Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998)

[David Ehrenstein]

He was!

Why do you think Pasolini made Il Vangelo Seccundo Matteo anyway?

[Antoine Doinel]

Jonathan Rosenbaum has posted his review of the film on his blog.

[David Ehrenstein]

Well he's wrong.

[jesus the mexican boi]

Glad that's settled.

[Mr Sausage]

In her capsule for the Reader’s movie listings, Lisa Alspector rationalizes the the argument this way: “Plays are created in hopes that they’ll be staged by many directors; only convention has persuaded us to think of movies differently—remakes are often evaluated as if originality were somehow quantifiable, absolute, or the necessary objective of art. With this thriller—which is innovative in the extreme to which it takes the practice of copying—director Gus Van Sant reminds us that all forms can be used as blueprints and that hommage may be a euphemism.”

I can’t disagree with a word Alspector says. It’s irrefutable that “only convention” has persuaded us to think that movies—or, for that matter, poems, short stories, novels, paintings, sculptures, and buildings attributed to single artists—can’t be remade just as plays are restaged.

It has little to do with convention; it has much more to do with the central fact that a staged play has real temporal limits, whereas a movie does not. No one can go back and watch Shakespeare on stage at The Globe, but anyone can go back and watch the original Psycho as many times as they want. A remake, or 'restaging' in theatre terms, is unnecessary when you have a perfect execution of the thing already available.

Those temporal limits create an inescapable reality for play-goers: a play is remade every single night of its production, each time getting either closer to or farther from the rehersals, or a particularly good night, or the requirements of the director; or altering over subsequent shows as the players get into the rythm, as they react to and play off audience reactions, or even as they feed off a certain energy. The idea of a 'remake' is inherant to onstage performance. There is no such idea in cinema: a remake is a special occurance, not the necessary result of the form. We must by necessity, not convention, approach a movie remake with an entirely different set of expectations, assumptions, and desires, than with a restaging of a play.

Well he's wrong.

Stop trolling.

[David Ehrenstein]

It's really very simple, Sausage Man. Jonathan's premise is, as you point out quite plainly, ridiculous. A film (pace Raul Ruiz) is not a play. Jonathan's completely unwilling to deal with Gus' avant-garde aspect. The Gus Psycho is a surrealist "impossible object." It was made for those of us who are thoroughly familiar with Hitchcock's Psycho. It would mean nothing to those who haven't seen the original. Joanthan's unwillingness to play with Gus is strikingly out of character with his other cinematic concerns, especially those expressed in his classic "Midnight Movies" (co-written with Hoberman.) Gus' Psycho functions in relation to Hitchcock's ogicinal much as The Rocky Horror Picture Show audience does to its beloved celuloid totem

[swo17]

It was made for those of us who are thoroughly familiar with Hitchcock's Psycho. It would mean nothing to those who haven't seen the original.

I felt that, sure, there were film students, cinephiles, and people in the business who were familiar with Psycho, but that there was also a whole generation of moviegoers who probably hadn’t seen it. I thought this was a way of popularizing a classic, a way I’d never seen done before.

[foggy eyes]

I felt that, sure, there were film students, cinephiles, and people in the business who were familiar with Psycho, but that there was also a whole generation of moviegoers who probably hadn’t seen it. I thought this was a way of popularizing a classic, a way I’d never seen done before.

Sure, but the film stills exists and functions independently of what Van Sant said about it (never mind the fact that he's clearly considerably smarter and more playful than that isolated comment might suggest). David's argument holds fast, and I think it's probably the most positive (and productive) way of approaching the film.

[domino harvey]

I don't always agree with Rosenbaum, but I'm certainly in his corner on this one.

[Grand Illusion]

The theater analogy is so horrid for the exact reasons Mr. Sausage stated. But also because of the value of a script. If the director is the author of the final text, then he/she interprets and reworks the original script. Kurosawa interprets King Lear and Macbeth and comes up with something entirely different than what happens when Kenneth Branagh does.

Van Sant is not re-interpreting the script. He's trying to interpret a film that's already been directed. A meta-director, analogous to the George Lucas of 2007 going back and reworking the films of 1980's George Lucas, adding flourishes.

Most straight remakes are abysmal, but let's give Van Sant the benefit of the doubt and say that he regards Psycho as a play. In that sense, the obligation to that analogy would be to take the script of Psycho and direct it. Look at The Lower Depths, how both Renoir and Kurosawa directed a version of Maxim Gorky's play and brought different interpretations. Kurosawa did not take Renoir's film and remake it shot-by-shot nor would that have yielded his own unique vision on the text.

Further, the film does exist independent of what others say about it. So if the argument is that this film is made for Psycho aficionados, what of the newcomers? Did Universal require proof of having seen the original?

Since they did not, for the newcomers who like it, will they give Van Sant the plaudits for his plagiarism? For those who dislike it, will Van Sant have stained the name of a classic? Are they forever spoiled, going into Psycho, on the lowered chance that they will even seek out the original? What good does this film do for newcomers that an advertising campaign to go see the original movie wouldn't (besides make Universal money)?

This is especially important because people can find the original. Film is film because it is a permanent medium (Metropolis thread notwithstanding). Film is not a play. The closest analogy would be a screenplay. Regardless, by choosing to recreate shot-by-shot or trying to cast the same actor "types," Van Sant is not treating the film like a play, he's treating it like a coloring book.

[yoshimori]

Van Sant is not treating the film like a play, he's treating it like a coloring book.

This is the crucial point. What theater director makes every set design decision, complex blocking decision, timing decision, etc in order to recreate another's prior direction? To miss this is to miss the whole pomo genius of the project.

[MichaelB]

What theater director makes every set design decision, complex blocking decision, timing decision, etc in order to recreate another's prior direction?

Actually, this happens quite frequently in opera and ballet. Luchino Visconti, Andrei Tarkovsky and Kenneth MacMillan are long dead, yet Covent Garden still revives "their" Royal Opera/Ballet productions, meticulously restaged by others according to their original specifications. And when I was in St Petersburg in 2002, I saw a production of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty that claimed to be a perfect facsimile of the original 1890 premiere.

The most crucial differences are generally to do with casting - clearly, the original singers/dancers are unlikely to be available decades later!

[yoshimori]

Actually, this happens quite frequently in opera and ballet.

Yes. But operas and ballet are, of course, not plays. The written play is, it seems to me, like a musical score. Good directors/conductors bring it to life and rarely (never?) do so by meticulously following some prior performance. Hard to imagine Simon Rattle using the latest technology and the current members of the Berlin Philharmonic to make a modern simulacrum of a Furtwangler performance of a Brahms symphony. No? [Maybe he should, though!]

I myself would love to see eighteen versions of the same screenplay - from Godard, Desplechin, the Coens, von Trier, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, etc etc etc - but that would, of course, not be the kind of thing van Sant was doing with Psycho: he was not shooting his version of the screenplay, not treating the script like the text of a play, but meticulously recreating the "film" of Hitchcock's Psycho.

[MichaelB]

Steven Spielberg once fantasised about giving five very different directors exactly the same script and seeing what they did with it.

[HerrSchreck]

Why do I remember Tarkovsky saying the exact same thing?

[knives]

I'd love to see a The Terror type thing where directors are given fragments of a screen play and work based on that.

[David Ehrenstein]

I'm terribly superfond of the 1967 Casino Royale -- the most rigorous test of the auteur theory known to man.