So, Just What Is in Store for the ‘Psycho’ Remake?

The remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 black-and-white horror classic “Psycho” has been shrouded in secrecy. Ever since Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment announced in March that Gus Van Sant would direct a modern version in color, film buffs have hungered for details, mostly in vain.

That’s why Jeffrey Kitchen’s screenwriting seminar last Friday night at a West Hollywood hotel was such a treat. Kitchen, a writer and script doctor, had invited Joseph Stefano, who wrote the original “Psycho” script, to speak. But instead of talking solely about the old script, Stefano talked at length about the new one--the version that Universal had recently hired him to polish and update for Van Sant.

The 76-year-old writer--who has written several other films and was a creator of TV’s “The Outer Limits”--revealed that the modern-day “Psycho” (Vince Vaughn will reprise Anthony Perkins’ role as Norman Bates, while Anne Heche will try to match Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane) will have a new sensibility. Below, excerpts of Stefano’s remarks:

How Times Change: Van Sant’s intention was to shoot [the remake] shot for shot and word for word [to match the original]. Then when we met it was clear that some things in the script would have to be changed. [For example], in the original movie there was some sense that being in a hotel room on your lunch hour was morally wrong. I didn’t think that would fly today. And then some minor things, like increasing the amount of money that [Marion Crane] steals [from $40,000 to $400,000]. And not being able to make a phone call for a dime today. Things like that. . . .

I felt that some of the talk of [Norman Bates’] mother--when you hear her calling him “Boy”--I felt you had to be more subtle now. A mother calling her son “Boy” and asking if he has any guts doesn’t work today. . . .

Janet Leigh was a big star who had been in pictures for almost 15 years at the time of “Psycho.” The whole point of casting her was because the audience would come unglued by the fact that Janet Leigh was supposedly dead 25 minutes into the movie. That’s something that I don’t think will work today. I don’t think that anybody will go to the movies today and be shocked that somebody gets killed early in the movie. But in those days, the whole star system was part of our mentality and our sensibility. You just didn’t go to see a movie starring Janet Leigh and [expect her to] get killed. Whether people will be surprised that Anne Heche is killed, I kind of doubt.

But a lot of young people will be seeing it for the first time--”Psycho” to them is a funny bit [he pantomimes a stabbing motion, evoking the film’s famous shower scene] that is used in comics sometimes. So it may be a shock to them.

How Salaries Change: Universal owns the script. They hired me to do a polish and an update. For a polish I’m getting a lot more than I got for the original screenplay.

Casting: I’ve made Sam [Crane’s boyfriend, played in the original by John Gavin and in the remake by Viggo Mortensen] a little different in the new version--a little more open. A little more, frankly, sexual. I think he’s a little more interesting this time around. We’ll see.

He was the only character in the [original] movie that I wasn’t really terribly pleased with. I felt he was almost being a little flippant at times. Putting myself in his place, if you told me that your sister has disappeared and I loved her, I would stop being flippant damn soon. Maybe John Gavin had something to do with that tone. That happens sometimes. But it was in the script, or he wouldn’t have been able to do it.

I think the casting will also have a big impact. Viggo Mortensen as Sam is going to be a very different ballgame than Gavin. And I think Anne Heche will have probably a little more of the woman who decides to steal the money [in her] than Janet had.

Playing on the Nerves: But not that much has changed. The suspense that the movie generated--Why was she in this room talking to this man? And why was this man’s mother so nasty to him, not allowing him to bring a woman in the house?--to me, I think, that still plays on the same nerves today. I don’t think there’s anybody today who won’t recognize it. . . .

My whole point was to make “Psycho” be about a young woman who is in a desperate situation. She wants to marry her boyfriend, who needs money, and so in a moment of madness, she steals $40,000 and goes to give it to him--without even thinking. In the book [by Robert Bloch, from which the script was adapted], you just meet her--she comes into the hotel, you don’t have any idea who she is and she gets murdered. I felt that was like a random killing and that it wouldn’t really mean very much to the audience. The book began with Norman and his mother talking. There’s no way you could have filmed that. Norman Bates in the book is in his 40s, an alcoholic. And he’s kind of creepy. My feeling was that there would be no way I could get your loyalty to come to this type of character.

So I suggested to Hitchcock that we make it a movie about this young woman. And then at a certain point, we would deprive you of her and then ask you to latch on to this kind of sympathetic young man who covers up for his mother’s murders.

My feeling about “Psycho” was I had two jobs. One was to make you love and mourn a wonderful young woman. The other was to make you feel sympathy and sorrow and friendship for the person who was the killer. I don’t think audiences ever had any trouble doing that. It was Janet Leigh’s movie and then it was Tony Perkins’ movie.

The Director: I think [Van Sant] is the right person to [remake] it. The nightmare would be if some other directors I could name had done it who had been doing it, as a matter of fact, for most of their careers. That would worry me. Gus is oddly like Hitchcock just in his way: kind of reserved and yet friendly and forthcoming. There’s a calm that Hitchcock had, too. He didn’t seem to have a temperature that went up.

The Naysayers: I met somebody the other night at a screening who said he’d be boycotting the [remake]. [There are people out there] who feel that they’re the owners of “Psycho” and they weren’t asked about this. There was no big poll taken asking, “Would you like us to remake ‘Psycho’?” And that’s taking it away from them. I’m sympathetic to that point of view. “Psycho” is history. It’s recurrent history in that it has remained vivid all through these years. I usually just say that I hope that they’ll see it.