Hollywood Reporter (2012) - Why the Psycho Shower Scene Looks Totally Different in Hitchcock
Details
- magazine article: Why the Psycho Shower Scene Looks Totally Different in Hitchcock
- author(s): Matthew Belloni
- journal: Hollywood Reporter (07/Dec/2012)
- issue: volume 418, page 98
- journal ISSN: 0018-3660
- publisher: BPI Communications
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, Janet Leigh, Hitchcock (2012), Psycho (1960), Scarlett Johansson, Universal Studios
Links
Article
Why the Psycho Shower Scene Looks Totally Different in Hitchcock
How do you make a movie about the making of Psycho when you don't own any rights to Psycho? With a lawyer's eye for detail, it turns out. Tom Pollock began his career as a successful entertainment attorney before running Universal Pictures and becoming a producer. So when his former studio, which distributes the five Alfred Hitchcock films controlled by the director's estate, declined to grant permission for Hitchcock to use footage, he knew how to fashion a workaround. Consulting with L.A. attorney Donald Gordon, an expert in reviewing films on behalf of insurance companies that issue "errors and omissions" policies, Pollock instructed that rewrites omit footage from the 1960 film or any direct re‑creations of scenes or images. Fleeting pieces of Psycho probably could have been defended as "fair use," which allows snippets of copyrighted work to be used in other works in certain circumstances, but the filmmakers chose the safe ground. For instance, a creepy house seen in the background as Hitchcock walks around the Universal lot isn't the Bates Motel ‑ it just looks like it. And when shooting the key scene about the filming of the shower sequence, the filmmakers were careful to avoid copying the look of the original. "You don't see it the way it is in the movie," says Pollock. "There's a shot of Scarlett Johansson looking like Janet Leigh ‑ that's the closest we come, and it lasts for one second." To complement D...
