Psycho now and forever

>> Can Gus Van Sant improve on perfection?

by MATTHEW HAYS

Gus Van Sant and the cast of his latest film have been very, very careful in promotional interviews. There is no way, after all, that they could possibly out-do Hitchcock's Psycho. But this, it appears, is precisely what they've set out to do. There will be more gore in the shower, says Janet Leigh stand-in Anne Heche, and the infamous scene will also feature more flesh.

Critics are divided; resurrecting the Bradys is one thing--but this? Others feel it's a sort of postmodern compliment; Psycho 1960 won't be sullied by a remake--hell, it already withstood three cheeseball sequels.

Van Sant has remade more than just the film. Hitchcock insisted that the original be released to very specific instructions: in a then-unprecedented move for a director of such stature, there would be no advance press screening of Psycho.

The move, as Stephen Rebello recounts in his exhaustive making-of book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, infuriated a number of critics, leading to something of a media backlash against the film. "A blot on an honourable career," wrote New York Times' critic Bosley Crowther, and "slowly paced for Mr. Hitchcock and given to a lot of detail."

The film critic for the London Times, John Russell Taylor, argued that "Hitchcock's major sin was to have antagonized the critics before they even saw the picture. He had urged them by letter not to divulge the ending, and he had announced that nobody would be admitted to the cinema once the film had begun. Thus they went to the press show already huffy and affronted; and what they reviewed was not so much the film itself as the effect of its publicity on their egos."

The notoriously sensitive Hitch was pissed at the negative responses. But word of mouth spread very quickly indeed, and director, cast and crew were soon invigorated by the impressive box office the low budget film was raking in.

Each had their own response to the film's success. Hitch loved it, and smelled more opportunities for publicity. Soon there were stories in the national press of state police having to be called in to disentangle traffic snarls, created by the rush to see the film. One Chicago theatre owner phoned Paramount, saying he had an ugly mob on his hands who, getting soaked in a downpour, insisted on being let in to see the film. "Buy them umbrellas," was Hitch's response, and Paramount did, sending 40 over to the cinema right away.

Leigh stayed away from screenings, concerned that her presence might confuse those who wanted to suspend their disbelief for the narrative. "A theatre manager told me about a little boy who went to the first showing the first day it opened," Leigh told Rebello. "They emptied the theatre and that little boy went back to every show that day. He kept running up and down the aisles yelling, 'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh--you won't believe what's going to happen!'"

According to Leigh, Anthony Perkins was creating his own fun when Psycho was released. "[Perkins] was in Paris making a movie when Psycho came out," she recalls in her memoir Psycho: Behind the Scenes of a Classic Thriller. "He would hide outside theatres and when people filed out, their nerves frayed, Tony would abruptly leap from the shadows, wild-eyed, and shout at the crowd in his best Norman Bates style. Something those poor souls would likely never forget."

But perhaps the oddest thing about Psycho is why someone would want to remake it. It is arguably the greatest horror film ever made; I would argue it is the closest thing to perfection ever captured on celluloid. Perhaps Hitch himself had the answer to Van Sant's urge to remake Psycho when he said "Film should be stronger than reason."

The new Psycho opens Friday, December 4