“The real trick—as was the case in ‘Psycho‘—is: can you keep the plot a secret and convince people to go without really telling them why they should go?” director Steven Soderbergh asked during an MSN interview about his final theatrical film “Side Effects.” “The best case scenario is people coming in cold. Then you have the most fun.” But merely tipping his hat to Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t enough for the filmmaker, who has gone a bit further in deconstructing the iconic thriller.
Today, the director has posted “Psychos,” which as you might gather from the title, is a feature-length mashup of Hitchcock’s original 1960 movie and Gus Van Sant‘s controversial shot-for-shot 1998 remake. His approach is interesting, utilizing monochrome for the entire movie cutting between shots from Hitchcock’s and Van Sant’s films. But for the shower sequence, he goes to color, primarily using Van Sant’s cut though overlaying imagery from Hitchcock’s take as well. (And it should be noted that Soderbergh did something similar in “Kafka,” with a key sequence in color in an otherwise black-and-white film).
Naturally, it’s a fascinating watch so block off some time and jump over to Extension 765 to check the mashup that Soderbergh says cryptically comes from a place of “total affection, openness, and honey bought directly from a beekeeper.”