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PSYCHO
(1998) filming locations
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CREDITS
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Why?
Why? Why? Several years on and it still remains a mystery
why indie director Gus
Van Sant would make a virtually frame-for-frame
remake of a classic, in eye-popping colour. And what
a top-notch cast thought they were doing.
"I felt that, sure, there were film students, cinephiles
and people in the business who were familiar with Psycho
but that there was also a whole generation of movie-goers
who probably hadn't seen it," says Van
Sant, "I thought this was a way of popularising
a classic... It was like staging a contemporary production
of a classic play while remaining true to the original.
OK. But why the surreal flash-frames in the murder sequences?
Who knows.
As in Hitchcock's
original, there's a panoramic shot of Phoenix,
Arizona,
with the camera homing in to a room of the Westward
Ho Hotel, 618 North Central Avenue, downtown
Phoenix. Unlike Marion and Sam, you won't be able to
check in a for a quick lunchtime canoodle. It's now
a residential apartment block for senior citizens.
Hitchcock
didn't have today's technical resources. He intended
the elaborate opening shot to follow the flight of a
housefly (which reappears on Norman Bates' hand at the
end of the movie) into the hotel room.
The Westward Ho
is also featured in 1972's Pocket
Money.
The original 'Bates Motel' still stands on the Universal
lot, as you'll know if you've taken the Universal
Studios Theme Park, but it's been moved from its
original location. For the new film, a new – and
slightly updated – house was built on the lot.
The scene of Marion Crane (Anne
Heche) being woken in her car by the traffic cop
was filmed at exactly the same spot at Gorman,
north of LA,
as the original. The swamp scene was also filmed at
Gorman, in a break from the original Hitchcock
locations. The 1960 film used the Falls Lake on the
Universal backlot, which was now deemed a mite too familiar
to moviegoers.
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR PSYCHO
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CHECK
OUT
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Visit
the
Universal
Studios Hollywood Theme Park and studio tour, 100
Universal City Plaza, Universal City, north of
Hollywood on the 101 Hollywood Freeway.
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ASSOCIATED
FILMS |
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