Hitchcock Woman the Eighth: Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in Psycho
On the one hand, it’s a bit odd to put Janet Leigh in with the other eight Hitchcock women - after all, she’s only in half of one Hitchcock film. But because that film is so iconic, and her presence in it so famous, it would be inconceivable to make the list of Hitchcock women without her.
She’s one of the few Hitchcock women one could call working class, though not for a lack of glamor on Leigh’s part. (Hitchcock leverages the loosening standards of 1960 Hollywood to show Leigh in her underwear as often as possible.) Marion Crane certainly has the strength and determination of all the Hitchcock women - going to criminal lengths, stealing money from a rich man who certainly doesn’t need it. But she steals it for fairly selfish reasons, to solve her own personal problems. Though she’s done something criminal, yet she remains likable, we root for her. She knows what she did was wrong, and after a conversation with Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) where we learn how trapped he is in his own life, she eventually turns the corner and decides to return the money. She plans to try her best to escape the trap she has set for herself. But then the movie takes an unexpected turn and we never see the end of the story we were expecting. Her premature end isn’t due to any weakness on her part - it comes due to the evil in the world that Hitchcock proves could be hiding around any corner. An evil that could come at any time for any of us.
Of course, one could say the true Hitchcock woman in Psycho is Marion’s determined sister Lila (played by Vera Miles). More on her in another entry.
Still wondering what The Birds would have been like had it starred Suzanne Pleshette. She wasn’t your typical “Hitchcock woman”, but that’s what would have made it interesting. At least we got the delightful Annie Hayworth.
The second annual edition of the Montreal International Game Summit Brain Dump was a hoot! Embracing the theme of “Inventing the Future” the eight participants from Montreal and all over the continent plus myself as host went through a whirlwind of unique looks at what the future may look like. Such as….
- Deus Ex Human Revolutionart director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête talked about how the video game industry must go to aesthetic rehab and look to new places for visual inspiration.
- Versatile game designer/writer and RPI professor Lee Sheldon talked about cut-scenes being evil and why the game industry needs to try harder to innovate at telling stories through gameplay.
- Assassin’s Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson said the press and marketing need to stop asking all the wrong questions and instead focus on the meaningful content in the games we make.
- Epic Games founder/CTO Tim Sweeney talked about the end of the platform wars and how we must rethink the games we design.
- University of Montreal game studies professor Bernard Perron talked about how Small is Beautiful and how the game industry needs to figure out how to deliver episodic content on a way that will keep up with his addiction.
- THQ game designer Stephanie Bouchard talked about making video games more human and how The Godfather game did not live up to her expectations.
- Director of marketing at Square Enix Cord Smith talked about the future is like the past - and how we should learn from all those quarters we spent.
- Watch_Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin took us out on an inspirational point, reminding us that we need to leave room for players to make their own interpretations of the worlds we build for them.
You can download the slides here!
We were written up (partially) by Gamasutra here!
See everyone next year, when all will be held accountable for their predictions. Not really.
Next week at the Montreal International Game Summit I’ll have the pleasure of introducing David Sears’ production keynote “Desade, Machiavelli, and Me.” He will be exploring some of the working situations at game development shops he and I are both intimately familiar with.
Even cooler, David’s written up some study materials that will clue you in on where he’s going with what is sure to be a barn burner of a talk.
http://www.sofstudios.com/psyop/5/machiavelli-the-marquis-de-sade-and-me/
Now, you wouldn’t want to miss that.
Fix It Felix Jr. Coin-Op
Found just sitting out with the other coin-op machines on the Microsoft campus - amazing piece of viral marketing for Wreck it Ralph, a fully functional coin-op of the fake game from that movie - includes worn and distressed authentic art on the cabinet, smashed plate glass on the joystick panel, a fake servicing company sticker. There’s some authenticity problems with it, but only the super hardcore arcade enthusiasts I know would ever notice. And the game’s fun too - not exactly a classic, but overall the thing just “feels” right. Hope the movie can live up to it…
Last year’s Montreal International Game Summit Brain Dump was a raucous good time – so much so that we’re doing it again! In two weeks (Wednesday, November 14th, 5:15 PM to be specific), MIGS Brain Dump 2012 will be the closing keynote for the conference, and the subject is “Inventing the Future.” I’m glad to host our all-star lineup of brainy participants, each doing 5-minute talks where they tell us what’s to come in the world of game development. Who knows, a few of them may even be right. And our speakers are:
- Stephanie Bouchard – Game Designer at THQ MTL, a specialist on unique user-input devices to connect humans and machines.
- Alex Hutchinson: Creative Director at Ubisoft MTL, who just shipped Assassin’s Creed III
- Jonathan Jacques-Belletête: Of Eidos MTL, most recently Art Director on Deus Ex: Human Revolution
- Jonathan Morin: Creative Director at Ubisoft MTL, currently working on the hotly anticipated game Watch_Dogs
- Bernard Perron – Professor of video game studies at Universite de Montreal and perhaps the biggest horror game fan I know.
- Lee Sheldon –Co-Director of the Games Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, also designer/writer of many an adventure game, also doing the design keynote at the conference.
- Cord Smith – Director of Marketing at Square Enix, also speaking at the summit about rebooting the Hitman franchise.
- Tim Sweeney – CTO of Epic Games, chief architect of the Unreal Engine, also giving the main conference keynote.
Hope to see you there.
About time I saw this movie.
Now that the Smithsonian’s video game exhibit has closed, time to post some photos from when Katharine and her cousin attended. They loved it, though it was smaller than I expected. Typical bitter game developer: “What, three rooms? That’s it?”
The five playable games were Pac Man, Super Mario Bros, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower, a decent assortment. They also included displays of most game systems from the last 35 years, though I was offended by the lack of an Apple II anywhere to be found. Really? No iOS either? Strange omissions.
If someone had told me, back when I was a teenager, that one day Bard’s Tale III would be in the Smithsonian, I would have said “Really? And not Bard’s Tale II?" (Though, to be fair, I did like BCIII as well…)
