On her way to tell Sam about her theft, she gets caught in a terrible downpour and pulls off at the out-of-the-way Bates Motel (as a cheeky touch, Van Sant has the neon Bates Motel sign read NEWLY RENOVATED). It is the story of flighty Marion Crane ( Anne Heche), a secretary at a real estate firm who steals a large amount of money from her boss in order to start a new life with her boyfriend Sam (Viggo Mortensen). The blood and guts of the film are still the same.
Indie filmmakers often talk about using big studio money to do something radical. Robert Forster, who plays the exposition-laden psychiatrist at the end of Van Sant's remake, had his own theory: "They don't change Hamlet whenever some new company puts on a production." In a sense, by so slavishly recreating the 1960 original, Van Sant was paying it the ultimate form of respect. "Why does a studio ever remake a film? Because they have this little thing they've forgotten about that they could put in the marketplace and make money from." "It's a marketing scheme," Van Sant also added. īut why do it scene-for-scene? Van Sant offered a variety of answers, but the one he came back to most often was "Why not?" There was a pop artiness to the project, akin to Andy Warhol taking someone else's work and turning it into a famous silkscreen. He could use his newfound carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was to remake Psycho.
Then came Good Will Hunting, which earned $225 million at the box office on a $10 million dollar budget, and earned Van Sant a Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards. Up until then, the filmmaker was known – if he was known at all – for indies like Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho and To Die For. Van Sant's Psycho redux remained a pipe-dream until 1997. This is Gus Van Sant's Psycho, the 1998 shot-for-shot remake that lead critics and audiences to respond with a resounding, "Why?" Because this is not Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. And the blood that's about to splatter the shower tiles will be bright red instead of a dark brown rendered in black and white. But there's something different about it this time. We know almost every frame and angle of it in our collective consciousness, even if we've somehow managed to avoid seeing the film the scene is from. Marion, so enamored in her baptism-by-shower, fails to notice the shadow darkening the shower curtain the shadow of an individual raising a long, sharp object in their hand. She can feel the wrong-headed choices that brought her here, to this nondescript motel nestled in the middle of nowhere, circling down the drain. This shower is a cleansing not just of body but of spirit. The water streams out of the shower head, and she lets it wash over her, rinsing away her poor past decisions in the process. She adjusts the hot and cold valves until they're just right. Marion steps into the motel shower without a hint of hesitation. In this edition: a defense of Gus Van Sant's misunderstood Psycho remake.)
PSYCHO 1998 STREAMING MOVIE
(Welcome to The Unpopular Opinion, a series where a writer goes to the defense of a much-maligned film or sets their sights on a movie seemingly beloved by all.
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