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OT: July 2019: The Birds and NXNW "In the News"

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
8 replies | jump to latest

We've talked around here recently about how modern younger generations just don't remember Hitchcock or even his most famous, later movies, but this week in the news, one Hitchcock movie was mentioned and the other was referenced indirectly , to wit.

Two news articles this week:

ONE: "Hitchcock was right: bird attacks on rise." This article used the once-usual, soon-dead trope, "Just like a scene out of Hitchcock's The Birds" -- to describe a few isolated but angry bird attacks.

TWO: "Barefoot woman climbs Mount Rushmore to within 15 feet of the top." North by Northwest wasn't mentioned in this article at all, but the article made the point that not only was a barefoot woman able to clamber from the monument's base to near the top in less than a half hour...LOTS of people keep climbing up there.

This underlines a point I made (in my recent NXNW thread) that Roger Thornhill's plan to "climb down Mount Rushmore" isn't that far-fetched, and that if two assassins had not been on Thornhill's(and Eve's) tail, he might have been able to get Eve down the mountain fairly quickly and easily.

The key is to reach all that piled rock UNDER the chins of the Presidents. This was the rock that was cut and blasted loose to make the monument, and it provides a fairly easy "platform" by which to walk down. From the top of Mount Rushmore, I guess getting to all that rock is simply a matter of navigating the flat areas between and below the Presidential faces.

But again: evidently people "jump the barrier fence" and climb Mount Rushmore UP, all the time. And again: this woman last week made the climb BAREFOOT!

PS. To prepare his NXNW screenplay, screenwriter Ernest Lehman climbed up Mount Rushmore with a forest ranger as his guide...but Lehman got dizzy and couldn't complete the climb. He gave his camera to the forest ranger and let the ranger take photos at the top.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Interesting.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Yes, I thought so. Bird attacks continue. And Mount Rushmore was always easier to climb up and down than it looked -- its just that the officials don't want people DOING that. Defacing a monument and all that.

There was some sort of speech on the floor of the US Congress, in 1959, btw, by a Congress Member condemning Hitchcock for staging an action fight on Mount Rushmore. Defacing a monument and all that. Hitchcock always managed to drum up a little controversy...Hitchcock's counterargument: the good guys defeated the Communist bad guys AT a national monument. What could be more patriotic?

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I saw both of those stories on the news.

The one about the bird attacking, they said it was probably protecting its young 'uns from people who were getting too close. They had video of it. The newscaster said, 'Or it might be a scene by Alfred Hitchcock.' And they actually all laughed. So at least THEY knew who he is.

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As you might gather, MizuB, I thought of you when the birds article referenced Hitchcock. Maybe a lot of people don't know him, but a few still do. A few.

On the other hand, the Mount Rushmore article did NOT reference NXNW...only those of us in the Hitchcock know got the connection.

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Both stories reminded me of Hitchcock.

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Me, too. Its been said that Hitchcock's gift to the generation of fans who DID know who he was is that he invested the regular world(from a motel room shower to Mount Rushmore) with new personalities -- the sinister; the exciting.

And objects, too: neckties AND potatoes, in Frenzy.

And birds attacking. Or just...birds grouped on a wire.

And carousels.

And the Statue of Liberty. And the Golden Gate bridge...

....and bell towers..

Hitchcock gave us an entire universe of "charged objects and settings." It was, again , a gift to our imaginations.

Dwindling though our ranks may be...

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

It sounds to me like you just saw an article about the bird attacks, but I saw clips of them on the news. (Sorry if I'm wrong).

They looked like that shot of the Seagull dive-bombing Tippi Hedren in the boat.

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Maybe a lot of people don't know him, but a few still do. A few.

=========

What surprised me was that all of the newscasters are YOUNGER than me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It sounds to me like you just saw an article about the bird attacks, but I saw clips of them on the news. (Sorry if I'm wrong).

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I just saw the article. I'll go looking for the clips!

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They looked like that shot of the Seagull dive-bombing Tippi Hedren in the boat.

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Ha..a "shot by shot remake."

I suppose this is a good place to note that one thing that attracted Hitchcock to make "The Birds"(from the Du Maurier short story ) was that these evil, murderous eye-gouging killers were....just regular birds. No hawks, no eagles, no owls, no over birds of prey. More like the "friendly" birds you see around you all the time(and seagulls near the ocean.) Its rather like positing a Little Old Lady as a knife wielding monster -- there's a disconnect. And thus -- in real life -- its interesting to see "just regular birds" attack.

I would figure that Hitchcock would decline "Jaws" -- a shark is too monstrous "on the natural."

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Maybe a lot of people don't know him, but a few still do. A few.

=========

What surprised me was that all of the newscasters are YOUNGER than me.

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Well, maybe they surf the net...hah. I've opined in the past that I think Psycho and The Birds are about all that really stick around at all in the public memory from Hitchcock. You've noted that even those two got no recognition among young people you met, but, a few young people(maybe film history buffs) likely still know those two Hitchcock titles, at least.

A few. Hah.

[–] MizhuB (165) 5 years ago

From my experience, I think it's just that although PSYCHO is the more famous of the two films, more people nowadays have actually seen The Birds.

PSYCHO: It's so old.
The Birds: At least it's in color, and once you get past that boring first part, it has more action.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

PSYCHO: It's so old.
The Birds: At least it's in color, and once you get past that boring first part, it has more action.

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Well, I've certainly heard said -- directly if nicely to my face, and from young people AND my peers:

"I just cant watch black and white films."

This still strikes me as odd, but I now take it as a fact that for some of the modern populace, once color became the default norm for movie and TV in all its forms -- we lost entire potential audiences for black and white films(while retaining, I guess my older generation and a little up or down from it, who still enjoy a b/w film - like Psycho.)

Meanwhile, Psycho DOES look old -- Janet Leigh's suitdress for the trip to the Bates Motel, Vera Miles coat. The cars. Arbogast's hat. Oddly, John Gavin in slacks and white shirt(at his hardware store) always looks modern to me. I wear that outfit to this day.

And yes, The Birds sure has a lot more action -- more set-pieces, more SIZE(that final shot) than Psycho. Hitchcock was out to top Psycho, and in this one specific way, he did.

And yet Psycho functions more as an "organic whole." Yes the murder scenes are the key to everything, and yes the fruit cellar climax is a big scream. But the overall atmosphere and organization of the film makes it rather a work of perfection that The Birds, alas, could not be. Especially when "my Psycho is not your Psycho." Hah.