Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is the title of a non-fiction book by Stephen Rebello.

First published in May 1990 by Dembner Books and distributed by W. W. Norton and Company, the book details every aspect of the creation of director Alfred Hitchcock's famous thriller Psycho released to theaters in 1960. From Hitchcock's acquisition of the original novel by Robert Bloch to his work with two different screenwriters, casting, filming, editing, scoring, and promotion, the book takes readers into the day-to-day lives of moviemakers who believed they were making a modestly budgeted, black-and-white shocker that represented a radical departure from the elegant, suspenseful films that had made director Hitchcock's reputation, including Rope, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much and North by Northwest.

The project Hitchcock tackled in part as an experiment to compete with financially successful, low-budget, youth-oriented horror movies went on to astound many by becoming a cultural watershed, an international box-office success, a film classic, and a forerunner of the violent, disorienting films and real-events of the turbulent 'Sixties.

Stephen Rebello researched the film thoroughly through Hitchcock's personal records and archives and he interviewed virtually every surviving cast and crew member. Prior to the book's publication, Rebello's initial research appeared as a 22-page article in the April 1986 issue of Cinefantastique magazine entitled "Psycho: The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece".

Critical reception

On the publication of the hardcover first edition in 1990, critic Richard Schickel called the book "indispensable and marvelously readable" and "one of the best accounts of the making of an individual movie we've ever had." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times declared it a "meticulous history of a single film production." Anthony Quinn in The Sunday Times wrote; "[the book] combines a gossipy retrospective with a serious work of criticism, presenting an articulate guide to Hitchcock's idiosyncratic approach to film-making and the collaborative efforts that underpinned it. The author has conducted interviews with all those involved in the making of Psycho -- its casting, scripting, art design, lighting, editing, selling -- in the course of it, we inch closer to the bizarre, unpredictable quality of its director."

Psycho star Anthony Perkins called the book, "Meticulously researched and irresistible ... Required reading not only for Psycho-philes, but for anyone interested in the backstage world of movie-creation." Reviewer Gary Johnson called it "one of the best books ever written about the making of a movie." Gerald Kaufman of the Sunday Telegraph found it "joyously entertaining."

Entertainment Weekly, referring to Rebello's revealing how Hitchcock arrived at the sound of the knife stabbing the heroine in the shower, opined "the melon tale alone is worth the price of [the book]." Another top critic wrote that, unlike other books about films and filmmakers, it "reads more like a gripping novel than detached intellectualism."

In a January 18, 2010 Newsweek story called "The Mother of All Horror Films," Malcolm Jones called the book "fascinating." Leonard Maltin in his "Movie Crazy" blog of October 29, 2010 called the book "landmark." In 2012, a writer for The Hollywood Reporter declared the book "a masterpiece about a masterpiece."

Publication history

The book has been subsequently published in hardcover and paperback by Marion Boyars Limited in Great Britain and Australia. It has been published in translated international editions in Japan by Byakuya Shobo, France, Germany, and in Italy by Il Castoro.

The 1994 paperback version is ISBN 0-312-20785-9.

St. Martin's Griffin published a trade paperback edition in 1998.

Open Road Media launched the ebook version in 2011.

In 2012 - 2013, the book will be republished in a motion picture tie-in edition in the U.S. and Italy as well as published for the first time in Brazil, Germany, Russia and China.

The book is widely used in university and college courses on film and the work of Hitchcock.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• The Awful Truth
• The Trouble With Alfred
• The Novel
• The Director
• The Deal
• The Screenplays
• Preproduction
• Shooting
• Postproduction
• Publicity
• The Release
• Afterglow and Aftermath
• Cast and Credits
• The Films of Alfred Hitchcock
• A Note On Sources
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

Film adaptation

In 2005, the newspapers Variety and Hollywood Reporter reported that the Arts & Entertainment Network would produce a television film or miniseries based on the book. Subsequently, the book was optioned by major motion picture production companies and attracted the interest of a number of top film directors and actors.

On November 20, 2011 Sacha Gervasi was announced as being in negotiations to direct the dramatic motion picture for The Montecito Picture Company, owned by Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock.

The Fox Searchlight production began filming in April of 2012, co-starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, directed by Gervasi and produced by Alan Barnette and Tom Thayer. Black Swan co-writer John J. McLaughlin wrote the first screenplay drafts; subsequently, Stephen Rebello wrote additional drafts that shifted the focus of the film to the complex personal and professional relationship of Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, during the filming of the life-changing Psycho.

Scarlett Johansson was announced on March 2, 2012 to play the original 1960 film's biggest box-office star, Janet Leigh, along with James D'Arcy as Psycho's lead, Anthony Perkins and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles. On March 21, additional cast members were announced including Toni Collette as the director's trusted assistant, Danny Huston as screenwriter-playwright Whitfield Cook, Michael Stuhlbarg as powerful agent and studio boss Lew Wasserman, Michael Wincott as psychopathic murderer Ed Gein, Ralph Macchio as screenwriter Joseph Stefano and Richard Portnow as legendary Paramount Studios boss Barney Balaban and Wallace Langham as graphic designer Saul Bass.

External links

• Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho at the Internet Movie Database
• Stephen Rebello at the Internet Movie Database