How (Not) To Raise A Psychopathic Child - Things I've Learned From Watching A&E's New "Bates Motel"

     It's been difficult to watch a full-length feature film for a while.  There's now a three week old infant in the room  most nights, and he sets the schedules.  His scheduling doesn't include too many ninety minute blocks of downtime, so I've been making due with hour long horror dramas like American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and A&E's new Bates Motel.  I can almost get through an hour long episode during Gunnar's between feedings nap time.  I'm looking forward to the debut of Eli Roth's Hemlock Grove on Netflix next month, too.  Should I be watching this kind of programming with a baby in the room, though?

     Yeah, I know, it's probably a bit early to be worrying about whether or not the baby is being irreparably damaged by exposure to televised horror programs.  For one thing, he's unable to hold his head up long enough to watch anything.  The only time he displays any neck strength at all is when I'm trying to burp him, and then he seems determined to throw a red-faced skunk eye on me throughout.  He can hold his head up just fine for that.  Still, I know he's cognizant of what's going on around him.  It makes me wonder if immediate and prolonged exposure to this kind of entertainment explains what happened to me . . .

Thom Yorke of Radiohead - Hey, man, are you OK?

     The baby seems to have an affinity for the music of Radiohead already, and I attribute that to the fact that
he heard a lot of Radiohead while still in utero.  If Thom Yorke's solo album calms the baby,  I'm more than happy to store that in the arsenal alongside his swaddling cloth and his Bippy.  Whatever works, right?  Then I'm watching the first episode of Bates Motel - while holding the baby, of course - while onscreen the young Master Bates attends a high school party (wait - what?), and waddayaknow, the music playing in the background is a Radiohead song.  . . . so a young Norman Bates + exposure to Radiohead = Psycho.  And I'm playing the kid Radiohead to soothe him.   Nature versus nurture.  I may as well start collecting small animals for Gunnar to kill.

     Of course, Norman's problems are the result of a far more complex set of circumstances than just the music he hears.  I watched the second episode of Bates Motel last night, and I nearly crawled out of my skin with "eeeew!" when Norman's mother very nonchalantly stripped clothing in front of her teenage son.  Sure, in this case we know this is heading to a bad place, but . . .   Only an hour or so before I'd been holding the baby because he'd been particularly fussy.  I'd finally succeeded in getting him to momentarily settle down and rest, his next feeding was in the warmer, and I didn't want to rouse him unnecessarily before his bottle was ready.  Here's the rub:  I really, really needed to pee.  If I laid him down he would immediately open his eyes and fuss.  Well, I can hold the baby with one hand, and I can pee with one hand, sooooo . . . Don't judge me - I wasn't wearing a diaper.

Norma Bates doing some household cleaning

   Still though, I've yet to enlist Gunnar's assistance in cleaning up a murder scene, so maybe there's still hope.  As long as I continue to tend to those chores solo then everything should be just fine.  That'll also forestall the touching family moment we have prior to disposing of a dead body in the lake together.  As far as I know, Gunnar doesn't yet have a sketchbook full of bondage pics hidden under his bassinet, so we're good there, too.

     I just want the little guy to grow up healthy and happy.  I want the same for young Norman.  Maybe there's hope for him, too.  The show's producers have already made clear that they won't necessarily be beholden to canon based upon Anthony Perkins' portrayal of the character.  Is it possible that we live in a world where the young Norman Bates might somehow escape his dour fate, upbringing be damned?   I actually think that would be weirdly inspiring.  If there's hope for the most psychopathic fictional mama's boy that ever misused the cutlery, then maybe there's a chance I won't do too much damage to the wee baby Gunnar. 

We can fix this, right?

Posted by Brandon Early

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"You may call me Hitch. Hold the Cock." - Hitchcock (2012) Review

     Hitchcock (2012) came and went with nary a peep last year, and I'd be lying if I said I couldn't see why.  It's a Hollywood style biopic, with all the attendant strengths and weaknesses that entails.  The biopic has fallen from favor in recent years, and I attribute that in large part to the merciless skewering the form received at the hands of the underappreciated - yet widely seen - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).  Even casual viewers have grown wise to the narrative beats of the Hollywood biopic and recognize the associated tropes and cliches.  Granted, Hitch never sank to the same melodramatic extremes found in the lives of many biopic subjects, but Hitchcock does suffer from an overriding sense of familiarity.

     Hitchcock isn't a traditional biopic, though, insofar as it doesn't attempt to address the entirety of Hitch's career.  The movie concerns itself with the time period beginning and ending with the production of Psycho (1960), a watershed event in both Hitch's filmography as well as the history of cinema itself.  Hitchcock further skews from form in the sense that the narrative, ostensibly about Hitch himself, is in fact predominately about his wife Alma Reville.  Nothing wrong with that, mind you, particularly when Alma is portrayed by the always incredible Helen Mirren.  There's loads of entertainment value to be had just from watching old pros Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren doing what they do so well.  Still, it's not hard to see how a viewer could be disappointed by the overall experience Hitchcock provides.

     The narrative never delves very deeply into just what exactly made Hitchcock tick, and that's a glaring deficiency.  Hitch was larger than life, a droll and morbid misogynist with a pitch black sense of humor, and though Hopkins delivers a typically solid performance, the script fails him.  Hitch's creative process here is portrayed largely by way of a rather awkward narrative conceit in which he shares on ongoing internal dialog with Ed Gein, the infamous real-life nutjob upon whom Robert Bloch's novel Psycho was based.  It's a reach, and it never really succeeds in illuminating Hitch's creative process.  It's a conceit that reeks of Screenwriting 101 and never manages to feel organic or germane.

Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock on the set of Psycho

     Perhaps more damning, however, are inaccurate details about the filming of Psycho that even a casual fan of Hitch's work will be likely to notice.  For example, composer Bernard Herrmann's iconic string accompaniment to Psycho's shower scene is treated as an afterthought.  While it's true that Hitch initially wanted no musical accompaniment for the scene, it's egregiously dismissive for the movie to treat its ultimate inclusion as though it was just hasty, ill-considered happenstance.  Hitchcock also presents the meticulous creation of the shower scene, which took a week of set-ups and filming, as though it occurred in a single frenzied outburst performed by Hitch himself.  Perhaps that serves the dramatization of this film's narrative, but you're begging criticism when you play fast and loose with the details of one of the most thoroughly documented and scrutinized scene shoots in the history of the medium.

     Still, though, I'd also be lying if I said I didn't enjoy Hitchcock.  Performances are strong throughout, particularly a brief and sublimely perfect perf by James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins.  Ralph (The Karate Kid) Macchio contributes a fun cameo as screenwriter Joseph Stefano, as well.  Hopkins has fun delivering some suitably Hitchcockian bon mots like the one in this article's title, and Hitchcock is loaded with moments that likely aren't accurate, but feel like they ought to be.  I laughed aloud at the scene in which Hitch and his agent are brokering their deal for Psycho with Paramount head Barney Balaban and Hitch pulls out his checkbook to bankroll the project himself.  Sure, it's patented Hollywood myth-building hokum, but it's entertaining hokum.  Hitchcock is recommended, but temper your expectations.

Hollywood Myth Building - Hitchcock (2012)

Posted by Brandon Early

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