Part One: Alfred Hitchcock: The Director Who Randomly Tortured People

Was it worth it? In Episode 41, Robert is joined by Abed Geith to discuss Alfred Hitchcock the  brilliant director who also tortured his friends and employees.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans and this is once
again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. Now, my co host today, who was
going in cold in this Tale of a Bastard, is Abta.
How are you doing, man, I'm great. Thanks for having me.
And you are with the podcast Gone Riffin on Starburns Audio. Yes,

(00:22):
I am second season, that's right, and we're every Wednesday.
You can find us and wherever you get podcasts. And
you are also generally you would say, a creative, a
story consultant or whatnot in the industry so to speak. Yes,
mostly for animation. I consult on my friends shows and
before their shows they have me come in and kind
of like I just know every TV show and animation,

(00:45):
Like I'm really into media or a lot of stuff.
So it's like I can be like, well that's too
much like this, or maybe try that, and it's like
helpful to people. And you are a big fan of
Today's Big Bastard. Oh yeah, Alfred Hitchcock honestly, without question,
one of the greatest directors. Yeah, there's no doubting that,
Like there's no underplaying the guy's influences. Sheer um versatility

(01:10):
is really amazing. Yeah, it's it's he's it was a
remarkable director with a remarkable impact. And unlike most of
the bastards we talked about on our show, guys like Hitler, Stalin, Saddam,
Steven Seagal, you know, these people are monsters who left
the world with nothing but misery, pain, death, and a
couple of mediocre nineties action movies. Alfred Hitchcock is a

(01:30):
much more complicated character to talk about when we're sort
of parsing out his legacy. And so the question that
that you and I have to answer today is, in essence,
was it worth? It was what we as a society
got out of Hitchcock worth what the man did to
some of the people around him. I mean, I hope so,
but I don't know exactly what we're gonna find out. Yeah,
and there probably won't be a clean answer, but you know,

(01:52):
it helps to set up a question like that at
the start of the podcast, even if we never address
it again, and and you know, hopefully the audience won't notice.
I shouldn't have brought that up, just rolled on through it.
But right now, we're committed together. So we're locked in
arm in arm. Let's tiptoe arm in arm too oblivion.
I don't know, I should just move on to the story.

(02:14):
Let's do it. Alfred Hitchcock was born on August eighteen nine,
So he's a nineties kid. I'm I'm an eighties nineties kid. Yeah,
I'm an eighties nineties kid, but mostly nineties. Yeah. So
already we've got a lot in common with Hitchcock. I'm
sure his dad's side of the family was mostly a
bunch of small business owners, and his mom's side of
the family were laborers, you know, So he comes from

(02:35):
a pretty working class background, Cockney background. So like, yeah,
Alfred's dad, William, moved the family into the lucrative grocery
store owning trade when he was just a baby. The
family lived on premises at the greens grocers they worked at,
and in general seemed to have lived ideal lives as quiet,
productive subjects of the crown. You know, pretty pretty normal,
you know, turn of the century British family. So while

(02:58):
family circumstances were comfortable enough, father William was a strict disciplinarian.
Alfred was the youngest of three children, and his dad
seems to have singled him out for a particular ire.
Throughout his life, Hitchcock was fond of relating this story,
and I'm going to quote Alfred here. When I was
no more than six years of age, I did something
that my father considered worthy of reprimand he sent me
to the local police station with a note. The officer

(03:19):
and duty read it and locked me in a jail
cell for five minutes, saying this is what we do
to naughty boys. I have ever since gone to any
links to avoid arrest in confinement. To you young people,
my messages stay out of jail. Now, it's debatables to
whether or not that story is true. I do want
to believe that there was a time when you could
just whimsically send your kid to the police station and
have him locked up for a couple of minutes. My

(03:40):
dad almost did it to me when he caught me
with Pott. Really he threatened to call the police. You know,
so I've been there, But that's a little like now nowadays.
I don't think most parents would do that because you'd
be like, I mean, cops, you people. Sometimes Well, my
dad was like a fanatical Muslim, so yeah. Yeah, he
was against any kind of drugs and that's a complicated
police relationship there too. Yeah. Yeah. And Hitchcock's family would

(04:03):
not have had that kind of you know, it was
the eighteen nineties. They were all British and very uh
Cockney Caucasians. Yeah, and they probably trusted the police more
than we do. It was a different era. Although this
does seem to have given Hitchcock kind of a lifetime
hatred of police officers and all authority figures, which is
that we share that, yes, it ditto, ditto, uh, And

(04:24):
it's also a pretty ever present theme in his work.
You know, the police generally are not portrayed as particularly
on the ball in hitchcock films, and in a way
they represent sort of like an opposition. Yeah, yeah, and
that seems to have been his very much attitude. He
stayed in a number of interviews actually that it must
be said to my credit that I never wanted to
be a policeman, which is like the polite nineteen fifties

(04:45):
equivalent of having a C. A B. Tattooed or stuck
on the back of your shirt or something like. He
he definitely had a little bit of that punk attitude going,
I can imagine. Yeah. Donald Spotto, who were the biography
The Dark Set of Genius, notes that it's impossible to
con firm or deny hitchcock story about being locked in
a cell for five minutes. Whatever the case, it's telling
that he would go back to the story repeatedly in

(05:06):
interviews and definitely says something about him as a person.
Hitchcock grew up into an anxious child. He did not
deal well with being left alone and was prone to
flights of wild paranoia. Quote. I remember when I was
five or six. It was a Sunday evening, the only
time my parents did not have to work. They put
me to bed and went to Hyde Park for a stroll.
They were sure I would be asleep until they returned.
But I woke up, called out, and no one answered,

(05:27):
nothing but night all around me, shaking. I got up,
wandered around the empty, dark house, and finally, arriving in
the kitchen, found a piece of cold meat that I
ate while drying my tears. Yeah it's a rough story,
oh man. Yeah, Yeah, And so far I'm with him, Yeah,
so far with him. He's not nothing, nothing like he's
just a little kid at this But he's struggling. He's struggling,
and he he begins to binge eat uh. And apparently

(05:49):
his favorite foods were fried fish and bacon, which checks
out with the British stuff, very British, that is British. Yeah,
a lot of fried fish, a lot of bacon. He
later recalled that his goal with this was to build
what he described as an omer of fat to protect
him from the world. It's kind of awesome, Yeah, it's
it's kind of making it your own. Um. As a
young man, Hitchcock's favorite hobby involved studying the timetables of

(06:11):
the brand new electronic trains that had just come to London. Uh.
He was seven years old when the London area got
its first electronic tram and this was apparently something of
like a local hobby at the time. It's just obsessing
over train schedules and like betting how late or early
a train would be. It was a boring time, like
nineteen o seven, there's not a lot study. It's that
or Dickens Well, it's kind of like model building. Yeah,

(06:34):
I feel like this is the nineteen o six version.
Like the people who would have been doing that in
nineteen o six grew up reading Star Wars Extended Universe
novels in the nineteen nineties. Oh yeah, yeah, to the Empire. Yeah,
it's something cool and new and futuristic, so you obsess
over it for a while because we we didn't get
Star Wars sequel, so that was the closest we got.
The closest we got it was our electronic train schedules.

(06:57):
I think I was made fun of. Ye yes, yes,
I would say it made me a stronger person. But
it made me better. Well, it did make me better. Yeah.
Uh and damn, I'm gonna guess maybe he didn't take
ship for the electronic train thing. That might have just
been so cool at the time. But he was probably
ahead of the curve. He was probably ahead of the
curve that is inforced. Hitchcock went to high school or

(07:22):
primary school, yes they call it. It's Saint Ignatious, which
was a Catholic school that took a traditionally and expectedly
Catholic attitude towards discipline. Kids were whipped on their knuckles
for being bad, but discipline there was not the sort
of ad hoc affair that it's usually portrayed as being
in like movies about Catholic schools, kids would be sentenced
by their teachers for particular acts of misbehavior, and they'd
have to schedule time to go get whipped by their

(07:42):
school's disciplinarian. I actually grew up in a school like this. Yeah,
my elementary school in Oklahoma had corporal punishment and it
was all your teachers would sentence you, but the principal
had to do all of the paddling. So's the movie?
Is it Taps? I don't know, were there in the
military school and they take over oh ship? No, I
an't see that. I don't know if it's Taps. It's
like it's it's something, but it's it's the similar thing

(08:04):
where the kids are whipped and then one day they
sort of like overrule the teachers. Well, we didn't ever
overthrow our teachers. It was more like you'd schedule a
thing with the principle and he'd hit you in the
butt like five times with the paddle, and then he
signed the paddle. Yeah. Anyway, So I don't know, Hitchcock
and I have this in common. Um, it wasn't very
scary at our school. It was almost more of a joke.

(08:25):
But Hitchcock this seemed to really leave an impact on him,
and it seemed to be something that he related to
with horror, and it almost seems like how old was
he again, how he would have been, you know, twelve thirteen,
That's that's really scary. And it seems like what really
had an impact on him was the sort of inevitable
nature of once you get sentenced, like you have to
go schedule the time. It doesn't happen immediately, so you've

(08:47):
just got this dread approaching, which is again something that's
really present in his movies, Like he's the master of
suspense exactly. So like it seems like you can kind
of see these little bits of him getting programmed as
he's young by sort of these experiences of his best
methods and film in his filmmaking is where the audience
knows something's coming but the main character doesn't. Yeah, and

(09:07):
he's in a way that's similar. Yeah, he likes to
torment you with he learned that, and yeah, here's what
he said about it later. Quote. The method of punishment,
of course, was highly dramatic, because the form master would
tell the pupil of his wrongdoing and the people would
have to go before to the disciplining priest. It was
left to the people to decide when he would go
for the punishment, and of course he would keep putting
it off, and then at the end of the day
he would go to a special room where there would

(09:28):
be a priest or a lay brother who would administer
the punishment, like in a minor way going for execution.
I think it was a bad thing. It was not
like they give the poison can in other schools. This
was a rubber strap. If by chance you had gone
as bad as to be sentenced too, shall we say twelve,
you would have to spread it over two days because
each hand could only take three strokes as it became numb.
So it's I was I was actually hit by my mom,

(09:50):
not my dad. And she would do that where she
would count during the day how many hits I would get. Yeah,
and if I was really bad, she'd use like a
like a spatula. Yeah, and then this was on my bomb. Yeah.
But that's like horrifying, like that knowledge, that knowledge that
like you got. I think the most was seventeen. We're
coming my way, and yeah, there it seems like it

(10:10):
was twelve for him, but like, yeah, that's that clearly
left an impact on this guy, to the same idea
that it is terrifying. Yeah, yeah, exactly and makes you
hate your mother. Yeah, well exactly. I don't think Hitchcock
grew up super fond of authority figures partly as a
result of this and as a result of his Yeah,
so of course we're seeing the man sort of come
together here as a child. Spotto, also, his biographer, also

(10:34):
thinks that this had a major impact on the content
of his movies. Hitchcock was described at the time by
other kids in his primary school as being different from
the beginning. One of his schoolmates later described him as
a lonely, fat boy who smiled and looked at you
as if he could see straight through you. Jesus. Yeah,
so he's I mean, that's a movie right there, that is. Yeah,
he sounds like he's a little bit children of the
Corn or something. Yeah. Yeah, I was just about to say,
it's kind of like that. Yeah. Uh. Now. Mr and

(10:57):
Mrs Hitchcock called their son Fred. He hated the name.
He also hated his nickname Cocky, which he received during
his time in Catholic school. What with the news today
when you hear that he got nicknamed Cocky at Catholic school.
It is natural to assume the worst, but actually it's
a little bit less messed up than it might otherwise be.
I don't really understand where Cocky came from this nickname,
so I'm going to read that the story of classmate

(11:19):
gave his biographer about how he got his nickname. Cocky.
Hitchcock became a notorious purloiner of eggs from the priest's
henhouse on the forbidden side of the Presbytery garden. He
loved to steal the eggs and throw them on the
windows of the Jesuit residence. When an angry priest ran
out to managed to know who had dirtied the glass,
Cocky offered an innocent look, glanced at the sky, shrugged,
and said, I don't know, father, it looks like the

(11:39):
birds have been flying overhead. That's how he got the nickname,
even to junior boys of Cocky. Now this egg's story
is particularly interesting to me in light of another Hitchcock
quote I found in an article on the Telegraph quote,
I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened. They revolt me,
that white round thing without any holes. Have you ever
seen anything more revolting in an egg yolk breaking and

(12:01):
spilling its yellow liquid. Blood is jolly red, but egg
yolk is yellow, revolting. I've never tasted it. Oh, that's cool.
That's so weird. It is like the coolest, so weird,
but it's so cool. It's like kind of like I've
never heard anyone like say that about an egg. It
blows my mind. Actually, he definitely. That's what makes him
interesting is his perspective is so strange. Yeah, you know,

(12:24):
like right there you can see it. He's clearly coming
at the world from a different angle than everybody else's.
Even his lie about like a normal kid would lie,
like somebody else was throwing eggs at the priest's house.
He's like, no, no, no, the birds were flying overhead
and they blaming it on the birds. Even like age twelve,
he didn't like birds back then. No, no, never liked birds.
I kind of don't trust him either, because you can't

(12:44):
know what you don't know what they're saying, and they're
definitely planning something. Oh, all that chirping, there's like a
there's like a plot. He tried to warn us. Now,
Hitchcock preferred to use his own chosen nickname hitch Uh,
and he preferred that too Cocky or Fred or tragically
fred cock Uh. That would have been what I would
have picked, but he preferred hitch. Hitch was an odd kid,

(13:06):
and from the beginning he was insecure about his weight.
But if you're picturing young Hitchcock is a troubled, bullied loner,
well that might not quite be fair. Primary school seems
to be where hitch first ignited his love of pranking people,
and he did this in a way that I think
was definitely bullying. I'm going to read a quote now
from the Dark Side of Genius. In the early afternoon,
between a lecture class and a quiet study time, the

(13:27):
boys were free to gather in the schoolyard near the church. Gould,
who was one of his classmates then nine, was suddenly
yanked away from his peers by Hitchcock in an accomplice,
and dragged off to another forbidden area, the basement boiler
room of the school. Before he could cry out or struggle,
not much use in any case against two bigger boys,
Gould was bound hand and foot. Once he was immobilized,
he was prey to a carefully planned psychological torture that

(13:48):
could have ended disastrously. His trousers were pulled down and
Hitchcock quickly stepped behind him. There was the sound of
a scratching noise, and the two bullies raced up the stairs.
Young Gould must have thought he was attacked by a
firing squad. At one the sound of gunfire exploded, But
it was a string of firecrackers that had been pinned
to his underwear and ignited. It was a good job
I wasn't burned, could remembered. I stood there shaking and

(14:08):
crying for I don't know how long, until someone finally
found me and set me free. Of course, I was
too frightened to tell anyone who had done it. I
was afraid of recrimination, and they knew it. I guess
you could say Alfred Hitchcock had a sense of the
maccab even at school. Jesus, Yeah, that's kind of going
a little far right. I mean, I think I think
I used to join in with the popular kids teasing.
We all did nothing that like just horrific. Like tying

(14:33):
a kid up and penning firecrackers to his underpants. Is
that's a step, That's nuts, That's a step beyond. I mean, like,
if anything's going to get you into film school, yeah,
you can tell that story. And yeah, if this was
a movie, Gould would have been the one who became
a great director. But I know, isn't it funny one
of the tormentors became the director. Well, if you're gonna

(14:56):
be a heart like, I'm gonna bet Eli Roth was
pretty rough to be in high school. Oh and David Lynch,
Oh my god, them torturing insects. We should see if
there's some kids missing from David Lynch's to go after now.
As a teenager, Alfred Hitchcock grew enthralled with crime literature,

(15:17):
starting with the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and moving
on to what were essentially early true crime books accounts
of actual criminal cases and investigations. Spato says Hitchcock came
to think of the murderers he studied as his heroes
rather than they're victims with the people who caught them.
When he did focus on details of the victims experience,
the thing that interested him most was how much they'd suffered.
Alfred left school in nineteen thirteen when he was fourteen,

(15:39):
and he spent the next several years doing a mix
of odd jobs, artistic experimentation, and occasional rough attempts at
some kind of secondary education. He attended many plays and
grew enthralled by the young art of filmmaking, but he
had no time at the moment to consider that as
a career option. On December twelve, his dad died. Hitchcock
was only fifteen and suddenly found himself caretaker to a
very demand mother. Quote my mother, maybe a little bit.

(16:05):
My mother was meticulous about our home in her person.
She never left the house without presenting herself at her best,
her posture, her demeanor, her dress, her shoes perfectly polished,
a well kept handbag inside as well as outside, and
gloves whenever possible. Now, while he was still at school
and as a young man, Hitchcock's mother expected him to
come by her bedside every evening and describe an excruciating
detail what he'd done that day. When he was married,

(16:26):
his mom accompanied him and his wife on vacations from
the time they got married up until her death. Now,
unfortunately there's not as much detail on their relationship as
I like, or at least I was not able to
find it. But every detail I was able to find
makes it seem like it's a little bit weird. Yeah,
she was a bit of a demanding lady, right, especially
since he kind of took over for his dad. That's

(16:47):
kind of weird. Yeah, almost like you're my new husband. Yeah,
you know what I mean, Like there's like that creepy
thing happening well, and it's it's kind of what you
have happening at in Psycho where you know they run
this uh this, I mean she I don't think he's
Bates is taking it well, okay, because his dad gets murdered,
right and Psycho I don't remember that detail, but I
I it is sort of a controlling mother and it's

(17:09):
sort of like son that has to manage the business,
and he's almost like the face Yeah, while she just hides, Yeah,
while she just hides. It's one of those things where
like it is easy if you're like going back into
someone's life after the point and trying to like come
up with things that might have inspired their art to
pick on stuff like this, But at the same time,
like you really do see some of this coming together.

(17:31):
Even in that line that he was always more sympathetic
to murderers because Psycho was very much Norman. Yeah, it's
from Norman's side of things. But I was also I
think in the movie, I don't think they even mentioned
the father. Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't remember
off the top of my head. It's been because since
I've seen it. But yeah, I mean I definitely alone. Yeah,
they're both alone. Yeah, and it it does seem like

(17:52):
he had that kind of not obviously to that extent,
because Hitchcock very much lived his own life after a while.
But there's some there's some weirdness going on. There was
she with him all the way with with Alma, with
his first wife, Yeah, yeah, with Alma, Yeah, it was
that was that relationship so well, the family business provided
some revenue. Hitchcock was forced to get a regular job
in order to do his part in taking care of

(18:12):
his mother, which seemed to be most of the part,
Like at least the stories I've read really emphasized Hitchcock
was the one taking care of them, even though he
was the youngest. Uh. In nineteen fifteen, he found a
gig at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. UH. He
appears to have instantly impressed his supervisor and was transferred
to the advertising department. So clearly somebody recognizes this kid
ought to be doing something that, like, is presenting our

(18:36):
business to people, Like he recognized this guy's got a
creative gift. Yeah, it seems like it was immediately obvious
to the people. He had the he had the eye.
So Hitchcock spent most of his time at the Henley
Telegraph and Cable Company drawing, laying out ad brochures, and
he focused mostly on visual presentation, how to deliver a
message to an audience in the most impactful way. One
of his first jobs was to make an ad to

(18:56):
convince churches and other institutions to install electrical lights. Quote
from Hitchcock, I'd write church lighting on the cover of
a brochure and then draw two candles and there would
be darkness all around, suggesting that church lighting by candles
alone won't be enough to light any service. So he's
already playing with light. He's already like, we can see
the evolution of this thing that's going to go into
being his great talent. So Hitchcock and his family weathered

(19:19):
the Great War better than most families in England. He
worked hard, and he moved up the ranks of the
ad world By the time he was twenty, he was
still a virgin and by his own description, and uncommonly
attractive young man. But he was ambitious and talented, and
when he saw that an American film company was about
to open a studio in England, he knew he had
to be a part of it. Quote he quickly found
out what film they were planning, and with the assistance

(19:39):
of Henley's advertising manager, who helped him arrange a portfolio
and with whom he agreed to split any fee, he
went along to the Islington offices. Uh So, Hitchcock presents
his portfolio and this executive takes like he's he's just
got all these sketches that he's drawn of Londoners, like
people around the city, and they're really they're described as
being grotesque that it doesn't survive. But Kitchcock had just
spent days drawing pictures of like people traveling through public

(20:01):
transit in London, and he presents them to this advertising
manager at this film company, and the guy hires him
like that, It's like, you've got whatever kind of eye
it is that we need, you know, films and new
medium at this point. But right silent film is just yea.
Clearly this guy's got what they're looking for, so they
bring them on. And now Hitchcock is in the film industry.

(20:22):
So when we come back, we're going to talk about
what else happens in Hitchcock's early film career. We're going
to talk about how his love of pranks came to
sort of dominate his early career and uh, but first
we're going to talk about do you like as uh,
you know what, I'm a fan of eighties commercials. Okay,

(20:43):
what do you want to advertise for a product from
the eighties for free before we break for ads? Uh? Yeah, um, Crossfire.
It's an excellent game. Oh yeah, Crossfire And they had
a great commercial. Yeah right, and I Rosette Target not
too long ago and they brought it back. Oh well,
I'm gonna advertise lawn darts since we're doing a Yeah,
lawn darts. I remember that commercial. Yeah, take a kid's

(21:06):
eye out. Too many eyes in the world today. All right, ads,
and we're back. Great ads, really good ads, almost as
good as lawn darts. But I mean, live there, people.
I even remember the Crossfire song, cross Fire, You'll get

(21:27):
caught up in the crossfire, A cross fire yeah, at
the Crossfire people, we are accepting sponsors if you want
to be the official game of such an idiot. We're
all fools for not buying. Cross Fire would be worth
millions today. Speaking of millions, Alfred Hitchcock, So when we

(21:49):
last left him off, he's just he's just kicked off
his his his career. Gotten hired with like an American
film company that had opened a studio in England. So
he works with them on three movies, helps to produce.
He works a bunch of different jobs. He's assistant director,
art directors, script supervisor, and he basically gets a chance
to learn the fundamentals of filmmaking on several different projects. Um,
I'm not going to go to the tail on the

(22:10):
individual movies because they were like weird little early British
films and stuff, and yeah, it's not Hitchcock's vision or anything, right,
but he's getting an eye for the details. Yeah. So
what's important for our story is that while he was
working on the third of these films, titled The Prude's Fall,
Alfred Hitchcock found himself a lad whoa yeah, yeah, yeah,

(22:31):
look at you, yeah, look at him, Alma REVELI I
think Revel. Yeah. Yeah. It was a freelance editor with
the company, and apparently nineteen twenty one, Alfred Hitchcock's way
of flirting was to completely ignore her, even when she
was right next to him, and never Yeah, he snubbed her.
He refused to acknowledge her existence for like months and months,

(22:52):
and that worked because back then, I don't think anyone
did that. Yeah yeah, I mean if you, if you
liked the lady, you would kind of serenader. Yeah, I think, yeah,
no one had tried. Uh, this is almost like negging.
So he's like, yeah, he's really he's a pioneer, a
pioneer of of pickup artistry. Uh yeah. So he ignored
her for months and months and months until one night

(23:12):
he gave her a call at home. Is that miss
REVELI this is Alfred Hitchcock. I have been appointed assistant
director for a new film. I wonder if you would
accept a position as cutter on the picture, which is
what they used to call editors, which were physically cutting
your physics. Once she took the job and they began
working more closely together, he explained to her that he
was very shy when it came to women, but he's
still more or less ignored her. It turned out that
this is because he viewed her position editing as higher

(23:34):
than his own, and quote, it was unthinkable for a
British male to admit that a woman has a more
important job than his, and I waited until I had
the higher position assistant director. So he's going to hit
on this girl. She's got a better job than he does.
So it's like a power thing. We're starting to get
into the sketchiness now, yeah, yeah, a little bit. Although
I mean it's hard to say if that's that weird
at the time because at the time men were, you know,

(23:57):
that was the common thinking. I guess, yeah, so this
still maybe him more in line with, like, you know,
the sort of values at the time. He proposed to
her while they were on board a ship from Germany
to England in the middle of a dreadful storm at sea. Uh.
It was very very romantic and dramatic proposition. Yeah, she's
sick and everything. They got engaged in nineteen twenty one,

(24:18):
but they didn't get married until nineteen six. Why because
Hitchcock didn't want to get married until he had directed
three feature films. Here's how he described odd rule. Well,
here's his explanation for why he had this rule. I
had wanted to become first a film director and second
Alma's husband. Not in the order of emotional preference, to
be sure, but because I felt the bargaining power implicit

(24:38):
in the first was necessary and obtaining the second gez.
So it's not enough to for her to like him,
you know, he's got to like add to the bargaining power. Yeah. Yeah,
every relationship must have been hard to win over. Yeah,
it seems like because she had a pretty good career
of her own going at the time, I guess he
wanted to like outmatch her. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it

(24:59):
does seem like because she worked with him for his
whole career, they were collaborators, But it does seem like
she kind of gave up having like her own independent
career in order to sort of makes better being a
fan of his films. I would say that a lot
of her collaboration with him, it's like some of the
best yeah he's done. Yeah yeah. Now, Hitchcock would direct
something like twenty four British films. He grew well known
in the industry as an American style European director, so

(25:22):
he's famous for directing like an American when Europeans are,
you know, a couple of years behind Americans. Yeah, he
was like one of the first, yeah, to come out strong. Yeah.
And now among his colleagues, he grew well known as
a dick who played unbelievably aggressive pranks. Uh spot o.
His biographer suspects his motivation for these vicious pranks came
from him not being where he wanted to be yet
in his career and basically trying to gain control in

(25:43):
his personal life by fucking with people. Uh. Let's run
through several a lot really of his greatest hits. At
one point, he was given an assistant who, in his opinion, overdressed.
This made hitch feel like he had to take the
young man down a peg. He asked why the fellow
always wore such night's clothing, and the man said that
it was a holdover from his time in the Royal
Navy during World War One. He just sort of been
trained to always dress well. That night, Hitchcock asked the

(26:06):
young man to come with him on a trip across
the Temps. He made certain that the boat they took
was uncovered so that when it rained, it would drench
his young assistant and funk up his nice outfit, ruining
much of it permanently. That's that parts funny. It starts,
it starts funny. Young Alfred seemed to have a peculiar
hatred of other people having nice things, or at least
doing what he saw is bragging about it. On another instance,

(26:27):
after one of his cameramen talked about having an all new,
all electric kitchen, Hitchcock had two tons of coal dropped
in front of the man's door. Still, it's funny, it's funny,
but you see, like the proportions are off tons of coal.
It's almost like he went to the extreme. Yeah, that
was his pranking the the footprint of a large truck

(26:47):
worth of piles of coal. Yeah, he's kind of like
the original jackass. Yeah, yeah, he's he's got a little
bit of that going on. So he considered these to
be moral lessons, but they seemed to lack any sense
of proportion. Spoto's depiction of his life makes that very clear.
Other hitchcocking and mischief, however, inflicted some real inconvenience or
embarrassment on the victims for no particular reason. A featured
actress received four hundred smoked tearing for a birthday present,

(27:10):
and had the unpleasant task of deciding how to dispose
of what was left after two days living with an
all pervasive odor. After shooting the Farmer's wife, Hitchcock gave
a reception for the cast and crew, about forty people
in all, but the tupper was served in the smallest
room of a West End restaurant, where Hitchcock brought an
aspiring actors as waiters, one to each guest, and instructed
them to serve with appalling rudeness and incivility. So just

(27:31):
to get what he wanted on film. Yeah, well no,
I mean I think just this was after it was
done filming. Yeah, I think this was like, uh like
it was a reception for the cast and crew. So
he also, oh my gosh, Yeah, it's just weird. That
is weird. That's like it it starts like kind of
making sense. But he clearly seems to just have been
compelled to do this and to set up these kind
of dramatic scenes to see how people would react, you know,

(27:53):
because I would watch him being interviewed and he was
always really funny, you know, like very witty and kind
of like I was shocked at how hilarious he could be.
But I guess like he had a darker kind of sense.
He did have a darker kind of sense. Um. I
think he would defend it by saying he was trying
to teach lessons to people, and he sort of did
that in the same way that he would have to

(28:13):
a character in a movie. Like he he did that
like just in his actual life. Here's a quote from
Alfred himself on one of his practical jokes. Quote. The
best practical joke I ever played was at a London
hotel where I gave a dinner party for Gertrude Lawrence.
I always thought blue was such a pretty color, but
none of the food we eat is blue. So at
this party, all the food was blue. I had the
soup died blue, with the trout, the peaches, the ice cream.

(28:33):
How would the guests react? How far would manners and
propriety take them? So that he just wants to see
he wants to tweak people to see what they did. Yeah,
he's yeah, which is that makes very much sense? Like
knowing these days he would get his own show, Yeah,
and it would be probably really good. He would be
Nathan for you right now. Yeah, he would be their
modern Natan or if you know previous he would be like, uh,

(28:54):
you know what's that show with Aston Kutcher? Oh punked? Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it is that kind of thing. Um. Now, I do
want to note that, like these weren't all people who
had done something to offend him. He also fucked with
his friends this way. Sir Gerald Dumarrier, who is a
prominent actor at the time, was a friend of Hitchcox.
One day, he came into his dressing room after a
performance to find a live adult horse sitting and presumably

(29:17):
shitting in his dressing room. A few Yeah, they're they're
funny so far. A few weeks later, Hitchcock invited Sir
Gerard to a costume party and told him to dress
in a ridiculous get up. So Sir Gerard shows up
at this party with his face painted and dressed as
a Scotsman. As you probably guess, the party was really
a black tie affair, not a costume party, and Sir

(29:38):
Gerald left immediately feeling very embarrassed. Now again, little whimsical fun.
Elsie Randolph was an actress who worked with Hitchcock on
a number of films. She came to trust him and
at one point confided in him that she was absolutely
terrified of fire. As you might guess, Alfred, this is
this is where things take it to. Yeah, I'm seeing

(30:00):
the term. Yeah, As you might guess, Alfred Hitchcock was
basically the worst person you could ever tell about a fear.
Oh god, don't don't confide it a little bit, right,
because if we got around at what he does. But
here's here's what he does. He waits until she goes
into a telephone box like the tardest, you know, like
one of those like that's that's the ones that you
can't get out of. So once she's in it, he

(30:20):
locks it from the outside and starts pumping smoke into
the box and variously convince her she's about to burn
to death. That is fun. Love smoke filled. Man, when
you can't get out and trapped and you don't know
that it's a joke. He just think you've gotta die.
Oh that is that is a joy. That's better than Disneyland.

(30:41):
That's better than Disneyland. Oh God, I love a fake
burning to death. It's just there's no better way to
get a good laugh out of somebody. It's my favorite
thing about Disney World. When you're on the Space Mountain
and then it stops and it fills with smoke and
you're you're strapped in it. Like that's why everyone loves
Space Mountain, because you think you're going to die and
the doctor's like, just kidding. Ah. So, Hitchcock's usual targets

(31:05):
where people he worked with, generally people who worked under
him and thus could not really do anything about it
if they'd wanted to. He often spent tremendous amounts of
money just to screw with people. For one example, one Christmas,
he bought the entire crew of the movie he was
working on enormous pieces of furniture. Sounds nice, right, It
sounds like a fancy gift, But beforehand he went to
the effort of checking out each of their homes individually

(31:26):
to make sure none of them lived in houses that
would fit the gifts he was buying. What the funk?
Who does? Who spends thousands of dollars just oh, your
house is too small for that. I mean. His pranks
are almost as brilliant as his movies. Yeah, yeah, He's like,
they're not lazy pranks. That's that's that's very interesting. We're
gonna keep going. There's a lot more problems, man. Now.

(31:49):
From what I can tell, it seems like Hitchcock spent
a lot of the money he made, especially during the
early part of his career, really taking off playing increasingly
aggressive pranks. He had custom whoopee cushions sofa cushions may
for his home furniture, which he would put out in
lieu of regular cushions. Whenever he had a guest that
he thought was too fancy. Hitchcock would then spend the
entire night giving that person ship for farting at his party. Right.

(32:10):
He once sent a series of gifts and he did
love notes to a married woman he know knew uh Now.
This woman was one member of a couple who hosted
a radio show together. He did not like their radio show,
and so Hitchcock decided to ruin their relationship. I wanted
to see what this would do to the husband. At
one point she ran after the driver who had brought
a gift to try and figure out who the cinder was.
And finally the husband said on the air one day,

(32:32):
I can't go on with the show. She's run out
into the street. So I had the pleasure of breaking
up that show. So he just like, now, that's that's
kind of a little too far there. Yeah. Yeah. It
was not uncommon for Hitchcock pranks to veer into abusive territory.
Some of them were straight up bacts of torture. One time,
during the production of a film Hitchcock found boring, he

(32:53):
bet one of his crew members a full week salary
if the man could spend the night chain to a
camera in the empty, darkened studio. So he handcuffs this
guy inside and leaves him with a bottle of brandy,
which he said was to ensure a quick and deep sleep.
Do you wanna you want to take a guess at
what the prank was here? Oh gosh, I mean, who
knows that furniture thing still is still throwing me? Well this,

(33:16):
actually there's a little bit of relation to that. Uh.
He drugged the brandy with powerful accatives, causing the man
to shoot himself uncontrollably the entire night. Wow, I should
have predicted that, Yeah, that he poisoned some clue. The
rest of the crew found their coworker the next morning, weeping, ashamed,
badly dehydrated, and surrounded by a wide pool of his
own diarrhea in the middle of the gross. Yeah, that's

(33:40):
that's freely bad. That's not like a fun time happy prank.
That's noting like you gotta the couch is too big.
He shed himself for nine hours. Nine hours Jesus Christ,
Oh boy. Yeah, here's how the dark side of genius
tried to make sense of this horrific behavior to make
others feel childish and dependent. This seemed to be part

(34:02):
of his goal. He apparently considered most people a threat.
They were better looking, more intelligent, better educated, more socially
acceptable than himself, and by reducing them to a sudden discomfort,
perhaps he felt he was bringing them to the level
on which he always lived. By thus subjugating those he
resented for whatever reason and one whatever level of consciousness,
by submitting them to varying degrees of humiliation and danger,
he was not only controlling them, He was in fact

(34:24):
exteriorizing his own deepest fears, fears that would later be exteriorized,
chiefly on the screen, where he could subject vast numbers
of people to crisis and dread. Wow, that's how Spotto
concludes all this, And you know, he makes a good
case for I think I read some of that book
because I was staying at a friend's house and it
was on the shelf, and because at the time I

(34:45):
was like, I've always been a fan, but I remember
just pulling it off the shelf and reading a couple
of chapters. And it's a good book. It's a good book.
It's a good book. There's a lot of a lot
of this is in there. There's a lot of different
stories of his pranks that kind of I combed from
a number of different locations. Uh. The only person I've
read about who managed to turn the tables on Hitchcock
was Alfred Room, who was an assistant cameraman on one

(35:06):
of his productions. Was he Oh no, I'm thinking of
a different room. Yeah, I mean maybe. Um, After being
repeatedly pranked by the director, Room put a smoke bomb
under Hitch's car. Quote you never saw a fat man
get out of a car quicker. Hitch never tried anything
on me again. He respected you if you hit back.
If you didn't, he'd have another go. So this is
Room's sort of how to deal with Hitchcock. Well that's

(35:28):
awesome because it's like someone figured it out. Yeah, someone
figured it out, and a few people seem to have
figured it out over of course of his career. And
his name was Alfred. Also, yeah it was another Alfred.
Uh Now. No one at the time seemed to think
Hitchcock's hobby of sometimes literally torturing people was worth talking
much about. He was rarely interviewed about it, and then
only near the end of his life. In one nineteen
seventy two interview, he insisted his pranks were not meant

(35:50):
to harm or denigrate their victims, So that would be
Hitchcock's attitude. Well, but shooting for nine hours that's kind
of harmful. Seem harmful, and I can't be good for
your cohen. Poisoning someone's alcohol with laxative seems harmful, and
perhaps didn't. I mean, I bet you that guy had
problems later in life, like yeah, well, I mean, how
could you continue working on that thing? Your coworkers all

(36:11):
find you chained a thing covered in ship like after like,
surrounded by a pile of your own sick. That's it's
a dark man, and this all counts as light compared
to what we are slowly building towards. Well, I know
a couple of things. Yeah, you're right, Yeah, Hitchcock finally
crossed over from eurocinema to Hollywood nine nine. He hit
his peak in the nineteen fifties with a string of

(36:33):
legendary hits like dial In for Murder, to Catch a Thief, Vertigo,
and of course north By Northwest. Interesting side note Vertigo,
I want to say, rear Window um rope, And there's
one more, The Man who Knew too Much. They were
not like widely released or seen really like until the

(36:54):
eighties really because they came out in the theaters. But
we're just like brief so well hadn't seen them until
the eighties, like eighty four they were re released, So
I didn't know that. That's fascinating. Yeah, I didn't know that.
So that's when he like got I guess belood. But
it was like he was he became well known at
this point, so he was still he was kind of
well known, and um, I mean those movies like made

(37:17):
him like an icon. Yeah, but I think Psycho is
with the biggest breakthrough and that's what we're we're building up. Yeah, yeah,
we're we're getting up towards. So he continues pranking throughout
all these years, and his increasing a wealth allows him
to do things like by gigantic furniture for dozens of
people just to screw with them. So like that stand
we should also say, um, thanks to Salznick, he was
brought over. Oh yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, Rebecca

(37:39):
was his first, Um American film. Excellent movie. It's on Criterion.
I highly recommend watching it. It's brilliant. Salznick was like
already a fan, so he brought him over to make
that filmy and um, that's kind of his intro into
American cinema. And he I mean, he did very well
in American cinema. Now there's there's. Women are often a

(38:00):
focus in Hitchcock's films, often like major characters, and it
blondes in particular. And um, the Guardian described women in
Hitchcock movies is quote outwardly immaculate, but full of treachery
and weakness. Um, which you know, at least from the
Hitchcock movies. I know that seems to be uh an
accurate description of a lot of the female characters. That
a little bit. Yeah, And it's interesting to me the

(38:22):
outwardly immaculate because they are always blonde, they're always very
put together, at least at the start of the films,
and we see them sort of get degraded and picked
apart in what Yeah, Rebecca is all about that? Yeah,
I mean that poor woman is like taken two bits
at the end of the movie, and we his description
of his mother is that she was always very put together.
You know, she would never leave the house without gloves,
and he makes like made a big point of that

(38:43):
whenever he talked about her. So that's interesting to me
that like that is that is like his starting point
with any female characters, Like she hits that point where,
you know, it's very much similar to how he describes
his mother is always going out when she's very properly
dressed and attired and whatnot. To find that interesting. Now,
his d need for control was expressed in more and
more extravagant ways. This profile grew, and his brilliance was

(39:04):
recognized by a grateful, drooling loving Hollywood. According to the
Telegraph quote, he cared so deeply about protecting his art
he spared no expense making sure they were viewed in
the correct manner by their audiences, buying their film rights
to five of his most famous films. The Man who
Knew Too Much Rear Window, Rope and The Trouble with
Harry and Vertigo, so they could not be screened in
movie theaters for after their initial run. Subsequently, they were

(39:27):
not seen by a cinema audience for thirty years, So
that's why that happened. So he he only wanted people
seeing them in like the proper context exactly. So I
didn't know that was coming from him. Yeah, So apparently
that's sort of why, like he knew that when they
were in their initial theatrical run he could make sure
that they were seen in certain ways. And that Rope
is brilliant. Rope Rope is probably one of his movies
that I highly recommend you see. Yeah, it's it's got

(39:50):
such artistry and unique kind of style to it and
like ahead of its time. And we see there, we
see here that this is like, this is like the
good side of sort of this need for control, as
he's not going to put his movies out unless they're
like he can guarantee they're like being seen in the
proper way. So this is like, Okay, that's probably part
of why he was such a good director, as this control.
But we're also seeing sort of the dark side of

(40:10):
this control and both part of the same guy. And
this darkness that I keep talking to, we've seen bits
of it in the pranks he plays, but it becomes
really really clear when he starts dealing with his leading women,
and one leading woman in particular. And that's what we're
gonna start talking about. But first we're gonna talk about

(40:31):
almost But then I was like products, products and services,
like the fine products and services that support this show
and or program. We're back and we're providing a free
plug for the late nineteen eighties G I. Joe aircraft
carrier TOYO great toy. Yeah, and no kid owned it.

(40:53):
It was like ten ft long. Yeah, it was way
too big for a toy. Can you imagine, like your
dad brings that home. It's like, what stupid kid got that?
That was like to Christmas Is at least and you
immediately hated that kid. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't know
why we're so into eighties ads right now, but if
you make large g I. Joker aircraft carriers and one
of or you make real aircraft carriers and you want

(41:15):
to advertise on the show. We have a lot of
small nations building navies as listeners on this show Mozambique
could use a navy. They just sold there's to Erik Prince.
So I think we have a lot of Mozambique. Oh,
thank you, thank you. Yeah. So if you, if you,
if you sell navies, advertise on our show, and maybe

(41:37):
we can sell a navy to the next Eric Prince together. Yeah,
that sounds like a goal. That sounds like a nice thing.
So back into Hitchcock. Hitchcock became infamous as his career
really took off in the late fifties for writing his
actors and actress is hard. This was not always a
bad thing. I found a telling quote from Grace Kelly
in nineteen seventy nine. Mr Hitchcock is often reputed to
hold actors in disdain, but he actually has a special

(41:59):
way with them and is able to get exactly what
he wants in the way of a performance. His inimitable
humor puts him at ease, while his enduring patience gives
them any confidence they may need. Of course, sometimes he
merely wears them down until he gets what he wants.
So she's being very grateful there, But you can see
like he has a couple of ways of working with you. Well,

(42:19):
she was probably less another exactly because she was like Room,
the guy who put a smoke bomb on Hitchcock's car.
She pushed back. You know, she was very established by
the time you started working with him. Grace Kelly was
not some new starlett who starts working with this young director.
Well because like he discovered a few but yeah, exactly.
So above all else, Hitchcock was obsessed with a quest

(42:40):
to create the perfect actress, someone who could ideally embody
the specific kinds of heroine that he wanted to write.
Grace Kelly was one candidate for the role. Ingrid Bergman
was another. Hitchcock fell in love with Ingrid Bergman and
with Grace Kelly, neither reciprocated excellent movie. Yeah, and and
Ingrid Bourbon great actress, she did not reciprocate in Hitchcock

(43:00):
falling in love with her. So Alfred started telling all
of their colleagues a story that after a dinner party,
the famously beautiful Starlett had cornered this elderly obese director
in his bedroom and refused to leave until he fucked her.
He starts telling this to other people in the industry
and spreading this rumor. Now I think most people probably
figured out it was a lie because Alfred Hitchcock had
all of the game of a stale sandwich, but he

(43:21):
repeatedly insisted that it was the god's honest truth to
anyone who would listen. Bergman took it in stride. Quote,
I never got angry when it came back to me.
People will believe what they want to believe. I loved him,
but not in his way. So she's handled it very classily.
And both both Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman spoke fondly
of Hitchbock Hitchcock Hitchbock and seemed to believe that his

(43:41):
genius outweighed his more odious qualities right well, But Bergman
was also like she she worked very well with director. Yeah, yeah,
and she and again she was established by the time.
You know, he definitely helped her career, but she she
was on a pretty solid track but they started. She
was also she was pretty big in Europe before she Yeah,
So these were and again these were established when these

(44:03):
were confident women. These were people who knew their place
in the industry and who knew how to like, had
their own relationships with other people, and they were unhitched
cock able. They were unhitchcock able, unhitchcock able exactly, which
Alfred would have made that into a different kind of
pun but we're not going to do that now. Both
women he couldn't fu yeah, exactly, and he couldn't funk

(44:24):
with because they would push back like Room pushed back.
And that's the thing. If you push back at Hitchcock,
he'll stop because he doesn't like getting pushed at. Classic exactly.
Both actresses maintained good boundaries with the director and eventually
moved on from him to the rest of their lives.
Hitchcock remained obsessed with the idea of finding and molding
the perfect leading lady. What hitch wanted. What he craved

(44:47):
was a young woman to act as his blank slate,
someone without a career, separate from him and his genius,
someone he could craft and control. This was not a
benign desire, and in fact, it seems to have been
inextricably tied with a great deal of anger Hitchcock felt
towards the email gender. For example, Hitchcock had a couple
of quotes he was fond of dropping during interviews at
this time. I always believe that in following the advice

(45:08):
of the playwright sar Dough. He said, torture the woman.
The trouble today is we don't torture women enough. What, Yeah, Hitchcock,
that's the trouble with today is the trouble with today.
You know, the problem with today is not enough, not
too much, too easy for him out everybody, too easy.
They're all happy and doing well. That's not good. That's
not going to be good for art. He was also

(45:30):
fond of paraphrasing Oscar Wilde and saying, you destroy the
thing you love. This was particularly quoted by Hitchcock in
reference to his female leads. There's a guy to quote.
There's there's a guy to quote Oscar Wilde. Yeah, because
you know he was all right. He was, he was.
He seemed like a well balanced fellow. Hitchcock and his
wife were professional collaborators for their entire lives together, or

(45:52):
for their entire relationship pretty much. Her editorial skill was
a big part of his success, and in fact, she
essentially gave up her own shot at a great independent
career in order tomb again his Their relationship was a
long one, but it seems to have been almost entirely celibate.
Hitchcock regularly claimed that his daughter Patricia's conception was the
only time he actually had intercourse, since he was too
obese to enjoy sex. Robert Boyle, one of his art directors,

(46:13):
recalled he once said to me, I have all the
feelings of everyone encased in an armor of fat. He
felt he was not attractive physically, but had all those
same yearnings and was frustrated by what he perceived as
a difficulty, if not an impossibility, which was to experience
requited love. Why why didn't he just lose weight? I mean,
like health in the sixties was even butter Okay, yeah,
that's true. Yeah, but he feels for the guy. I

(46:38):
mean he comes from England where it probably wasn't as
like stigmatized stigmatizes America. Yeah, exactly, And I think you're right.
I think around that time Americans started thinking about it. Yeah,
but it was still like very the idea of health,
like we really didn't know much about how to it
didn't come along and probably till the late seventies. Yeah. Yeah,
that that's why there's that joke and Anchorman where he
talks about like jogging as if it's this weird. Things

(47:00):
really didn't like the idea that you would just go
run like that's a funny joke. It is a funny joke,
but it was like also a real thing that was
people had to be like, no, actually this stops us
from dying as soon all this bacon's killing our hearts.
There's a there's like an Altman movie not seen called
Health where it made fun of health health conscious people
showed them as like fanatics. Well, and that's why you

(47:21):
even get a little bit of Donald Trump, because he
believes that like exercising is bad for you, and your
body only has so much energy over the course of
your life and you're just wasting it by and he
like it's one of those things like you get raised
in that sort of time before it's common always think
it's weird if you don't trust doctors. Um. So, for years,
Hitchcock replaced sex with the joy he got from torturing

(47:41):
women who started in his movies, or at least that's
one way to look at things. In nineteen thirty five,
while filming The twenty nine Steps, Hitchcock thirty nine steps.
Sorry that my mistyping. That's why you're here, That's why
I'm here. Yeah, Hitchcock handcuffed Madeline Carol to her co
star with cuffs that were purposely tight enough to cause
her pain. He claimed he lost the key, forcing him
to stay that way for hours. He also had Carol

(48:03):
repeatedly dragged across the ground, probably more than was really
necessary to get the shots he needed for the film
during how I can't watch it the same way. During filming,
he called the lead actress the Birmingham tart and said
during an interview after the movie, nothing pleases me more
than to knock the lady likeness out of them. Oh
my god. Yeah, I mean that's a good film too.
But yeah, I mean he never made I mean he

(48:24):
made good films. Yeah. In nineteen sixty, while filming Psycho,
he forced Janet Lee to spend six straight days standing
in the shower underwater for hours at a time, presume movie,
because he thought that was necessary to get a truly
believable performance out of her shower acting. Yeah, shower acting,
And I mean it's a great scene. To this day,
Lee refuses to take showers, only using baths because she's
she's still alive. I think so, at least she was

(48:46):
when I read this. I mean, she may have died
since I'm not sure. I don't know. Yeah, I think
she might still be alive, though maybe Tippy headrans still alive.
Talk about her in a little bit. Sophie's doing the
cutthroat when kick off? Who does oh two thousand four?
Jesus wellfe Yeah, I mean it's because like nowadays, you
hear about it everywhere, and back then you probably did

(49:08):
it two thousand four. Yeah, and we were invading a
couple of places at that probably got kicked to the
back burner. So by nineteen sixty one, Alfred Hitchcock had
a well established reputation of being particularly brutal to his
female characters and sometimes the actresses who portrayed them. This
would all reach a boiling point when Alfred finally met
the perfect focus for his dream of creating the perfect actress,

(49:28):
a thirty two year old model named Tippi Hedren. And
that's what we're going to talk about in part to
you know who she's the mom of, right, Tippi Hedren? Yeah? No,
Melanie Griffith, Melanie Griffith, Okay, cool. She was also in
the movie where Everybody Got Attacked by Lions, which this
will tie into. Yeah, that movie is amazing. It is incredible.

(49:49):
Yeah you saw it. I've seen parts of it. Yeah. God,
so tense that movie. Yeah, it's like thirty lions attacking.
They were like a hundred something serious injuries during the
I know it's great. It's got her face torn up. Yeah,
they needed major reconstructive surgery. Yeah. Great movie, great movie,
great movie, absolutely entertaining. We're going to hear about something

(50:10):
that happened to Tippy Hedren. That's worse than filming the
movie where a hundred people got I know it horribly
injured by big cats. Oh it's bad and uh, but
that that comes next week. So before we kick off
and and come back on Thursday, you want to plug
your plug double sure. I have a podcast on Starburn's
audio network called Gone Riffin with Rich Fulture and where

(50:33):
every Wednesday you can find us wherever you find podcasts.
Podcast That's right, it's not like there's no theme. Yeah,
he gets mad when I talk about movies. Well yeah,
I mean that sounds great. Yeah, but his anger is funny. Yeah, anger,
anger is almost always funny. Hitchcock taught us that exactly,
which is why you should always change your friends up
and feed them dangerous doses of laxatives. Oh yeah, I mean,

(50:54):
nothing more fun. Nothing. Oh what a good time. We
have cameras you, Uh, the angles get all the angles
really get like a good look at this person, just
kind of like the matrix the inside. Yeah, it's like
the spinning. The best pranks are almost indistinguishable from the
things done in Bashar al Assad's prison cells. That's how

(51:14):
I've always said that. Yeah, I'm Robert Evans. This has
been behind the bastard. You can find me on Twitter
at I right. Okay, I have a book called A
Brief History of Ice where experiment on myself with dangerous
drugs and send one of my friends to the hospital.
So really check that out. Oh it's a hoot. Uh,
this sounds interesting, Thank you, it is. I did that
once with that drug salvia. I let people film me

(51:35):
while I was on it. Oh that sounds like a
bad idea. It was a very bad idea. That sounds
like a bad idea. Well, anyway, that's a whole another story.
I mean, I've got a great video of me doing
the same. It's it's great. I love it when people
take drugs on cameras. Oh it's awesome. Yeah, it's one
friend he freaked out and ran down the streets screaming,
did you get it on camera? I don't think so, man,
we did get him before he screamed. Okay, it's really

(51:58):
I'm a I'm a big believer that we should do
that to presidential candidates having a debate, which is, we've
given you both acid and now you're gonna sit under
cameras while it comes up, and we're all just gonna
pick you apart as human beings that you know. That
sounds like an awesome futuristic movie. Yeah, it would be
a great way to run running Man anyway. We have
t shirts, phone cases, We sell pre fabricated bunkers for

(52:20):
waiting out the Apocalypse, branded bunkers all on t public
dot com. Behind the Bastards, Sophie, you were signaling something
that drink mugs. We have drink mugs. We have mugs
that you can put drinks in in your bunkers that
you also buy from us. So check all that out.
Behind the Bastards t Public, We're on Twitter and Instagram
at a Bastards pod. We have a website Behind the

(52:40):
Bastards at comm with all the sources for this. And
that's all. I'm gonna say until we say Part two,
which is gonna come out on Thursday for you, but
we're going to record right now