Van Sant's Psycho...By Paul Thomas Anderson

As a general matter, there are five lead characters in Psycho (indeed, I call them "The Psycho Five"):

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)
Arbogast (Martin Balsam)
Lila Crane (Vera Miles)
Sam Loomis (John Gavin)

But the 1960 movie POSTER found room for SIX names:

Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO

Starring

Anthony Perkins
Vera Miles
John Gavin

Co-Starring

Martin Balsam and John McIntire

And Janet Leigh as Marion Crane

What an interestingly organized list of names! None of them allowed "above the title with Hitchcock" (as Cary Grant and James Stewart recently had been, along with Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason.)

Perkins given top billing(as promised by Hitchcock; he had fourth bililng in On the Beach the year before.) MILES given second billing . Gavin given third billing. Leigh(who deserved second billing) moved to "and" status but with star font.

In the co-starring bracket, Martin Balsam made sense to go first.

But John McIntire -- Sheriff Chambers -- got on that poster too.

Why? Why HIM and not Cassidy or California Charlie or Caroline(Pat HITCHCOCK) or especially Simon Oakland as the shrink?

I think the answer was simple: all those other people only got ONE scene. McIntire got THREE (at his house, at the church, at the DA's office.)

Thus we have "The Psycho Poster Six":

Norman Bates
Marion Crane
Arbogast
Lila Crane
Sam Loomis
Al Chambers

Which brings me to THEIR casting in Van Sant's 1998 remake of Psycho:

Norman Bates Vince Vaughn
Marion Crane Anne Heche
Arbogast William H. Macy
Lila Crane Julianne Moore
Sam Loomis Viggo Mortensen
Al Chambers Philip Baker Hall.

Aha. Will you take a look at that. Fully THREE of the six leads (in order of star power) -- Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, and Philip Baker Hall...had worked just a year before in 1997 in a very major movie called Boogie Nights by a very major new director, Paul Thomas Anderson.

That's HALF of the leads of Van Sant's Psycho cast with "PTA players."

I noticed that in 1998, even. I jokingly called Van Sant's Psycho: "Boogie Psycho."

But wait: the NEXT year, after Van Sant's Psycho, in 1999, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy and Philip Baker Hall would work AGAIN for PTA...in Magnolia.

The casting of "repertory players" by a filmmaker is part of what makes an auteur. For Hitchcock, it was Grant, Stewart, Kelly, Bergman...and Leo G. Carroll (and John Williams.)

For John Ford, it was John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara and Ward Bond and Hank Worden and that Swedish guy and sometimes Andy Devine.

And for PTA in the 90's, it was Julianne Moore, William H. Macy and Philip Baker Hall.
And those three appeared -- rapid fire -- in Boogie Nights followed by Psycho followed by Magnolia.

i was thinking about this because I recently caught up again with PTA's first movie, which actually had only Philip Baker Hall of those three in it -- and he was the movie-length lead of the movie. It was called Hard Eight. Now it turns out that Hard Eight had room for some OTHER PTA repertory players in John C. Reilly(second lead), Philllip Seymour Hoffman(a one-scene cameo) and Melora Waters(a one MINUTE cameo.) Julianne Moore and William H. Macy aren't in ti.

But it was enough seeing/hearing Phillip Baker Hall in Hard Eight and then remembering him in Boogie Nights and Magnolia to realize:

Van Sant's Psycho is - perhaps by ACCIDENT -- more like a PTA movie than a Van Sant movie, and almost as much like a PTA movie as a Hitchcock movie -- because "actors rather control the mise en scene of a movie."

And one realizes -- poor Gus Van Sant. He was hot there for awhile -- indiefilm, Good Will Hunting, Psycho... a Sean Connery movie...but over the years he has rather retreated back to indies and a certain lack of relevance. Certainly not the relevance of PTA in 2022 -- I mean Licorice Pizza got plenty of auteur ink and 3 Oscar nominations.

I suppose these observations remind us that movies "take on a life of their own" generally created by their makers AND their actors. Van Sant, in setting out to recreate a Hitchcock movie, almost accidentally also recreated a Paul Thomas Anderson movie!

Interesting, though: after the "run" of Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia...much of PTA's "90's reperatory player group" dropped away from him. I'm doing this from memory but after Magnolia:

I don't think William H. Macy is in any more PTA movies(Macy never got another Coen Brothers movie after Fargo, either -- his reputation was a bit prickly.)

I don't think Julianne Moore is in any more PTA movies.

I don't think even the redoubtable and arresting Philip Baker Hall is in any more PTA movies.

CONT