![]() ![]() These pooches were Stanley and Geoffrey, the director’s lovable Sealyham Terriers. As she enters the place, you can see Hitchcock leading a pair of small dogs out. The Birds throws one at us when Melanie (Tippi Hedren) ducks into a pet store near the beginning of the picture. By 1963, audiences had come to expect these little cameos. Alfred Hitchcock loved to make brief, on-screen appearances in his own films. He’s remembered as both the master of suspense and an early adopter of cinematic Easter eggs. hated me and would lie in wait for me.” 4. I think we’re working with seagulls.’ And out of the rafters would come Archie. “I’d walk in and say, ‘Is Archie working today?’ And they’d say, ‘Uh, I don’t think so Rod. "I hated him and he hated me.” It got to the point where Taylor started making inquiries about Archie’s whereabouts as part of his daily, on-set ritual. “Every morning, if we were on the set together, he’d come over and … bite me," Taylor revealed in Universal’s DVD documentary All About the Birds. ![]() There was a captive raven named Archie who seemingly went out of his way to attack the actor, even when the cameras weren’t rolling. One particular bird really had it in for Taylor. Like everyone else in the film, Rod Taylor’s character-Mitch Brenner-had to withstand a barrage of avian attacks. For safety reasons, its beak was bound shut with wire. “ built a little platform on her shoulder and a gull was put there,” Hitchcock explained. In one interview, Hitchcock noted that a lot of prep work went into the shot in which a seagull latches onto a girl at a birthday party, harassing her as she tries to run off. Sometimes, to get their feathered friends to fly toward a camera, the crew would suspend a hunk of meat beneath the lens. The wrangling team had plenty of other tricks up their sleeves as well. Another measure taken in the name of animal welfare was the construction of a large net, which the special effects team draped over the living room set this kept the birds from flying haphazardly through the rest of the studio. “We actually built an aviary onto the set for birds that had been hurt or injured,” Veronica Cartwright, who played Cathy in the film, said. Under their watchful eye, the crew set up a makeshift avian hospital. To ensure that none of the animals was harmed, the American Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) assumed an active role in the production. Berwick oversaw an entire bird-wrangling team whose members spent a huge amount of time corralling their feathered co-workers between takes. Most of these were wild-caught crows, ravens, seagulls, and sparrows. Through a meticulous positive reinforcement process, animal handler Ray Berwick trained hundreds of live birds for use in Hitchcock’s movie. We’re just keeping the title and the notion of birds attacking people.” The result was a screenplay Hunter described as “a screwball comedy that turns into terror.” 2. Hunter remembered that, during an early telephone conversation, the director told him “We’re getting rid of the du Maurier story entirely. Once Hitchcock bought the rights to du Maurier’s avian yarn, he hired screenwriter Evan Hunter to pen a script. However, his adaptation would not be a faithful retelling. Hitchcock liked the basic premise and wanted to put “The Birds” on film. One of the book’s highlights is a chilling tale called “The Birds.” An environmentally-conscious fable, it’s about a population of birds who start attacking humans after a harsh winter depletes their natural food supply. In 1952, du Maurier published The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Some Stories. In 1940, he took Rebecca-du Maurier’s gothic masterwork which continues to sell 50,000 copies a year-and converted it into an Oscar-winning drama starring Laurence Olivier. ![]() Over the course of his career, he adapted three of du Maurier's stories, beginning with his 1939 film version of her thrilling novel Jamaica Inn. IT WAS THE THIRD DAPHNE DU MAURIER STORY THAT HITCHCOCK ADAPTED.ĭaphne du Maurier's work has been adapted dozens of times for film and television projects, and Alfred Hitchcock was a particular fan of the London-born author and playwright. Hitchcock’s next picture was The Birds, a technical marvel against which all creature features-from Jaws to Cujo-are now measured. Just when it seemed as though there was nothing left for him to prove, he climbed right back into the director’s chair. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock unleashed Psycho, his most financially successful film and a trendsetting horror classic. There’s an old saying in Hollywood: You’re only as good as your last movie. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |