Top Notch Task Force

In the US, the Sundance channel is currently running Psycho and The Birds "free on demand."

I've seen Psycho once on TV in the past year -- but I kept falling asleep during it. So I decided I could watch it this one more time for 2020.

Problem: even in an "on demand" format, Psycho came with...commercials. Hell, I haven't watched Psycho with commercials since the 70's. It sure does break up the tension. Though -- weirdly, and I've seen this with other "on demand" movies on TV -- the commercials are removed for the last half hour -- you get black screen and a pause, as if the commercial was there and taken out. Very odd. But the first 2/3 definitely had commercials.

I elected to play a little game I play with Psycho whenever I see it again: look for some small detail that I never saw before.

This used to be pretty important stuff -- like Norman's face reflected in the glass of the bird exhibit in his parlor when he goes to peep on Marion.

Or how there is a little box outside the motel office door: "Leave Keys Here." Practical.

But now...well, its just little unimportant details I see:

Lila enters the hardware store -- so wonderfully stocked by Hitchcock's art directors -- and to our left, her right , next to the door, are a few stacked TV tables, with a label: TOP NOTCH. Its upside down, I read this upside down. And I thought: well, TV tables have "notches" to be constructed at different heights! Top Notch.

And somehow this reminded me of something else: when you see Psycho on the BIG SCREEN, you see details you CAN'T see on TV.

Like how the map in the DAs office at the end says "Shasta County" and how, if you are in the know, now you know EXACTLY where the Bates Motel and Fairvale are in California.

And this: one time when I saw Psycho on the big screen, I tried to read the billboards from Marion's POV as she drove up Highway 99 in California.

I remember that, for the most part, I could NOT read them. Too blurry(in light) or it was too dark.

But I read one billboard, and it said in big words: TASK FORCE. With a smiling man's face. Now, a task force is a military thing, sometimes adapted to a civilian bureaucracy, but this looked like some sort of business with a service to be peformed for the customer. TASK FORCE. I found myself wondering: what was TASK FORCE in California in 1959? I guess I could research it but...nah. Still...just another detail in Psycho.

Back to that hardware store:

One of the paltry few nominations for Psycho in 1960 was "Black and White Art Direction" -- for the house, inside and out, I'd guess. Though the art direction in that hardware store was pretty detailed and amazing. I can picture a "crew" of maybe four or five Universal/review workers assigned to stock that store up one wall and down the other: paint cans, peat moss in big sacks, "Top Notch" TV tables, rakes(to hang ominously like claws over Lila's head in the darkness) ammo -- and high up above Arbogast: knives in a big circle. (This looks BACK at Marion's fate, and FORWARD at Arbogasts.)

I'd like to think that whoever nominated Psycho for Best Art Direction took that hardware store into account. Its design is great -- a long tunnel back to Sam's forlorn back room and bed.

In the Van Sant..he filmed at a REAL hardware store on Santa Monica Boulevard in LA and...no tunnel effect, not as much "flavor" on the walls.

Chalk this post up to "an appreciation of the details in Psycho" -- intended(Top Notch and Shasta County map) and unintended(TASK FORCE on the highway to hell...)

And of course, Psycho did NOT win Best B/W Art Direction. The Apartment did. For Jack Lemmon's cavernous workplace and oddly Gothic and musty apartment. Good enough -- bu the Psycho house was better.