

Lila’s job has moved from the Music Makers’ Music Store to the Hardcore Vinyl Record Store.ġ3. Some changes are dictated by the attempt to bring the material up to date:ġ2. The acting throughout, whether it involves Heche, Viggo Mortenson, or Julianne Moore, is more naturalistic, less stylized and deliberate. All Van Sant’s stars affect southwestern vowels.ġ1. As Sam signs the register at the Bates Motel, Lila winks at Norman, and he winks back.ġ0. For example, Sam seems relaxed, almost joking, when he tells Lila on her entrance to his hardware store, “I can only take so much more of this.”ĩ. In general, Viggo Mortenson’s Sam is a lot more laid-back than John Gavin’s. Norman makes as if to open the money-filled newspaper just before he tosses it into the trunk of Marion’s car.Ĩ. When he first discovers Marion’s corpse and several times while he is cleaning up in the bathroom, Norman seems about to throw up.ħ. Norman snorts humorously at the end of almost every speech he makes.Ħ.

Instead, she holds her noticeably untouched half-sandwich at arm’s length.ĥ.

Marion doesn’t eat any of the sandwich Norman offers her, or anything at all after he starts talking about stuffing things. Marion is less visibly shaken by her encounters with the police officer and the car salesman unlike Leigh, who maintains an air of constant wary detachment, Heche smiles repeatedly, even when she’s dining with Vince Vaughn’s Norman.Ĥ. Janet Leigh looks daggers away from the oilman Cassidy after his crude sexual overtures Heche simply rolls her eyes.ģ. Anne Heche’s rose-colored dress, her frequent joking, and the absence of a serious quarrel make the tone of the first scene playful, not tense.Ģ. Some of these differences are rooted in casting changes, though they go beyond the way different performers inevitably look different:ġ. Here’s a guide to some of the most important (and mostly unacknowledged) differences that can be observed even by color-blind audiences who don’t notice actors and actresses. If that’s the case, however, some gremlins must have sneaked onto Van Sant’s set and into his cutting room, since even apart from inevitable differences (e.g., the prominence given to the shower scene in the remake’s publicity, Vince Vaughn’s lack of the specific prior screen credits that made Anthony Perkins such a deceptive choice to play Norman Bates), the remake differs from the original in more ways than you can wave a butcher knife at. The publicity from Universal claimed that Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho was a line-by-line, shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film except for changes in casting and color, and hints that the representations of sex and violence might be changed to appeal to a more jaundiced ‘90s audience. × Current About Archive Submit Editorial Board Salisbury Universityġ01 Ways to Tell Hitchcock’s Psycho from Gus Van Sant’s
