RE: JCO: Hitchcock
Hi Cyrano
Glad you're back. I just brought up Hitchcock as JCO was talking about him in her recent interview with Michael Silverblatt. A while ago Randy listed on the site that she was writing a biography of Hitchcock, but then information about it disappeared and I was always curious about what happened to this project. Then I heard her say in this interview that she did a lot of research for the biography, but decided Hitchcock was such a distasteful man she couldn't go through with writing it. However, she did write the story "Fat Man, My Love" based on that research. It's an interesting story, funny and bitter, a bit like the narration of Blonde with the starlet recounting the rather surreal experience of working in the movie business, being pushed into a certain character and "look" for the camera. She's incredibly critical of the Hitchcock character she refers to as Fat Man, but is strangely defensive of him too. It seems like she admires him as a man of great power and vision, but he's also someone that was despicable, cruel and misguided.
I think JCO’s portrayal of “fat” people has always been a powerful symbol of gluttony and greed, a sort of insatiable aspect of American appetites, that enough is never enough. What comes to mind most strikingly is that scene in Wonderland. I think the young man runs away with the mother of his adoptive family and they get Chinese food. They eat more than enough for two people, but the mother is still hungry and she remarks something like “It’s delicious, but it’s like air”. I don’t know why, but that scene has always stuck in my mind.
eric
Glad you're back. I just brought up Hitchcock as JCO was talking about him in her recent interview with Michael Silverblatt. A while ago Randy listed on the site that she was writing a biography of Hitchcock, but then information about it disappeared and I was always curious about what happened to this project. Then I heard her say in this interview that she did a lot of research for the biography, but decided Hitchcock was such a distasteful man she couldn't go through with writing it. However, she did write the story "Fat Man, My Love" based on that research. It's an interesting story, funny and bitter, a bit like the narration of Blonde with the starlet recounting the rather surreal experience of working in the movie business, being pushed into a certain character and "look" for the camera. She's incredibly critical of the Hitchcock character she refers to as Fat Man, but is strangely defensive of him too. It seems like she admires him as a man of great power and vision, but he's also someone that was despicable, cruel and misguided.
I think JCO’s portrayal of “fat” people has always been a powerful symbol of gluttony and greed, a sort of insatiable aspect of American appetites, that enough is never enough. What comes to mind most strikingly is that scene in Wonderland. I think the young man runs away with the mother of his adoptive family and they get Chinese food. They eat more than enough for two people, but the mother is still hungry and she remarks something like “It’s delicious, but it’s like air”. I don’t know why, but that scene has always stuck in my mind.
eric
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