Vertigo (1958) - quotes
Quotations relating to Vertigo (1958)...
Pre-Production
Just like he'd said, "I always wanted to do a dolly shot in an auto factory," [Hitchcock] said, "I always wanted to do a chase across the faces of Mount Rushmore." And I thought, "Hey, I really like that idea." And that was the seed of the flower that took eleven months to grow. But I had to ask myself, "Who's chasing whom over the faces of Mount Rushmore?" and "How do they get there?" and "Why?" And that took quite a bit of doing on my part. I remember that I used to squeeze out a tiny bit of the screenplay every day, fully convinced that it would never actually become a movie. There were many nights when I would be driving home from the studio thinking that we were just kidding ourselves — and wondering how long the charade would go on. The truth is, even with all my experience, I really didn't know how to write the script. I'd never written a movie like that before, but gradually I eked it out — or, at least, the first sixty-five pages — and then Hitch went off to make "Vertigo". So I'd sit there in my lonely office, and many times I'd go home at night having written less than half a page, completely discouraged. And several times I tried to quit while he was away, but my agent wouldn't let me, saying, "You've already quit 'The Wreck of the Mary Deare', you can't quit this one too." So I was kind of trapped into doing it.
— Ernest Lehman (2000)
keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Mount Rushmore, North by Northwest (1959), The Wreck of the Mary Deare, Vertigo (1958), pre-production, and screenplay
Other Quotes about Vertigo (1958)
I went up to Santa Cruz for his birthday when we were making Vertigo, for instance. His daughter Pat was there, and we were on the veranda as the phone was ringing with well-wishers. Hitch was quite a guy. I couldn't keep up with him. You know, he would even carry your bags up to your room. He had terrific energy. I couldn't drink as much as he could, either. I would have to go to bed by midnight, and even then I would be dead the next morning. But not Hitch.
Bumstead recalls spending a weekend in 1957 at Hitchcock's second home in Scotts Valley, California.
