Time To Shoot

Inside Psycho

Wondery

Society & Culture, Tv & Film, Vera Miles, Norman Bates, Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Documentary, Film History

4.5 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What do you do when your studio hates your next picture? If you’re Alfred Hitchcock, you put up your own money and risk everything on it. Psycho was a movie everybody in town said couldn’t get made - it would be the movie that would ruin Hitchcock’s career, they said. Or would it?

Hitchcock casts his Norman Bates and his “perfectly ordinary” Marion Crane. Hear how the voice of Norman’s mother evolves from a series of hilarious celebrity prank calls, how Hitch navigates the performance of one actor he called “the stiff.” Then, he swears the cast and crew to secrecy, and production begins on the biggest bet of Hitchcock’s career.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Prime members, you can listen to Inside Psycho, add free on Amazon music.
0:05.0	Download the app today.
0:07.0	From Wondry, I'm Mark Ramsey, and this is part three of Inside Psycho. Oh, Spring, 1959,
0:35.0	1959, Beverly Hills.
0:40.0	Why Frank Freeman, the head of Paramount, is sitting poolside in a towel and slippers.
0:47.0	His teeth are gripping his cigar with such force he's almost biting off his tongue. You could say he's steamed, you could also say,
0:57.0	that's an understatement. A butler brings him a phone. It's Barney Balaban, Paramount's corporate president.
1:04.7	Barney, I know, don't, but don't yell at me Barney, I can, I can hear you.
1:17.8	Yes, Hitchcock is out of his mind yes I've read it I know it is Barney I know look Barney we both love hitch nobody's been better to Hitch than Paramount, but this is too much. This is grotesque.
1:28.7	Sweetie, sweetie you're flashing me when you swim by. Please keep the water to yourself.
1:32.9	I'm on a very important call here.
1:35.0	Barney, Barney, I will explain it to him.
1:38.1	This psycho thing is garbage.
1:40.6	None of the paramount prestige. I mean nudity, violence, a guy dressed as a dame.
1:46.0	And Barney, there's a scene with a toilet, a toilet! This is never going to pass the production code and I am now now president of the NPAA, which means I'm in charge of the fucking code.
1:56.0	It is fixed immediately. I don't care what you gotta do. You gotta talk about it.
2:00.0	But Hitchcock had made up his mind.
2:03.0	And his agent, Lou Wasserman, had already secured the rights.
2:08.0	But what to do about Paramount?
2:11.0	Wasserman had an idea, and it would go down as one of the greatest business deals in
2:16.3	Hollywood history.
2:20.7	So here's the deal guys. That's Wasserman in a smoke-filled room at Paramount.
	...

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