The filmmaker, Sacha Gervasi, who made his name chronicling the career of little known heavy metal band Anvil in the brilliant documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil! is reportedly in talks to direct the long gestating project Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho. The title suggests exactly what the film will be about, the legendary master of suspense taking on Robert Bloch’s famed pulpy novel and research he did for the project and the production of the film.
Having not read the book by Stephen Rebello, on which the film is based, I assume it will be a factual drama. The previous incarnation of the project had Glee and Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy on the project with Anthony Hopkins attached to star as Hitchcock. As well as Helen Mirren rumoured for the part of Hitchcock’s wife. Hopkins talked about Murphy’s vision for the tone of the project which sounds great:
It starts off in a Wisconsin field with the man Gein—the man who killed his own brother and kept his mother’s body in the closet—it starts off these two brothers digging in the soil around this place on the farm, and one says to the Geins guy, ‘You’re just a mommy’s boy.’ And suddenly this shovel hits him on the back of the head, BANG, and kills him. The camera pans to Hitchcock standing there in the middle of the field having a cup of tea, ‘Good evening. I hope you didn’t miss that shot. Without that we wouldn’t have a film.’ And that’s how it starts.
Those of you who are not down on your Psycho mythology should know that serial killer Ed Gein was the main source of inspiration for Norman Bates, and has served as the prototype for many serial killers in other horror movie. The true story referred to at the start of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is most likely to be the story of Gein’s killings.
It is little known as whether this will appear in the movie after it has been through many drafts, most recently one of the Black Swan scribes, John McLaughlin, had a go at retooling the screenplay. It will be interesting to see if Gervasi brings the project into fruition and how a documentarian who tackle a subject like this. I love Hitchcock’s Psycho and would like to see more on the process behind it. We’ll keep you covered on any further details of this project.
