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Psycho: A Love Story

Posted By Matt On 3rd October 2005 @ 16:27 In Books, Movies, Music, Television, Blogs, Internet, Technology | 4 Comments

Following the success of the remixed Shining trailer, other recut trailers have begun to surface.

A movie critic in Los Angeles named Peter Debruge has devoted an entire site, Movie Trailer Trash, to film trailers. He reviews them, he provides criteria for judging them, and he writes a short history of them. The site was part an undergraduate thesis he wrote at The University of Texas in 2000.

As part of that thesis, Peter recut a trailer for Psycho and dubbed it Psycho: A Love Story. His version occludes the central revelation of Hitchcock’s film, and presents it as a sweet-hearted love story:

On his website, Peter explains how he made it:

In the following demo preview, I intend to show how easy it can be to cut a preview for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho that makes the edgy thriller look like an upbeat romantic comedy. Keep in mind, that I am employing the same tricks real trailer editors use, some outrageously obvious and others more subtly insidious, to pull off the deception. As my model, I’ve selected Miramax’s late-fall preview for Bounce, a generic boy-meets-girl approach that seems to surface frequently enough for films of this kind. Notice how virtually every transition in the Bounce preview uses either a dissolve or a horizontal wipe to join the two clips.

University of Texas students and alumni might be interested in this tidbit, as well:

I’ve also tried to have some fun with the narration, recorded by Dr. William Livingston, who provides the voice of “Tex” on the University of Texas’s automated phone system. He and I worked together on properly wording the “shower” pun to acknowledge what everyone knows about the movie Psycho without actually letting the preview reveal the movie’s sick twist.

I’ve never heard Tex before, but a little research turned up this remembrance of his phone system recordings. That post includes a link to the Austin American-Statesman’s surprisingly entertaining video of Dr. Livingston reading lines from the phone system (registration required) such as “Please enter your nine-digit student ID number,” “The code you entered is invalid,” and “Our records indicate that your registration bill has not been paid.” I know, I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but Livingston’s dramatic flair breathes new life into those dead lines.

Dr. Livingston seems like a very nice guy. I guess he takes after Norman.