![]() ![]() The challenge of television was one that Hitchcock took on in a variety of ways: fronting, in a markedly sardonic fashion, his own TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–62), as well as adopting TV production methods (short schedule, small crew, black and white) to make Psycho (1960), for example. In a way, I'm aware that I'm continuing to look for something I haven't quite found, and maybe never can.Ĭ.D.: One of the things you find in your search is that Hitchcock is cinema, or cinema at a certain moment in its history, when first confronted by television. This subsequent footage forms a major part of a further development of Looking for Alfred (2005), a project called Double Take (2009). We subsequently integrated some footage of Ron into the film, but since so much was missing, I felt I needed to visit him again and I came to London to interview him. I asked myself: "How can I solve this?" The spontaneous solution was to go for the complete opposite, our Chinese Hitchcock lookalike, Bruce Ho. ( Looking for Alfred, 2005 / Double Take, 2009 )Ĭ.D.: You had to get a double for the double. But then, just when everything was in place and we were ready to shoot, Ron fell ill and had to go into hospital. When I looked at the footage of Ron afterwards, it was eerie and uncanny to see what I began to believe was our perfect Hitchcock double. ![]() This was vividly brought home to me shortly after the London casting, where I met Ron Burrage, a professional twenty-year veteran Hitchcock lookalike. Even in not finding what, in the end, turns out to have been a MacGuffin, you arrive at another story. Although we never found the "Alfred" we were looking for, the pursuit of him led us to other things. With the Hitchcock castings, it was the same. It sets the story in motion: a device to start the story-telling process, to make people curious. J.G.: It's the oil that greases the wheels of suspense, as Hitchcock would claim. I'm convinced of this, but I find it very difficult to prove it to others." It seems to me that, for your purposes, the MacGuffin is not quite nothing. Among other things, he says-in a delightfully paradoxical way-"the main thing I've learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing. In the end it's like those Russian dolls, one hiding within another and within another and within another, until finally you realize that there is nothing hiding beneath at all.Ĭ.D.: Indeed in his interviews with François Truffaut, Hitchcock speaks at length about its inherent meaninglessness. The first guy follows, "What's a MacGuffin?" The second replies that "It's a device to trap lions in the Scottish Highlands", at which point the first retorts: "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands." Nonchalantly, the reply comes as "Well, then that's no MacGuffin!" In our search for the perfect Hitchcock, perhaps he has himself become our own MacGuffin, our illusion pushing the search forward. One asks the other: "What's that thing you're carrying in the luggage rack?" "That's a MacGuffin" comes the answer. ![]() Johan Grimonprez: This reminds me of the MacGuffin anecdote: I've read three, four, maybe five versions of this story where Hitchcock tells an almost but not quite identical account about two guys who meet on a train. Having been on the trail of Hitchcock for almost four years with this project, you must have the feeling that his shadow is everywhere you go. Ishii-Gonzáles (London/New York: Routledge, 2004), 173Ĭhris Darke: We're talking only a short distance away from The Gainsborough, the first film studio Hitchcock ever worked in. Restivo, A., "The silence of The Birds: sound aesthetics and public space in later Hitchcock", in Past and Future Hitchcock, ed. Bode (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2007) Hitchcock's Absen ce", in Johan Grimonprez: Looking for Alfred, ed. Ishii-Gonzales (London: BFI, 1999), 3–14Ī Streetcar named Marge (The Simpsons, season 4, episode 2, first aired 1 October 1992) and Bart of Darkness (The Simpsons, season 6, episode 1, first aired 4 September 1994) This is reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's William Wilson (1839), a story of mis- taken identity where the protagonist is dogged by his counterpartĮlsaesser, T., "The Dandy in Hitchcock", in Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays, ed. Grimonprez is here referring to the Treehouse of Horror VII episode (season 8, episode 1, first aired on 27 October 1996) Ishii-Gonzáles (London/New York: Routledge, 2004), 164–78 ![]()
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