Linda Aronson has a lot to say about movies like that. I went to a seminar of hers recently and hotly recommend it.

She points out that what a lot of recent films playing with structure do is take the second act crisis and put it at the beginning, let that run for a bit, then flash back to the chronological beginning of the story. What that does is to immediately engage the audience's attention, and makes getting through all that business of setting up the character/location/etc. a lot easier and more interesting for the viewer.

For example, if you wanted to spice up Lawrence of Arabia (which is a bit slow and dull to a modern audience) you move the climatic attack on the train to the beginning of the film, have Lawrence emerge with blood on his hands looking wild, then dissolve back to what used to be the original opening scenes. There we have a gawky, awkward, but engaging younger Lawrence who has not yet seen the horrors of war. What now makes him more interesting is that we've had a glimpse of the man he will become and so we are all the more intrigued.





Do I sound pompous sometimes?

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I'm sure that Lee has my best interests at heart

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"I agree that Psycho is unique, but the closest I can think of (not surprisingly) is a Brian De Palma film called Sisters aka Blood Sisters where Lisle Wilson's character is the protagonist initially but is killed some way (20 minutes or more?) into the film. The Jennifer Salt character then becomes the protagonist. I think she may have been introduced just before the murder but it is not at that stage clear how important she will become." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070698/

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I remember Angie Dickinson being murdered only minutes into the movie - in fact, weren't the credits rolling as she took that shower?

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When Stefano met Hitchcock to discuss the script of Psycho, he confessed to having a problem with the material; principally, he disliked the character of Norman Bates. In Robert Bloch's 1959 novel, Bates is plump, balding, bespectacled and 40 years old. "I really could not get involved with a man in his 40s who is drunk and peeps through holes," reflected Stefano. "The other problem was that there was a horrendous murder of a stranger I didn't care about either. I just kept saying to Hitch, 'I wish I knew this girl. I wish Norman were somebody else."'

Consequently, Stefano suggested that the screenplay begin with the character of Marion Crane, who steals $40,000 from her Phoenix, Arizona, employer to begin a new life with her lover but is murdered after stopping at the Bates motel. "Audiences would be sucked into a character who did something wrong but was really a good person," Stefano said. "They would feel as if they, not Marion, had stolen the money. When she dies, the audience would be the victim. With so much early emphasis on Marion, no one dreams she'll get killed. Killing the leading lady (Janet Leigh) in the first 20 minutes had never been done before." (Or since...)



As to the writer's qualms about the central male character, Hitchcock pacified Stefano by asking, "How would you feel if Norman were played by Anthony Perkins?" Stefano was delighted. "I suddenly saw a tender young man you could feel incredibly sorry for," he recalled. "I could really rope in an audience with someone like him." Hitchcock's motives in suggesting the lean, lanky and boyish-looking 28-year-old Perkins were not wholly artistic, though he enjoyed the idea of evil disguised as innocence. He knew that the actor owed Paramount a film under an old contract and could be hired relatively cheaply - for $40,000, the same amount that Marion stole.

Coincidentally, both Stefano and Perkins were in psychotherapy when they were hired by Hitchcock. A weirder coincidence was that Stefano had no idea that Perkins' father had died of a heart attack when his son was five, the same age as Norman at his father's death. Nor was Stefano aware of Perkins' intensely close relationship with his widowed mother.

Stefano was interested in how a formidable and over-protective mother could turn Norman Bates into a killer. So he wrote a scene between the adolescent Norman and his mother that was never intended to be shot. In it, the pair are larking about on the floor. Suddenly, Mrs Bates discovers that her son has an erection and her joy turns to hysterical anger. Screaming that he must forget that he has such a disgusting part of the body, she pulls a dress over his head, smears his face with lipstick and locks him in a closet.

Joseph Stephano 1922 - 2006