LOS ANGELES, CA -- Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano's widow and son are in settlement talks with Fox Searchlight Pictures over the depiction of Stefano in the current film Hitchcock, which they claim wrongly credits Alfred Hitchcock's wife with Stefano's ideas and work on the classic thriller.
Marilyn and Dominic Stefano of Agoura Hills have hired legal counsel to represent Joseph Stefano’s estate in seeking compensation from the studio.
“Fox Searchlight’s actions … have caused, and will continue to cause, financial damages to our client and to his intellectual property interests and injury to our client’s legacy in connection with Psycho,” attorney William Sobel wrote in a letter to the studio in October.
Negotiations between lawyers for Stefano’s estate and the studio are ongoing. Sobel and Fox Searchlight spokeswoman Lauren Hochberg declined to comment on the status of the talks.
Hitchcock, now in theaters, is about the relationship between the legendary filmmaker, played by Anthony Hopkins, and his wife, Alma Reville, played by Helen Mirren, during the filming of Psycho.
In the official trailer, Hitchcock asks Reville if she is intrigued by the idea of having the heroine killed halfway through the movie. “You shouldn’t wait until halfway through; kill her off after 30 minutes,” Mirren’s character replies. (Go to 1:33 in the attached video.)
That scene in particular angered Marilyn Stefano, and it is cited by her attorney in his letter to the studio.
“In fact, it is well-documented in numerous publications that our client [Joseph Stefano] conceived the … idea, and the film falsely attributes our client’s work product and ingenuity to Mr. Hitchcock’s wife,” Sobel wrote.
Marilyn Stefano, who was on the set for the shooting of Psycho’s infamous shower scene, said she was "appalled" by Hitchcock and its “lies” and “mistakes” in the depiction of her husband, of the famed director and others who were involved in making the film, which was released in 1960.
"How on earth did Sacha Gervasi get to direct this film?" Marilyn said. "So many mistakes, errors, changes of facts and lies."
Hochberg said Gervasi was traveling and unavailable to comment.
Joseph Stefano adapted the Psycho screenplay from the novel by Robert Bloch. He also went on to produce and write episodes of the television series The Outer Limits, Psycho IV: The Beginning and other films and TV shows. He died in 2006 at the age of 84.
Credit Where It's Not Due
The movie's depiction of Joseph Stefano and its portrayal of Reville suggesting that the Marion Crane character, played by Janet Leigh, be killed early in the film, has so angered Marilyn that she wrote her criticisms in a letter to Agoura Hills Patch.
“The script written by my husband was what turned an ugly, trashy little book into a movie watched and studied by every film class in the world, I dare say,” Marilyn wrote. “But to claim that Alma revised it, and came up with the idea of killing the heroine off within the first 30 minutes, is such an outrageous lie that it infuriates me. It's taking credit from the real writer, whose dialogue is printed and quoted by so many, without crediting anyone but the great Hitchcock—and now the great Alma Reville.”
“Shortly after Joe and Hitch meet [in the movie],” Marilyn wrote, “Hitch tells Alma he had Stefano write out the first few scenes, asks her to read them and she tells him—“Hire him.” … There’s no way Joe would have started writing any of the script without first being hired—which he was at the end of that first meeting—he would have gotten in trouble with the Writers Guild that doesn’t allow auditioning.
“They have a scene where Peggy, Hitch’s assistant, actually says that the credit should be: Written by Joseph Stefano and Alma Reville! (Alma says: “The people who matter know. That’s all that counts.”) Strangely, this little scene is not in the script the studio sends out for writing nomination. Did they ad-lib it?”
The Opening Scene
Marilyn told Patch in a previous interview that her husband had his famous first meeting with Hitchcock in 1959, shortly after reading Bloch’s book, which only introduces Marion Crane as she's checking into the infamous Bates Motel.
"He was on his way to the meeting at Paramount when he wrote the whole opening scene to the movie in his head," Marilyn said. “Joe wanted to develop more of a back-story for the character, so when she dies the audience misses her.”
Hitchcock was so impressed that Joseph got the job on the spot, she said.
More Criticisms
Marilyn had other criticisms of the film:
Joseph, played by Ralph Macchio, is portrayed as being nervous and disheveled, late for his first meeting with Hitchcock, and prone to talking about his personal psychoanalysis with the great director.
“[Joseph] always dressed elegantly,” Marilyn wrote. “He was not intimidated by Hitch or anyone else, so he wouldn’t have been nervous. And he was eager to talk about the movie, not analysis, and certainly not that he’d been in analysis so long—that might have made Hitch worry that he was too unreliable and unstable to hire.”
“After a scene with Scarlett [Johansson, playing Janet Leigh], she goes into a dressing room to be fitted, and Hitch goes into his office, which evidently is right next to that dressing room, takes down a painting and stares at her through a peephole. In his office?? Since when are the two [rooms] next to each other on a set? Tacky and stupid!"
“They show Hitch first reading the book, with the cover clearly showing the slashed letters, which were designed for the film, so he was reading a book that wasn’t designed yet."
“Though he’s shooting at Universal-Revue [Studios], Barney Balaban (the head of Paramount) comes onto the set demanding to see footage, even though he’s not financing the picture and has no right to even be at the studio."
“I found the picture mean-spirited, with lots of negative things to say about well-known people merely to make people laugh,” Marilyn wrote. “It painted a portrait of this brilliant, one-of-a-kind director/producer as a greedy, malevolent, totally self-centered man who was incapable of showing appreciation and support for anyone….
"Of all the directors Joe worked with, Hitch and Marty Ritt [The Black Orchid] were the very best, the most generous and so self-assured that they liked to have the writer involved…."
Marilyn said that after Hitchcock got to know Joseph and her, he shared his expertise in wine and food with them. Hitchcock also asked if he and Alma could come to a Christmas party they were hosting.
"When they arrived at our house, he planted himself in the bow of the piano that faced the entry door," she wrote. "When people walked through that door, the first person they saw was ALFRED HITCHCOCK!....
“It’s partly out of these fond memories that I’m angry and appalled that they would treat Hitch with so little respect. So I’m speaking up for him—in addition to being upset about their attempts to tarnish my husband’s great contribution to this classic film that still fascinates people.”
Richard Core contributed to this story.
Think about it. Now, if you want to make up whimsy, call it such, advertise it as such...but then, who would go see it? Who would go see "this is how Alfred Hitchcock might have been..." I agree with the previous post: there was enough information around to have made a "good" movie, especially with the actors involved, based on what "really" happened...the rest is just unethical rewriting of history.
— Steven DeRosa, author Writing with Hitchcock
As to her other factual objections, sure, it's bllshtt to credit Alma Reville with co-writing the script-- but she was indeed a tremendous influence on all of A.H.'s work. Yes, it's absurd to think A.H.'s office was next to a dressing room, but for goodness' sake... if you WERE going to do that scene, how WOULD you set it up? Follow Hitchcock waddle the quarter-mile from his office to the sound stage, walk through the grips and cables and lights and press his eye up to a hole in Janet Leigh's aluminum dressing room trailer? As Hitchcock always said, "Film is life with the dull parts cut out."