DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Sixty-five years ago, director Alfred Hitchcock shocked audiences and changed cinema forever with the release of his 1960 thriller movie "Psycho." It was a slasher film before that term existed and was based on a book by Robert Bloch. Hitchcock was attracted to the film because of the unexpected sudden murder of a central character early on. Joe Stefano, who wrote the screenplay, preserved that central surprise, and so did Hitchcock. He cast movie star Janet Leigh in the role of a criminal on the run, then had her character stabbed to death in the shower after checking into a remote motel run by Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins.
Most of "Psycho" was photographed quickly and cheaply by the same crew Hitchcock used for his still-running TV anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." The budget for "Psycho" was $800,000, making it one of the most profitable films in Hollywood history - and one of the most influential, too. "Psycho" elevated the suspense and murder genre to a higher level and has been copied, saluted, even remade by generations of subsequent moviemakers. Today, we're going to hear from actress Janet Leigh, the star of "Psycho." Well, the star for the first third of the movie, anyway. Terry spoke with her in 1999.
Leigh wrote a memoir in 1995 about the making of "Psycho." They started with a clip from the film. Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, who has stolen some money, is on the run and has checked into the Bates Motel, run by Anthony Perkins as a mild-mannered Norman Bates. He offers her a sandwich. They sit in the parlor eating, and he tells her about living with and caring for his invalid, mentally unstable mother. Marion suggests he put his mother in an institution.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PSYCHO")
ANTHONY PERKINS: (As Norman Bates) Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? No laughing and the tears and the cruel eyes studying you. My mother, there? But she's harmless. She's as harmless as one of those stuffed birds.
JANET LEIGH: (As Marion Crane) I am sorry. I only felt - it seemed she's hurting you. I meant well.
PERKINS: (As Norman Bates) People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues and shake their heads and suggest oh so very delicately. Of course, I've suggested it myself, but I hate to even think about it. She needs me. It's not as if she were a maniac, a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?
LEIGH: (As Marion Crane) Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough. Thank you.
PERKINS: (As Norman Bates) Thank you, Norman.
LEIGH: (As Marion Crane) Norman.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
TERRY GROSS: Now, what was your reaction when you read that your character was killed halfway through the story?
LEIGH: Well, actually, in the novel it's only two pages.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Oh.
LEIGH: But when Mr. Hitchcock explained that he wasn't going to go into the entire history of this gentleman because it was just too much, that he was going to concentrate on Mary and the discovery of Mary. And - you know, in other words it would revolve around her. So I knew it was going to be a short part. I didn't know it would even be as long as it turned out to be, which was due to Mr. Stefano's take on it, because it was interesting to me that when I interviewed Mr. Stefano about - in regard to the book, he said that when he first met with Mr. Hitchcock, he had said, I really don't like Norman Bates very much. I mean he was unattractive, you know, and he's just not something I want to write about.
He said but what interested me was that if you start the movie with the girl and get the audience into her life and her problems and her traumas and bring her then to Norman Bates. Then - especially with Anthony Perkins playing Norman Bates - then you have lured the audience into a situation where they think it's going to be, oh yeah, well know there's two guys, and which one is she going to go for? And that's your typical kind of little wrapped-in-a-blue-ribbon package. And, of course, then the tragedy becomes even more shocking, and, of course, Mr. Hitchcock saw the value of this. And Mr. Stefano said to me that he - Hitch leaned over, and there was this gleam in his eye and he said, oh, yes, and we'll get a star to play her, so that it would be even more of a shock.
GROSS: Well - and it was. I mean, it was shocking for audiences when you were killed and when this motel owner, who you seemed to kind of pity if anything, turned out to really be a monster.
LEIGH: Right. Well, that's why he was so - you know, Tony Perkins was just so brilliant because almost you wanted to mother him in a way. You know, you felt sorry and yet he had that undertone where there would be a spark of something that would set him off, and you could see that there was - it wasn't quite right, and yet you could never identify what was wrong. And that's why it was so beautifully done by him.
GROSS: Now, let's get to the shower scene. There were about suffer 70 different setup shots in the shower scene?
LEIGH: Yes. It was 70-plus.
GROSS: How did Hitchcock explain what he wanted from you in that scene - in the overview, before getting in to each shot every day that you were doing a new shot?
LEIGH: Well, the overview was the actual drawings of each shot. And so he showed us the overhead shots. He showed us this shot. He shows the close-up there. He showed us - you know, it was all planned.
GROSS: So every time you did a shot, you knew exactly where the camera was looking. You knew if the camera was looking at your navel or looking at your head.
LEIGH: Of course. Yeah. Because if it was looking at my navel, I could wear a bra and pants. You know, I mean, in other words, I dressed according to where the shot was, or undressed according to where the shot was.
GROSS: Now, say that camera was looking at your navel, did you feel, well, I don't have to particularly act in this shot? My face doesn't need to express anything 'cause the camera won't see it.
LEIGH: That's not exactly true because it's amazing how your body has a tone - has a - I don't know, a reaction to it. I can't explain it, but if you're just bland your body is going to be bland. But if you're feeling, you know, the terror and the effect of the blows and whenever, your body shows that. I don't think that you can, you know, sort of separate it.
GROSS: Now, what kind of knife was Anthony Perkins using?
LEIGH: A big long butcher knife. That's all I know.
GROSS: Was it a retracting knife?
LEIGH: No, no. It didn't retract. It wasn't steel, however. I mean, it looked like steel but believe me it wasn't. Because what people forget is that we could not show penetration of a weapon. So you could never see the weapon - the knife going in. So you don't - you couldn't use a retractable knife. I mean, it had no purpose.
What you saw was you saw the knife go back and lunge forward, and then you showed the shot of either, you know, the shoulder or the tum or the thigh or whatever. And you, in your mind, imagined it going in there. But you - and then you saw it pull back. And then you saw it go again. But you never saw it enter the body because it's not - was not allowed.
GROSS: Now, what did you do - what did you think about to get that look of horror on your face when Tony Perkins pulls back the shower curtain and is there with his knife? Was just being in the moment with Tony Perkins enough, or did you think of other things beyond that?
LEIGH: I think that just - it wasn't always Tony Perkins doing that with the knife, you know. He had different people doing it.
GROSS: With stand-ins?
LEIGH: Stand-in, somebody - a woman at one point - so that the audience could never get a fix on the character. I mean, they all had the same clothes and wig and everything on, but different people were in different shots so that the audience could never kind of get a glimmer of who it might be.
GROSS: Oh, so you mean even on screen we weren't always seeing Anthony Perkins.
LEIGH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. He wasn't even there. He was in New York rehearsing a play, I think.
GROSS: That's very sneaky (laughter).
LEIGH: Yes, of course, but that's Mr. Hitchcock. And because if the same person did it all the time there was a possibility - slim, but still a possibility that perhaps the audience might guess it. And the - I didn't really need a lot of other thoughts in my head because when that shower curtain goes back and you look at this figure, which is exactly what they did in the thing, you know, I mean, that's pretty frightening. I didn't have any trouble with that.
BIANCULLI: Janet Leigh speaking to Terry Gross in 1999. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1999 interview with Janet Leigh about the making of the groundbreaking Alfred Hitchcock film "Psycho," made 65 years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: Now, you were doing the shower scene, so although you weren't completely nude, you weren't exactly clothed, either. You write that you wore moleskin.
LEIGH: Right.
GROSS: Around your privates. Yeah.
LEIGH: Because in the full shots where you wanted the body outline - right? - I wore moleskin over, you know, where I should. And that was, I think, the roughest - well, one of the roughest things about that sequence because it's - as you know, it's a nude-colored almost soft suede-like or something on the outside and then it's adhesive, obviously, on the inside. And, you know, taking it on and off is - was very - on tender skin, it was painful.
GROSS: You know, you must have felt particularly vulnerable 'cause here you are in the shower, you know, knowing that this actor with a big knife is going to be coming at you. But also you've got these crew guys looking at you from on top and from the sides making you feel, I'm sure, more vulnerable. Were you able to use that vulnerability knowing that the crew was looking at you when you were mostly naked? Could you work with that and use that for your facial expressions?
LEIGH: Well, I think you use everything - every tool available for whatever you're trying to portray. Certainly, I always noticed that during this shower sequence that everybody seemed to have a lot of assistance.
(LAUGHTER)
LEIGH: It was a closed set. But there were more people than I remember being on that set. And one time, one of the most difficult scenes technically and also for me was at the end, when she falls forward and grabs the shower curtain and goes over the tub. Her head is kind of against that tub, and he starts on a close up of the eye and pulls back into a long shot. Now, we did it several times. We were in the 20 takes. I don't know which one, 24, five, something around that. And because it wasn't automatic focus, it was hand focus, it was a very difficult technical shot for the camera operator who had to do the focusing as we pulled back. And it was hard for me because of trying to just have a non-live look in your eye because well, that's another story about I couldn't wear contact lenses, not enough time. So it was just a hard shot. And around the oh, I don't know. 24th or fifth, somewhere in there, everything seemed to be going well. But the steam from the hot water had started to sort of melt the adhesive on the moleskin. And I could feel it pulling away from my bosom. And now, I knew that camera-wise, it would never show. But the guys upstairs on the rafters, the electricians up there, the gaffers, they were going to get, you know, a peek. And I thought to myself, well, what do I do? I feel it pulling away. This shot is going well. I don't want to do this shot again. And it's nothing they haven't seen before. So I just said, let it rip. And - because - and that was the shot that they printed.
GROSS: What was your reaction the first time you saw the final cut of that scene?
LEIGH: I didn't see that scene separately, I saw the entire picture. But I have to tell you that I screamed bloody murder. I mean, I really did, even though I read the script, I'd done the show. I knew what was happening. I was still here. It just blew me away.
GROSS: Do you mean it was more frightening to watch the scene than it was to shoot it?
LEIGH: Yes.
GROSS: Why do you think that is?
LEIGH: Well, because in shooting it, don't forget, you wait maybe two hours while they're setting up the shot. And of course the emotion is there when you're doing the scene, but then you relax again for another hour while they do the next set up. In the actual seeing of it, you saw the staccato. You saw the beat of the scene. You saw the mounting tenseness and the mounting, you know, desperation, and that's where it hits you - and the music. Seeing that altogether, that was what made it emphatic is putting all the editing together and the music. Because otherwise, you know, it was spread out over seven days. This way, I saw it in - what? - 45 seconds. And it was it was terrifying to me. It's the truth that I never realized in my life before how vulnerable one is in a shower, and I don't take showers. That's the truth. Because you are completely defenseless. I mean, one, you can't hear because the water's running. Two, unless you, you know, have different kind of curtains, which I'm sure afterwards, I know they did, but at that time, you couldn't see out because of the curtain. And you're naked, you're defenseless. And it just terrified me.
GROSS: So it's been only baths since the making of "Psycho?"
LEIGH: Exactly. And if there's no other way, I mean, if wherever I happen to be only has a shower, it's with a door. The shower is never closed. The bathroom is very wet. And I'm always facing the door, and there is something by my side that I could grab if I had to.
GROSS: Alfred Hitchcock didn't want anyone in the audience to know that your character, Marion, was going to be killed or that Anthony Perkins was really the mother, you know, that he was...
LEIGH: Right. Right.
GROSS: ...Impersonating his mother. So what did Hitchcock do to make sure that you and the other actors didn't inadvertently give away any of this information?
LEIGH: We did not go on tour for this picture, Mr. Hitchcock did. If you remember the classic, now, teaser for the movie is you never saw us really. You saw Mr. Hitchcock taking you through the motel and the various, you know, places saying, oh, well, we don't to talk about what happened there. I mean, it's a classic teaser. And he went on tour around the world. We never gave an interview. He was afraid that we might just let it out. And I don't know if you remember in the book, the story of how it came, 'cause again, this was a first, except for road show pictures, where you would have a matinee at 2:30 and an evening one at 7:30, like, "Gone With The Wind" or something like that, most movies just ran continuously and you could come in at any time.
GROSS: Right. In fact, and the bywords of movie goers were, this is where we came in.
LEIGH: Exactly.
GROSS: Because you'd come in in the middle of the movie, and you'd stay until that point came around again in the next showing, and then you'd leave.
LEIGH: That's right. And what happened was he was sitting with his assistant, and he said, you know - he said, I just thought - he said, this stars Janet Leigh and Tony Perkins. What if somebody should come in in the middle of the picture and keeps looking for Janet Leigh and she's not there? That's going to be very strange. So he said there's only one thing to do. He said we can't let anybody in after the picture starts. Well, there was all heck to pay because the theater owners just - I mean, they couldn't believe that that was a rule. And actually, the day it opened, the - Barney Balaban, who was head of Paramount, who distributed the picture, got calls from theater owners all over the country saying, look, it's a 9 o'clock show. You know, it's half full, and there's a line outside. What do you mean? I'm going to let them in. And Barney said, you'd better read the fine print. You can't do it. Well, of course, once they realized, they used this. I mean, finally, when people realized that they couldn't get in until the picture - once the picture started, there were lines. People went crazy. The theater managers used that. In the rain, they - you know, they had umbrellas for people, and everybody tried everything. So it was revolutionary.
GROSS: Right. Well, Janet Leigh, thank you so much for sharing some of your memories of "Psycho" with us.
LEIGH: It was fun.
BIANCULLI: Janet Leigh speaking with Terry Gross in 1999. Janet Leigh died in 2004 at age 77. Her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, starred in her own low-budget influential slasher horror film, 1978's "Halloween." Coming up, more about Hitchcock with Evan Hunter, the screenwriter of Hitchcock's "The Birds." This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BERNARD HERRMANN'S "PSYCHO - MAIN THEME - SUITE")
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. We're looking back today at a couple of Alfred Hitchcock films. We just heard about the making of his 1960 movie "Psycho," which was released 65 years ago. Next, we focus on the film he made in 1963.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRDS")
BIANCULLI: The film "The Birds," based on a novella by Daphne du Maurier, is set in a small coastal community where the birds inexplicably begin attacking humans and pecking them to death. The story was adapted for the screen by Evan Hunter, who had written the novel "Blackboard Jungle," which itself was made into a movie. Under the pen name Ed McBain, Hunter also had written a series of bestselling mystery novels set in New York's 87th Precinct. When Terry spoke with Evan Hunter in 1999, she asked him about adapting the novella, and he admitted he found it difficult.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
EVAN HUNTER: Well, I wasn't so much worried about how "The Birds" would perform because I figured that was his job not mine, directing "The Birds." But if we stuck to the original premise of these two people in the cottage, who in the story, as I recall, spoke to each other mainly in grunts and long pauses, there would be a lot of lapsed time on the screen.
GROSS: (Laughter) Right. Now, what was the climax in the novel? And what did you think of the climax?
HUNTER: The climax was the scene that survived, one of the few - the only scene that survived the story, where the finches come down the chimney into the cottage.
GROSS: Hitchcock told you that he wanted to get rid of everything in the novella except the title.
HUNTER: Yes.
GROSS: And the idea of birds attacking. Did he have a similar reaction to the novella that you did, that there really wasn't much there that would adapt into a film?
HUNTER: I think he had other reasons for not wanting to keep it the way it was. He liked to deal - in all of his movies, he dealt with more sophisticated people who were intelligent and quick-speaking and almost glib. And he didn't have that opportunity with these characters. So in a sense, our reactions were the same in that respect. But he also did not want to shoot ever again in England, he told me. He never wanted to go back to England and shoot there.
So he wanted to transfer the entire story to the United States someplace. And we chose the San Francisco location because - or he chose it, actually, because he had luck with, I guess it was, "The Trouble With Harry" or "Suspicion" or one of them that was shot up there in Petaluma, in the chicken country up around San Francisco. And he looked upon omens and little superstitious things. Like he had great luck with "Rebecca," which is why he bought "The Birds," you know? And he had luck shooting around the San Francisco area, so he wanted to back to shoot there.
GROSS: Now, you say in your book, "Me And Hitch," that you wanted to do "The Birds" as a screwball comedy that suddenly turns terrifying.
HUNTER: Yeah, that idea came later. We went with several notions. I remember one of my ideas was to come out and have her a schoolteacher, the new school mom in this little town, Bodega Bay. And an inbred hostility from the natives against the newcomer, the big city girl from San Francisco. And this was one of the ideas that was shot down. She survived, of course, as Annie in the screenplay and in the movie, but not as the lead character.
One of the ideas he had was that she was a newspaper reporter coming up from San Francisco to examine, to look into some reported bird attacks. And this went by the by, but it survived as her father being the publisher of a newspaper. We kept flipping around, looking for a handle on it. And then one day I was on my lunch hour. And when I came back, I said to Hitch, why don't we do a screwball comedy, and suddenly, it turns to terror? We have a bird attack in the middle of some nonsense, and we know we're serious here. We're talking about bird attacks. And he liked that idea very much, and that's what we went with.
GROSS: Do you feel that that was a successful idea?
HUNTER: Yeah, I thought it was a successful idea. But I'm not so good - I'm not so sure how successful it turned out to be in execution. It was a very difficult premise to bring off to begin with. And I think it required enormous skill all along the way. And perhaps I had not the skills. And I know Hitch had the skills because he dealt with comedy very often in the past, but I don't think he ever dealt with merging comedy with terror. And of course, it takes a great deal of skill on the part of the performers.
GROSS: Yeah, well, Hitchcock, I think, had wanted Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Did you write with them in mind?
HUNTER: Yes, there was no question. They were at the forefront of both of our minds while we were talking the script, a Grace Kelly-Cary Grant team.
GROSS: How did you...
HUNTER: And of course...
GROSS: Yeah.
HUNTER: It was impossible, you know, because Grace was already in Monaco, as Hitch said, being a princess, you know? And Cary Grant wanted 50% of the picture, and Hitch would never give him anything like that.
GROSS: Now, when you were working with Hitchcock on the screenplay, did you talk a lot about why the birds were attacking?
HUNTER: It came up frequently because we didn't want to make the movie a science fiction film. We could've said, well, you know, the birds are attacking because there's a strain of virus 21-7 going around, and this is probably from another planet, or any such nonsense as that. And at the same time, we didn't want it to seem as if we hadn't thought of it, as if we hadn't thought - why are these birds attacking? - you know, why the creative forces behind the picture hadn't once thought to ask this question of themselves.
So it was a dodgy situation. And we decided there was - I did a scene in the screenplay where they try to figure out why the birds are doing this. And they succeed only in frightening themselves. But what they do come up with is the notion that there is a collective intelligence behind it, that these birds are not acting in isolated little groups but that it's all the birds. It's all the birds attacking mankind for whatever reason. We never explain why, but at least we do explain that there is a unified force here and not some stragglers.
GROSS: What happened to that scene?
HUNTER: On the cutting room floor. I don't think he ever - wait, did he shoot that one? Yes, he did shoot it. He shot it, and it did not survive the final cut.
GROSS: Now, was Hitchcock concerned when you were writing the story about how he was going to technically pull off the bird scenes?
HUNTER: Never. I once asked him in one of our meetings, how far can I go with this, Hitch? And he said, go wherever you want and let me worry about it. You put it on paper, and I'll get it on film. And I think he really believed that. You know, you must remember this was in 1961. And we did not have "Star Wars" technology, which is unfortunate because we would've had them screaming out of the theater, I promise you.
GROSS: (Laughter).
HUNTER: But we did not have it. And I don't think he realized when he made that promise to me how difficult it was going to be to deal with birds and to deal with animation and to deal with puppetry and all the other little gimmicks he used to create the illusion of reality. It was interesting because the most real thing in the movie - to me, anyway - were the birds, not the people. The people, in a way, were the puppets. And the hand puppets that were biting the people seemed real. It was a strange irony.
GROSS: How many? What percentage of the birds would you say were puppets and animations, and how much of the birds was real?
HUNTER: I'm trying. I can't assign percentages to it. I can only give you absolute examples. The scene where the birds are attacking the town, where the gas station catches on fire and we cut to way above the gas station, we see the birds flying in formation like a flight of fighter planes, those were animated. One of the most frightening scenes in the film is where Rod Taylor is trying to pull the shutter close and tie it with a cord, and a bird is pecking at his hand. That was a puppet. Some of the birds in the scene where the children are running away from the school.
GROSS: Yeah.
HUNTER: And the birds are on the children's backs and they're trying to get them off, and they're going at them. Those were mechanical birds that the children were operating from little, you know, buzzers and things inside their clothing. The scene where the swifts come down the chimney, that was all double exposure. We shot the people running around the room, flapping their hands in the air, and then the birds were added onto that later on. Like that.
BIANCULLI: Evan Hunter speaking to Terry Gross in 1999. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1999 interview with Evan Hunter, who wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film "The Birds."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: Let's hear a scene from the film. The townspeople are gathered in a restaurant after a bird attack on the school.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRDS")
CHARLES MCGRAW: (As Sebastian Sholes) Now, maybe we're all getting a little carried away by this. Admittedly, a few birds did act strange, but that's no reason to believe...
TIPPI HEDREN: (As Melanie Daniels) I keep telling you, this isn't a few birds. These are gulls, crows, swifts...
ETHEL GRIFFIES: (As Mrs. Bundy) I have never known birds of different species to flock together. The very concept is unimaginable. Why, if that happened, we wouldn't have a chance. How could we possibly hope to fight them?
MCGRAW: (As Sebastian Sholes) We couldn't. You're right. You're right, Mrs. Bundy.
BILL QUINN: (As Sam) What's the matter? Is something wrong out here?
GRIFFIES: (As Mrs. Bundy) We're fighting a war, Sam.
QUINN: (As Sam) A war? Against who?
MCGRAW: (As Sebastian Sholes) Against birds.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) I'm glad you all think this is so amusing. It frightened the children half out of their wits. If the young lady said she saw the attack at a school, why don't you believe it?
QUINN: (As Sam) What attack? Who attacked the school?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Birds did. Crows. You're all sitting around here debating. What do you want them to do next, crash through that window?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Mommy.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Put on your coat. Why don't you all go home, lock your doors and windows. What's the fastest way to San Francisco?
LONNY CHAPMAN: (As Deke Carter) The freeway, ma'am.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) How do I find it?
JOE MANTELL: (As Salesman) I'm going out that way, lady. You can follow me.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Well, then let's leave now.
GROSS: Now, do you feel that you learned things about building suspense by working on "The Birds" with Hitchcock?
HUNTER: Yeah. He was very good on suspense, and he was very good on detail. You know, it was amazing. I'd be in the middle of discussing a scene with him. And he would say out of the blue, well, how long has she been in San Francisco now? How long has she been in Bodega Bay? And I would say, well, I don't know, two days. And he'd say, well, has she called her father? And I'd say what? He said, has she called her father? I said, no, she hasn't. He said, well, don't you think she should call her father, tell him where she is, you know? And I said sure, you know (laughter)? So it's easy to do a phone call to papa.
Or things like - I'll remember this always. When I described the scene to him where she goes up to the attic. I don't know if you recall the movie, where there's been a big bird attack on the house. And they're all sitting around, and Mitch is asleep in the chair and she's asleep in the other chair. And she hears a sound. And she looks up. She leans over, she says Mitch, and he doesn't hear her because he's asleep. And she grabs a flashlight and goes to investigate.
And I'm describing the scene to him. And this, by the way, it didn't turn out to be this in the film itself. But in the screenplay, when she opens the door to that attic, there's every bird imaginable to mankind in that room. I mean, there are hawks, there are eagles, there are seagulls. Anything you can imagine is in that room. When her eyes pan that room, we see all the birds in the universe in that room. And we know right at that moment that this is a unified attack against human beings and not something we're playing around with here in Bodega Bay.
It didn't turn out that way. In the film, he just used crows and seagulls. But I described the scene to him. And she goes up the stairs, and she hesitates. And then she opens the door, and all these birds are in there. And he was silent for a while. And then he said, let me see if I have this correctly, Evan. And I said yeah. And he said, there's been this massive bird attack on the house. I said, yes, there has. He said, and now she hears a sound, and Mitch is asleep, so she doesn't want to wake him up.
GROSS: (Laughter).
HUNTER: I said yes. So she goes to investigate by herself. Have I got that correct? I said, yes. He says, well, is the girl daft, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
HUNTER: So I said, well - you know, I realized he had me. And he said, we'll take the curse off it. He said, we'll have her first go into the kitchen and spot the lovebirds in the cage. And this makes her feel a bit more complacent about it. And then we'll have her, along the way, open some other doors. And she'll see that everything is OK. And we'll lull the audience until she opens that final door, and boom, there are all the birds.
GROSS: Can you think of an example of a scene that Hitchcock added that you hadn't written?
HUNTER: Yes. Well, there were many in the film. For example, the scene where Melanie is trapped in the phone booth. This is not in the screenplay at all, not at all. The scene ends. I don't know, the birds are chasing the children and everybody is running from the town. But it was Hitch who put her in that phone booth and Hitch who had all the birds smashing into the phone booth, picking up the metaphor of she being a bird in a gilded cage from the beginning of the film. And now she's back in the gilded cage in the phone booth. You know, it was wonderful imagery and scary as hell. When they're battering the walls of that thing, you think they're going to get her.
GROSS: The other nice thing about a phone booth is that she's enclosed but it's also a transparent enclosure, so you can see her through the glass.
HUNTER: And you can see everything that's happening. And you see people running and the one guy with blood all over his face almost trying to want to get in the phone booth. So it was a brilliant scene and not at all in the screenplay.
GROSS: Now, did you enjoy working with Hitchcock?
HUNTER: Oh, yeah. Oh, he was wonderful. He was like the father every boy wished he could have. You know, he was, I think, approximately twice my age while we were working on the film, and in good health and good spirits and told me many, many times that he felt he was entering the golden age of making films, his golden age of making films. He had just come off the success of "Psycho," you have to understand, and was looking forward to "Birds" being an even bigger success. But he was humorous, he was anecdotal, he was generous with his time and with his patience. And, you know, I was the new kid on the block out there in many, many respects. And he took me under his wing, not to...
(LAUGHTER)
HUNTER: ...Use a metaphor.
GROSS: And then attacked you, right.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Evan Hunter speaking with Terry Gross in 1999. He died in 2005 at age 78. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film "Hamnet," about Shakespeare as a husband and father. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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