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The Psychiatrist in Psycho Has Died: RIP, Robert Forster

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

Well, its not an OT post seeing as Robert Forster indeed played the psychiatrist at the end of Psycho....except it was the 1998 Gus Van Sant Psycho.

Forster was actually one of the most important cast members in the Van Sant, because a year before -- in December of 1997 (Van Sant's Psycho opened in December 1998), Forster had been given the Oscar-nominated movie comeback of a lifetime when Quentin Tarantino gave him the role of Max Cherry, balding 50-something bail bondsman, in "Jackie Brown."

Ostensibly, the bigger comeback was Jackie Brown herself -- Pam Grier -- but when Oscar time came, only Forster got an Oscar nom...Best Supporting(he lost to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, as did Burt Reynolds for Boogie Nights.)

Key to Forster's performance in Jackie Brown -- I swear -- was his FACE. A gorgeous male beauty in his youth(Reflections in a Golden Eye; Medium Cool) Foster had aged into a kind of worried, sad handsomeness -- you liked him, and you felt a little sad for him but you knew(as a bail bondsman) Cherry could still kick ass if he had to.

I'll go further: in a 1980's movie about American commandos taking on Middle Eastern terrorists -- The Delta Force with Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin -- Forster played the head terrorist and I remember thinking: he looks too NICE to be a terrorist. As Norris methodically beat, tortured and killed this "evil man" I thought: "Oh, leave him alone, Chuck...he's kinda sad."

I've often wondered if QT saw that niceness because its sure there in Max Cherry. Jackie Brown sees it, too and the two become one of the great middle-aged love couples in movie history. And I like what one critic said about Max Cherry: "He's perfectly accepting to be the lieutenant to Jackie's leader in this criminal caper."

Max Cherry and Jackie Brown and that Oscar nomination were enough to make it a fairly big deal when Forster took on bombastic Simon Oakland's psychiatrist role from Psycho. Again...he was nice. And low key. And a bit boring actually. Oakland hit everything harder and Forster (with only half of Oakland's dialogue) proved why that was necessary.

Forster was saved for aging character stardom in the 20 plus years since Jackie Brown and Psycho - - I hear he was on Breaking Bad, for instance. And I remember him as a very interesting character in The Descendants -- the father of George Clooney's wife, now in a coma, who loves his daughter and hates his son-in-law -- and never knows that his daughter was cheating ON that son in law. Its a painful side story in a very sad movie.

Trivia: QT "hung on" to the idea of Foster in a movie after initially interviewing him to play a pretty bad guy in Reservoir Dogs -- the aged gangleader played by growly bald guy Lawrence Tierney. Tierney was right for that role, and it took five years for QT to give Forster the RIGHT role.

RIP Max Cherry. Farewell "Psycho Shrink Number Two."

A showbiz survivor over the decades. Robert Forster.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Medium Cool is the ultimate late '60s time capsule.

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Yes, and with some documentary Chicago riots footage. Along with Easy Rider and maybe Putney Swope, its the perfect movie EXACTLY of 1969. None of them travelled well into time.

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I've forgotten as much as possible about the Psycho remake (saw it once and was left feeling icky).

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We've kicked it around here. One thing: all the cast members were good actors(including Forster) -- but rather miscast.

I call it "the experiment that succeeded by failing."

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Forster was very good in Jackie Brown and more recently The Descendants.

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I forgot that in The Descendants, not only did Forster have the daughter in a coma, he had an aged wife with Alzheimer's who had no idea what was going on with her daughter. Sad all around, and, indeed, Forster did NOT play a nice man here -- he played an enraged, tragic old man.

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Besides Medium Cool, I have only seen him in one other film as a young man: Cover Me Babe. It used to play on Fox Movie Channel constantly. He has the lead role alongside Sondra Locke (the non-Mrs. Eastwood for a decade and a half), who passed away last year. The trivia on imdb says Michael Sarrazin turned down his role. All of these people died of cancer in their 70s.

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I have not seen Cover Me Babe. Interesting that all the actors(in or out) passed of cancer in the 70's. They had hard, struggling acting careers, but all "made it."

Meanwhile, I said it elsewhere, so I'll say it here: I think that Robert Forster as Max Cherry is QT's greatest character -- closely followed(in the same great film) by a hilariously quiet and deadpan(and bearded handsome) Robert DeNiro as a sleepy ex-con.

[–] AdamS (336) 5 years ago

Fine actor … RIP... just saw him in "El Camino"

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A former co-star, Donnie Wahlberg, praised Forster highly upon his passing.

The two were in a movie called "Diamond Men"(about diamond salesmen working backwoods towns in, I think, Pennsylvania?.

I SAW that movie. I'll have to check imdb, but it came out some time after Jackie Brown and Forster was very nice in that one too. I recall he had a funny scene with a hooker whose tattoo "came to life as animation" and freaked Forster out. I think his character was on drugs.

I'm reminded that, 20 or so years ago, there were a lot more American indies like "Diamond Men" out there -- I saw them in art theaters all the time back then.

Anyway, I don't recall the plot, but I remember Forster being quite good in "Diamond Men."

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Forster was the spaceship captain in The Black Hole (1979) w/ Anthony Perkins, so an indirect Psycho connection there.

And another Hitch remake connection, Forster was Christopher Reeve's detective pal in the TV-movie remake of Rear Window.

Anyhow, after Jackie Brown gave him the role of a lifetime, Forster worked continuously, albeit in small roles, occasionally with top-notch directors: Lynch, Gondry, Payne. Good for him. Nice guy by all accounts.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Forster was the spaceship captain in The Black Hole (1979) w/ Anthony Perkins, so an indirect Psycho connection there.

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Indeed. That was an "interesting" movie -- from the "in between Disney"(Walt was long dead; the power moguls hadn't taken it over yet). It was a "Star Wars" follow up with pretty atrocious effects, though the plot was almost "Psycho in outer space in design" - a Gothic spacehip on the edge of the black hole -- and eventually, we go into that hole. It coulda shoulda been something great. Remake time?

The cast was weirdly interesting as well. Aside from Forster, we had Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Maximillian Schell, and Yvette Mimeux. The greatest cast of -- 1960? But in 1979, they were all rather "old hat." The movie business could be tough.

I guess Forster in his younger, better looking years was just "basic hunk material," but Jackie Brown gave him a new middle-aged lease on life.

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And another Hitch remake connection, Forster was Christopher Reeve's detective pal in the TV-movie remake of Rear Window.

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Indeed, the same year as Van Sant's Psycho, with Viggo Mortensen doing double duty in Psycho and the theatrical remake of Dial M with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow. It was a one-two-three flurry of "Hitchcock re-dos" demonstrating that Hitchcock's reach extended well beyond his 1980 death, into the late 90's. We're still waiting for Michael Bay's Birds remake, 20 years after it was announced. I think maybe its not coming.

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Anyhow, after Jackie Brown gave him the role of a lifetime, Forster worked continuously, albeit in small roles, occasionally with top-notch directors: Lynch, Gondry, Payne. Good for him. Nice guy by all accounts.
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Yep, I suppose you could say that outside of John Travolta, Forster got the biggest "career lift" from QT.

Though Pam Grier is currently on an ABC sitcom. Saw her the other night.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

Hm... he has the look of a familiar face, but I just can't place him -- https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=robert+forster&form=QBIL&qs=n&first=1&cw=1784&ch=924.

Will have to see Psycho (1998) again. Only watched it once in a theater and was disappointed. Have to watch Jackie Brown again, too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hm... he has the look of a familiar face, but I just can't place him -- https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=robert+forster&form=QBIL&qs=n&first=1&cw=1784&ch=924.

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Many of those photos are how he chose to look in his final 10 years -- no toupee, rather weirdly "bald with a patch of hair up front." The middle-aged shots with toupees are his "Jackie Brown" look (better.) And you can see him as 30's TV private eye "Banyon" in one shot. He's a lot younger then. I think that was from the 70's. He survived.

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Will have to see Psycho (1998) again. Only watched it once in a theater and was disappointed.

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You know, I'm kind of partial to Van Sant's Psycho. It is now over 20 years old ! And so it has developed its own nostalgia. I see the film not only as an experiment, but as Van Sant's expression of the same fandom many of us have here. He seems rather desperately to have wanted to "bring Psycho back" -- rather like Norman hanging on to Mrs. Bates, when you think about it.

My favorite movie of 1998 is Saving Private Ryan(which has roots in the violence of Psycho; both films "went toofar" on the violence front.) But I do believe, if only for my fascination with it -- Van Sant's Psycho is my SECOND favorite of 1998. Honest. I recall spending most of 1998 waiting for Van Sant's Psycho. It was announced in April, cast by June, filmed in July and August, and in theaters by early December. And I tell ya, it was a HARD wait -- I wanted to see what they did to my favorite.

Of note: HITCHCOCKs Psycho split over two years -- 1959 and 1960. It was announced in November 1959(from a novel published in April 1959) filming in November and December of 1959 and January and a bit of February in 1960. For June 1960 release (entirely different seasons of making and release than the Van Sant.) Of record: the shower murder was filmed during late December; the staircase murder was filmed in late January. So Marion Crane died in 1959 and Arbogast died in 1960. Hah.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Have to watch Jackie Brown again, too.

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That one's my favorite QT film, though it has a very " middle-aged" bent, and it is fairly long. It ambles along on characters and humor, even though the situation is tense and life-or-death. I consider it QT's "Rio Bravo" and I think he does too.

I'm afraid the dialogue sequences and characters in the new QT, "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood," lack the rich detail and entertainment value of the talks in "Jackie Brown." Though QT adapted that one from an Elmore Leonard novel, maybe that helped.

Noteable: Robert DeNiro wanted to be in Jackie Brown...and he wanted Forster's role. QT said "no can do" -- its for Forster. So DeNiro took a "supporting role" -- and got one of the best roles HE ever had.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A bit more trivia on Robert Forster and Psycho:

I recall reading a "blurb" article in some 90's movie magazine(maybe Movieline) called "Celebrity Sightings" or some such. It was based on people reporting in when and where they saw movie stars and other celebrities around Hollywood.

Well, someone turned in this tidbit: they saw Robert Forster, sitting all alone, at the Village Theater in Westwood(near UCLA in West Los Angeles), watching Psycho. You can imagine Forster proud to be in another major movie, for another major director...albeit in a very short part. He had to watch the whole movie to see his truncated version of the psychiatrist scene, but I'm sure he enjoyed it.

And this: The Village Theater in Westwood can be seen in QT's new movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Its the theater across the street from the theater where Sharon Tate watches herself in "The Wrecking Crew" at the Bruin Theater. The marquee for the Village has the 1969 George Peppard film Pendulum playing.

So: Robert Forster, in real life, did what Sharon Tate, in fiction does in OUATIH: Watch themselves at a Westwood Village theater in a movie, all alone.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Psycho was announced in September 1959 - I only just found this out since I'm a newly avid browser of newspapers.com

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Ya got me! And I'm glad you did! Thus my education on Psycho is corrected and enhanced.

I thought it was announced just as it started production(November.)

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https://www.newspapers.com/search/#s_place=United+States+of+America&lnd=1&dr_year=1959-1959&query=alfred+hitchcock+janet+leigh+psycho&oquery=alfred+hitchcock+janet+leigh+psycho+1959

"Janet Leigh To Star In Hitchcock Movie" was the headline.

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That's a pretty cool website. Is there a way to read MORE of these articles? The excerpts are tantalizing: "Leigh and Gavin spending the day half nude filming a scene." Hah.

A BIGGER question: I've always hoped to have some way to link here on the board to the original KABC-TV TV Guide -- and newspaper -- ad for Psycho on its November 18, 1967 broadcast(or its later February 17, 1968 broadcast -- they used the same ad but changed the wording a little. The November ad says "Los Angeles Televsion Debut" the February ad takes that out and puts in "Alfred Hitchcock's")

Using newspapers.com, can you access the Los Angeles Times for either of those dates and see the ad for link-up here?

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Back to Forster, I think I'll rewatch Medium Cool as kind of a tribute. I remember it being very racy and real for the time. There might've been a sex scene with full frontal nudity. This was RIGHT AFTER the production code ceased.

When TCM played Reflections in a Golden Eye a year or so ago, I couldn't watch more than 5 minutes of it because the whole film was tinted green. Yet the trailer shows the film in regular color. Are there different versions of it? TCM claims they show films unedited, but I've found this to be untrue. When "Blume In Love" played on the channel, a topless scene was blurred out as though it was network television.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Back to Forster, I think I'll rewatch Medium Cool as kind of a tribute. I remember it being very racy and real for the time. There might've been a sex scene with full frontal nudity. This was RIGHT AFTER the production code ceased.

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Yes, it was a rather heady, shocking time in American films when the old production code ceased(November 1968) and the R and X appeared. I believe Medium Cool got an X(along with Midnight Cowboy the same year.)
Rather than "re-watch" Medium Cool, I think I may have to WATCH it. For the first time. Its one of those movies where my knowledge is strictly from reading reviews and articles. I certainly wasn't allowed to watch X rated movies in 1969. Though a few years later, I was. I caught up with A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy a few years after their release and my turning 18. I was a stickler. (Also: an X movie by Candid Camera guy Allen Funt called "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?") .

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When TCM played Reflections in a Golden Eye a year or so ago, I couldn't watch more than 5 minutes of it because the whole film was tinted green. Yet the trailer shows the film in regular color. Are there different versions of it?

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I don't know. I've not seen the film so I don't know if Huston had the full film tinted green, or if that was a bad print.

In the 70's, a local TV channel showed a group of Fox films in a package, and I remember, the channel "filtered" all of them so they broadcast PINK. I noticed it even as a young viewer. Years later, I would see some of the same films (Our Man Flint comes to mind) and I had to "un-remember" the pink versions.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

TCM claims they show films unedited, but I've found this to be untrue. When "Blume In Love" played on the channel, a topless scene was blurred out as though it was network television.

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It seems to depend on what time of day they show the film. Language seems to get a pass, but nudity is an issue.

And yet, I recall TCM broadcasting Hitchcock's R-rated Frenzy at 3:00 am in the morning. I taped it to see if TCM left the nudity intact. They DID. (Of course, 3:00 am on the East Coast of America was midnight on the West Coast...but that's still pretty late.)

Speaking of Frenzy -- Hitchcock's only R-rated film and more sexually violent than Psycho -- the 1972 film received an "ABC Sunday Night Movie" broadcast in February(sweeps month) 1975 and was severely cut down. All nudity removed. All cussing removed. And in the famous rape-strangulation scene, the rape was cut down to a struggle and the strangulation wasn't shown at all -- they freeze-framed on the victim yelling "My God, the tie!" and screaming. The "cleaned-up" Frenzy was very odd: it was missing its major set piece and became a pretty boring movie without it.

And the 1970 NBC showing of Torn Curtain removed the Newman/Andrews opening love/sex scene in its entirety ...and edited down the graphic killing of Gromek into a brief struggle and his off-screen death.

The world was waiting for HBO and VHS. Broadcast TV and R rated movies were not compatible.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Unfortunately the site requires you give CC information to make an account, even for a trial.

Once a year the site is made accessible to anyone, free, for a 24 hour period (missed it!).

But you can still get a basic view here: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/105632952/
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Interesting...and there is the "Janet Leigh article" pretty visible for the reading.

I wonder if this website has the Los Angeles Times. If so, I might pay...for awhile ...to obtain a link to that Psycho ad from 1967.

Because...in the context of this Psycho board and others in which I've participated over the years...this ad(which also served as huge billboards all over Los Angeles) gave me the "haunted" vision of Psycho that dogged me for a few years until I saw it. The billboard/ad created a "vision of Psycho" in my mind that really doesn't match the movie as we have it. I suppose even if I could link to the ad/billboard, readers here would get none of its 1967 effect.

The ad combined three photo elements we CAN access on the internet today:

ONE: The slashed logo from the movie: PSYCHO. (Scared me.)
TWO: The photo of the old house with a shadowy, Frankenstin-ian Perkins standing next to it. (Scared me.)
THREE: A big photo of Anthony Perkins, one hand over his mouth the other outstretched, fingers splayed. Perkins certainly didn't look beautiful in this rendering, and his wide-open eyes -- scared me.

All merged together and rendered a bit too "dark," these elements created wonder in my mind about how horrible Psycho was, how scary that house was, how scary Perkins was (oddly, I think I IMAGINED the motel in the ad, because I'd heard of it, but it is not in the ad. Only the house.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

All of this contributes to a phrase I pull out around here from time to time: "My Psycho is not your Psycho." I didn't see it on release in 1960 or re-release in 1965 or even re-RE-release in 1969(see the version of Psycho TV did not dare show.) Rather, the film was unseen to me, but TOLD to me, and that billboard was the main event in creating Psycho in my mind. For years.

Though somewhere in there before seeing Psycho, I found the Hitchcock/Truffaut book at a department store book section and flipped through the "old Hitchcock movies" like The 39 Steps and Rebecca and Rear Window, til I got to the Psycho pages. Actually SEEING Arbogast's bloody shocked face(and the more abstract shower scene photos) gave me a coupla sleepless nights. "My Psycho is not your Psycho."

But maybe newspapers.com can make it so...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

One thing that sticks out reading these old newspapers is how much BS passed for fact in the pre-internet days, in regard to the personal lives of celebrities.

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Oh, yeah. The movie business really WAS a very fake, "anything goes" BS business for quite a few decades, regardless of the quality of the movies being produced. Even Hitchcock's pretty good "Psycho" trailer -- where he tour guides us around the Bates properties -- has some of this hyperbole right at the beginning: "The fabulous Alfred Hitchcock gives you a tour of the locations for his new movie, PSYCHO."

The FABULOUS Alfred Hitchcock?

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Unless it was someone like Liz Taylor, whose entire life was chronicled by the press, there was no such thing as fact-checking.

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Nope. Indeed fact checkers couldn't work in Hollywood and outside "reputable" reporters seemed to go along with the fakery. It was kinda/sorta like pro wrestling is covered today. The wrestlers are stars and entertainers and nobody reports on the "fakery" of it(which, I know, is actually very physically demanding, athletic work which can injure or kill the fakers.)

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Reporters printed whatever publicists told them. Your whole story could be a pack of lies and this would become myth until a biographer investigated it.

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Yep. I bought(cheap) a book a few years ago called "The Fixers," about Hollywood fixers Eddie Mannix and...some other guy. The book itself strikes me as full of unproven material(mainly about which stars were gay)...but it makes a sometimes-proven case that these studio fixers could get stars off the hook for everything from drunken driving to murder. One evidently proven case: Clark Gable got Loretta Young pregnant, but she was married. She chose to have the child, so went "sick" for a few months. She had the child, had the child placed for adoption -- and then adopted her own child. All covered up.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Clint Eastwood has several illegitimate families who for the longest time he pretended didn't exist; it was only in 2018 that he acknowledged a daughter he'd kept secret since 1954. Jack Nicholson has a few "unconfirmed" children as well.

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I call this "male superstar birth control." Clint and Jack(and Eddie Murphy, I think) had children by wives, girlfriends and one-night stands alike. Toss a million or so to the mother to raise the child and...done.

I have seen recent photos of both Clint Eastwood and Eddie Murphy posing with their numerous(around 10?) grown children. Eastwood's in particular are interesting. You can figure out which one's mother is actress Frances Fisher(from Unforgiven and Titanic); she looks just like her. The two from Eastwood's first wife -- Kyle and Allison -- were in a few of their dad's movies, and I think he snuck one or two into other movies as well. And Eastwood has one child -- Scott -- who is a handsome dead ringer for Dirty Harry...and has a small movie career.

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And most actresses and female singing stars who debuted after 20 lied about their age, it's a long list that includes everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. A few Hitchcock gals as well: Doris Day (b. 1922) claimed 1924 until the AP found her birth certificate in 2017, and as I mentioned in another thread, I was floored when I saw that Tippi Hedren was born in 1930 (which she openly admits to...now), since 1935 had been her "official" birth year for decades.

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Well, we all know about Hollywood ageism, and it was worse "back then." Especially for actresses. I think somebody even sued IMDb modernly to stop the site from printing birth year dates. It can kill careers, and its unfair if a person looks younger than their birth age, anyway.

In short, I'll give this one a pass...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

This one is "backwards": the "ballyhoo" for Psycho (its Hitchcock tour guide trailer) leads up to a discussion of the shower murder and a recreation of the first scream in the scene...done by Vera Miles in for Janet Leigh.

But it was in "serious" film books and articles that we were told: "Hitchcock surprised the world with his out of nowhere shower murder of the star."

Hmm...the trailer basically says "Come see my new movie with a murder in a shower in it."

But evidently all those film scholars never SAW that 1960 trailer so...print the legend.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The L.A. Times is on there, but only select editions. They seem to add more over time. As of this writing, the page in question doesn't show. Here's what came up when I searched for it:

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This is great. You've hit some real pay dirt here, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I'm "detail nerdly" on this, but hey, it was just a few movies at a young time in my life, and it is a GOOD memory how TV Guide could create a certain anticipation when "something big" was going to be broadcast. Like Psycho.

And this: I feel if one could "open up" the page excerpts you show for November 12 , 1967 and November 18 , 1967...you would see EXACTLY the ad for Psycho that I have been talking about. The November 12 page is from the LA Times "Sunday TV Guide"(a newspaper supplement) and that guide had the Psycho ad in it, likely on the page that has the listing you show.

Same with the November 18 page from the Times.

And look at how Psycho was advertised even within the "listings grid":

LA TV Debut!
ANTHONY PERKINS, JANET LEIGH
Psycho

I think KABC-TV paid for such a "special" listing. You can see the cast listing (Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire) that would become historic unto itself. And in some of the blurbs, words about the movie: "horror and shocks" -- "tale of a mysterious psychopathic killer." Etc. Thus was the special scary nature of Psycho transmitted.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Also interesting:

Seeing blurbs in San Bernardino and Escondido TV listings for the KABC-TV broadcast of November. San Bernardino is about 60 miles away from LA; Escondido is about 100 miles away from LA -- and yet, they advertised an LA TV broadcast of Psycho.

There's a blurb for Psycho in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida paper in October 1967, playing on "Channel 6" which I believe was out of Miami. Scroll a bit to the left and you have a viewer from Miami writing "When I learned Psycho was playing on South Florida TV, I fell out of my seat. I thought Psycho was lost forever!" So...confirmation of another US city where Psycho got a screening in 1967. Its kind of interesting, really, this major hit(a phenomenon perhaps much bigger than Hitchcock's usual directorial output; it grew past him) was shipped to city after city across America for late night viewings, without network broadcast, but nonetheless "seen by millions."

There's a February 1968 listing for Psycho -- but not on TV -- its "at the movies" as a "co-hit" to either "An American Tragedy" (with Janet Leigh) or The Defector (a 1966 Monty Clift film, his last before his death.) I couldn't be sure by the ad placement. So: Psycho was literally still playing in theaters at the same time it was being broadcast on TV!

Its a great nostalgic trip, those links. I think this blurb is the most nostalgic of all:

LA TV Debut!
ANTHONY PERKINS, JANET LEIGH
Psycho

That brings it all back. How "special" that screening of Psycho was. Everybody saw it on that Saturday night in November...except me. Or maybe it just seemed that way.

And then I got to see the first half hour or so in February.

More "oral history": the way KABC-TV showed all late night movies at that time was to open the movie after each commercial break with "and now, we return to Psycho" -- with a quick, silent clip from the film. That night, the clip was always, after the commercial, everytime: Norman running down the hill from the house to find Marion. I didn't get to SEE that part of the movie, but I sure got to watch that clip several times before I had to turn the movie off.

I recall when I finally got to see all of Psycho in 1971, when the movie finally reached the Bates Motel , I felt like i had finally "left port and set sail on the open sea" of the movie itself.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A little more "defensiveness" about this oral history:

ONE: That print ad and billboard(PSYCHO, the house, Perkins) didn't scare me "out of nowhere." It scared me because neighborhood kids had filled my mind with images of women getting slaughtered in showers and(mixing up the book with the film) getting beheaded, her limbs stuffed into a hamper, etc. And something bad happened to a private eye, I knew. And I knew Perkins did it.

TWO: I will attest to reading TV Guide a lot as a kid in the sixties. It was a corollary to reading movie ads in the newspaper -- taking in all the "ballyhoo" and seeing what TV shows or movies on TV I could watch. There were a LOT of ads for horror movies in TV Guide; they got big ratings.

Around 1962, an LA channel ran a horror movie series called "Chiller" and took an entire full page ad for the Saturday night debut of House on Haunted Hill, using the film's poster. I think you can see that poster on Moviechat and -- Vincent Price is holding a severed head! Not to mention the skeleton in the ad....these were scary things to see for an impressionable child.

But I also used TV Guide -- and Judith Crist's weekly reviews of movies on network -- to teach myself about the movies.

It all pretty much ended in the 70's. I didn't take TV Guide when I moved out of my parents' home, I got advance notice on movies like "Frenzy" (and The Godfather, and Jaws) getting their broadcast premieres just by checking the newspaper listings...a childhood fixation went away.

But I like that I HAD that movie-teaching TV Guide fixation when I was young...and those blurbs for Psycho in 1967("Los Angeles TV Debut!") are nothing but sweet nostalgia.

[–] jasonbourne (1027) 5 years ago

https://youtu.be/oXJUfM4elPI

I started looking into Psycho (1998) and whether to buy the Blu-ray DVD. Probably will and some of his other movies. Here are some shot by shot comparisons. Is that director Gus Van Sant in the real estate office scene?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Here are some shot by shot comparisons. Is that director Gus Van Sant in the real estate office scene?

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Indeed it is, with a "Hitchcock stand-in" sticking his finger into Van Sant's chest as if angrily saying "how DARE you do this to my movie!"

Its a funny gag, but I think the rather GIANT Hitchcock is another bit of miscasting on Van Sant's part.

And, as much as I DO like the gag, I think an alternative here would be to have "matted in" the shot of Hitchcock in the window from 1960..as if bringing him personally into the remake.

But the gag IS good.

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Those "flowing" shot by shot comparisons show that Van Sant certainly DID get his "shot by shot matches" a whole lot of the time, but they also reveal weaknesses:

Note how Janet Leigh COOLY watches Cassidy walk away from her desk whereas Anne Heche really mugs it up in disgust.

And watch -- shot by shot -- how Van Sant screwed up as many shots in Arbogast's murder(including his climb, the attack, AND the fall) as he got right. He just couldn't pull it off.

Etc.

Van Sant has made a number of other respected films, both before and after Psycho. One -- Elephant -- is a fictional re-staging of the Columbine school massacre, a "real life" study in nice-faced psychopathy...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have just watched what I believe was Robert Forster's final performance. It is a Netflix movie called: "El Camino -- A Breaking Bad Movie."

Though I heard and read good things about "Breaking Bad," I never really got into it. I watched a few episodes -- mainly in the beginning -- and I went ahead and watched the finale(in which Walter White was dealt with more satisfyingly than Tony Soprano ever was.) Someday I may binge the entire show; I feel like I missed out the first time.

And "El Camino" is about the "second lead"(the young guy) and his adventures after Breaking Bad ended.

Anyway, I guess that Robert Forster came to this movie playing a character he had played ON Breaking Bad.

Forster is the best thing in "El Camino," which, fittingly I guess, debuted pretty much around the same time Forster died.

Its 21 years after Jackie Brown, and Forster's face -- often filmed in unflattering bad light -- is a mass of cracks and wrinkles and white skin. I guess the cancer that killed him was ravaging his face and aging him fast.

Still, his voice is fine, and his line readings and cadences are PURE Max Cherry. Its like the same guy, with the same quiet authority, except crooked this time...but still a GOOD guy. Since by the time I saw "El Camino" I knew Forster was dead, watching his great handful of scenes here reminded me that I was NOT wrong in enshrining Max Cherry in my personal gallery of Best Characters in Movies.

I didn't think "El Camino" was particularly good. Pretty boring, really. The second lead guy wasn't really meant to carry a movie, I don't think. But Robert Forster saves the day...right up to the end of the film.