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Are we? Kicking. Hello friends. Whoa, Sophie, you talked over me while I introduce. We're leaving this in. We're leaving this one. We're leaving this in. You did an Orson Welles, kind of. Hello, Fred. Hello, friends. We're leaving this in. And I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the ********. The show. We tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. One of whom is my producer, Sophie, who is flipping me the bird right now. Because I demand honesty in my podcast, which means we leave in the 20 seconds before I introduce the show, when we're just talking over each other. That's because we're professionals. I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the ********. We talk about bad people. Today we're continuing to talk about Alfred Hitchcock. My guest. Abed. Keith. How are you doing? Hi. Hi. Hi. I over stepped your. No, it's fine, as long as we leave it in because it's honest. Yeah. Don't edit that out, because that was perfectly timed. This is the audio equivalent of cinema Verity. I don't know what that is. It's a style of filmmaking. Yes. Yeah. So I used it, right? Yeah, you did. Fantastic. Said it. Right. Fantastic. Yeah. I love saying things. Right. When people say cinema variety, I get mad. No, that's the shows that are talked about on the famous magazine variety. Yeah. Right, right, right. I think so. Yeah, they did that terrible list of the best horror movies that had World War Z on it. World War Z, World War Z. It's got Brad Pitt in it. It's not a horror movie. I don't know. Seven, although he was. I just saw him on growing pains and he was pretty good. Growing pains. That have been a while ago. Yeah. I think that was his. This gig, good for him. Kind of like how what was his name? The guy, the Batman that people don't like? Michael like? Oh, oh, you mean Val Kilmer? No, no. The new one. The new Batman. Christian Bale or no Ben Affleck. You know, before you get to bed, Affleck. Sorry, man, people don't. Some people don't like him. That's true. Every Batman has his his lovers in his haters. Yeah, I think my brother's not a Christian Bale fan. That's fair. But Ben Affleck was on that voyage of the Mimi thing that we had to watch in high school before he was Ben Affleck. Oh, ****. Where he says, holy chickens. That's all peanut butter, which is still my favorite line. Wait, wasn't that? Oh, I remember that show, but I don't think I ever watched. All the men have to huddle naked together for warmth, and everybody in your high school class laughs. Wait, was that a movie? Oh no, it was like it was like a TV series type thing we had to watch in class to learn about the sea. Let Ben Affleck take you on the waves. Well, he was like 9. He was like the show's Wesley Crusher. Oh, God, I know. He was like, just imagine Wesley Crusher wasn't a great pick for Wesley Crusher. He had his moment. He had his moments, yeah. Speaking of people who had their moments, Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah, he had actually a lot of moments. Very influential director. So when we last walked there, we talked about his early life, his his armor of fat, his controlling mom, his kind of dangerous, bordering on torturous loaf of prank sometimes. And fear of women being fear of women, his pretty good sense of humor when it didn't get mean. It's complicated, man, and one of the more important things about sort of his. Life is he had this sort of desire to create the perfect actress he wanted to mold and so, like, he worked with a lot of great actresses, but they most of them didn't quite fit that bill because they were already well established and they moved on after him. You know, most actors don't want to work with one guy forever. You want to do cool stuff, you know, you want to do a bunch of stuff unless you marry them, like Helen Bonham Carter or like Sarah Connor. Yeah. Yeah. Although she's about to be in another one of those movies. I think she's really good. She's, I mean, she's one of the few actresses that actually topped the star. Yeah, absolutely. I thought in T2 she was better than Arnold. She's she's a way more impressive action star in that movie. Just seen when she breaks down, is the best man in the scene when she, like, it's just taking apart that mental hospital, like, and just destroying those men. Oh, that's the best. It's so good. I love that movie. Let's talk about the opposite of that, OK? Alfred Hitchcock's career with Tippi Hedren. So Alfred Hitchcock first saw Tippi Hedren in 1961 when she appeared in a commercial that he watched for like a a weight loss supplement thing. Hedren was a veteran model and at 32A mother, but she had no real experience in the film industry. She in fact had no particular ambition to be an actress, but Hitchcock saw her real and wasn't chanted by her. He offered her a three-year contract, and even though the contract was for less money than she'd been making modeling, she considered, you know, three years of guaranteed income, a more stable move than continuing to act in commercials. And you know, she's a mom, so she's like, OK, well, it's the natural progression, natural progression. This seems smart. I'm going to do this. So she agreed to meet Hitch and talk about the job during that first meeting. Which basically just bragged to her about his own life, talking about the great restaurants he'd eat in that in cities around the world. He offered her the gig and she took it thinking that he'd be using her as a recurring actress on his TV show Alfred Hitchcock presents. I used to watch that as a kid. Great show. So she started to realize that Hitchcock's plans for her were much more involved when he sent her to Edith head, the famous fashion designer. And she was very talented. Yes, in the Incredibles, the Little lady who makes the costumes for the characters. She died recently, right? Maybe. I'm not sure, but I love old. Movies. You always see her name in the credits. She was. She's one of those. Like, yeah, she was like on every film, foundational and sort of golden era Hollywood. So Edith had crafted a whole wardrobe specifically for Tippi Hedren. And in fact, she made two wardrobes, one set for screen tests and another set for her to wear out in the world. So kind of a nice gift, you know, you're having, but also kind of controlling because this is Hitchcock being, like, I'm not just going to pick out what you wear when you're doing screen tests and and whatnot. I want to pick out what you wear when people see you. Wow. Again, not the kind of thing you'd immediately if you're tippy, you'd pick out is weird because, like, you might be like, oh, this this guy's gonna pay to have the greatest designer in the world make me laugh. You're blinded by the fashion coolness of it, but something a little bit weird there. Yeah, like there's a sliver of. There's a sliver of, like, that's strange. Most like a Hitchcock movie. You know, that first thing that you get from Norman where you're like, oh, maybe there's something like that scene when they're eating the sandwiches and you get a couple of moments where you're like something. Yeah, something a little bit off. Yeah, something's a little bit off, just like that. Now, as soon as Tippi Hedren signed on the dotted line to work with Alfred Hitchcock, he believed he owned her. She was not like Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly, an independent star who might have had to deal with this specific studio, but was generally able to pick her own roles. Hedrons contract made her Hitchcock's actress, and in Hitch's mind this made her his property. While Hitchcock in the studio worked on doing the rest of the casting and prep work for what would become 1963 the Birds, Tippi basically had a couple of months off with pay to move into Los Angeles and get used to being in California. Hitchcock ordered her to gain weight during this time. He thought she was too skinny, so he sent her several bushels of potatoes over to her house with a note reminding her that insufficient amounts, they had a lot of calories. He sent her Dom Perignon on Christmas Eve and a telegram on Christmas. So far, yeah. He's a nice guy. Nice guy. Sitting a bunch of potatoes over to the potatoes is a weird little weird little weird. It's not like fancy food. It's like she's probably making enough money for potatoes, right? Them being the basic food stuff. Well, unless he sends them over mashed. No, I think you're like sending her bushels of potatoes. OK? They were just raw. That is weird. Potatoes is a weird gift. Yeah. Now, in the new year, Alfred decided to change Tippi's name. Sort of. She'd gone by Tippy for so long that it had replaced her birth name, Natalie, but it wasn't her original name. Hitchcock decided that from now on, whenever her name was printed in films, it had to be surrounded by single quotation marks. He just wanted to be clear that it was a nickname. He thought that that would be better for her mystique, her career, or whatever. I will give him that because Tippy is very memorable. It is a memorable name. Kind of a weird choice, but, you know, I'm not again so far. OK, yeah. It's not so suspicious. He's getting really involved in this lady is getting involved. I mean, he's probably just he cares. He cares. He just cares. Right? Next, he ordered two members of his crew to watch Miss Hedren whenever she left the set and make notes on what she was doing. You know that she went who she saw, what she did when she wasn't working, like a investigator kind of following around. Like, yeah, like, yeah, he had two people basically follow her around everywhere and keep to these guys credit. After a few days of this, they realized it was weird and just started lying to Hitchcock. Ohh, stopped following her. So they're not ********. They did the right thing. Keep taking the money, just don't do the job. That's the right, because otherwise you would just hired a private investigator. True, you lied to the guy. Smart. Hitchcock ordered other members of the cast to avoid touching or even talking to Tippi Hedren. Rod Taylor, her costar in the birds, recalled. She was like a precious piece of jewelry he owned little by little. No one was permitted to come close to her during the production. Don't touch the girl after I call cut, he said to me repeatedly, getting a little weirder. Yeah, he's treating her like she's like an object. Yeah, exactly. Now, early on in the production, Hitchcock sent a basket of bread to Tippi Hedren's house. It came with a note that said, eat me, Tippi. Later stated he was developing this obsession and I began to feel uncomfortable because I had no control. I had to be very careful. He tried to control everything what I wore, ate and drank. So this progresses, it progresses. This stuff I'm familiar with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we're about to get. I guess we'll see how much you're familiar with as we get into I know one thing that's pretty crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's a common. It's a common. Now. According to a write up in the Express quote, not long after writing an elimo, Hitchcock attempted to embrace Hedren just before the. More open. In front of a crowded hotel, Hedren approached Alma Hitchcock's wife, asking for help. Her exact words were tippy. I'm so sorry you have to go through with this, Hedren remembers. I looked at her and said, but Alma, you could stop it and her eyes sort of glazed over and she walked away. That's not great. It's like he had his wife in check. Yeah, yeah, it is. And it's it's a little bit, you see shades of the Weinstein stuff here. A little people see some messed up stuff going on, but nobody's quite, nobody's saying anything. But also see, back then it was different. It's not like now it's like, you know, people kind of just didn't gossip. Yeah. And women had a lot less power in the workplace. Right now. You know, Hollywood was actually probably more progressive than most places in terms of that just because, like, you've got a little more marketability when you're. But even then, like, but also Hitchcock was like, super famous. Hitchcock was ******* Hitchcock. Yeah. So it's like no one wanted to really **** with. Psycho had come out. He invented the slasher job. Like, he was he was big. He was as big as a director's ever been literally and figuratively. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. There's no dream warriors without psycho. That's true. That's true. My favorite nightmare on Elm Street. It's easily of the nightmare on Elm Street movies. The one with the best rap. Yeah, absolutely. And docking is on the on the soundtrack. I mean, what more do you want? I was in, I was in Big Bear, California recently, and I was at like a random cafe in Big Bear, and they were advertising that Docken had been there three days earlier. And I had the same thought that I think everyone has when they hear about docking playing somewhere, which is. Well, they're alive. Would have assumed the coke would have gotten them years ago, right? Good on you, Doc, and nice livers. Really impressive. Now, most of the cast and crew seemed to have been well aware that something sketchy was going on between the director and his leading lady, but no one actually took any action to defend her or tell Hitchcock that he was being a total creep. And so, as they continued to film, Hitchcock grew more obsessed and even bolder. Here's the dark side of genius. He began to take unusual care in the rehearsal and preparation of every shot, directing her down to the movement of an eye and every turn of my head. She remembered, and he also started to take her aside for longer story conferences about the film, which made her increasingly uncomfortable and off the set. He was always staring at her, as she and others vividly recalled. So by the time they got well into shooting the birds, Hitchcock was in full blown creepy, abusive boyfriend mode with the woman he was not dating. It was roughly 30 years his junior. Not that any of this would have been cool if they were dating in the same age, but you catch my meeting. The fact that this guy was her boss makes it weirder. Now. If you've seen the birds, you know that it's a movie that involves a lot of birds. These animals were scrupulously cared for. Crumlin assistance were scratched and packed with regularity, like you'd expect with the movie that uses a bunch of birds. But the Humane Society was on set and they made sure that all the animals were well fed and never forced to work for too long, so the animals were treated very well on the set of the birds. The film's leading lady was a little bit of a different matter. During her twenty weeks of shooting Tippi Hedren had only one day. Free during entire production, she was not actually needed on set the entire time, but Hitchcock was insistent that her presence was necessary. Now, this was not entirely a bad thing. Tippy herself even recalled quote he gave me the best education an actor could have with any other director. It would have taken 15 years, but he had me involved in every part of the film. Script completion, wardrobe, design, special effects, work, dubbing. It was his film from start to finish, and he wanted me to learn how to put it together, so he's taking it seriously. This idea of crafting the perfect artist, he's diligent about it. It's not all creepy, which probably makes it more difficult from Tippy. Like, she's getting this incredible. Yeah. It's like, that's the trade off. Yeah, that's the trade off. You get to meet this master and work really closely as he, you know, the birds is one of the great masterpieces of horror to this day. It's very influential. Yeah. And so having that opportunity, I can see how that would make it easy to not push back more at the weird stuff. Right now you've got this incredible nobody gets this chance. I mean, he's also giving her her career. Well, that's what he saw it as. Although she would argue this has never been my ambition. So anyway. But he does believe, you know, I'm giving her her career. So the other members of the cast and crew were very supportive of hedreen they wouldn't push back against Hitchcock. And so she soldiered on. But as things went on, Hitchcock began to push for more and more control over the life of the films leading Lady. He started telling me what I should wear on my own time, what I should be eating, and what my friends and I should be seeing. He suggested that such and such a person was not good enough for my company, or that someone I might have a social engagement with was not right. And he became angry and hurt if I didn't ask his permission to visit friends in the evening or on a weekend. That's well out of bounds for a boss. I mean, it's almost like he's like an overbearing father. Yeah. He and I think that's his attitude, right, because he's saying, like, I'm making you, I'm building you. You think that comes from his mother and his relationship? In a way, I think it might. I think this because he, if I'm a therapist, I'd say it stems from that control thing. I'm a therapist with the information I have right now and and me not being a therapist. Also, if I'm pretending to be a therapist, let's put on our therapy hat. Let's put on our therapy hat. I definitely draw a line between those two. Things yeah, therapists hit us up on Twitter. If we're wrong about this and you think we're being irresponsible. Our Twitter name is at Bastarde pod, so? Therapists, you know, hit us up. Get at us. Get at us. Yeah. Slide into our DMS. Is that that's what the kids say. So if he's giving me the thumbs up, she wouldn't give me bad advice. Now, when Tippi would express her totally understandable discomfort at some of the creepiness that was coming out of Hitchcock, the director would respond with anger, telling her that he had pulled her out of the trash heap. That was one of the ways he'd phrase it. He had made her into a star, so she should just be happy to do what he told her to do. He repeatedly told her that thousands of girls could have replaced her, which, you know, Tippy would have been fine with. She never really wanted this life, but now she was under contract, so there was nothing to do with the job. Had signed up for quote he could be two different men. He was a meticulous and sensitive director who gave so much to each scene and who got so much emotion into it, and he was a man who would do anything to get a reaction from me. Now one of Hitchcock's favorite ways to get a reaction from tipping was to whisper something obscene or pornographic to her the instant before calling action. And this is something he did his entire career, particularly to the women he worked with is he would whisper something sexual to them right before yelling action just because he wanted to get them off balance. That's that. There's another director that did that. I can't remember who it is, but it wasn't as sketchy. Yeah. And it's kind of just a way to sort of throw the person off and the reaction you want. I can see the artistic justification for it. I can also see that crossing the line into sexual harassment very easily that. I mean, that is sexual. Sexual harassment because it's unwanted. Sexual. Exactly. Anyway, Alfred Hitchcock considered this is his prerogative as a director, like the The, You know, getting this sort of reaction if somebody thought it was his. His duty, or at least that's how he would have justified it. He also took to trying to force Tippy to drink martinis during rehearsals. Tippy, who herself was a Hitchcock fan before this point, saw a similarity in how the great director treated her and how he treated the women in his films. I had always heard that his idea was to take a woman, usually a blonde, and break her apart to see her shyness and reserve broken down, but I thought this was only in the plots of his films. Now, one of the most iconic scenes in the birds and in all of horror cinema, comes when Miss Hedren's character. Was brutally attacked on screen by a horde of birds. Still a really common oh, it's it's terrifying. We're going to talk about that scene in a little bit and how it was even more horrifying behind the scenes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is probably the most well known Hitchcock story. We're going to get very granular, but I'm going to tell you right now, not the most ****** ** thing he does. No, there's something worse. There's there's a couple things worse, right? Yeah, yeah. So we're going to get into that in a whole lot more. But first. Do you love products and services? I already asked you this question, but you're going to answer again. Yeah, I still do. Well, before we break to products and services, I'm going to yell something obscene and sexual into your ear to provoke a good reaction from you. Oh, fun. Moist. That was a good facial reaction. Sophie had a good one, too. I don't like that word. Nobody likes that word. That's why it provokes a good reaction. I'm just a genius trying to do a good lead in to these ads. Well, this will be good for our movie. Yeah, this will be good for the movie that we're filming right now by stuff. We're back. Sophie's telling me that she is not bothered by the word moist, which if Dan O'Brien, my old boss, is listening right now, he's not listening anymore because he hates that word. But yeah, you know, it's not a good word. It's not a great word. Not my least favorite word. No, there's worse. Yeah. Yeah, there's worse words. I don't like milk. Milk. Milk. Because the way you say it, you go milk. It bothers me. Milk? Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't sound right. Milk. OK. Milk is uncomfortable. When I say it, I say. It's like when people say they go milk and it's like, it creeps me out. I don't know why they used to call it white meat. Oh, that's worse. Yeah. Well, no, because it's very, it's very, it's got a lot of nutrition and protein and stuff. You're like a poor peasant in the 1800s. It's like, it's it's like a meat, right? It'll keep you alive. Like, fair enough, you know? Yeah, you have no no dog in this fight. Yeah, if he doesn't like it when I talk about dog fights, I said I didn't have a dog in this fight. That makes me a hero. You're giving me a look. You give me a look in your your your. You're feeding your dog a dog treat. She probably didn't like that scene in the wire when Method Man's dog dies. That's a rough scene, and I know it's tough. Yeah, poor Method Man. Poor Method Man. Anderson would do good in the fight. Anderson's a good name. Good name for a dog. I got him a switchblade for Christmas. Dog fight. Where do you buy a switchblade? A dog sized switchblade? Yeah. From the dog switchblade store. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. Dog switchblades.com. Wait, is it is it something else? It's not really a knife. No, no, it's a knife. No, no. You go to dogswitchblades.com, they'll give you a they have a box program where for 4999, you get a different dog switchblade, every month. Geez. There's like everything now. Yeah, there's a lot of different. That's my favorite of the box subscriptions. Switchblades are so cool. They're great. They're great, especially when they're wielded by dogs. I used to have a come one. Great way to comb your hair, yeah? Great way to comb your hair and get mistaken as having a knife by police officers. I know. Yeah, I'm sure. $2.00. Now we were talking about Hitchcock. We talk about the filming of the birds in one of the most iconic scenes in all of horror cinema. When Miss Hedren's character is attacked on screen by a horde of vicious birds, they tear into her flesh, nearly killing her. If you watch the scene today, it's remarkable for how realistic it looks, how compellingly terrified that woman seems, right. This is because everything happening in the scene was more or less real. Didn't he like, not tell her? Oh, he did a bunch of stuff getting into Hitchcock's well established pattern of ******* with leading. These might be part of why no one really stood up to for hippie Tippi Hedren at the time. He was certainly more obsessed with her than he'd been with his other actresses, but nothing about his behavior stood out until the point when it became time to film the infamous climax of this movie. Quote the final great attack of the birds was to involve the leading lady herself. She would be caught in a room full of crows and gulls and Ravens that would tear at her until she collapsed in a state of shock. Tippi Hedren had been told before the week shooting began that of course mechanical birds would be used for the scene, since anything else would be practically impossible. But when she arrived on the set that Monday morning in June, the assistant director, James Brown, informed her that mechanical birds would not be used because it had been determined that on film they would look like artificial props. An hour later, the new approach began. Did that guy slip up? Oh no. No, no, it was Hitchcock's plan for it to this to be a surprise to her. Right, right, right. For them to be like, it's going to be fake birds, fake birds, fake birds. And then she shows up the day they're filming and like, actually it's going to be real birds. And the way they filmed it is they just had two guys with, like, huge protective gloves and huge boxes filled with birds positioned on one side of the camera, one on each side of the camera, facing the actress. And Tippy, you know, was stood with her back to a wall and the whole set was in a cage. So these people are all in a cage with the birds. And while Hedren panics and waves her arms, live birds are thrown at her while the cameras rolled. So these men are just chucking live animals at her. She stands there. I cannot imagine what that was like, so this is obviously a step behind making someone stand in a shower for six days or handcuffing someone for a few hours. Hitchcock was literally having this woman assaulted with birds. Tippi later said there was no precedent for anything like this, and no one knew what to expect. All of us thought it could be done very quickly, and no one hoped so more than I we thought. Maybe after one or two takes, they'd have all the film they'd need. It went on the entire day. Jesus. Tippy would endure birds being thrown at her, they'd reset the scene, and then they'd fling more birds on her over and over again for hours. At the end of the first day, they still weren't done. You want to guess how many, how many days it took him to get this shot? Oh, probably like 4555. Full days of having birds thrown at. I mean, after day three, you feel like you got all the shots you need, right? We're done here. We've got enough shots. Yeah. Having bird news, what we got there? Come on. Five days they're doing nothing but throwing birds now. The close up 8 hours a day, the different angles. They need to use less and less stage makeup as the days go on, because her face is now covered with like, real scratches and real blood. She's got scars on her face. Still feel like they're just throwing birds at her? Cary Grant was reportedly stunned by Hedren's Courage. People on set began to whisper. I'm Terry grant. You are amazing. I never throwing birds at a woman. Birds and a woman. I would never have heard of throwing glasses at a woman because it's the 60s. But birds. Birds. Wow. I love doing impressions of him. Yeah, he's he's he's got that classic Hollywood voice. People on set whispered that Hitchcock was lucky that Tippi Hedren was new to show business. No veteran actress would have put up with anything like this. I mean, yeah, Ingrid Bergman. We are not going to throw birds at me for five. She's not having it, Hitchcock. Had enough cachet to get a day. Not five days, maybe 5 minutes, maybe 5 minutes, not five days. You know, she'd fling the birds back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, Hedren later said the week was perfectly dreadful, really. The worst week of my life. Each day, I thought, and they told me just one more hour, just one more shot as it goes on for five days on Thursday, when it should have been ******* done. After four days of bird assault, Hitchcock reviewed the dailies and determined that a new angle was necessary for the like, the shots. At this point, he's just having fun. If this point, he's just having fun. Yeah, this is Tippy. And so on Thursday, the wardrobe mistress took me into my dressing room. Their elastic bands were tied around my body with nylon thread that was pulled through tiny holes in my costume. I soon found out what this was for. One leg of each bird was tied to each piece of clothing so that when I lay on the floor they couldn't fly away but would bound and perch all over me. This went on for the rest of the day while they tried to get the shots that they wanted. So after throwing birds at her for four days, they tie birds to her body and leave the birds panicking and flipping out on her. Oh my God, it just gets better. It just gets on Friday they did the same thing again. So they could get close up shots at different angles. By then, the birds were clearly losing their **** as well. One in particular flipped out and attacked Tippi Hedren's left eye, leaving a deep tear on her lower lid and coming pretty close to blinding her. This was finally too much for Tippy, and in all fairness, I think a lot of Navy seals would have broken under five straight days. Oh yeah, I can't imagine she went that long. Yeah, she's a tough lady. She was given the weekend off and set to come back on Monday and have more birds thrown at her quote when she came back to work. Monday morning, she was in such a distraught state that she could not be roused from a brief nap in her dressing room. She awoke to find herself under sedation. Back home. Hitchcock was told by her physician that she could not possibly return for at least a week, and when he replied that she was needed for every shot, the doctor insisted that in her present condition she would not be able to sustain work at all. And so production on the birds closed down for a full week, which is an extraordinarily expensive thing. It did eventually finish shooting the film, obviously. Hitchcock moved on to his next production, and Tippi Hedren got some time to relax and recover from a full week of sustained bird assault. During this interim. Hitchcock proved unable to turn down his creepiness. He sent Tippi Hedren's daughter. The gift that he said. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Yeah, it is. A, he sent Tippi Hedren's daughter a handmade doll at. This wasn't Melanie Griffith, though. Or was it? I think it was Melanie. I think it was Melanie. He sent her a handmade doll that was a perfect representation of her mother, dressed as her character in the birds and placed in a tiny coffin. Well, and she had the doll had scars on its face. Yeah, that's nuts. He sends her daughter. Like, why? Like handmade doll of her mom's corpse. See, now he's reaching. Her to the daughters life. Yeah, which is crazy. It's insane. When Melanie was asked about this later as an adult, she said he was a ************ and you can quote me. So I did. Wow. Great quote, great. Great quote. It's probably why Melanie did so much coke in the 80s. Yeah, probably didn't help it. That's got to **** ** a kid. I know, and I'm sure that just seeing her mom in that state. Not great. Not great for you. Shortly after sending her daughter a replica of her corpse, Hitchcock had Tippi Hedren come in for what he said was a deep makeup. Session to prepare for their next film, Marnie. Instead of doing a makeup test, a plaster cast was taken of Hedren's face and used to make a perfectly lifelike mask of Tippi Hedren. Asleep or dead, the mask had no use in the film. Hitchcock kept it in his own office. Oh, God. Yeah, that's ******* creepy. Why? Because he wanted, he wanted a perfect mask of his leading lady, looking like she's dead to keep in his room. I mean, at this point, like, what kind of mind is this? I mean, the guy who makes the birds. Psycho? Yeah. He sounds like a James Bond villain. He does a little bit right. He's got that kind of air to him and that kind of. I must have a mask of you looking dead. I must have a mask of your corpse. So while he was mired in pre production for Marnie, Hedren enjoyed a very well earned holiday. Alfred continued to send her increasingly strange letters, some of which were clear examples of sexual harassment and others of which were just weird. He designed a special trailer just for her to use during the filming of Marnie. He stalked it with his favorite wines and stationery that matched the stationery he kept in his office. Her trailer was located right next to his private office with a designated door that led straight to his office so that he could enter and Acosta whenever he wanted without anyone else seeing. When they started filming, Tippi had to invite friends over to her trailer at the end of the day just so Hitchcock would not find her alone. God, yeah. Also, that movie has a very disturbing scene. Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that. As a general rule, though, my advice for men in the entertainment industry? If people start inviting their friends over so that they're not alone with you, you may have creeped them out. I know you may have done something messed up. I think it's at that point it's time to kind of move on. Get away from this maniac. Peel back, peel back. Yeah, she's about to. The famous director started sending letters and party invitations to Tippi Hedren's parents, as if he was trying to court her favor romantically. As Hitcher's obsession grew deeper, he sat down with his screenwriter and demanded that the man at a scene to the movie Marnie, where Hedren's character is raped. This is where this is bad, yeah, the screenwriter said. Quote, I didn't want to write that scene for him and I told Hitchcock, so I thought it would break sympathy for the character of the man, and it's totally unmotivated. But Hitch said he wanted it in the film, and he insisted that at that exact moment of the rape, he wanted the camera right on her. Shocked face. Jesus. Yeah. It's also Sean Connery. It is Sean Connery. Which, I mean, you see him in a different light. You do. It's kind of impossible not to in a scene like that. And it seems like, like, I I'm not a great film buff, but other people say the scene feels weird. That was a movie that I watched that I was kind of like, I can't watch this again. This is this is awful. Hitchcock grew more possessive, if that's even possible. As time went on, he started demanding his cameraman focus on Tippi Hedren's face and body. With almost pornographic obsession, he banned visitors and guests from the set, ad eventually Hitchcock's ********* overwhelmed him. Here's the dark side of genius. Is what happened. Quote by November he was telling her his recurring dream. You were in the living room of my house in Santa Cruz and there was a rainbow, a glow around you. You came right up to me and said, hitch, I love you. I'll always love you. And we embraced. Don't you understand? He asked in a low voice. That you everything I've ever dreamed about, if it weren't for Alma. Tippi Hedren's feelings and intentions and her own private life seemed of no concern to him, but it was a dream hit, she told him. Just a dream. And she left her dressing room now in public to studio executives in the media. Hitchcock was effusive in praise for Tippi Hedren. He called her the ultimate actress, the finest performer he had ever worked with, and his praise quickly slipped into outright talking about his attraction to her. He seems to have led several film executives to believe that he and Hadron were having an affair. She encountered this when she would, like, talk to these people. They would, like, essentially make comments that led her to believe they thought that she was having. He probably did that just so he could, like, you know, bring down suspicion of him being this creepozoids. Yeah, it's not weird. It's not weird that because they're together in this, you know, relationship, whatever. I mean, there was that rape scene in there was that rape scene in the movie. Hitchcock was baffled by the fact that all of this dedication on his part had not yet been reciprocated by the object of his desire. He hired a handwriting analyst to try and determine whether or not Tippi Hedren had what he called a deceitful personality. And then, at the end of February, Hitchcock finally crossed the line into physical violence, if we don't count throwing birds at someone for five days as physical violence, in a way. In a way, in older interviews like this one I found in the express in 2008, Hedren was open. About only the verbal aspects of what went down quote. He stared at me and simply said as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that from this time on he expected me to make myself sexually available and accessible to him however and whenever he wanted. But in 2016, Tippi Hedren finally alleged that after making these demands, Hitchcock straight up assaulted her. Quote I've never gone into detail on this and I never will. I'll simply say that he suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse and it was ugly, and I couldn't have been more shocked and repulsed. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became. Then he started adding threats, as if he could do anything to me that was worse than what he was trying to do at the moment. Boy, yeah, this is hard to hear. It's rough. It's rough. It's rough stuff. It's rough stuff. I didn't know he physically did anything. This didn't come out until 2016 right now. So we're going to get into a little bit more about that, about what Hedren says in 2017, you know, after Weinstein's assault, become public and sort of the end of this unfortunate tale. But first, you know, it's not a weird. Name Zevia the stevia based diet soda beverage I'm currently sipping. And in fact, Zevia is the only stevia based diet soda beverage currently on this table. That's a good, that's a good ad plug. Here's some products that paid us. We're back. We're talking about Alfred Hitchcock's assault of Tippi Hedren, kind of the culmination of just so much creepy behavior. In 2017, after News of Harvey Weinstein's creepiness became public knowledge, Tippi Hedren tweeted this. I'm watching all the coverage on Weinstein. This is nothing new, nor is it limited to the entertainment industry. I dealt with sexual harassment all the time during my modeling and film career. Hitchcock wasn't the first, however. I'm not going to take it anymore, so I simply walked away and didn't look back, Hitch said. He would ruin my career. And I told him to do what he had to do. It has taken 50 years, but it is about time that women started standing up for themselves, as they appear to be doing in the Weinstein case. Good for them. Yeah. Now, the bad news is that Hitchcock did ruin her career. He had her on contract for a couple more years, and so she wasn't able to do anything without him for the rest of that time. And he blackballed her in the industry. She never had the kind of career that she could have. Well, he Weinstein, Weinstein, Weinstein before Weinstein was. I'm guessing he was like in elementary school at this point, right? Well, Hitchcock created the term Weinstein. Yeah, he he did he in anticipation of the other creepy man who would take on his baton. He. However, he did not ruin Tippi Hedren's life. She went on to run a big cat sanctuary, which might have been tied to all the bird related trauma, and LED into her being in a movie wherein she and her family lived with a number of dangerous gigantic cats for years and were horribly wounded. Which movie? Might be tied a little bit. That's what I was wondering. I'm like, there's such a connection there. It may just be that because she'd had this experience on birds, she was less likely to realize things had crossed a line in the production of that because, I mean, she's subjected her family to that. Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of what happens with trauma. Yeah. Like you get ****** ** and then you push it on people around you if you're not careful. I heard about that with child molesters that they were molested. So then at the cycle continues. Well, and I can say having gone through some of my. Own deals with PTSD and having had a part, like, we both pushed **** on each other and, like, traumatized each other further. It's a thing, like, you go through something fun. You almost do it unconsciously. Yeah, because it resets your ideas of like, what's reasonable once you've gone through something crazy and you're more likely to like, I'm not going to call it Tippi Hedren, a bad person for putting a family through this. Having gone through what she's. I can see how wasn't it her and her husband because he was a filmmaker? Yeah. They've been working with these animals for a while anyway. Well, we we benefited because that's a great. It was a great movie. What was the name of that roar, roar, roar. Exactly right. It was just released, I think, recently. Go watch big cats **** with Tippi Hedren's family. Get ready, because that movie will **** you up. Yeah, it's very disturbing. All of the times you see people attacked by animals on it are real. They're real. They are real. Graphical, not depictions, actual attacks of big cats on human beings. It's crazy. It's just one of those things that reminds you that, like if your house cat. I have a house. I love cats. Yeah, if your house cat were 180 pounds. That would regularly injure you, right? Without wanting to cause you pain. Just no, that's what cats do. That's their normal, like, routine. Yeah, they just cats. I'm going to go out and just kill a goat. Yeah, ****. ****. Some **** for us that's buying a sandwich, yeah? Let's get back to the podcast. So Tippi Hedren, after Hitchcock actually assaults her, lays hands on her. She stands up for herself and she pushes back and Hitchcock doesn't push anymore at her. So that stays true to his character, but he also goes completely in the other direction. Where he once been talking about her is like the next Grace Kelly, this great star who's going to be winning awards and stuff. He starts refusing to even speak her name, calling her only that girl. He directs her through his assistants, and he goes beyond ignoring his leading lady and he works to actively sabotage. The movie Marnie itself, making sure the final edited version was as bad a movie as he was capable of making. It's not that good. It's not that good because he ****** it up, right? And on purpose. Yeah. He burned his own movie to the ground in order to hurt Tippi Hedren for not responding. You know, Kubrick kind of has the same tactics. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. With with with the Shining. You know, he put Shelly Duvall through some ****. Yeah. Which is similar. And it's one of those things. There's always, if you've got a great director whose job in that case is to get traumatic acting out of it, to get someone to act like they've been traumatized. There's always a degree, like even like George Miller in the making of a Mad Max Fury Road. And there's that talk about how like great movie, great movie, brilliant movie. There's that talk about how what's his name? Batman? Christian Bale. Not Christian Bale. ******* Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy. The other bang. Yeah, he's been yeah. Tom Hardy's like hanging beneath this truck and like, his kid is like watching as they do this stunt where he's like underneath the truck held up by wires and his kid asks George Miller, like, what happens if the wires break and. There's like, oh, they're really strong wires. They won't break. And the kids like, yeah, but what happens if it breaks? And he's like, well, I guess your dad's going to go under the wheels. That son your dad was Bane. He'll be fine. He'll probably be fine. Yeah, he survived that monstrosity movie, but there's always a degree. If you're a great director and you're trying to get a great performance, the specifically an actor to act traumatized, there's a degree of emotional *******. There will always be some even great directors who aren't necessarily ****** people. When you get caught up in art like that, you'll do some things that are on the line. You know? I think Hitchcock crosses that line. Yeah, well, you know what? It is too. It's like in Kubrick's state. You know, he didn't have actors as good as Nicholson, so to to measure up he had to **** with them. He had to **** with them. And maybe that one. I don't know enough about that to say if he crossed a line or not. It's always a risk. He didn't making it. There's like a making of shining if you watch and you can see her kind of breaking down and it's the same thing. And like Apocalypse now where you see a machine where he's like injuries himself badly while drunk on set in that opening scene, like cuts himself in his bleeding everywhere and Kubrick just like now. Going ohh you mean just keep rolling? Oh sorry Coppola. That's why I'm here. I'm bad. Yeah, say I'm bad at this. I'm bad at all this except for reading about creepy things people do. So Hitchcock had enough to deal with Hitchcock's biographer Spotto calls Tippi Hedren Hitchcock's last great obsession and arguably his downfall. Spotto argues that after Marnie, he never made another great movie and that he may never even made another good movie. That this, like, kind of broke him. Yeah, frenzy is pretty interesting for the subject matter. But yeah, you're right. I mean, he's definitely, like, going down. Yeah, and like the fact that he sabotaged. Barney is kind of like, that's sort of where this guy's mind breaks, you know? Yeah, he's kind of losing it. He kind of loses it after that. While he would live on until 1980, his life was increasingly devoid of meaningful work, filled with food, ill health, too much alcohol, and an increasingly cold and perpetually sexless relationship. But this is also when I saw him on many interviews and he was really funny. Yeah. I mean, he's he's got that sort of charm. Yeah. I want to say he has a really **** **** Cavett interview around that time, but he's not producing his great films. Anymore he's become. He's already a legend. Yeah, but he's not necessarily doing what he does best. Yeah. Yeah. Which seems to he's one of those people who doesn't last a lot longer after they stop putting out good work. Yeah, it's really a shame. It is. And he dies a year after receiving the Oscar for Lifetime achievement in 1980, which is the only Oscar he received, only Oscar he received and which he was really anxious about taking because he number one knew it meant that his career was over and #2 didn't like how he looked. On screen because he was in very ill health at that point. So it was a he was not a happy man at the end. You can you can see it in the films they they get really disgusting and disturbing. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of his mind unraveling and we are all left here to unravel his legacy and try to figure out how should we think about Alfred Hitchcock knowing all this stuff, you know, because it is clear with his work that art and abuse were inextricably tied together. He was able to make the great films he was able to make because. It was the kind of man who would poison a cameraman and let him **** himself for hours or throw birds at a woman for five days. The ******** thing is a little more fun than the birds. They're both over a line. I know, but ******** I can kind of be like, all right, you're still. I still like you. You're great. Yeah, but it's like the birds thing. It's like, all right, what are you doing? This is crazy. Yeah, the birds thing. And, like, you can see, like when he locks that woman in a telephone box and fills it with smoke. That's over a line to me, too. That is too. That's pretty good. This is a guy. To most people would have put lines up earlier than Hitchcock did, and because he didn't have those lines, we got some great movies. But because he didn't have those lines. Melanie Hedren got a doll of her mom's corpse sent to her house. Like like it carried over into other people's lives. Yeah, and traumatize them till this day. Probably to this day. And that's complicated. Yeah. I I want to say an unknown movie of his that's wonderful is shadow of a doubt. Haven't heard of that one with Joseph Cotton. Excellent movie. It's really good. And it's before his kind of like Swan. I mean, I, I went into this podcast, I've definitely seen more Hitchcock than I saw Steven Seagal. Steven Seagal because I only think I'd seen like under siege and on deadly ground of his, you know, I think I've seen him. Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and the birds. Obvious, yeah. Yeah. But that's pretty much it for my Hitchcock. Yeah. There's some kind of the big hitters. There's some deep cuts, like suspicion is great and that's. Cary Grant, yeah, and so is what's it called. Rebecca, I already mentioned, is great. There's also a foreign correspondent is really good. He worked with William Cameron Menzies, excellent cinematographer. So where are you now as a as a huge Hitchcock fan? Like, obviously this is not a guy. It's not like Weinstein where he was an influential person in the industry, but you can pretty much cut mention of him out and not affect the history of cinema. Yeah, because he was just a producer. Producer. He wasn't like, although I've seen a movie he directed. Oh, really? I didn't know he directed anything. It was a it was like Marisa Tomei's first film. Ohh, weird. Yeah. Hitchcock, you cannot cut out of film cannon without losing something. He's too influential. He's too influential. And I could still watch Rebecca and and love it just as much. Does it help that he's a director who made creepy movies rather than like, if if this was like, I feel like if Jimmy Stewart had been doing this **** I wouldn't be able to watch. It's a wonderful life. Yeah, it's different because you're not seeing him on film, so that makes it easy. That makes it easier, however. It does tarnish. What you're about to say is, does this tarnish my. Yeah. Appreciation of his films? A little bit, yeah. Like, I don't know if I could watch the birds the same way, right? Or even Marnie, which I haven't watched from the first time I watched it. So there's a little bit of that. But it's also like, like, right now I want to revisit foreign correspondent just because it's a brilliant film. Yeah. It's like espionage and, like, really interesting for its time. One thing I do want to bring up that I'm not enough of a film historian to say concretely, but it occurred to me as I'm researching this, you know, you've got Alfred Hitchcock. Betting the slasher genre and also a guy who has some serious issues with women, which are very much on display. I feel like horror as a genre has for a long time had some issues with women. Yeah. Yeah. And it's wonder how much of that is Hitchcock's DNA in the genre. He definitely is kind of the pioneer of that because Psycho is what a lot of people would agree is the first slasher movie. Yeah, yeah. You know, and inspired so much. It was the first time too, that that horror was was was like. A masterpiece. It wasn't just schlocky. It wasn't a guy in a rubber suit banging around. I mean, at the time, horror was kind of goofy and cheesy, like Vincent Price. Yeah, you know, like darkness everywhere. Skeleton. Yeah, it was a corny. You made it kind of artistic. And so I wonder how much of his issues with women and his. Because, like, we talked about the shining later. And I have to think Kubrick's got to be a guy who's influenced by Hitchcock, of course. And and. Donovich, perhaps even down to the way he treats his actress to get a response like, well, this would not have been a hidden story at the time. Well, Hitchcock got a great performance out of Hedren and the birds, and he did it by ******* with her. Maybe that's what I got to do with Shelly Duvall, right? Right. I got a pusher. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can see them justifying it in that sense. Yeah. It doesn't make it OK. And it's another example of sort of how this kind of thing gets passed down because we see Hedren sort of maybe passing it down with her family, getting them into this production that's really a little too much. But we also see, like, Hitchcock passing down this sort of idea that, like, sometimes you have to push your actresses. So, like, what did he say? Like, you have to torture the torture, torture the woman. Yeah. The trouble today is we don't torture women enough. Yeah. That was a very odd quote because I've, I mean, I've never heard it put that way. Yeah. And it makes no sense. Yeah, it does. Unless you start thinking about like, OK, well, you've got the Tippi Hedren, the birds. You get Chilly Duvall and the shining sometimes. That's what directors do. It comes from a place, though, of, I think, fear. Of of women, you know, and and and their strength. Yeah. Where it's like, you're sort of insecure and you're about yourself and insecure about the quality, I think, of the actresses that you're getting to that you have to. Because he's not doing that. Like, Hitchcock's not doing that to Cary Grant. No. I was just about to say, like, he would never do that to Kerry. Yeah. He would carry Grant would just storm off the set. Yeah, exactly. Cary Grant would not take that. Nobody's throwing birds at Cary Grant for five days. No, no. Cary Grant's interesting because he loved Hitchcock. Yeah. You know, and and he was also so difficult. To get on board for some movies. Billy Wilder famously tried to work with him many times. But for some reason, like, Kerry was like, no, yeah. But with Hitchcock, he's like, yes, I'll do it. And a lot of people, like even a lot of the women who worked with Hitchcock, really, because, you know, you made great movies with him. Even Hedren has this kind of like complexity where she's like, this guy is someone I really don't like, really ******* do it. Also, like, you know, you can't deny what he made. Yeah, it's tough. I can't remember. There's another story where where he. Got some actress, I forget who, an apartment? And then it was like within viewing of his apartment so that he could watch her. That's. Did you come across that? No, I didn't. But that sounds just like Hitchcock. I think it was right down to it almost being part of what was the movie where Jimmy Stewart's right. Your window rearing window. Yeah. I think that's kind of where that came from. Yeah. So again, this is a guy who everything he does in a movie is basically something he does in real life. I know he lives his life the way he directs his films and he directs ****** ** films. He he's he's like a performance artist. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's where we're gonna land for the day. Abbed, you gotta any pluggable us to plug before we roll on out of here? Last episode, I plugged my podcast. I'll plug my Twitter. It's at AUBG. Awesome. You can find me on Twitter at I write. OK, you can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram. And at ******** pod. You can find us on the Internet at behindthebastards.com. Then go to the public. You can buy a T-shirt, you can buy a cup, you can buy if you're if you're in the in a military that uses T54 tanks. We have some some silk screens for those that you can put on over your tank. So if you're currently serving in the Afghan military and you're a fan of the show, you can get some some backstreets branded content there. Two public really has a great variety of things, so check all that out. I'm Robert Evans and until next week, I love about 40% of you. Now, that was fun. Hitchcock in the hitch can. Yep, I I'm. I have to say, I'm pretty disturbed.