Yesterday I received my invitation to Hitchcock and I nearly let out a scream of delight. Not that the trailer convinced me a masterpiece awaited me or that I've rushed to read "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho" in preparation but I do tend to get excited for most things Hitchcock. The power of branding! I still remember the day I received the Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection box set (a gift from a generous reader some years ago) which felt like 15 Christmases at once.
Wouldn't it be neat if more Golden Age era directors had the sort of modern profile that The Master of Suspense still enjoys? Wouldn't it be neat if baby cineastes pored over every page of "William Wyler and the Making of Jezebel" (not a real book) or if the film version of "Billy Wilder and the Making of Some Like It Hot" (not a real book) retitled simply Wilder (not a real film) was a sudden hot Oscar buzz prospect for 2013 or if you could say "George Cukor" to anyone and they wouldn't think you were referring to a coworker or neighbor they didn't know. Wouldn't it be great if "King Vidor" didn't sound more fictional to people than Princess Mia Thermopolis of Genova?
But I digress.
My mind suddenly jolted to Hitchcock and his immense fame a record six times already this week: when Manuel Muñoz's (author of the Psycho-adjacent novel "What You See in the Dark") wrote up Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte for the blog; when I read Interiors Film Journal's look at the motel room in Psycho (What an interesting choice as I've never much considered it as a space before... just as a violent eruption of glass shard like images if you will, and again when I was ); when Vanity Fair posted those photos of young prankster Mitt Romney and the one of him with the etch-a-sketch totally had me shivering from its Norman Bates like quality only scarier because I can escape Bates' knife if I don't stay in his motel but how to escape Mitt's destructive capabality if he becomes President?; when Beau sent me a text saying "The Girl" (that other Hitchcock making-of bio) sucked; when the invite arrive and; first and foremost when I my friends covered me in seed and pidgeons landed all over me in Puerto Rico's Old San Juan (I'm just back from a week in the sun!) which made me want to watch THE BIRDS again immediately...
me in Old San Juan earlier this week. Amor a Puerto Rico
Well... immediately after a shower. They're so dirty!
P.S. This image doesn't even hint at how many of those birds land on you when you're holding bags of seed. They peck so furiously that your arms have polka dot imprints afterwards but the sound of their begging cooing right in your ears is remarkably endearing/freaky/surreal.
TALK TO ME... Which classic movie director outside of Hitchcock do you most wish had a higher profile these days? How high would you rate your anticipation of "Hitchcock" on the coming soon meter? Have you seen The Girl?
On an off-cinema note, have you ever been to Puerto Rico?