Joseph Stefano - quotes
Quotations relating to writer Joseph Stefano.
Film Pre-Production
We were looking for a writer and someone suggested James Cavanagh, who wrote some of the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television shows. I don't remember the meetings they had, but when we got the treatment, we read it, and it was very dull. If you can imagine a dull script written from the book "Psycho". It just didn't have anything. So then it was decided, we need another writer. "Who are we going to get?" And then names were suggested. And Hitch thought a lot of Ned Brown, and Ned suggested Joseph Stefano.
— Peggy Robertson (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV), James Cavanagh, Joseph Stefano, Ned Brown, Psycho (1960), pre-production, and screenplay
My involvement with "Psycho" began through my agent, Ned Brown, who was determined that I should work with Hitchcock. Hitchcock had seen the two things I had done prior to that, and wasn't terribly impressed with them, and also didn't care too much to work with young, new writers. So Ned persisted and Mr. Hitchcock gave in.When I met Mr. Hitchcock at my first meeting, I had to convince him that I could write this movie. I felt the best way to do it would be to simultaneously interest him in how I saw it being done and solve the main problem of the material, which was a boy with a dead mother, and we weren't supposed to know she was dead.So I conceived of the story being about Marion, a lovely young lady, who's having a disastrous affair with a man who can't marry her. She's a rather moral girl. She wants to get married. She says, "We can't meet in hotel rooms anymore. We're not gonna do this." He kind of laughs it off, doesn't really believe her. This only heightens her frustration. When she gets back to the office, she suddenly has a large sum of cash in her hand, and, in a moment of madness, decides to steal it.So she steals it and is going to go to her boyfriend and give it to him, which in itself is a preposterous notion: that he would accept it. She drives and gets lost in a rainstorm... and then finds the motel and goes into the motel... and talks to the young man who runs the motel... and begins to realize that he's in a trap... and she has just put herself in a trap... and that she's got to get out of it.She decides to return the money, and she feels good about this. She takes a very cleansing shower, and someone comes in and murders her. At that moment, Hitch said we could get a star to play that part, and I knew I had the job. He liked that whole introduction to the movie. He liked the fact that it was going to be about her. Then we were suddenly going to do this awful thing to you, say, "No, no, no. It's not about her. It's about him."
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Ned Brown, Psycho (1960), pre-production, and screenplay
My first meeting with Hitchcock took place at his offices at Paramount Studios. Psycho was a Paramount picture. He was, as always — as I would soon be learning — immaculately dressed: dark suit, white shirt, beautiful tie. Sat behind his desk, rarely moved away from his desk, and very... warm. I found coming from him a kind of warmth... that was not that common amongst directors in those days, nor is it today. But it was a wonderful, wonderful kind of rapport. And his interests were charming. He asked me things about myself. I told him that I was in analysis, and that, as a matter of fact, I had just come from a session. He was very curious about that, but always in a very polite way. But he truly wanted to know what was going on. I thought he probably felt there was more to writing a movie than simply talking about the movie, and I was right.The next day, after the first meeting, we began talking about this movie that we were going to make called Psycho. We never mentioned the book again, and we never referred to the book again. There was never any talk about dialogue or motivation. The thing that was a little bit scary at that point in my life about the way Hitchcock worked, was that he would not discuss motivations and characters and why people were doing it. He felt that was my job. If I asked him any question like that, he would say, "That's up to you, Joseph." I realized early on that he had faith in the writer or he did not have faith. And if he didn't, I don't think you'd be working with him.
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
He did an interesting thing, though, which kind of amused me and touched me. After we had been talking daily for about a week and a half, he said that he and his wife were taking a cruise. He said, "While I'm gone, why don't you write that first scene in the hotel room?" I said, "Fine. I'll do that." I wrote it, and when he came back we resumed our meetings and I gave him the scene. The next morning he said to me, "Alma loved it." I was very touched. Obviously, he liked it too, but it was lovely of him to tell me how his wife felt about it. That was a little easier for him to do. He was not a sentimental man. Or he was, but would not show it. Let's put it that way.
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
[Alma Reville] used to come to the office quite often when we were working on it. One day, it was a very, very terrifying experience... when we were working on Psycho. We were talking about Norman wrapping the body in the shower curtain... and ways to do it without showing the dead body. Hitch got up and came around his desk, and I was sitting on the sofa. And he began to act out. He said, "The camera line is here. Norman is doing this, and he drags her out. Now he very neatly folds the curtain over her." As he was doing this, the door opened... and Alma came in. But it was such a shock. Nobody but Alma would ever open that door and come in, without a phone call or something. At the moment, we were so involved in this scene, to have the door burst open and somebody come in was quite shocking.
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
In my very first meeting with Hitchcock, he said, "This is going to be a black-and-white movie, and it's going to cost under a million dollars." I was flabbergasted because I had never conceived of Hitchcock, at that point in his life, making a movie for less than a million dollars.He mentioned another company that was making very low-budget movies, which were not terribly good, and were doing very well at the box office. His feeling was: "How would it be... if somebody good did one of these low-budget movies?"
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (1960), and pre-production
In the book, Norman Bates is actually a middle-aged man, a reprobate, drinks, overweight, wears big, thick glasses, peeps through holes. I thought he was incredibly unsympathetic. I didn't like him. So when Marion gets killed, I am then expected to switch my empathy toward this man. I couldn't do it with the character as he was written. I perceived a young man, vulnerable, good looking, kind of sad, makes you feel sorry for him. Hitchcock said, "What would you think of Tony Perkins?" Of course, that was practically what I had described.Once I had written the first draft — which, incidentally, is the one that he shot — he told me that Anthony Perkins was available to play Norman Bates. I told him that was sensational, and that was what was going to happen. He mentioned Janet Leigh for the star part... because he felt, among other things, that no one would be able to accept that we had killed her this early in the movie.
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Psycho (1960), pre-production, and screenplay
Film Post-Production
Stefano describing the end of the film...
My script ended where he says, "Why, I wouldn't harm a fly." Where the mother, through him, says, "I wouldn't harm a fly." And that was it. That was the end of the movie for me. Hitchcock and George Tomasini, his editor, did this marvellous thing with the skull of his mother, almost subliminal, some people didn't even see it, and the car being pulled out. I think that was kind of a way to give you a return to the person that you lost, who is buried in that. And also to open up the thought that maybe there are some other cars in there.
— Joseph Stefano (1997)
source: The Making of Psycho
