies...you know, Ralph Bellamy." See? In that universe, Ralph Bellamy exists. Grant can also make a passing reference to Archie Leach. On the other hand, Jerry Lewis can play himself arriving at the real-life Fontainebleau Hotel employing a bellboy who's a dead ringer for him, and nobody remarks on it.

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That sort of thing rather repeated decades later in the Julia Roberts/Ocean's 12 context and the Arnold Schwarzennegger/Last Action Hero context, and the thing of it is this: is ALL of these cases, the movie is rather abandoned as a "serious story in which we should invest." The in-jokes take over and the movie ceases to exist as a "real" story.

Of course, Hope and Crosby broke the fourth wall and spoke of Paramount all through their "Road" pictures so..this is a long tradition.

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But we'll also bend the rules for some serious stories too: those floating warriors again, or Van Helsing explaining, "The strength of the vampire is that people will NOT believe in him."

To paraphrase Nancy Reagan, we make our little rules; we break our little rules.

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The rules of fictional movies are always intriguing to accept. Shall we agree -- in live action films -- that the rules of gravity and physics do not exist, and that people can fly through the air great distances after being thrown? Or should a movie be entirely "reality-based"?

An interesting movie in this regard IS Psycho. For its often been lauded for its "plausibility." No vampires, here, no zombies, no possession by demons. Simply...a psycho. Who kills with a knife. And yet for all the plausibility of the story, the two murders are "cinematic"(with fast edits for the shower and an overhead shot and process work for the staircase); the movie becomes "fantastical" when the murder scenes arrive. There's also the matter of the Gothic house, which is "hyped up" beyond the realism of your "average backwater house."

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I thought you were going to ask, does anyone actually think they're their mother and go around killing women because of it. I would say no. As for your question, yes, I get in the shower before turning on the water. Guess it depends on certain factors. Looks like everyone else is agreeing with your point: I don't.

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Makes for an "educational" thread. I think the two nails on the head you hit were: (1) Standing outside the shower and testing the water makes for water on the bathroom floor(yep, this happens with me) and (2) Sure you can get in the shower if you back up from the showerhead before turning it on.

I'm pretty sure now that everyone else is NOT agreeing with my point(although I'm not the OP), and that's great. Multiple posts are now appearing from folks who get in the shower before turning it on!

I do think that Janet Leigh getting in the shower and standing right under the showerhead before turning it on is likely the "unreal and unnerving " thing.

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I get in the shower then turn it on. It's never really bothered me.

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Yes, they do. Otherwise you end up with water splashing everywhere because the shower door or curtain isn't closed.

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It's suspension of disbelief as Hitch wanted a very tight sequence. Saul Bass claims to have directed it, but that's not true. I'm a fan of Bass, so would know. He did the story boards though. Someone even made a documentary on the shower scene. If someone complained of something like this during shooting, then they would be fired on the spot. They may get shot lol.

As for real life, I doubt anyone does it like Marion unless they want a jolt... Jeez, I can't even imagine being hungover and doing that. I'll soak my head that way if I'm hungover. It's has to be a mistake or something for someone to do that. Or they are horny as all heck and need to cool down. Do people actually do that or is that suspension of disbelief, too? I'm too old to remember and past that stage haha.

Practically, I can see someone getting in and running the faucet until it's the right temperature and then switching to shower mode.

Anyway, what it supposed to mean is the washing away of sin. Marion has decided to come clean (no pun intended) and this is her first step. She wants to accept her punishment, so what better way to do it than a cold shower?

There is irony and a double entendre to this sin stuff, but I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

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