Psycho
Short description
A secretary steals a large sum of money from her employer and leaves town, hoping to join her boyfriend and start a new life with the cash. Exhausted on the road, she stops for the night at a remote motel run by a young man named Norman Bates, who lives under the shadow of his overbearing mother. Her stay there proves fatal, and when she fails to surface, her sister and a private investigator begin looking for her, drawing them toward the strange bond between Norman and his mother. The film is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller of the same name.
Gus Van Sant directed the 1998 version, working from Joseph Stefano's screenplay. It was the fifth of the eighteen films he has directed, coming after Good Will Hunting and before Finding Forrester. Vince Vaughn plays Norman Bates, with Anne Heche as Marion Crane, Julianne Moore as her sister Lila, Viggo Mortensen as Sam Loomis, and William H. Macy as the investigator Arbogast. Brian Grazer and Van Sant produced for Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, with a credited cast of twenty-two and a crew of 122.
The production carried a budget of 60 million dollars and returned roughly 37 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 4.6 out of 10 from about 53,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.1 out of 10 from over a thousand votes. A critics' rating of 5.7 out of 10 from seventy-seven reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Nicole Kidman and Drew Barrymore were considered for the role of Marion. Kidman was busy with other projects, and Barrymore was deemed too young for the part.
- The film is based on Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho" (1959).
- In the shower scene, the blood on the tile, the knife, and Marion's wounds were added digitally during editing.
- In the episode where the character played by Anne Heche approaches the car dealership where she is to exchange her car for another, she passes by a bus stop with a poster for the film "Six Days, Seven Nights" (1998), in which Heche starred with Harrison Ford.
- Robert Forster starred in a television version of Hitchcock's famous film "Rear Window" that same year.
- Gus Van Sant appears on screen in the episode where Marion returns to her office after her lunch break. In this scene, Van Sant is talking to someone who looks very much like Hitchcock. Hitchcock himself appeared in the same episode at the time.
- During filming, director Gus Van Sant and the film crew watched a DVD recording of Hitchcock's "Psycho" to do everything the same way as in the original film. When Van Sant noticed errors in that film (a door opening without a key, a bloodstain on the bathroom wall unexpectedly disappearing), he decided to repeat them in the remake.
- The motel sign reads: “completely renovated.”
- Viggo Mortensen starred in another remake of an Alfred Hitchcock film that same year – "A Perfect Murder." In both films, he plays the lover of the main character, both pictures include a bedroom scene with his participation, as well as a crime involving the same amount of $400,000.
- The motel set was built specifically for this film, but it looks exactly like it does in Hitchcock's movie.
- Viggo Mortensen starred in another remake of an Alfred Hitchcock film that same year – "A Perfect Murder." In both films, he plays the lover of the main character, both films feature a bed scene with his participation, and also a crime involving the same amount of $400,000.
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