Behind Every Great Man is a Great Woman: A Review of the Movie "Hitchcock"

The year 2012 was not kind to the legacy of Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock.  Last year saw the release of not one, but two biographical films which both paint the most famous director of all time in less than flattering colors.  The Girl, a made-for-TV movie originally shown on HBO and written by Gwyneth Hughes, depicts Hitch as a sadist, a sexual predator (of the harassment vein, not as an all-out rapist, but still not exactly an admirable quality), and as a more or less villainous figure.

Hitchcock, released to theaters and written by John J. McLaughlin, has more sympathy for its subject but will still tarnish his reputation as it depicts Hitch as the public figure, but his wife and sometime collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) as the true genius behind the scenes.  The film is based on Stephen Rebello's non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, a book I've read, but so long ago that I don't remember much about it.  For example, I don't recall if Rebello depicted Hitchcock as amarous, paranoid, or coldly insensitive as he is sometimes presented here.  I'm 99% sure, however, that the idea that Hitchcock often imagined (or possibly even hallucinated?) confiding in Ed Gein -- the real-life serial killer who inspired the invention of Psycho's Norman Bates -- is a complete invention on the part of screenwriter John McLaughlin.

Despite the title of the source material, this movie is as much about Alma as it is about Hitch.  The movie more or less equally divides its attention among three distinct but closely related storylines.  The first is Mr. Hitchcock's attempts to make Psycho, a narrative that begins at the premiere of his previous film (North by Northwest), continues along every stage of development, production, and marketing the movie, and ends at the premiere of Psycho itself.  The second storyline involves Hitch's sometimes rocky relationship with Alma, and the third involves Alma's relationship with the writer Whitfield "Wit" Cook (played by Danny Huston with a sort of sleazy charm), whose friendship with Alma leads to a professional collaboration, and also threatens to become an affair.

All three storylines are entertaining, both in their content and presentation.  I've never heard of screenwriter McLaughlin before this film, but here he definitely earns my respect.

Still, one thing does bother me . . . 

The story is set in motion when Whitfield asks Alma to try to convince Hitch to use one of Wit's own books as the basis of Hitch's next film.  Even before Hitch begins to suspect Wit of having an affair with his wife, the great director clearly has no respect for Wit as a writer, so he begins a search for a more worthy inspiration, and settles on Robert Bloch's novel Psycho.  Literally every single person Hitch knows -- including Alma -- opposes his choice, but fortunately for both his own career and for the history of film, Hitch stands firm.

It should be noted that, until the movie is almost over, Hitch's stubborn determination to make Psycho in the first place is the last time that Hitchcock will depict Mr. Hitchcock as a man of independent inspiration, and Alma's opinion that the book isn't worth his time is the very last time she will be depicted as being wrong about anything in any way.  In all other regards, Alma is depicted as the true genius behind the scenes, including coming up with the idea to kill off the leading lady early in the film, re-writing the entire script, directing the film herself for a couple of days when Hitchcock falls ill, and even being the one to insist on Bernard Herrmann's iconic "eek eek eek!" music score when Hitch argues that there shouldn't be music in the shower scene at all.  Indeed, Hitchcock seems to argue that not just some, but all of the reasons why Psycho is an effective movie is because of Alma, not because of Alfred.  "I'm useless without you," Hitchcock explicitly says to his wife at one point, as if screenwriter McLaughlin was afraid we might have somehow missed the point that this movie has been making almost since the film began.

I don't remember Mr. Rebello's book well enough to tell you whether all of this is invention on McLaughlin's part, or based on the facts as presented by Mr. Rebello, but I can observe the sum total of all of this is that, in McLaughlin's attempts to emphasize how important Alma was to Hitchcock, he goes too far, and ends up completely robbing Hitch himself of anything resembling artistic inspiration or independent thought -- and I feel that this message, whether it's intended or not, is a gross injustice toward the Master of Suspense.

As a sort of consolation prize, the final act does depict Alfred Hitchcock as a master of marketing, as Paramount Pictures more or less sets out to sabotage Psycho's success, and Hitchcock responds with a series of brilliant gimmicks and ideas to turn the extremely under-marketed film into the biggest box office success of his career.

Now for the bottom line:  Yes, the movie's message made me uneasy.  But the thing is, the movie also happens to be very entertaining.  Even if the script robs Hitchcock of his artistic genius, it retains for him his brilliantly dry wit -- and, of course, makes Alma his equally clever peer in adroit banter.  And the cast is fun, made up of a lot of talented character actors.  True, Jessica Biel may be blandly miscast as Vera Miles, but Anthony Hopkins is simply brilliant as Alfred Hitchcock, Kurtwood Smith and Michael Stuhlbarg are highly amusing in small but key supporting roles, and James D'Arcy is so perfect as Anthony Perkins that at first I thought it was footage of the real Perkins spliced in, Forrest Gump style.  (And as for enjoying the cast, see if you can identify the grown-up 80s child star in a small but important cameo).  All in all I'd have to say that despite my disapproval of the film's message regarding its main character, Hitchcock is a winning film, definitely worth your time.

Broadway review: Lucky Guy

You may not recognize the name "Nora Ephron," but you're probably familiar with her work.  She's the writer, and sometimes director, of some great modern classics -- Julie & Julia, You've got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry met Sally, if you enjoyed these or many other films, you like them at least partially because of the combination of heart and humor that has become the Nora Ephron trademark.

Lucky Guy, the new, and unfortunately final, play from the recently deceased Ephron, forgoes her usual romantic comedy format for a subject even closer to her heart:  journalism, the world where Ephron got her start.  Specifically, Lucky Guy tells the story of real-life journalist Mike McAlary, whose meteoric rise from an unknown sportswriter in an oft-overlooked branch office for the New York Daily News, to becoming the paper's star reporter, took place during the 1980s, a decade which Lucky Guy convincingly portrays as an NYC news journalist's dream come true.

Lucky Guy goes to great lengths to make McAlary seem larger than life, beginning with a scene in which several of McAlary's colleagues talk about him as if he was a legendary figure, and continuing with many other scenes that make it seem as if the entire Daily News, and the lives of all the other reporters, revolved around the ups and downs of McAlary's career.  Understand that I don't mean this as a complaint; such tactics are pretty much par for the course for biographical films and plays.

What I would complain about, however, is the manner in which Ephron goes about this tactic.  The vast majority of lines in the play are exposition, as the supporting characters take turns narrating McAlary's life, while actual dialogue scenes take a backseat.  This manner of presentation didn't exactly interfere with my ability to enjoy the play, but it did constantly seem like a sort of odd choice, as if I was watching something that was only one part stage play and two parts story-time.

Lucky Guy owes much of its box office success to the star power of Tom Hanks, who stars in the lead role, in his Broadway debut.  I won't go so far as to say that I can't imagine anyone else in the role, but I would observe that the part plays to Hanks's strength of easily switching back and forth between comedy and drama -- an admirable ability that made him such a great fit with Ephron in Sleepless in Seattle and You've got Mail.

The supporting cast is mostly made up of a who's who of semi-famous character actors from TV, although I almost wonder why, as the supporting characters -- some based on real people, some not -- are, as depicted here, mostly interchangable.  Ya got Richard Masur from One Day at a Time, Christopher McDonald from Family Law, Peter Scolari from Bosom Buddies and Newhart, Maura Tierney from NewsRadio and ER, Courtney B. Vance from Law and Order:  Criminal Intent, Michael Gaston from Jericho, and, the one that excited me the most, Peter Gerety, from one of my favorite shows of all time, Homicide:  Life on the Street.

All of these actors do a good job, bringing more talent to the roles than is really required, as most of what they do is simply explain to the audience what a great/ terrible/ committed guy McAlary was; in fact, aside from Hanks in the central role, McDonald is the only one who really gets to shine, as the slick agent/ attorney/ con artist Eddie Hayes.  Tierney is especially wasted as McAlary's wife, in a role that requires her to complain that her husband is more devoted to his career than to his marriage, to stand by him when he needs her, to bring beers out to the guys when they visit at the McAlary house, etc.  It's odd that, in a play written by a woman, the largest female role is also the most disposable, cliche-ridden, cardboard character, while the other female characters seem able to inhabit McAlary's world only by becoming "one of the guys."

Yet despite these flaws, I would still describe Lucky Guy as a pretty good play.  Some of the credit for this goes to the cast:  Hanks is very good in the lead, McDonald is a lot of fun as Eddie Hayes, and the rest of the cast, even if they do little more than tell stories and occasionally react to McAlary's antics, do their jobs well and with charm.  The real credit for the play's success, however, goes to Nora Ephron herself.  Yes, there is too much exposition and, arguably, not enough development of the supporting characters.  But what saves this play from its imperfections, and ultimately makes it highly entertaining, is Ephron's wit.  Put simply, there are a lot of really good one-liners here -- more so, I dare say, than in even some of Ephron's better movies.  I mean real laugh-out-loud lines.  (The biggest laugh, however, goes to Courtney B. Vance's body language, as his character attempts to explain to the audience the difference between the "rich" and the "poor" of New York City.)

It all comes down to this:  I rarely get a chance to see a Broadway show, so when I go, I have high expectations.  Lucky Guy may not be perfect, but it kept me entertained, made me think, and, most importantly, made me feel that my money was well spent.

Not Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

For those who like to think about "what if," here's a list of movies and other projects that almost got made.  And uh . . . I guess that's all the introduction this blog entry needs.

1.  Bartholomew vs. Neff:  In 1993, John Hughes wrote this comedy about two next door neighbors who develop an escalating rivalry of practical jokes on each other.  He wrote one of the roles specifically for his best friend and favorite actor, John Candy.  To the surprise of the few people who knew about the project, Hughes, through his production company, signed Sylvester Stallone, of all people, to play the other neighbor.

At the time, Stallone was trying hard to break into comedy; his two most recent films had been Oscar and Stop!  Or my Mom Will Shoot, both of which bombed at the box office.  Stallone somehow got ahold of a copy of the script, and was intrigued by the idea that no matter how vicious things got between the two neighbors, they both remained sympathetic characters.  Candy, Hughes, and Stallone all signed on board, but Candy's death put a kibosh on the project.  According to the Hollywood rumor mill, Stallone pitched to Hughes the idea of making the movie with Danny DeVito in Candy's role, but Hughes, out of respect for his deceased friend, outright refused to proceed without Candy.  Stallone returned to the action genre instead of pursuing another comedy project.

2.  Beverly Hills Cop Die Hard:  This unimaginatively titled crossover idea was once floated about as the third entry in both franchises.  The idea behind this buddy movie was to team Bruce Willis's John McClane and Eddie Murphy's Axle Foley against terrorists in Beverly Hills.  20th Century Fox hired a writer, and an entire script was written (a page of which was later leaked to the public) but the project never went any further than that when both Fox (which owned the Die Hard franchise) and Paramount (Beverly Hills Cop) balked at the idea of a single movie having to shoulder a budget that would include the salary demands of Murphy and Willis, both of whom, at the time, were popular enough with audiences to demand record-breaking salaries.

As it turned out, Murphy's negotiating power plummetted less than a year after this decision was made, as the once box office phenom proceeded to make a series of box office flops, but by then (and possibly because of Murphy's fall from grace) Fox had already lost interest in the crossover idea, and instead hired Jonathan Hensleigh to re-write his script Simon Says as a vehicle for the Die Hard franchise.  The result was Die Hard With a Vengeance.  Incidentally, Hensleigh had written Simon Says with original characters, but his plan was to sell it to Warner Bros. as the next Lethal Weapon film; he took it to Fox only after Warners rejected the idea.  So this is really the story of two almost-made movies in one.

3.  The Man who Killed Don Quixote:  In 2000, Terry Gilliam started production on The Man who Killed Don Quixote, a typically Gilliamesque combination of comedy, fantasy, and science fiction starring Johnny Depp as a modern-day man transported back in time, where he meets literary character Don Quixote.  Depp and Gilliam ran into so many obstacles making the movie that Gilliam helped make a documentary about their troubles, Lost in LaMancha, which was released in 2002.  As recently as 2010, Depp and Gilliam were still trying to get the movie made, but various complications -- including Depp's own busy schedule and funding difficulties -- have so far prevented further development.

4.  The Odd Couple:  In the 80s and 90s, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams were both huge box office draws when it came to comedy, but despite their close friendship, and their collaborations with the annual "Comic Relief" fundraisers, they had yet to make a movie together.  So, considering their individual track records, everyone involved expected their first cinematic collaboration, Fathers' Day, to be a big financial success.  In anticipation of said success, Warner Bros. signed Crystal and Williams to star in a remake of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, but to everyone's surprise, Fathers' Day flopped at the box office, and Warners quickly abandoned The Odd Couple, preferring to pretend that the Fathers' Day embarrassment had never happened.

5.  Unmade Angel/ Buffy crossover:  Joss Whedon has been known to intentionally throw his fans off guard by leaking false information onto the Internet, so take this one with a grain of salt.  But back in 2001, the WB cancelled Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Whedon and his writers, at the time, had every reason to believe that Buffy's adventures were over.  It didn't take long for their plan to kill Buffy off in the series finale to leak onto the 'net, and another, now mostly forgotten, leak appeared shortly after:  that an upcoming episode of the Buffy spin-off Angel would focus on some of the Buffy supporting characters wandering around L.A. in an attempt to find Angel and tell him of his beloved's demise.  Fans of the series know that this episode was never made, but whether this is because the idea was leaked to the public, or because of UPN's decision to immediately resurrect the Buffy series, or some other reason entirely (including the possibility that this was just Internet hogwash to begin with), we'll never know.

6.  Unmade Star Trek episodes and movies:  Any franchise that has been around for nearly half a century is bound to have a few unmade projects in its history.  After the success of Star Wars, Paramount Pictures decided to make a Star Trek movie, and arranged for a  now legendary brain-storming session involving nearly every great science fiction writer alive at the time.  Harlan Ellison and Stephen King tell a comical but apparently true tale of some of the rejected story ideas for Star Trek:  The Motion Picture in King's non-fiction book Danse Macabre, while David Hughes and Philip Kaufman give a more detailed, serious account of the same story in Hughes's book The Greatest Sci-fi Movies Never Made.  Time travel adventures to prehistoric Earth, ancient Greece, the American Revolutionary War, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor were at one time or another, considered and rejected for various reasons.  To me, every one of these sounds intriguing.

But the one almost-made Star Trek idea I would have most liked to see stems not from that legendary brain-storming meeting, but rather from another one that took place decades later.  The year 1996 marked the thirty-year anniversary of Star Trek, and Paramount wanted to do something special to celebrate.  The writing staff for Star Trek spin-off Deep Space Nine got together, and discovered that they all shared "A Piece of the Action" as one of their favorite episodes of the original Star Trek.  In "A Piece of the Action," the crew of the Enterprise discovers a planet whose entire culture is based on a book accidentally left behind by a previous Earth ship, Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, and to their surprise, everybody on the planet now acts, talks, and thinks like a character from an old-fashioned Hollywood gangster movie.

In the proposed DS9 sequel to that classic episode, the crew of the Defiant (the starship sometimes featured on DS9) visits the same planet and discovers that the too-suggestible inhabitants have again based their entire culture on the previous visit -- and everyone is now walking around in 23rd century Starfleet uniforms and acting like characters from the original Star Trek!

Anyway, the story goes that the writers of DS9 were discussing whether to go with this story idea or to re-visit a different classic Trek story instead, when they just happened to bump into Charlie Brill, the actor who had played a human/ Klingon spy in the fan favorite episode "The Trouble With Tribbles."  One discussion led to another, and the next thing we know, the DS9 tribute to classic Trek ends up focusing on the tribble episode instead of the gangster episode.

Don't take that as a complaint, mind you.  I loved the DS9/classic Trek crossover that resulted, and anyone who enjoys either incarnation of Star Trek would probably tell you that "Trials and Tribble-ations" is a delight.  But the other one sounds really interesting too.

So anyway, there you go.  A history of just some of the Hollywood projects that might have been had fate, in its various forms, not intervened.