There is the issue that "a movie is a special thing." Bigger budget, bigger profitability(if its a hit), a certain lasting quality through the decades (as Psycho certainly has the longest years of, of this group.)
But as I've also contended, "the movies" are changing at the theaters with such profundity that I think what Psycho, Fargo, and SOTL accomplished will be less and less in our future. The movies remain, to me, very much a 20th Century artifact...at least in terms of mass watching and mass rememberance(like Star Wars and those 1977 lines.) As swanstep keeps track for us, good movies ARE being made, still, and will be made. But their audience will be more narrowcast.
---
Which reminds me: what OTHER Hitchcock movie might merit a TV series on cable?
I'll offer: The Birds.
I'll cheat and say Sabotage (1936?), one of Hitch's worst films and most wasteful of its source material, Conrad's The Secret Agent (The first novel about modern, post-nitroglycerine terrorism). The BBC's excellent, recent 3 part adaptation of The Secret Agent showed what you could do with that source with it's almost Joker-like Professor character, devastating betrayal of a wife by her husband, and so on.
---
Well, there's an example in which it sounds like it pretty much happened, for real. 3 parts is almost a mini-series.
Using "Bates Motel" as our base, practically ANY Hitchcock movie could be made into a series...if the plot of the movie was saved for the final season and the first four-five seasons told a totally new story. Let Jeff Jeffries watch all sorts of new and different dramas out his window for four seasons; The Final Season, Lars Thorwald moves in...
---
Beyond that, and again cheating somewhat, a TV-ised NbNW would look a lot like the old Avengers TV show or maybe Mission Impossible or Alias. Eve Kendall continues as a super-spy whereas Roger Thornhill wants no part of it and continues to want to live it up in Manhattan.... but keeps being drawn into his wife's adventures....
---
Yes. NXNW would be a good basis for a spy show, and WAS somewhat the inspiration for The Man From UNCLE(the casting of Leo G. Carroll; the use of the UN building, the insertion of innocent bystanders into each weeks spy plot.)
There was an 80's show called "The Scarecrow and Mrs. King" that reversed your plot for NXNW the series: Kate Jackson was a single woman drawn into Bruce Boxleitner's weekly spy adventures. I liked the credit sequence, I sometimes watched the show.
----
Well, I thought about it, and the ending of Bates Motel (SPOILERS AHEAD) was, rather...a cliché. Sorry. The "nice killer" makes his brother kill him and sees a loving vision of his young Mother waiting for him in Heaven(?) when he dies. It bugged me in a "non-specific way" when I saw it, and then Hitchcock's words started ringing in my ears thinking more about it. That was a cliché ending, we've seen that a lot.
--
Maybe.
---
Fair enough assessment. I'm sure many viewers found it satisfying. After the final episode, they ran a "post-mortem" segment that showed lots of teenage and 20-something fans for Bates Motel showing off their fan art and love for the show. I would expect Hitchcock's Psycho would look old, staid and uneventful to them.
---
It was a safe, 'no surprises' ending that's for sure.
---
Yes, I really felt that way about it. Perhaps the only "grace note" of tie-in to Hitchocck's vision was Mother's dead presence at the dinner table when Dylan came in. The horrifying realization that a body IS only a body -- the soul is gone(if you go that) way) OR the machinery is shut down. But worse, the idea that THIS body was now evidently two years dead.
PS. All this new "peak TV" on the air and I've been spending some hours each week re-watching The Sopranos. I'm showing it to someone who never saw it and I find myself "re-hooked" on a series I embraced long ago. I would expect that The Sopranos is like Psycho or North by Northwest to me...something that so excited me on first viewing that re-viewing it is a greater pleasure than watching something new. (But I did get Feud done, so I'm not entirely in the past.)
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Extra: HBO ran a 2011 made-for-HBO movie called "Cinema Verite" the other night. Fascinating in its own way, it told the story of "the Loud Family," a real-life Santa Barbara family who allowed cameras into their Santa Barbara home (and elsewhere, like their gay son's NYC apartment) for what became the first reality show: "An American Family." The show was filmed in 1971 and shown on PBS in 1973.
The hook: playing the big, burly, bearded and long-haired TV producer of the show was Tony Soprano himself -- James Gandolfini, wonderfuly different looking and non-lethal, but eventually a bit on the menacing side as he manipulated the perfect family into allowing the wife to ask her husband for divorce while the cameras rolled, throwing him out in the process.
As the Louds, Diane Lane was 1971 perfect and Tim Robbins(Susan Sarandon's very tall ex) was really good as the man 1971 wiped out: no college, "school of hard knocks" self-made salesman's wealth; beautiful wife, five kids(one gay)...constant womanizer who took his affairs as a patriarchal right. Robbins was the best thing in this in certain ways, capturing the "beloved father/serial cheater, ruler of the roost" whose patriarchal power is taken away from him, just like that. He is banished.
"Cinema Verite" was a one-shot movie, but it followed the pattern of peak TV: two of its stars(Lane and Robbins) HAD been movie stars, but no more. Gandolfini was HBOs biggest star. The writing was good, the nostalgia thick, the historical points wonderfully made(we see footage of the REAL Loud family on the Dick Cavett Show, including the cast-off dad, and they look good. They "re-united" after the divorce to fight press smears against them.)
The film also gave us a poignant "whatever happened to" ending: The gay son died of AIDS and his deathbed wish was that his parents would reunite. They did(at least as of 2011), living together, the satyr father evidently forgiven for his 50s/60s era sins.
2011. I can't remember what year Gandolfini died, but it was sad to see him vibrantly casting aside Tony Soprano and starting up his new career, only to die soon thereafter.
reply
share
movieghoul (213)
8 years ago
A 4 season back story to Rear Window? Hardly, Except when confined in a wheelchair, it's very difficult to imagine Jeff sitting in his apartment spying on the neighbors. He's out in the world globe hopping and taking "real" pictures, not imaginary ones in his head, which is all he has to divert himself while his leg is healing.
NBN? Possibly, would be interesting to see what happens next. As for back story, might be interesting if they concentrate on Eve and Van Damm, but Thornhill? As he himself admits, his wives divorced him because he led too dull a life.
IMO, these "extension" series of books/films are getting out of hand. The original creator made very definite artistic decisions as to what to include and what to leave to the reader/viewer's imagination and speculation and in most cases, more is certainly next.
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
A 4 season back story to Rear Window? Hardly, Except when confined in a wheelchair, it's very difficult to imagine Jeff sitting in his apartment spying on the neighbors. He's out in the world globe hopping and taking "real" pictures, not imaginary ones in his head, which is all he has to divert himself while his leg is healing.
---
Yeah, you got me there. But then, I'm not too crazy about the stories they invented for the first four years of "Bates Motel"(which I read about, I didn't watch those seasons.)
----
NBN? Possibly, would be interesting to see what happens next. As for back story, might be interesting if they concentrate on Eve and Van Damm, but Thornhill? As he himself admits, his wives divorced him because he led too dull a life.
---
Ha. I've always postulated that had NXNW been made in the 80's, it would have REQUIRED cinematic sequels...just like Raiders and Lethal Weapon and(most on point) Die Hard would have gotten. We'd have to extrapolate other things for that to happen: Cary Grant being young and fit enough to anchor the series, Hitchcock being alive and willing to make the films or to farm them out to others. But...this is a fantasy based on NXNW being made in the 80's.
I can just see the titles for the sequels, too: South by Southwest, North by Northeast....
But lets say a TV series. I think Thornhill after his NXNW adventure would be a good spy. Consider this: all the other "legitimate" secret agents the Professor sent after Vandamm got killed (and Eve would have been, had Thornhill not come to the rescue.) Thornhill proved, smart, fit and cynical enough to outsmart everybody and foil all of Vandamm's plots to kill him. Thornhill proved himself a GOOD secret agent.
Roger and Eve TOGETHER as spies might have made a good "Thin Man" team for TV(just not with Grant and Saint playing them.)
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
IMO, these "extension" series of books/films are getting out of hand. The original creator made very definite artistic decisions as to what to include and what to leave to the reader/viewer's imagination and speculation and in most cases, more is certainly next (less?).
---
I agree, but nothing can be done about this, I suppose. Whatever brief period of time was given to honoring great films as "once in a lifetime stories" has been dashed as commercial considerations entered in. Psycho, Fargo, and Silence of the Lambs are commercial properties to which, we have found, anything can be done that the owners of the material wish.
I will note this, though: Hitchcock died in 1980. Psycho II went into production in 1982. So it is as if Universal figured "we can't mess with this major Hitchcock property while he is still alive." But once Hitch WAS dead....it was open season on his most famous film(which Universal had bought from him for plunder, with his acquiesance.)
Steven Spielberg noted that he had no control over "Jaws" and was dismayed by that film's bad sequels. Ever after -- Spielberg had control over the material and sometimes directed the sequels(Raiders, Jurassic Park.)
I've always figured, by the way, that had Hitchcock lived into the sequel era -- he would have made them, or at least produced them, too. He remade the Man Who Knew Too Much and made money in television. He would have followed the commercial trends.
And hey, maybe "Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho II" would have been a "Godfather II."
reply
share
movieghoul (213)
8 years ago
Hitchcock said many times that he remade MWKTM because he wasn't very satisfied with the original and wanted to get it right. That's not the same as remaking just for the sake of the almighty dollar; I'm sure he would not have considered remaking The 39 Steps, it was perfect as it was.
Interestingly, in the late 50s, Paramount was into remaking classic comedies of an earlier era, but not even acknowledging them as remakes, the titles were always changed. So Sturges' Miracle at Morgan Creek became Jerry Lewis's Rock a Bye Baby, and The Lady Eve became a godawful vehicle for George Gobel.
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Hitchcock said many times that he remade MWKTM because he wasn't very satisfied with the original and wanted to get it right. That's not the same as remaking just for the sake of the almighty dollar;
---
Fair enough. Given all those other ones he could have remade, he seems to have felt that MWKTM was the one that could use a Technicolor/VistaVision redo with American stars. He also said about the remake that he felt the twinned child kidnapping/assassination plots were always going to be big box office.
---
I'm sure he would not have considered remaking The 39 Steps, it was perfect as it was.
---
Well, as Dr. Richman says...yes. And no.
Hitchocck said of North by Northwest, "Its the American 39 Steps." Think about it -- after MKWTM came two downer box office middlers -- The Wrong Man and yes, Vertigo. Perhaps Hitchcock thought it was time to "go back to the 30's well" one more time. NXNW isn't an official remake The 39 Steps, but we have spies and the wrong man on the run and a knife in the back. Bonus: its kind of a remake of Saboteur, too("North by Northeast") with Mount Rushmore in for The Statue of Liberty.
My theory that Hitch would have likely gotten into "remakes and franchises" is not one I can test beyond...Spielberg. Spielberg directed sequels to Raiders and Jurassic Park, but declared that ET would NEVER have a sequel. By ANYBODY. Meanwhile, Spielberg produced movies like Back to the Future and Gremlins and farmed out the sequels.
But for Hitchcock to work in the sequel era means he'd have to work in the Spielberg era. It just doesn't compute...
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
And what Hitchcock movies might have merited sequels?
Well, in "real life," Psycho got three and The Birds got one(on cable TV, with Tippi Hedren but NOT playing Melanie.)
South by Southwest. North by Northeast. South by Southeast.
To Catch A Thief might merit sequels(in this fantasy, Cary Grant could switch from NXNW sequels to Thief sequels as Harrison Ford juggles Star Wars and Indy.)
John Michael Hayes WROTE a sequel to Rear Window: Jeff moves to the New England coastline with Lisa ...and Lars Thorwald breaks prison and follows them there. Much window peeping ensues. (Problem: this sequel was written in the EIGHTIES. Recasting necessary.)
I suppose from the forties, Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur could be turned into action sequels, especially the former. (And in the latter, Otto Kruger escaped; go get him, Bob!)
Uncle Charlie and Bruno Anthony died. But Bob Rusk did not. Perhaps a Frenzy II could find Rusk escaping, committing more murders, and FINALLY getting the death or beating he so richly deserved.... I see Blaney and Inspector Oxford teaming up to chase Rusk.
Other than those...I got nuttin.
reply
share
movieghoul (213)
8 years ago
The 39 Steps was the film that made Hitchcock's reputation. IT was the biggest BO film of the time in the UK, and a number of critics called it the best British film ever made to date. So it's understandable that Hitchcock would revisit it throughout his career, but at the same time, avoiding an explicit remake.
Aside from the technical advances between 1935 and 1959, NBN is a much more mature film. For one thing, we know ab solutely nothing about the protagonist of 39 Steps, he literally could have been chosen at random. But the little we do know about Thornhill provides irony and a poetic sense of justice to his dilemma. He's spent his life as an ad man cultivating the "expedient exaggeration", but suddenly he's up against not just VanDamm and his crew, but the Professor and his team, who are masters of the expedient exaggeration, never mind who gets hurt or "slightly killed".
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
The 39 Steps was the film that made Hitchcock's reputation. IT was the biggest BO film of the time in the UK, and a number of critics called it the best British film ever made to date.
---
I tend to forget that...or need to be reminded. The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes (templates, both) seemed to make Hitchcock's move to America inevitable.
---
So it's understandable that Hitchcock would revisit it throughout his career, but at the same time, avoiding an explicit remake.
----
Yes. Saboteur and North by Northwest are very much like it -- but not much like it at all. Even if Saboteur has a handcuffed couple and NXNW has a victim with a knife in the back. Its the CHARACTERS who are so very different from film to film. Saboteur notably focusses on a "regular Joe" working man who works in an aircraft factory(a WWII audience surrogate); NXNW on a decidedly upper-class(self made? family wealth too?) sharpster.
Of course, The 39 Steps couldn't get the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore into the plot...those remained all-American stages for "gigantic" climaxes.
---
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Aside from the technical advances between 1935 and 1959, NBN is a much more mature film.
---
Hitchcock himself noted this, pointed out that he did try to "broaden out" his characterizations in his American films. The changing times demanded it , for one thing.
---
For one thing, we know ab solutely nothing about the protagonist of 39 Steps, he literally could have been chosen at random. But the little we do know about Thornhill provides irony and a poetic sense of justice to his dilemma.
---
Yep. Though Cary Grant plays him so he's charming, he's also selfish and distracted, at the start. Thornhill will find himself -- and a woman to save, and a country to save.
---
He's spent his life as an ad man cultivating the "expedient exaggeration", but suddenly he's up against not just VanDamm and his crew, but the Professor and his team, who are masters of the expedient exaggeration, never mind who gets hurt or "slightly killed".
---
That's well pointed out. NXNW certainly set the stage for our modern thrillers in which the CIA is as much a villain as any foreign power(which is really, any more, a matter of international box office.) By the end, everybody's lying EXCEPT Thornhill, who seeks to prove the truth of his identity and to confront others about theirs.
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Noteable -- and a little suspect:
While promoting Torn Curtain in 1966, Hitchcock explained why the film was missing the "big chase action sequences" of North by Northwest.
He said that the knock-offs of NXNW and its crop duster scene had turned that movie into "a cliché." The Bond films, the helicopter chase in From Russia With Love, Arabesque, That Man From Rio -- Hitchocck wasn't going to do THAT anymore, he said.
Rather, said Hitchcock, "Torn Curtain" was a return to: "The 39 Steps!" Which, Hitchcock pointed out, was NOT a big action film, but rather a "series of continual and interrelated episodes and incidents." Or something like that.
Me, I think Hitchcock was just trying to explain away with Torn Curtain that either he didn't have the stamina to film action scenes anymore -- or Universal wouldn't give him the budgets for it. (Both the on-location crop duster scene and the soundstage Mount Rushmore scene COST MONEY.)
reply
share