A Belated Happy Birthday to Hitch

I post this on August 15, 2018, and, having not been available to post "day and date," I'll offer a belated Happy Birthday to Hitchcock -- August 13 was the day.

I remembered that when skimming the Encore Suspense channel on August 13(two nights ago) and finding myself in a cell with Norman Bates. "Ah, there it is -- my movie centerpiece," I thought, and then I remembered: its the Big Man's Birthday. (I checked the grid and it showed that when Psycho ended, The Birds was coming up, to be followed by Vertigo.)

When Psycho ended(magnificently), I watched the beginning of The Birds in honor of the birthday. Got as far as Melanie going from the general store(a hardware store not unlike Sam Loomis Hardware, but with a Maine-accented old guy running it) and then up to meet Annie for the first time. (I've always felt it is a fatal blow to the tempo of the first act to send Melanie to Annie BEFORE she gets pecked on the forehead by the bird.) Then I turned things off for the night.

I always like to consider Hitchcock's birthday "the official holiday of movies." I do believe he's the only director to merit film festivals ON his birthday(some channel is usually showing his movies on August 13), and some years ago Google put his famous profile on their page on his birthday(that's back when they did really famous people, now they salute more obscure visionaries.) And in giving Hitchcock his own day, so to speak, the cable channels are saying: "the movies are that important -- as are the greatest people who made them."

Its 119 years since Hitchcock's birthyear of 1899; in 1999(the 100th) I was the biggest fanboy I've ever been, travelling both to Los Angeles one month and to New York City another month to enjoy "Hitchcock Cenntennial Events."

In LA, it was at the Oscar Academy building, with a display of Hitchcock artifacts in one room and a "show" one night hosted by Peter Bogdanovich with guest Janet Leigh speaking (and clips of the shower scene; the bird attack on Bodega Bay, the strangling(but not the rape) of Brenda Blaney; and things like the Psycho tour guide trailer and a bizarre piece in which Hitchcock speaks on film to an obscure British film society(Hitchcock had just made The Birds, and he says "It was so difficult to make that I shall never make another movie entitled The Birds again).

The NYC trip was to the Museum of Modern Art; they had a room with some displays ABOUT Hitchocock, rather than artifacts from him. I recall my favorite shot in Psycho -- Arbogast climbing the hill to the house -- framed like a painting on the wall. But wait -- it was a TV screen. Push the button -- Arbogast starts moving, enters the house, climbs the staircase, dies -- and the film resets to Arbogast climbing the hill, and freezes.

(Note in passing: I think the clip of Arbogast's murder -- "fake" process shot and all -- stands now as the most shown clip of any Hitchcock movie; it encapsulates "The Master of Suspense" in as concise and shock-entertaining way as possible; it is less sexually violent than the shower scene, and shorter than scenes like the crop duster, Rushmore, the Albert Hall concert, or the berserk carousel. That's why they put it on the wall a MOMA, and why Dick Cavett showed it to open his 1972 interview with Hitchcock, and why all manner of TV documentary shows on Hitchcock -- and Herrmann --- use it extensively)

I saw Psycho in the theater at the MOMA the day I was there(I had timed the trip to it; they showed each of Hitchcock's films one a day) and it was a full house. Funny: when Mother ran out at Arbo, only one person in the entire theater screamed -- everybody else knew what was coming. A big laugh.

Not the TOTAL fanboy, I had organized the 1999 NYC trip around other things(seeing Kevin Spacey and Paul Giamatti in "The Iceman Cometh" for one) ...but I did manage to get over to the Plaza Hotel to see where the adventure starts for Cary Grant in NXNW.

But that was Hitchcock's Cenntennial birthday YEAR; all that's left almost 20 years later is to salute him on his DAY.

So I did...this week, belatedly.