1. 1989 was considered a transitional year for independent distribution because, regardless of the "video market," many of the independent distributors overexerted themselves in the production of larger budget films and nearly resulted in the death of the entire independent production distributors altogether. However, while many of the distributors were filing for bankruptcy, other distributors, such as Miramax, were able to make a major impact on the overall structure and look of independent filmmaking in the late 80s and through the 90s. In economic terms, an "indie-blockbuster" is, by definition, a film that, on a smaller scale, replicates the exploitation marketing and box-office performance of the major studio high-concept event pictures. The industry responded to the "indie-blockbuster" by having each of the major studios purchase a specialty division in order to take advantage of the niche-based distributions that the "indie-blockbuster" played into.
2. The criteria that guided Miramax's acquisition strategies in the 1980s were exploitation marketing tactics to promote their movies and a positive public image. Miramax staged publicity stunts, such as Claudia Ohana posing for Playboy for promotion of the film Erendira. Many film historians are unable to find out which events were staged and which events were actually real. Also, during the 1980s, Miramax focused on securing distribution rights for films produced outside of the company. The films had to be "quality" films while promoting a director's unique vision. Miramax also sought out films that were nonclassical in nature and covered subjects that would be deemed unconventional by Hollywood. They tried to cover as many niches as possible. Additionally, the Weinstein brothers limited their spending, chose to continue acquisitions instead of producing their own films, and restricted their release schedule in order to continue beating out the other distributors who were going bankrupt.
3. sex, lies, and videotape was co-financed by RCA/Columbia House Home Video and Virgin. RCA/Columbia was not happy with the use of the word "videotape" in the film's title and asked for it to be changed. When the film became too controversial and made its way into the film festival market, Miramax was able to pick the film up and market it as best they could. Miramax pursued the rights to distribute sex, lies, and videotape so aggressively because the Weinstein brothers saw the film as a potential independent blockbuster powerhouse. They marketed the film in ways to get it out of the "art house" niche to reach a larger audience, and the distributor also played itself up as the "primary force" behind the films development in order to enhance its image.
4. Some of the key promotional strategies for Miramax's advertising of sex, lies, and videotape were a trailer cut to fit the market that the film would best fit into, a one-sheet that would reach multiple niche markets, and a press kit that would promote the film as though it were a Hollywood blockbuster. The markets it appealed to simultaneously were: the art-house audience and the youth audience. To reach the art-house audience, Miramax included all of the film festival awards the film had received and the press responses from some of the most well-known newspapers and magazines on the film's one-sheet. To reach the youth audience, Miramax focused on two aspects of the film through text on the film's poster: one of the best films of 1989 and a focus on how edgy the film happened to be. "Finding the high concept in low budget films" means to find a way to have the film reach as many markets as possible by finding aspects of the film that might interest people the film was not intentionally made for, meaning the supposed "indie" audience.
5. Miramax eventually released the film on 350 screens while opening the film slowly to let the appeal build on positive reviews and word of mouth. The film was released over six months. This is different from "saturation booking" where films open in nearly every theater in major cities and some minor cities in an attempt to reach as many audiences as possible to get as many bodies into the theater seats as possible regardless of what the reviews might be.
6. Malin's comments were prescient for two reasons. First of all, Malin's statements not only showed the possible demise of niche films but also explained why the middle-level studio films were not as successful, meaning they did not have as big of a market abroad as the action packed, event blockbusters carried. Secondly, Malin's "exploitation of the rhetoric of quality" was a reason for his supposed foresight. His words depicted the independent films as something special to be set aside from the rest of the products coming out of the film industry. So, he showed that it wasn't the niche film that was struggling but that the film industry itself was suffering with the poor showing of the middle-level films and its dependence on overseas marketing to make money.
7. By the mid-1990s, the term "independent" actually functioned as a "discursive tool" for the press and the film industry. With the bifurcation of the industry, the "independent" film sometimes came across as merely a label placed upon a film even though the term no longer held any real definition. The fact that all of the "independent" films in the 1995 Oscar race were released by subsidiaries owned by major media corporations is the ironic part of 1995's "Year of the Independents." The repercussions of the bifurcation of the industry were: the development of an interrelated but fundamentally distinct aesthetic by each industry (superstars and super explosions vs. well-known actors with "explosive" stories) and the development of films for clearly defined niches as a result of coming out of one of the two different sides of Hollywood from specialty divisions.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Reading Response for February 8th
1. With Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, Van Sant found himself making films that he wanted to make regardless of the fact that some people might see him as a sell-out. Fearing that he was too dependent on underdog characters, he tried to just stand in as a director when on set. Both films maintained marginalized characters from the "bad" side of town, meaning they were not wealthy, so Van Sant was still able to maintain two of the aspects we have discussed in reference to his contributions as a film author. After reading his opinion of the scripts and the films experiences themselves, I now understand why Good Will Hunting did not feel like a Van Sant film, other than the aspects that we looked for in class, but I can appreciate the film more as a part of his canon after getting his opinion on it.
When it comes to the comments about Van Sant's vision in relation to the heterosexual white male directors, I felt like Taubin was kind of out of place in the way the question was posed to Van Sant. It almost seemed as though the assumption being made was that just because Van Sant is a homosexual white male that his films automatically had to be viewed with a homosexual slant towards the actions taking place, and while I do believe that homosexuality does play a part in most of his films, I do not think that it's as big a part of his authorship as Taubin tries to make it out to be. As we read earlier in the semester, it's just one of the many issues that Van Sant likes to bring up in his films. Yes, he likes to put a sexual stamp on the films that he makes, but it is not always homosexual in nature. However, I feel like Van Sant handled the assumptions in such a way as to defend himself without attacking Taubin's statements. Instead, he simply says that it might be the audience "reading into the film."
The first time that I viewed Elephant, the kiss scene definitely caught me by surprise. Not because it was two boys kissing, but I just didn't see it coming. However, upon multiple viewings of the film, Van Sant's statements do make sense. The way in which the two boys interact throughout the film show their close friendship with one another in a way that almost makes it look more intimate than just a casual friendship. Van Sant explains his reasoning behind it as what he feels kids who spend a lot of time together do together, especially as these two characters are about to go into a life or death situation. He used the kiss to make the boys "human," instead of trying to demonize them, which is something that I find to be very interesting. When making a film about a school shooting, most people would try to demonize the people doing the killing, however Van Sant brings it upon himself to add a human element to most, if not all, of the characters he directs.
Though we discussed his re-make of Psycho in great detail in class, I did find Van Sant's reasoning behind re-making the film to be very interesting. I never really thought of making a film as an "appropriation exercise," but I appreciate his reasoning behind it. Instead of trying to "rob" older, forgotten films of their integrity and character, he wanted to re-make something that everybody would know. It was a challenge that had not been done before, at least not to the extent that he did it with the nearly shot-by-shot re-make, but it was really just an exercise for him as a director, and I think that's the way that people should view it instead of trying to compare the old version and the re-make to see which one is "better." Obviously, the first film bears Hitchcock's fingerprint and he films it in a way to give it critical acclaim, but that does not mean that Van Sant's version is any less worthy of being appreciated as what it is, a director taking a film and making it into an exercise for himself.
2. Van Sant considered the traditional screenwriting format to be restricting because it did not allow for any real freedom during the film production phase. Instead, it was merely a translation from script to screen. Everything in the script was seemingly set in stone once the ink hit the paper, and that was how the lines would be delivered and how the scene would be set up. With Elephant, Van Sant got rid of scripted dialogue and allowed for what he called "ordinary conversations." Instead of his script being set in stone, the lines of the script worked as a filmmaking "map" for him to follow. He also used non-professional actors so that the conversation would feel more "ordinary" and less scripted. For non-professional actors, not having to memorize lines from a script would allow them to shape the characters in the film themselves, with the help of Van Sant, and it would become more about how conversations were handled than what was said. To develop the narrative, Van Sant follows the lives of various students in the school instead of just focusing on the perspective of the shooters. While there's a good chance that many people watching the film would know what was going to happen, we are able to connect with the other characters before the shooting occurs, and we, as an audience, barely see the shooters in relation to the other characters until the killing actually begins. Though the actions seem to take place within a certain day and a certain time, the audience is left to figure out exactly where they are in time and space, as the film follows various characters from many different points throughout the film.
3. The second act of Elephant is different from other films with a three-act structure because it does not follow conventional standards for a second act. Usually, the protagonist would be faced with multiple obstacles, problems, and other things to keep him/her from his/her goal in the narrative. Instead, the film covers what went on during the previous day and follows a different character. Elephant does not have one clear-cut protagonist, so the second act is not able to function as it normally would, not that Van Sant would have allowed it to function that way with the way in which he styled and structured the narrative of the film.
4. While many people recognize that Elephant had no defined time frame, other than taking place during twenty-four hours spanned across two days, what most people don't realize is how Van Sant plays with shot duration to show more of the action within those twenty-four hours. The audience is actually exposed to a lot of the action that took place between many of the characters over that twenty-four hours period instead of focusing on the actions of one character, even though John does take over a prominent role in the films. The shot duration nearly acts as though the actions were happening in real time, and in the third act, when the shooting spree for Alex and Eric begins, the real-time feel continues and the film "nearly approximates the actual time frame of the events of the Columbine shootings, which occurred over... fifteen minutes." Elephant's shooting sequence lasts nearly twelve minutes.
5. The big difference between Elephant and Hollywood and most independent films is that Elephant does not follow one character in particular. While John does seem to become the film's main focus at times, the narrative still spends a great deal of time getting to know each of the characters as the camera follows them through their actions taken on the day of the school shooting. In fact, other than the school shooters who are constantly being traumatized in their school setting, the audience barely has any information to connect to any character that would be a true "protragonist," other than John, who has to deal with his alcoholic knowledge and the fact that he saw the shooters going into the school and made no efforts to stop them. The tracking shots used to follow the characters give the audience a long time to look at the characters, but they never really penetrate beneath the surface of the characters. These strategies allow Van Sant to show the disconnect between the student-to-student relationship and the student-to-authority figure relationship. None of the characters are really connecting with one another, and in a way, the audience is unable to connect to any of them as well. In a way, it's just like every awkward phase that any high school student has ever had to go through. Teenagers feel as though they don't belong, and Elephant depicts that in a way that feels true to the high school experience.
6. Stephen Heath's criticism of cinematic authorship states that authorship could exist but that the critical approach to a film should not just be focused on the work of the director. Instead, there should be an approach that allows for the analysis of all of the work put into a film by various crew members that add to the sense of authorship often labeled only under the name of the director. Only focusing on the director's creative input distracts from audience reactions and discounts any views that might merely be interpretations of the viewers and were not actually placed into the film by the director himself. Many hands play a part in how a film is received. Focusing on a very narrow aspect, like just the role of the director, would also take away the impact of social situations and culture have on a film.
This plays a significant role in our class because we are looking at Van Sant films from an authorship perspective, and while many of the "marks" we claim he places on a film could be accurate, there are many creative moves made by other members of his crew that we might be attributing to him when they were not his ideas. Furthermore, the way the film is made could be entirely dependent on the crew that he is working with and their ability to execute the directorial vision that he has. Also, Van Sant is very big on playing up societal standards and cultural roles his characters might have. Poverty, and other social issues, are big story points for him.
7. Barthes demands "the death of the author." Foucault also tried to predict a time when "the author function will disappear." Neither Barthes nor Foucault see the merit in having an authorship based criticism of films, and they seem to think that the only way for it to stop polluting the field of film criticism would be for the idea of authorship in filmmaking to disappear completely. While Meskin seems to agree, to some extent, that the idea of directors as authors of films is outdated, in a way, and somewhat romanticized, while also saying that there are not enough parallels being made between novelists and filmmakers as authors for it to stand its ground as a critical concept, he does not feel that such a radical step as "death" for the idea of authorship needs to take place. Instead, he argues for a better definition of the author concept while also arguing that it is not even clear which stance Barthes and Foucault even have on the supposed existence of authorship. Meskins simply finds their arguments unpersuasive.
8. Many of the arguments against solo-authorship in mainstream filmmaking deal with the fact that so many people work on a studio film set that it does not make sense for the director to be handed the label of the author of the film simply because he is the end all, be all of filmmaking decisions on that set. The arguments for solo-authorship in mainstream filmmaking, however, go against this idea completely by comparing the process to a peer review process for an academic journal or to the editing process of a novel. Many people give their input into how the project should come together, but it is the "artistry" of the director that allows for the project to truly come together.
This relates to Van Sant because we are looking for particular ways in which he places his thumbprint on his films. However, with some of his more mainstream crossovers, especially with his re-make of Psycho, one has to wonder just how much of his thumbprint is visible on those projects. His independent works notably show his filmmaking style, but does the veiled appearance of his thumbprint on more mainstream works make those films any less than a Gus Van Sant film? That's what our course is meant to evaluate.
9. The motivations for the shift from "actual authors" to "author constructs" by some critics are that there is no denying that, while there are some real fictional authors, there are also authors that are implied within the film. While the director may not have written the story for the film that he created, he is still an "author construct" because he is the implied author of the translation of the script to the screen. One argument in favor of the implied author is "the suggestion that recognition of and appeal to the author construct provides the best explanation of the apparent unity and coherence that many films present us with," us being the audience and critics alike. However, Meskin feels that this argument is flawed because it implies that the markers of one individual creator can create a sense of unity. However, the use of "author constructs" could "distort our responses to cinema" if one author, implied or otherwise, was assigned to a film. This explanation seems muddled, and Meskin explains that the motivations for the shift are questionable at best. People who support "author constructs" often refer to the "frequent apparent mismatch between the character or the personality of the real person(s) who made a work and the character or personality expressed in the work." The actual person(s) who made the film should be of no true importance, then, as their stances are not reflected in the films.
When it comes to the comments about Van Sant's vision in relation to the heterosexual white male directors, I felt like Taubin was kind of out of place in the way the question was posed to Van Sant. It almost seemed as though the assumption being made was that just because Van Sant is a homosexual white male that his films automatically had to be viewed with a homosexual slant towards the actions taking place, and while I do believe that homosexuality does play a part in most of his films, I do not think that it's as big a part of his authorship as Taubin tries to make it out to be. As we read earlier in the semester, it's just one of the many issues that Van Sant likes to bring up in his films. Yes, he likes to put a sexual stamp on the films that he makes, but it is not always homosexual in nature. However, I feel like Van Sant handled the assumptions in such a way as to defend himself without attacking Taubin's statements. Instead, he simply says that it might be the audience "reading into the film."
The first time that I viewed Elephant, the kiss scene definitely caught me by surprise. Not because it was two boys kissing, but I just didn't see it coming. However, upon multiple viewings of the film, Van Sant's statements do make sense. The way in which the two boys interact throughout the film show their close friendship with one another in a way that almost makes it look more intimate than just a casual friendship. Van Sant explains his reasoning behind it as what he feels kids who spend a lot of time together do together, especially as these two characters are about to go into a life or death situation. He used the kiss to make the boys "human," instead of trying to demonize them, which is something that I find to be very interesting. When making a film about a school shooting, most people would try to demonize the people doing the killing, however Van Sant brings it upon himself to add a human element to most, if not all, of the characters he directs.
Though we discussed his re-make of Psycho in great detail in class, I did find Van Sant's reasoning behind re-making the film to be very interesting. I never really thought of making a film as an "appropriation exercise," but I appreciate his reasoning behind it. Instead of trying to "rob" older, forgotten films of their integrity and character, he wanted to re-make something that everybody would know. It was a challenge that had not been done before, at least not to the extent that he did it with the nearly shot-by-shot re-make, but it was really just an exercise for him as a director, and I think that's the way that people should view it instead of trying to compare the old version and the re-make to see which one is "better." Obviously, the first film bears Hitchcock's fingerprint and he films it in a way to give it critical acclaim, but that does not mean that Van Sant's version is any less worthy of being appreciated as what it is, a director taking a film and making it into an exercise for himself.
2. Van Sant considered the traditional screenwriting format to be restricting because it did not allow for any real freedom during the film production phase. Instead, it was merely a translation from script to screen. Everything in the script was seemingly set in stone once the ink hit the paper, and that was how the lines would be delivered and how the scene would be set up. With Elephant, Van Sant got rid of scripted dialogue and allowed for what he called "ordinary conversations." Instead of his script being set in stone, the lines of the script worked as a filmmaking "map" for him to follow. He also used non-professional actors so that the conversation would feel more "ordinary" and less scripted. For non-professional actors, not having to memorize lines from a script would allow them to shape the characters in the film themselves, with the help of Van Sant, and it would become more about how conversations were handled than what was said. To develop the narrative, Van Sant follows the lives of various students in the school instead of just focusing on the perspective of the shooters. While there's a good chance that many people watching the film would know what was going to happen, we are able to connect with the other characters before the shooting occurs, and we, as an audience, barely see the shooters in relation to the other characters until the killing actually begins. Though the actions seem to take place within a certain day and a certain time, the audience is left to figure out exactly where they are in time and space, as the film follows various characters from many different points throughout the film.
3. The second act of Elephant is different from other films with a three-act structure because it does not follow conventional standards for a second act. Usually, the protagonist would be faced with multiple obstacles, problems, and other things to keep him/her from his/her goal in the narrative. Instead, the film covers what went on during the previous day and follows a different character. Elephant does not have one clear-cut protagonist, so the second act is not able to function as it normally would, not that Van Sant would have allowed it to function that way with the way in which he styled and structured the narrative of the film.
4. While many people recognize that Elephant had no defined time frame, other than taking place during twenty-four hours spanned across two days, what most people don't realize is how Van Sant plays with shot duration to show more of the action within those twenty-four hours. The audience is actually exposed to a lot of the action that took place between many of the characters over that twenty-four hours period instead of focusing on the actions of one character, even though John does take over a prominent role in the films. The shot duration nearly acts as though the actions were happening in real time, and in the third act, when the shooting spree for Alex and Eric begins, the real-time feel continues and the film "nearly approximates the actual time frame of the events of the Columbine shootings, which occurred over... fifteen minutes." Elephant's shooting sequence lasts nearly twelve minutes.
5. The big difference between Elephant and Hollywood and most independent films is that Elephant does not follow one character in particular. While John does seem to become the film's main focus at times, the narrative still spends a great deal of time getting to know each of the characters as the camera follows them through their actions taken on the day of the school shooting. In fact, other than the school shooters who are constantly being traumatized in their school setting, the audience barely has any information to connect to any character that would be a true "protragonist," other than John, who has to deal with his alcoholic knowledge and the fact that he saw the shooters going into the school and made no efforts to stop them. The tracking shots used to follow the characters give the audience a long time to look at the characters, but they never really penetrate beneath the surface of the characters. These strategies allow Van Sant to show the disconnect between the student-to-student relationship and the student-to-authority figure relationship. None of the characters are really connecting with one another, and in a way, the audience is unable to connect to any of them as well. In a way, it's just like every awkward phase that any high school student has ever had to go through. Teenagers feel as though they don't belong, and Elephant depicts that in a way that feels true to the high school experience.
6. Stephen Heath's criticism of cinematic authorship states that authorship could exist but that the critical approach to a film should not just be focused on the work of the director. Instead, there should be an approach that allows for the analysis of all of the work put into a film by various crew members that add to the sense of authorship often labeled only under the name of the director. Only focusing on the director's creative input distracts from audience reactions and discounts any views that might merely be interpretations of the viewers and were not actually placed into the film by the director himself. Many hands play a part in how a film is received. Focusing on a very narrow aspect, like just the role of the director, would also take away the impact of social situations and culture have on a film.
This plays a significant role in our class because we are looking at Van Sant films from an authorship perspective, and while many of the "marks" we claim he places on a film could be accurate, there are many creative moves made by other members of his crew that we might be attributing to him when they were not his ideas. Furthermore, the way the film is made could be entirely dependent on the crew that he is working with and their ability to execute the directorial vision that he has. Also, Van Sant is very big on playing up societal standards and cultural roles his characters might have. Poverty, and other social issues, are big story points for him.
7. Barthes demands "the death of the author." Foucault also tried to predict a time when "the author function will disappear." Neither Barthes nor Foucault see the merit in having an authorship based criticism of films, and they seem to think that the only way for it to stop polluting the field of film criticism would be for the idea of authorship in filmmaking to disappear completely. While Meskin seems to agree, to some extent, that the idea of directors as authors of films is outdated, in a way, and somewhat romanticized, while also saying that there are not enough parallels being made between novelists and filmmakers as authors for it to stand its ground as a critical concept, he does not feel that such a radical step as "death" for the idea of authorship needs to take place. Instead, he argues for a better definition of the author concept while also arguing that it is not even clear which stance Barthes and Foucault even have on the supposed existence of authorship. Meskins simply finds their arguments unpersuasive.
8. Many of the arguments against solo-authorship in mainstream filmmaking deal with the fact that so many people work on a studio film set that it does not make sense for the director to be handed the label of the author of the film simply because he is the end all, be all of filmmaking decisions on that set. The arguments for solo-authorship in mainstream filmmaking, however, go against this idea completely by comparing the process to a peer review process for an academic journal or to the editing process of a novel. Many people give their input into how the project should come together, but it is the "artistry" of the director that allows for the project to truly come together.
This relates to Van Sant because we are looking for particular ways in which he places his thumbprint on his films. However, with some of his more mainstream crossovers, especially with his re-make of Psycho, one has to wonder just how much of his thumbprint is visible on those projects. His independent works notably show his filmmaking style, but does the veiled appearance of his thumbprint on more mainstream works make those films any less than a Gus Van Sant film? That's what our course is meant to evaluate.
9. The motivations for the shift from "actual authors" to "author constructs" by some critics are that there is no denying that, while there are some real fictional authors, there are also authors that are implied within the film. While the director may not have written the story for the film that he created, he is still an "author construct" because he is the implied author of the translation of the script to the screen. One argument in favor of the implied author is "the suggestion that recognition of and appeal to the author construct provides the best explanation of the apparent unity and coherence that many films present us with," us being the audience and critics alike. However, Meskin feels that this argument is flawed because it implies that the markers of one individual creator can create a sense of unity. However, the use of "author constructs" could "distort our responses to cinema" if one author, implied or otherwise, was assigned to a film. This explanation seems muddled, and Meskin explains that the motivations for the shift are questionable at best. People who support "author constructs" often refer to the "frequent apparent mismatch between the character or the personality of the real person(s) who made a work and the character or personality expressed in the work." The actual person(s) who made the film should be of no true importance, then, as their stances are not reflected in the films.
Monday, February 1, 2010
“Hitch Without Hitch” & “Gus Van Sant vs. Alfred Hitchcock"
1. The four ways in which Leitch argues that Van Sant's Psycho is unusual are: 1) Van Sant's decision not to update, readapt, or rethink the original's source material in any way, 2) the audience would lose the sense of surprise gained when the film's heroine dies almost exactly halfway through the film because of the original film, 3) the remake's textual closeness to the original, and 4) Van Sant sticking to the same filming conditions, including the same shooting schedule, that Hitchcock used with the original film.
Logistically, Van Sant had to deal with the artistic status of a remake. Due to having to make the film in the 1990s, Van Sant took advantage of the color film available to him and was forced to update the cast with current stars. The time period changes forced the differences from the original to be totally noticeable to the public, so any homage/aspects of the original film was marred by the unique touches that Van Sant placed upon it.
2. The key difference between the two shower scenes is that the Van Sant shower scene in which the heroine is killed is totally expected by the audience. This is different from general genre expectations and conventions inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho because it completely eliminates the element of suspense and surprise that Hitchcock prided himself in being a master of.
3. James Naremore has many objections to Van Sant's take on Psycho from the casting of Robert Forester as the psychologist and the effect that has on how Norman's diagnosis is perceived to how the close-up of Marion Crane's dead eye "spoils the mood of one of the most famous dissolves in movie history." In the areas of casting and performance, Naremore had objections to Vince Vaughn not being able to make the character of Norman Bates into his own character. Instead, Vaughn is forced to copy the performance of Perkins to mimic the original performance and, in this way, gives the audience no more than a "stale" performance with none of the payoffs (pathos, boyish humor, etc.) that the original performance provided. However, he disapproves of Anne Heche's take on Marion Crane because she loses almost everything that could be construed as the essence of Janet Leigh.
The Royal Cook is about about a cook who is fated to die due to his inability to recreate the exact taste of a mulberry omelet at the orders of his dying king. The explanation states that, even with a close examination of all of the same ingredients involved in the recipe, the royal cook cannot recreate the moment in which the previous omelets were eaten because the experience is entirely subject. In reference to Van Sant's Psycho, this means that no matter how hard he tried to make an exact duplicate of Hitchcock's film, he would have been entirely unable to do so because the audience for the film is entirely different. Psycho, and any other films like it, is no longer "cutting-edge." Modern audiences expect different things from their horror films.
4. According to William Rothman, Alfred Hitchcock was a master of choosing a camera angle or a specific shot in order to convey a certain meaning within his films. By copying Hitchcock, Van Sant was unable to replicate those meanings. Instead, Van Sant's subtle changes to the shots completely. They no longer have the power of Hitchcock's shot, and it does little to do the originator justice. The audience no longer feels trapped by Van Sant's camera angles and shots. The original meaning no longer exists.
Leitch raises the question of why. He wants to understand why Van Sant's shots lost the "force of gesture" that Alfred Hitchcock's had if they were, in fact, the same shots. Basically, the fact that Van Sant is not, in fact, Hitchcock himself should not alter the meaning if the film is an exact duplicate, however, the intertextual markers and other audience aspects change the film. Timothy Gould disagrees with Rothman because he states that the average moviegoer must be able to rise above the simple act of "commonplace viewing" and be able to acknowledge "Hitchcock's authorship." The audience should be able to make observations, regardless.
5. Alfred Hitchcock was Hollywood's first auteur filmmaker. While he was not the first to make some of his films, he was the first to make a film, put his filmmaking thumbprint on it, and make the film into something easily recognized as one of his works. Leitch even claims that Hitchcock might be the "last auteur." In Naremore's recollection of his first viewing of Psycho, he was genuinely horrified by the film. Van Sant's version of the film was more of an academic study then a genuine "film going" experience. However, for students watching Psycho in an academic setting, the film lost the original scare factor. The setting in which a film is viewed can have a tremendous effect on the way it impacts the audience.
6. Leitch suggests that maybe Van Sant "out-Hitchcocks Hitchcock" because Hitchcock was considered the master of suspense. He felt that making the audience feel suspense was always greater than merely surprising them. In this way, Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of one of the most horrifying scenes in Psycho, the shower scene where Marion Crane dies, is not scary in the same sense, as the audience knows the death is coming. However, the level of suspense is elevated because the audience knows the murder is coming and are on the edges of their seats as they wait to see how Van Sant plays the scene out.
7. The thematic concerns that Schneider associates with Van Sant films are: his character types as examples of dysfunction (hustlers, junkies, troubled geniuses, etc.) and his ability to explore subjectivity at the level of the narrative and on a visual level, which helps to explore the dysfunction of the previously stated character types. He also romanticizes the idea of leaving home and then heading out on the open road in order to escape repression.
In Psycho, the two main characters are incredibly dysfunctional and fit right in with Van Sant's ideas of dysfunctional, troubled individuals. Norman Bates suffers from mental illness as a result of living with, and his subsequent murder of, his overbearing, repressive mother. Marion Crane is desperate to leave her repressive life in the city and wishes to start her own life with Sam, so she steals money, leaves home, and heads out on the road in order to try to start this new life, a sentiment that works very well with Van Sant's romanticism of the road and the journey it represents.
8. Van Sant likes to insert images within important moments of his films, and Psycho is no different. While he tries to keep the film identical in a sense of a shot-for-shot remake, his own stylistic markers slip into the film. For instance, images of blue skies and clouds are cut in with Marion Crane's murder scene, and the same happens when Arbogast is being murdered in the Bates house. The use of time-lapse sky and other intercuts happens often in Van Sant films when characters are undergoing "altered states of consciousness." This is visible in scenes of orgasms, narcoleptic seizures, and drug-induced hallucinations in other Van Sant films.
9. Marion: By casting an openly homosexual woman, or so Anne Heche was at the time of the film, Van Sant altered the expectations of the character. Janet Leigh, the original Marion Crane, was heterosexual. Instead of committing a crime, such as theft, to get out of her trapped lifestyle in the city, the casting of Heche could lead the audience to believe, as Schneider puts it, that a "radical change in lifestyle" could be exactly what she needs.
Norman: The original character of Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, was incredibly effeminate. Perkins himself was a gay man, so the character's ticks and his leaning towards being more feminine than masculine were far more easier for the audience to accept. Casting Vince Vaughn gave the character a much more masculine, macho build, and it became more difficult for the audience to accept any signs of femininity from such a "man's man." By choosing to have Vaughn's character masturbate to Marion Crane's image through a peep hole, Van Sant cements his heterosexuality and eliminates the homosexual character type that Hitchcock had once played up in his own film. It also changes the meaning of her murder from one of his mother's jealousy to Norman's own jealousy in Marion not showing any interest in him.
Lila: Julianne Moore's portrayal of Lila Crane is one that comes across as more "butch" and independent than her sister, Marion. She also comes across as more "butch" and independent than the woman who had played her previously, Vera Miles. Schneider equates her to the same level of liberation as the lesbian cowgirls in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues because she actively participates in the capture of her sister's murderer.
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