Barbara Harris - quotes
Quotations relating to actress Barbara Harris...
I thought it was fantastic when I saw it. It was just so great. And Barbara did it great, you know. She was cute in the movie. She was a very talented girl. I leaned to Hitch after that. I said, "You know what, Hitch? You should go up at the top of the stairs. Barbara should look at the diamond. You should pan over on the stairway, and you should start down the stairway. Not Barbara. You. And you should wink in the lights." He thought about it for a long time, maybe 15 minutes. And then he said, "No." Had the world known that was going to be his last piece of film, it would've been so fantastic.
— Bruce Dern (2001)
source: Plotting Family Plot
Casting
While I was in Vienna, I was shooting a movie called ''Crime and Passion'' for Ivan Passer with Omar Sharif. And I was offered two pictures. One was the W.C. Fields biographical film and Hitchcock's film. And, of course, there was no choice. You know, working with Hitchcock was going to be the thrill of a lifetime. But I wanted the other part. I wanted the Barbara Harris part. I wanted to be, you know, the kind of clairvoyant who really wasn't all so clairvoyant. And I imagined her, and I thought she could have a Southern accent and kind of a low blouse. I had this whole idea of what she should be like, and I thought it would be very funny. So I passed that along, and Mr. Hitchcock wouldn't hear of it. So I was very thrilled. I came back to town to do ''Family Plot''.
— Karen Black (2001)
source: Plotting Family Plot
Film Production
There's some shots with Roy in the picture. Some of the longer shots in San Francisco, actually, after that church sequence, when they're dragging the body out to the car. That's all Roy. I think I worked about six weeks on it, out of a ten-week shoot. It was quite an experience because, basically, you went to work at 9:00 in the morning and you went home at 5:00, like you were working at a bank.Hitch loved Barbara Harris. He just loved her and would tell all these wonderful stories with her, you know. I would sit around and hear all these wonderful stories. Never heard him tell the same story twice. The nice thing was that he understood the parent-child relationship, director to actor. I also, again, was a novice. I had very little film experience.
— William Devane (2001)
source: Plotting Family Plot
Dern describes the runaway car scene...
He said, "Bruce,you know what would make this scene work?" And I didn't know. So, he had to explain it to me. He said, "Well, what I do is I do close-ups of you and Barbara, "and I do the car's point of view of the road. And I never show you the car. I show you the car when the oil's coming out of the brake thing, and then I let the car go. And I just cut to you and the car's point of view of the road. That way, the audience thinks they're you and are going through the trip." He does that on all his movies. I mean, that's the way to keep suspense. I didn't know that. I didn't know that's why it worked in a movie.Then at the end, we have the car crash. And the first thing you see is the car is upside down, and here's Barbara's head peeking out of the top. And then she's going to try to get out of the car. She starts climbing out, and her foot is on my face, 'cause the car is upside down like that. Well, that's just, you know... Hitchcock said, "Women always walk on men. They walk all over 'em." So, why not, you know?Then I come underneath the car with my head out that way, and he said, "You be a worm, and she'll be a bird." Well, that's inventive.
— Bruce Dern (2001)
source: Plotting Family Plot
