My good friend Brian had a book launch
last week. We have been a members of the
same writers group for years. He is whimsical and poetic. I like to kill people. He writes
about big issues of loss in the vineyards, childless women losing their minds
and making small toys from tree bark. I like to kill people. He is a romantic at heart. I like to kill people. His fiction has never really found a home yet his non
fiction - cookery books and journalism, has been published to great acclaim. I would kill his fiction publisher.
He was having a casual chat to a
publisher about writing a non fiction book about the greatest films of the sixties. They
passed on that, then had a light bulb moment and asked him to do a book about what he thought
was Hitchcock's greatest film. And argue his case.
It hit
the number 1 spot on Kindle and went into print within a month of its E launch.
My relationship with Hitchcock is as
follows. I named my first dog
after Kim Novak. My mum let me get my
ears pierced aged 16, she didn't let me
watch Psycho until I was 18! My first memory of the big 'What If....' was when I watched the Birds and
thought....'MMMM what happened there?'
And have always harboured the thought that crop spraying of the local fields with some weed killer had
put some neurotoxin in the food chain
and made the birds go a bit 'Rambo'.
And I have always wanted to be a
Hitchcock blonde but as I am the type that wears good clothes as if I have
stolen them, that will remain as likely as me
understanding The Life Of Pi.
Digging around I came across a few
quotes that I couldn't let go. You probably know them but they are worth a revisit. So here's a wee homage
to the great director. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock. Film director. Born August 131899, died April 29 1980. He was born in Leytonstone
East London/ Essex. David Beckham is a Leytonstone boy as well. That is jellied eels country, they call everybody 'john' (even women) and say 'innit' at the
end of every sentence.
'If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.' Indeed Bernard McLaverty once said to me and
I use this in workshops; - if you can write it, imagine watching it through a
window where you cannot hear and record what you see. Hitchcock famously hated
children and loved dogs, a man after my own heart. His signature cameo in The Birds is in the first minute
where he walks his own dogs out of the pet store. They are Sealyham terriers called Geoffrey and Stanley. Innit?
Alfred said, among other stuff -
'Revenge is sweet and not fattening.'
His answer to an actor wanting to know what his motivation
was 'your salary.'
'The man who invented bagpipes got the
idea from seeing a man carrying around an indignant asthmatic pig.' I think he
added that the pig sounded better.
'To
me "Psycho" was a big comedy. Had to be.'
'You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope
for is to referee.'
'Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love
scenes like murders.' Does that also work in the crime writing world?
He says about "North by Northwest". 'Our original
title, you know, was "The Man in Lincoln's Nose". Couldn't use it,
though. They also wouldn't let us shoot people on Mount Rushmore. Can't deface
a national monument. And it's a pity, too, because I had a wonderful shot in
mind of Cary Grant hiding in Lincoln's nose and having a sneezing fit.'
Brian, my friend, finally casts his vote as best film to
'The Birds' where birds of all sorts
start behaving like football hooligans.
You can argue about this at dinner parties but here are a few facts of no
consequence whatsoever to boost your argument.
It was advertised by the line ;'Suspense and shock beyond anything you have
seen or imagined!'
The film starts off with Tippi Hedrin and Rod Taylor indulging in some romantic nonsense that makes you wonder why they
had no work to go to. Tippi is also good at that 'running in tight skirt and
stilettos combo' which should be an Olympic event. She also rows in that skirt.
No comment.
This is Tippi preparing for the triathalon.
My favourite bit
is when the school teacher got her eyes pecked out. But that reflects how I
feel about teachers.
In the early
60's Hitchcock was planning to get to work on 'No bail for the judge' but Audrey Hepburn
got pregnant. Then he was doing a
treatment for Winston Grahams novel 'Marnie'
to star Grace Kelly but she wanted to stay being a princess and refused
the film in the end. He had the rights to The Birds' which had appeared as a
short story by Daphne du Maurier in Good Housekeeping magazine in 1952.
The film is
interesting in many ways. The hanging ending of The Birds is an antidote to the
end of Psycho, where a psychiatrist witters on for ages about the whys and the hows.
If you haven't seen it for a while just listen to the way the music doesn't punctuate the action, there is no opening
music at all, just birds screeching and squawking. There are
large
periods of silence when the tension just sits and waits... and waits.... For
over twenty minutes near the end , hardly a word is spoken. Brian has calculated the carnage begins 49
minutes into the film. The school house attack is 70 minutes in. It adds up to
103 minutes of folk getting pecked at.
He makes an interesting point, it
was not normal for Hollywood to harm kids in films. Yet in the
schoolhouse scene all of them are at risk, everybody is equally terrified.
Brian said that Hitchcock was reflecting the fact that war is indiscriminate.
Brian voted
it best because of its sheer tension
which builds for no reason as there is no solution. It's a relentless,
harrowing journey that leads absolutely nowhere.
The bit where
the birds attack the village was voted
by Bravo as the 96th Scariest Movie Moment.
So sit down and
have a wee glass of vino and watch it again. As the other tag line says...'The next scream you hear
could be your own!
Caro GB 8th of March
This
weekend I have been to Göteborg Book Fair, the largest cultural event in
Scandinavia. The Swedish fair was established in 1985, and receives around
100,000 visitors every year.
