I wonder- does anyone have suggestions for the best place to chat about books in forums similar to this?
Also I'd like to note how spot on the movie really was from the novel. Aside from trivial changes and small things left out, the only notable difference is Norman's appearance. I can understand the change to a more attractive appearance in the visual medium. It just really was a surprise to read how he was described in the novel.
We've often had threads before that focussed on differences between the novel & the film, so do feel free to post at length here on anything to do with Bloch.
shareI wonder- does anyone have suggestions for the best place to chat about books in forums similar to this?
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I do not, but it looks like at least one good suggestion has been offered to you on this thread, so far.
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Also I'd like to note how spot on the movie really was from the novel.
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Yes, indeed. While everyone from Francois Truffaut(a French director who interviewed Hitchcock for the book Hitchcock/Truffaut); Joe Stefano(screenwriter of Psycho) to Hitchcock himself dismissed the source novel as worthless pulp from which "very little was used," (Hitchcock told Truffaut only the shower murder interested him from the book), Robert Bloch himself pointed out that from Chapter Three on(Marion -- Mary in the book )-- arrives at the Bates Motel -- novel and movie match pretty much scene by scene, right up to the final line of book AND movie: "She wouldn't harm a fly." (Chapter One, set at the Bates mansion with Norman and Mother arguing as Marion drives up -- was jettisoned in favor of the famous "Marion Crane" story in the movie, which is much of Chapter Two in the book.)
Which is another way of saying: Truffaut, Stefano and Hitchcock were WRONG. Robert Bloch delivered a small masterpiece of setting, plot and storytelling. It was the best story Hitchcock ever found for a movie. Indeed, Stefano wrote better dialogue for the film and Hitchcock added all his touches, and the cast was great(Anthony Perkins uber alles) but...Bloch's book IS Psycho -- the story.
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Aside from trivial changes and small things left out, the only notable difference is Norman's appearance. I can understand the change to a more attractive appearance in the visual medium. It just really was a surprise to read how he was described in the novel.
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Yes, with everything I just said about Bloch's novel(evidently also called a "novella" -- for "short novel"?) , a significant change to the movie was turning 40-something obese bespectacled geek Norman into.. Anthony Perkins. As Hitchcock told Perkins to get him to take the role, "Tony, you ARE this movie" -- the whole thing depended on making Norman both sympathetic(and cute) enough for the audience to identify with him, and to NOT suspect him as the killer.
It has been suggested that, in 1960, the actor best suited to play Bloch's version of Bates was...Rod Steiger. As a matter of size and age, maybe yes, but as happens, Steiger doesn't really match the book's Norman , either -- not geeky and weak enough, I'd say. And Steiger gave off a strong New York vibe...not California Country. Steiger had been an Oscar nominee and over-the-title star by then, but perhaps near-unknown Victor Buono would have fit the bill, too. (Ernest Borgnine had played Steiger's lonely man from the TV play in the movie of Marty, but I can't see Borgnine as Norman.)
Hitchcock had wanted to use Anthony Perkins in SOMETHING since seeing him play a baseball player who has a mental breakdown in "Fear Strikes Out" in 1957. I figure Hitchcock had Perkins filed away for casting and when he read the book Psycho...voila...Hitchcock saw his Tony Perkins Movie and the rest is history.
As far as being nearly identical to the book, I'm thinking that back in that era, they tended to stick closely to the novels. Because Rosemary's Baby was near identical, near verbatim, as well.
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Yes, Roman Polanski adapted the Rosemary's Baby screenplay, and it is said that, as a novice screenwriter, he thought he was REQUIRED to write the script exactly like the book, right down to magazine cover titles mentioned in the book.
The year before with The Graduate, it was said that Buck Henry's adaptation of the source novel was so duplicative that his screenplay "wasn't so much re-writing the book, as simply RE-TYPING it."
I think also this: back in the 30's through at least the 70's, movies rather served as "sound and picture versions of bestsellers." People read more back then, fiction books were more important, and the famous phrase "Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture" was usually slapped on paperbacks of Gone with the Wind, Giant, Advise and Consent, To Kill a Mockingbird...The Godfather, The Exorcist and Jaws. Audiences showed up who had read the books and wanted to see their favorite scenes and characters on the big screen.
Modernly, I think many rather obscure novels are adapted for the screen, so a lot of audience members show up not KNOWING the book plot.
Also, a lot of comic books are being adapted for the screen these days, yes? Or "graphic novels" that LOOK like comic books....
Also I'd like to note how spot on the movie really was from the novel.
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I recently read Robert Bloch's Psycho start to finish in preparing some posts here and I found that it creates its very own and rather different "horror world," even though book and movie really match up.
The different Norman is key, to be sure. And the murder scenes are even more grisly in the book than in the movie(famously, Marion is beheaded in the shower, and Arbogast takes a straight razor to the throat.) The Arbogast murder is very different from the movie -- "Mother" happily greets him in the foyer as he enters the house("Just a moment," she trills, "I'm coming!") and kills him right there(supposedly "in front of Norman," but of course that's how Norman sees it in his MIND). In the shower scene, Mother's head pops through the shower curtain "hanging in mid-air" before the murder begins. Overall, these book versions of the murder are just as terrifying as the movie versions...but very different. But Hitchcock turned the murders into "cinematic events"(the montage quick cut killing in the shower; the process screen tumble down the stairs for Arbogast.)
But..and its hard to put a finger on it...there's an entirely different TONE to the events in Psycho, the book. We are often in Norman's head, hearing his thoughts, and the entire house/motel setting feels a bit more "populated." Crucially, when Arbogast is killed up at the house, there is an old couple staying down at the motel. Hence the slash to Arbo's throat...so he can't scream. Its a daytime scene, too.
Overall, the novel "Psycho" puts us more "with Norman and Mother"(because we can't "see her")...from their first chapter confrontation up at the house, to their discussions when Arbogast arrives (He tells Norman about the 40 grand, which does not happen in the movie, so Mother says to Norman "Forty thousand dollars? That's a lot of money...and he'll probably think we stole it from her...tell him to come up here to the house.")
Its funny. Of all the Psycho sequels and series and the one remake of the film, the one project still undone is somebody filming BLOCH's version of Psycho, with heavy Norman and those even-more-horrific murder scenes(not to mention a lot more sexuality in Norman's thoughts of mother and Marion...) I wonder if Universal owns the rights to the book. I wonder if Universal would allow (and pay for) that movie to be made?
Probably not. Especially given the millions necessary to make a movie these days. But ...its an interesting fantasy...
But..and its hard to put a finger on it...there's an entirely different TONE to the events in Psycho, the book.One example I remember that changed the tone for me was Mother felt a lot more mobile (for Norman) than she does in the film. Norman wakes up dazed from one of his episodes & after discovering Mary dead worries that Mom's off down the highway stabbing motorists who'll pull over to help her.
But..and its hard to put a finger on it...there's an entirely different TONE to the events in Psycho, the book.
One example I remember that changed the tone for me was Mother felt a lot more mobile (for Norman) than she does in the film. Norman wakes up dazed from one of his episodes & after discovering Mary dead worries that Mom's off down the highway stabbing motorists who'll pull over to help her.
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Yes...Truffaut was angry in that he felt the book "cheats" in terms of Norman having conversations with his mother that we cannot see(or having him "witness" Arbogast's murder as Norman while committing it as Mother.) But these are the amazing aspects of this great story no matter WHICH way you tell it. Hitchcock for his part, elected to design the film as a game -- a big trick -- and did things to accomplish that (ONE shot of Mother moving in the window; thereafter, she's still) .
But the Bloch imagined us to imagine all SORTS of things -- and the idea of such a psychotic, monstrous Mother "out there on the highway" ready to kill some passerby -- again, Bloch's book is scary in DIFFERENT ways that Hitchcock's movie.
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The film links Mother more tightly with the spooky house
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Pretty key to the movie yes -- in so many ways. As a matter of symbolism Mother is Up There in HER House, the Id to Norman's ego down below at the motel. But more to the point after she comes DOWN to kill Marino in the motel(thus making sure the motel is a terrifying place) -- she's UP there at the house, and victims and near victims go up there with a terrified audience by their side.
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& yet, by deemphasizing both Norman's hallucinations & also Norman's dazed-ess after Mother episodes, also makes Mother closer to Norman at all times.
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Well, Hitchcock was SO straightforward about our seeing only Norman "surface" and never really entering his mind til the very end. The book could get into his head all the time(yes, Francois -- "cheating" as he talked to Mother.)
And I'll always be a little sad that the cable series "Bates Motel" elected to give us the full-on "hallucinatory Norman" that we could only think about AFTER we saw Hitchcock's film. The model here is the movie "A Beautiful Mind" which posited a man's split personalities as people he saw before him. I think it took a lot of the mystery out of Psycho -- the mystery that continued on in OUR minds after seeing Hitchcock's film.
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The twist is made more obvious, less extravagant, and more fully anchored in how Norman conducts himself all the time.
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Yes...its a rather basic bit of business in the movie -- and some folks DID figure out the twist.(Though a lot of screamers did NOT.)
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These changes make it clearer that Norman's a great part for a master actor like Perkins than the book allows.
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And Anthony Perkins remains way near(or at) the top of the list of Oscar snubs. Not even a NOMINATION. ("I'm ashamed of your fellow actors," Hitchcock wired Perkins.)
On the other hand, Perkins was only truly Oscar-worthy as Norman that one time -- in Hitchcock's original. He had a good script, good direction, and a great movie all around him.
The film's close to the book in many ways
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Pretty much "scene by scene" from Chapter Three on...
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but the small changes ramify and make all the difference.
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Well, I still think Bloch's Psycho is a great story but had William Castle directed it with a bad scenarist adapting it -- or even BLOCH adapting it(see: Strait-Jacket) -- it could have been very much the bad B movie.
Hitchcock was forced by 1960 censorship to clean up Bloch's Psycho...but he instead swung big for cinematic shocks(helped immeasurably by Herrmann) and won big.
Goodreads.
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