MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Did Psycho Have a "Table Read"...

Did Psycho Have a "Table Read"?

posted 8 years ago by ecarle (14979)
11 replies | jump to latest

This post is inspired by a recent scene in the mini-series Feud in which some actors(including Bette Davis and Joan Crawford), their director(Robert Aldrich) and others, sit around a table and read their parts aloud from the script for the film "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte"(1964)

The scene shows Bette and Joan sniping at each other, and each sniping at their director about the terrible script -- all while actors Victor Buono and Bruce Dern try to read aloud their opening scene in which Buono forbids Dern from marrying his daughter.

I've been reading about "table reads" for some years now, and I'm pretty sure I've seen some HBO/AMC sequences on shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men where we see the cast sitting around reading THEIR scripts. Seinfeld, too, I think.

It seems to be a great and easy way for a cast to "get acquainted with the script" and their roles and the flow of the piece.

What I don't know is: is it done all the time? And how long HAS it been done, in movie history?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I know these three "table read" stories off hand:

ONE: The Wild Bunch, 1969. Director Sam Peckinpah gathered his all-male cast for a read through. Veteran Edmond O'Brien kind of quietly and in a non-committal way read his lines as the cackling old coot, Sykes. Peckinpah asked "Is that how you're going to play the part?" O'Brien said no -- did Peckinpah want to see some of that? Yes, please, said Peckinpah. And THEN O'Brien rose from the table and jumped around and turned on all the juice and played the old coot to the hilt. Peckipah was relieved.

TWO: Judgement at Nuremburg, 1961. A very starry table read: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximillian Schell. "Guest stars" Monty Clift and Judy Garland weren't there. As for Tracy, for the first two hours of courtroom scenes, as a judge, he barely has a line: "Overulled." "Sustained." "Could you speak up please." For much of the table read, Tracy barely had a word to read.Then at the end of the table read, Tracy got his big speech and impressed everybody.

THREE: The Flight of the Phoenix. Director Robert Aldrich convened his all-male cast around a table. All of the British actors produced their scripts...and closed them. Each Brit had memorized the script. Star Jimmy Stewart had not. But at the NEXT table read...Jimmy had his script down cold and closed it as well. (I don't know about Ernest Borgnine.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

With those stories as prologue, to my formative question:

I wonder if Hitchcock gave Psycho a table read? I'm guessing no: because he couldn't.

Because Janet Leigh was only on the picture for three weeks, and left. And then Martin Balsam came on the picture for two weeks, and left. Vera Miles came in late in the production, likely with Balsam but staying longer.

So unless Hitchcock had the contract ability to gather Leigh and Balsam together with the others before filming began...no table read. (I have read that Psycho got no wrap party for roughly the same reasons.)

Truth be told, I haven't heard of Hitchcock doing ANY table reads for his big ones, and indeed the way something like Psycho or North by Northwest is written(in the latter, Eva Marie Saint comes in almost an hour in, and James Mason disappears for about an hour in the middle), you could not gather the cast FOR a table read.

I think maybe memory suggests I've read of table reads for three Hitchcock films: Rope and Dial M(because they were from plays to begin with), and for some reason, Lifeboat comes to mind(because I think Tallulah Bankhead kept insulting Walter Slezak just for being German.)

We know that Hitchcock advised Perkins and Balsam to simply rehearse their dialogue in a corner of the soundstage..for how long, I have no idea. Jon Finch said on Frenzy he practically begged Hitchcock to let him go "run the jokes"(read the lines) with the other actors before filming scenes.

But that's about it.

Maybe when all was said and done, and because of all the "silent cinematics" in a film like Psycho...a table read simply wasn't practical.

But wouldn't it be fun if one WAS done for Psycho? Can you imagine: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, John Gavin, Vera Miles and Martin Balsam all at one table, reading their great lines...maybe with one-scene wonders like Vaughn Taylor and Frank Albertson strolling for an hour to do THEIR lines?

It would have been fun to see. But I'll settle for imagining it.

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

"I think maybe memory suggests I've read of table reads for three Hitchcock films: Rope and Dial M(because they were from plays to begin with), and for some reason, Lifeboat comes to mind..."
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Those are the very three that popped into my head as I began considering the question, Rope being the most obvious one in the affirmative, if for no other reason than the technical challenges involved (which I think might have applied to some degree for Under Capricorn as well). Makes sense for Lifeboat too, what with an entire ensemble within a confined space for every scene. But it sure doesn't sound like anything that would have applied to Hitchcock's normal M.O., does it?

From what I've read and heard, actors' subjective impressions of working under him ranged from frustrating/maddening/excruciating (Sylvia Sydney, Paul Newman...and Doris Day, until she received her well-recounted reassurance from him) to what I'd imagine must have felt quite liberating for players like Cary Grant or Balsam and Perkins. I think we talked some time back about Frank Sinatra vis a vis Hitchcock, and it's appetizing to consider at which end of the spectrum his comfort level could have fallen, given his instinctively spontaneous approach to acting on the one hand, and his distaste for multiple takes on the other. Spencer Tracy's another interesting one to consider; while he was apparently adaptable to either efficient one-take-wonders like Woody Van Dyke or practitioners of both extensive rehearsal and multiple takes such as George Cukor, he also resented directorial micromanagement of the mechanics of his performances (as illustrated by a story Stanley Kramer liked to tell about Inherit the Wind).

Which raises an issue about which I realize I know pretty much nothing where Hitchcock is concerned: multiple takes. Closer to "One-Take Woody" or "40-Take Willie" Wyler? I'm guessing that, with his own preference for pre-production over production, it would have been the former. But there's still the matter of the precision of his vision for a given film. I figure if anybody knows, you do.

What I know about the general topic is that it depended almost entirely upon the director. "Actor's directors" like the aforementioned Cukor, or Elia Kazan or Paul Mazursky favored the comprehensive approach, as did those who came to feature film from the days of live television (like John Frankenheimer, Delbert Mann or Robert Mulligan), although during the heyday of the studio system, that would in turn have depended upon an individual director's prestige and clout, which itself would have been reflected in the schedule and budget.

Then there were those like Frank Capra, who had as much autonomy as a director could attain at cost-conscious Columbia under combative and tyrannical Harry Cohn, but who was guided by what he felt productions or individual scenes therein required: unrehearsed spontaneity for It Happened One Night, You Can't Take It With You or Arsenic and Old Lace; precisely-coordinated multi-camera setups for Mr. Smith Goes To Washington senate scenes, for instance.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

"I think maybe memory suggests I've read of table reads for three Hitchcock films: Rope and Dial M(because they were from plays to begin with), and for some reason, Lifeboat comes to mind..."
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Those are the very three that popped into my head as I began considering the question, Rope being the most obvious one in the affirmative, if for no other reason than the technical challenges involved (which I think might have applied to some degree for Under Capricorn as well). Makes sense for Lifeboat too, what with an entire ensemble within a confined space for every scene.

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Yes. It almost "follows on the natural" that a table read makes the MOST sense for a movie in which all the characters share the same space at the same time and WILL be talking among themselves.

And Psycho would be a real problem for a table read. Most the actors would have to sit quietly while Perkins and Leigh read their scene together, and then Perkins and Balsam. Psycho is filled with "two-hander" scenes and little in the way of group interaction.

At the same time, I suppose a group table read for "The Sopranos" would allow the people playing Tony's "home family" to get a sense of Tony's scenes with his "gangster family"(Paulie, Silvio) and thus understand the entire episode they are in.

I tell you the truth: I'm not so sure that modernly, the "table read" isn't more of a Hollywood affectation mainly driven by TV production. "Everybody does it" - its a chance to get the cast together, get some camaraderie going, show off for each other ("Oh, Jon -- you did that line PERFECTLY!") I'm guessing Hitchcock didn't need or want to spend so much time with his actors in one place. Hah.

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But it sure doesn't sound like anything that would have applied to Hitchcock's normal M.O., does it?

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No, it doesn't, which is why I thought about it in terms of not necessarily being NECESSARY to film production.

On the other hand, there's so little we know even about this most discussed of directors.

I'll offer an example of something I DID read:

Janet Leigh was completing the movie "Harper" with Paul Newman. Newman told Leigh his next movie was Torn Curtain. She was excited he would now get to work with Hitchcock. He was excited too and told Leigh -- "And we get two weeks of rehearsal, I hear Hitchcock doesn't usually do that."

End of story. It didn't say if Leigh said Psycho had two weeks of rehearsal(I doubt it). It didn't say if Hitchcock had two weeks of rehearsal on OTHER movies.)

Probably whatever struck Hitchcock's fancy at the time.

All of this, out of nowhere, brings this memory of a serious actress named Janice Rule doing a scene with Dean Martin in one of his silly Matt Helm spy movies.

They rehearsed the scene just once, right before shooting. Janice asked if they could run through it again. Dino replied, nicely:

"Janice, if you want to go over these lines at home at night with your husband, that's great, or with the director for an hour before I come in , that's fine -- but one rehearsal with Dino boy is all you're gonna get!"

The Rat Pack School of preparation...

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

"I tell you the truth: I'm not so sure that modernly, the "table read" isn't more of a Hollywood affectation mainly driven by TV production. "Everybody does it" - its a chance to get the cast together, get some camaraderie going, show off for each other ("Oh, Jon -- you did that line PERFECTLY!")"
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I'm willing to bet that's very much the case. I'll also say I can readily see its value, particularly where it concerns rehearse-all-week/shoot-one-day sitcoms with studio audiences. Some weeks back, one of the cable channels ran a Mary Tyler Moore Show weekend marathon, and over dinner we've been working our way through the episodes we DVRd. One of the striking things about them is the degree to which performances enhance what was on the script pages: Ed Asner's meticulously-timed development and delivery of Lou's methodical and seductively manipulative disarming of some issue Mary would bring to him in one of her "Mr. Grant, I need to talk to you about..." moments, for example, after which she'd leave his office unable to dispute his circuitous logic but not quite sure how she'd been talked out of whatever her objective had been.

If I had to assign a ratio to the success of such bits, it might be something like writing, 30%; performance, 70%. Or in the case of Moore's brilliant invention of a dozen different ways to suppress inappropriate laughter at Chuckles the Clown's funeral: writing, 5%; performance 95%. What, after all, could the script have said? "Mary snickers...Mary giggles...Mary snorts..." For me, those five minutes are the only worthwhile ones in the entire episode. The tasteless jokes that Murray and Lou crack in earlier scenes are just not that funny and, for all my admiration of Asner's way with dialogue, uncontrolled laughter was something that he - or Gavin McLeod, for that matter - didn't convincingly pull off. Then come those five minutes, and Moore shows everyone how it's done. The way she blossomed as a creatively comic actress from her days with Van Dyke is something to behold.

Gee, I kinda went off on a tangent there. I guess the point (if there is one) has to do with the differing requirements of filming sustained performance and action in one evening, and those of exposing "bits of film" (as Hitchcock put it) over a period of weeks that, once assembled, would create the illusion of continuity (of which the shower murder would be the definitively extreme example, I suppose).

"Newman told Leigh his next movie was Torn Curtain. She was excited he would now get to work with Hitchcock. He was excited too and told Leigh -- 'And we get two weeks of rehearsal, I hear Hitchcock doesn't usually do that.'"
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Isn't THAT interesting? A magnanimous, star-pleasing gesture on Hitchcock's part? An acknowledgement of and attempt to adjust to the changing nature of film making in an emerging age of marquee-name independence and power? Doubts about the script itself? Or about Hitchcock's own abilities at that stage of his career? Some combination thereof?

D'ya mind if I consolidate replies to your further comments here in this one?

"Also: a young film writer/director named Curtis Harrington watched Hitchcock physically direct John Vernon and Karin Dor in the "murder of Juanita" scene in Topaz. Hitchcock walked the actors through their every move, personally positioned Vernon's hands on Dor's shoulder and back, etc. Hitchcock told Harrington: 'Ordinarily, I wouldn't get so involved, but these are unseasoned actors and need more personal direction from me.'"
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That also sounds as much like an example of that precision to which I referred earlier. Another would be William Prince's stylized, abrupt throwing back of his head and wide-eyed, skyward gaze when the bishop is injected by Fran in Family Plot: a very specific visual effect and rhythm Hitchcock was after.

"I can see Sinatra in The Wrong Man(as Italian-American Manny Ballestrero)"
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That's something I'd very much have liked to see. While bewildered forbearance and quiet suffering was effectively portrayed by Fonda, Sinatra would seem to have been a natural for the role, not only for his real-life heritage, musical background and east coast manner and sensibilities, but for his diminutive physical stature as well (which he worked to his advantage in From Here To Eternity and The Man With the Golden Arm) as opposed to Fonda's towering presence.

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

"The intractable risk for Hitchcock with Sinatra would have been if Sinatra had resisted the schedule and sought to cut the script."
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I suppose it can be assumed that Sinatra's ability to throw his weight around was sufficiently rehabilitated by the start of The Wrong Man's production (exactly two years and one day after his From Here To Eternity Oscar), and having finished with Preminger only four months earlier on The Man With the Golden Arm, would he have been more inclined to rebelliousness or perhaps have considered a stint with the generally sedate and genial Hitchcock a welcome change of pace? Working in Sinatra's favor might have been the amount of shooting that, for him, wouldn't have been dialogue-dependent.

Oh, my: the castings that might have been. Speaking of which...

"I can see Tracy in the lead in Foreign Correspondent or Saboteur . Possibly Rope -- where the male lead has no romantic interest and is kind of a bad guy(the professor.)"
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Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur, absolutely. Rope...hmmm...gotta think on that. Maybe even Spellbound? Peck always struck me as too callow for that role, and Tracy had done tortured intensity quite nicely when it was called for.

I'm among those who feel that, while Stewart did his best, he was miscast in Rope. I don't remember where it was (maybe while the IMDB boards were still active), but someone somewhere suggested James Mason might have been good for that role, and with which I heartily agree. Rupert's gently mocking, is-he-or-isn't-he-kidding demeanor would have been right up his alley, as would the righteous outrage he exhibits when he realizes what his so-called philosophy has wrought. Another tantalizing suggestion made was that of Rex Harrison. Fun to mull over. In any event, either one would have more comfortably borne a name like Rupert that Stewart.

"With Capra I think you get the twin issues of 'clout' and 'what does the movie need?' A good overall director like Capra could decide in advance which way to go . Personally, I love how over the top and manic Arsenic plays."
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It's never bothered me as much as it does some others (along with Grant himself, reportedly), and in his autobiography, Capra himself said, "I let the scene stealers run wild; for the actors, it was a mugger's ball." Figuring into that was the hurry on the part of everyone involved to get it into the can in advance of Capra's late-'41 entry into military service. Just the same, I've lately come to think Fred MacMurray would have been an ideal choice for Mortimer. He did befuddled desperation and delayed-reaction shock and amazement so well. If you've ever seen - or ever do see - 1945's Murder He Says, in which he finds himself in a remote farmhouse at the mercy of a family of homicidal hillbillies (led by whip-crackin' Marjorie Main), you'll know what I mean.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

"I tell you the truth: I'm not so sure that modernly, the "table read" isn't more of a Hollywood affectation mainly driven by TV production. "Everybody does it" - its a chance to get the cast together, get some camaraderie going, show off for each other ("Oh, Jon -- you did that line PERFECTLY!")"
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I'm willing to bet that's very much the case. I'll also say I can readily see its value, particularly where it concerns rehearse-all-week/shoot-one-day sitcoms with studio audiences.

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That's true. I guess I go back and forth on this. Perhaps the table read is much more of a TV series tool than for the movies. And getting the tone of the lines right by working it out with your fellow actors can be valuable. Plus -- or, again -- the idea that the entire cast can get a sense of the entire episode(even scenes in which they do not appear) is probably valuable, week to week.

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Some weeks back, one of the cable channels ran a Mary Tyler Moore Show weekend marathon, and over dinner we've been working our way through the episodes we DVRd. One of the striking things about them is the degree to which performances enhance what was on the script pages:

If I had to assign a ratio to the success of such bits, it might be something like writing, 30%; performance, 70%. Or in the case of Moore's brilliant invention of a dozen different ways to suppress inappropriate laughter at Chuckles the Clown's funeral: writing, 5%; performance 95%. What, after all, could the script have said? "Mary snickers...Mary giggles...Mary snorts..."

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Oh, yes.

I might add -- and with all due respect for his script AS a script -- that many of the famous lines in Joe Stefanos' script for Psycho "play" differently on paper than as read on screen. Even though Stefano knew he was writing for Tony Perkins, Norman doesn't really SOUND like Perkins...until Perkins plays him. Arbogast has none of Balsam's amiable warmth -- he's a tough , unsmiling cookie. And Lila lacks the "heart" that Vera Miles gives her, the sense of tears waiting right behind the fury.

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For me, those five minutes are the only worthwhile ones in the entire episode.!

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Interesting! I'd always thought it was all perfect. Hah -- I've never seen it, just the ending in clips. I take your judgement as one worth considering!

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The tasteless jokes that Murray and Lou crack in earlier scenes are just not that funny and, for all my admiration of Asner's way with dialogue, uncontrolled laughter was something that he - or Gavin McLeod, for that matter - didn't convincingly pull off.

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That triggers an anecdote: I watched "All about Eve" recently(the Bette Davis Feud series brought it on. ) Then I watched the "Making Of" documentary. Celeste Holm recounted how in a scene where she laughs uncontrollably, after the first take, Bette Davis snarled: "I can't DO that." Holm: "Sure you can, if you try." Davis: "No, I can't...I don't know how you pull it off."

And director Joe Mankiwicz ..aware that Davis had been belitting and lording over Holm for much of the shoot, called for a second take of Holm laughing spontaneously. To Davis' displeasure...

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--- Then come those five minutes, and Moore shows everyone how it's done. The way she blossomed as a creatively comic actress from her days with Van Dyke is something to behold.

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Yep. She matured, she got new kinds of writers, she was the star of this one...but she was GOOD. Very good.

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Gee, I kinda went off on a tangent there. I guess the point (if there is one) has to do with the differing requirements of filming sustained performance and action in one evening, and those of exposing "bits of film" (as Hitchcock put it) over a period of weeks that, once assembled, would create the illusion of continuity (of which the shower murder would be the definitively extreme example, I suppose).

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This is why Hitchcock has this bad reputation with actors, I guess -- all that attention to silent scenes where the actors didn't even get to talk(but boy did they get to STARE, and EMOTE).

And yet, I think the acting done by Perkins, Leigh and Balsam in particular in Psycho is a master class in line reading, physical presentation, knowing when to pause and when to speed it up...entertaining AND art.
.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

From what I've read and heard, actors' subjective impressions of working under him ranged from frustrating/maddening/excruciating (Sylvia Sydney, Paul Newman...and Doris Day, until she received her well-recounted reassurance from him) to what I'd imagine must have felt quite liberating for players like Cary Grant or Balsam and Perkins.

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Well, this is all "from the outside"(as a reader of books about the making of films), but it seems that some directors WOULD talk and talk and talk with their stars about their roles and their motivation -- the directors would LIKE to do that -- but Hitchocck was pretty business like. The usual line attributed to him was "I hired you because I know you are a good actor and I expect you to handle your job well."

That said, I've read all sorts of little anecdotes about Hitchcock giving actors direction right after a take. He told Sean Connery not to listen with his mouth open; he told Eva Marie Saint to look directly into Cary Grant's eyes for their love talk. He used the Cockney expression "dogs feet" to recommend that an actor pause("Paws" -- dog feet) between lines.

I like one story where, after cutting a scene in "Man Who Knew Too Much '56", Hitchcock approached James Stewart and said "I think this take was a little flat, can you do something to get more emotion into it?" And Stewart did. So Hitchcock DID watch. And care. And, to a certain, basic extent, direct.

Also: a young film writer/director named Curtis Harrington watched Hitchcock physically direct John Vernon and Karin Dor in the "murder of Juanita" scene in Topaz. Hitchcock walked the actors through their every move, personally positioned Vernon's hands on Dor's shoulder and back, etc. Hitchcock told Harrington: "Ordinarily, I wouldn't get so involved, but these are unseasoned actors and need more personal direction from me."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I think we talked some time back about Frank Sinatra vis a vis Hitchcock, and it's appetizing to consider at which end of the spectrum his comfort level could have fallen, given his instinctively spontaneous approach to acting on the one hand, and his distaste for multiple takes on the other.

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The TV series Feud gave us a fictional scene of Sinatra going ape over some direction from Robert Aldrich on the silly "Four for Texas." Maybe that happened, maybe it didn't. But a lot of evidence exists that Sinatra was big on single takes -- which is actually great if Sinatra knew his lines that well.

Hitchcock gave the public quote "I wouldn't work with Frank Sinatra or Marlon Brando, because those men direct themselves." And yet it is tantalizing to think about what might have been with those men in Hitchcock movies. Sinatra WAS seriously considered for North by Northwest(Ernest Lehman first wrote it with Sinatra in mind.) I can see Sinatra in The Wrong Man(as Italian-American Manny Ballestrero) and he's my only offered substitute for Stewart in "Vertigo." Brando WAS seriously considered for Marnie(Brando had a Universal contract at the time, and was working hard to meet it.)

I think the issue with both Sinatra and Brando is that while Hitchocck couldn't risk them -- it might have worked out. Sinatra famously "behaved" for John Frankenheimer on The Manchurian Candidate(because he knew President JFK was waiting for the movie), and Brando famously behaved for a cantankerous director Charlie Chaplin on The Countess From Hong Kong(because he was, well, Charlie Chaplin.) THAT was a Universal film; Marlon just kept fulfilling his contract.

The intractable risk for Hitchcock with Sinatra would have been if Sinatra had resisted the schedule and sought to cut the script. The intractable risk for Hitchcock with Brando would have been..."Method misbehavior." He had suffered that with Monty Clift on I Confess...Clift's unwillingness to do simple "looking up" shots and the like, without hours to brood over motivation.

Its too bad. I would have liked Sinatra or Brando in a Hitchcock movie. Though then we'd be less Fonda, Stewart, Grant, or Connery in one!

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Spencer Tracy's another interesting one to consider; while he was apparently adaptable to either efficient one-take-wonders like Woody Van Dyke or practitioners of both extensive rehearsal and multiple takes such as George Cukor, he also resented directorial micromanagement of the mechanics of his performances (as illustrated by a story Stanley Kramer liked to tell about Inherit the Wind).

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Tracy's another one we didn't get in a Hitchcock picture and I can only assume he and Hitch would have got along. But they weren't at the same studios at the same time, and its hard to think of a Tracy Hitchcock role. Probably have to be the "early American period" while Tracy was still young-looking -- I can see Tracy in the lead in Foreign Correspondent or Saboteur . Possibly Rope -- where the male lead has no romantic interest and is kind of a bad guy(the professor.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Which raises an issue about which I realize I know pretty much nothing where Hitchcock is concerned: multiple takes. Closer to "One-Take Woody" or "40-Take Willie" Wyler? I'm guessing that, with his own preference for pre-production over production, it would have been the former. But there's still the matter of the precision of his vision for a given film. I figure if anybody knows, you do.

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Hey, thanks. There are two books -- one about the making of Vertigo and one about the making of Frenzy -- in which we get production records of takes and its pretty impressive: three or four, tops, most of the time (or ten takes made, three printed, etc.) One low angle shot of Bob Rusk coming through the door to confront Brenda Blaney had only two takes. Of course, its just a shot of a guy coming through a door.

On more intricate shots, Hitchcock sometimes needed more takes. There's a scene of Rusk and Babs walking through a Covent Garden market warehouse that needed about ten takes. Lines were blown, extras missed cues, the camera shaked, etc.

And this: Frenzy famously opens with a body washing ashore on the Thames banks while a politician gives a speech. Extras rush to view the body and some actors have a few lines. Hitchcock was satisfied neither with the actors nor the extras. At the end of the Frenzy production schedule, he returned to the Thames and restaged the entire scene with new extras and actors.

On Vertigo, James Stewart and Tom Helmore finished work scheduled for one day , before lunch. Everybody went home early.

Also on Vertigo, Hitchcock did NOT require multiple takes(as maliciously rumored) of Kim Novak diving into a tank doubling for San Francisco Bay. Two, I think, with a dry-off in between.

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What I know about the general topic is that it depended almost entirely upon the director. "Actor's directors" like the aforementioned Cukor, or Elia Kazan or Paul Mazursky favored the comprehensive approach, as did those who came to feature film from the days of live television (like John Frankenheimer, Delbert Mann or Robert Mulligan), although during the heyday of the studio system, that would in turn have depended upon an individual director's prestige and clout, which itself would have been reflected in the schedule and budget.

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Agreed. I would expect that "actors directors" budgeted more time for rehearsal, exploration of line readings, etc.

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Then there were those like Frank Capra, who had as much autonomy as a director could attain at cost-conscious Columbia under combative and tyrannical Harry Cohn, but who was guided by what he felt productions or individual scenes therein required: unrehearsed spontaneity for It Happened One Night, You Can't Take It With You or Arsenic and Old Lace; precisely-coordinated multi-camera setups for Mr. Smith Goes To Washington senate scenes, for instance.

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With Capra I think you get the twin issues of "clout" and "what does the movie need?" A good overall director like Capra could decide in advance which way to go . Personally, I love how over the top and manic Arsenic plays.

[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

Checking Rebello's book (as people probably already knew or guessed) there's no mention of anything like a table-read. Moreover there is a remark on p.84 to the effect that as part of the general 'high level of secrecy' around Psycho the full script wasn't ever circulated, rather the Basement end of the script in particular was withheld from most of the cast and crew: Miles and Perkins and Gavin and DP Russell had it but that's about all. This strongly suggests that no full table read ever occurred.

Note that Woody Allen used to be famous say in the '80s and '90s for not giving his actors full scripts, rather they just got *their* pages so that no actors would have a full view of the picture or be in a position to challenge Allen's interpretation of the material. I don't know whether Allen still does this. He may have had to give up some of his preferred dictatorial powers to get the actors he wants as his own star has slowly cooled (comeback films notwithstanding) through the '00s and '10s.

Did Psycho Have a &quot;Table Read&quot;?

Did Psycho Have a "Table Read"?