Lately, I’ve been thinking about murder. What I mean is, I’ve
been thinking about a premise for a murder mystery movie I’d like
to call
”
The Suspense is Killing Me.
”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about murder. What I mean is, I’ve been thinking about a premise for a murder mystery movie I’d like to call “The Suspense is Killing Me.”
The story takes place in San Juan Bautista in 1957 when Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock, and actors Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak spent a few days shooting pivotal scenes for the film “Vertigo.”
In my movie, there’s this guy – let’s call him “Norman” – who absolutely hates Alfred Hitchcock. The reason for his loathing is that “Hitch’s” movies scare him too much. And also, as the manager of a rundown motel, Norman’s a little, er, psycho.
So, when he finds out Hitchcock is in San Juan Bautista, he decides to kill off the famous Hollywood director. He plans to make it look like an accident. Unfortunately for Norman, the people of the mission town innocently keep getting in the way of his diabolical murder plot – some of them even getting accidentally bumped off themselves.
Of course, in true Hitchcock fashion, there’s an innocent man who gets caught up in the intrigue. Romance comes into play when a beautiful woman helps him figure out the crazed killer’s identity.
Critics consider the dark-edged “Vertigo” as Hitchcock’s greatest masterpiece. I highly doubt “The Suspense is Killing Me” – if ever made – would achieve masterpiece status. Think of it more as a comic homage to Hitchcock.
My story has a preposterous plot, so I’m sure Hitchcock – who had a devious sense of humor – would have got a chuckle from the macabre premise.
It’s appropriate on this Friday the 13th to talk about the Master of Suspense’s connection to our South Valley region. Hitchcock was born in London on Aug. 13, 1899. He made a name for himself in England’s film world before coming to California in the late 1930s.
In 1939, Hitchcock filmed portions of the mystery romance “Rebecca” in the scenic Point Lobos State Reserve on the rugged Big Sur region south of Carmel.
The opening credit scenes, showing a car driven through fog down a wooded road, was filmed near the park’s entrance. Point Lobos’s craggy coastline also stood in for “Monte Carlo” and the “Cornwall” region of England.
Hitchcock found himself in a cyclone of controversy with locals when his crew disturbed environmentally sensitive areas of the park. Mother Nature got her revenge, however. The director and crew suffered rashes from working in poison oak.
Hitchcock fell in love with the Monterey Bay region. He often spent time with friends in Saratoga. And in 1940, he bought a ranch vineyard in Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It served as a weekend retreat for his family, and he frequently entertained Hollywood stars there.
After “Rebecca,” Hitchcock’s next movie filmed in Northern California was “Shadow of a Doubt.” Released in 1943, the murder mystery is set in the small town of Santa Rosa north of San Francisco.
Released in 1958, most of “Vertigo” takes place in San Francisco, the most photogenic city in the world. But San Juan Bautista is the place where the most dramatic points of the story take places.
“Vertigo” scenes shot in the South Valley area also include Big Basin State Park, Cypress Point on the 17-Mile Drive in Carmel, and the Avenue of Tall Trees (the eucalyptus grove on Highway 101 between Gilroy and Prunedale).
Hitchcock’s 1963 movie “The Birds” is set mostly in Bodega Bay, an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. Hitchcock felt inspired to make it after reading a newspaper article about an incident in Santa Cruz when birds, disoriented by fog, flew into the seaside town and terrorized locals.
A Santa Cruz landmark also helped inspire Hitchcock in creating “Psycho,” his most famous film. The California Gothic style of the Hotel McCray (now the Sunshine Villa) near Santa Cruz’s Beach Boardwalk inspired the ominous architecture of the Bates Mansion where psychotic evil lurks.
In the opening scene of “Marnie” (released in 1964), actress Tippi Hedron flees her employer at a train station supposedly in Hartford, Connecticut.
Hitchcock actually filmed it on the passenger platform at the Diridon Train Station in San Jose.
San Benito County’s San Juan Grade Road, heading toward Salinas through the rolling hills of the Gabilan Mountain Range, was a stand-in for Cuba’s rural topography. Hitchcock used the setting for the scene in his 1969 movie “Topaz” where an elderly couple spies on Russians unloading missiles in Castro’s Communist-controlled island.
Although it’s set entirely in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II, Hitchcock’s underrated film “Lifeboat” has a strong South Valley connection. Hitchcock had Salinas-born author John Steinbeck write the first version of the screenplay. It was not a happy collaboration for either man, and Steinbeck asked that his name be taken off the credits.
Steinbeck wrote a novella based on the movie’s premise of survivors in a lifeboat fighting amongst themselves after a German U-boat sinks their ship. The book was never published.
If you’re a film buff who want more stories about the suspense film director’s connection to the South Valley region, I highly recommend the
book “Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco” by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Levanthal.
And if you’re Steven Spielberg and would love to do a comic homage to the Master of Suspense, I’d be glad to talk about ideas for “The Suspense is Killing Me.”
Alright, Steve, we’ll probably have to change the title. But even Hitchcock himself had at least one quirky notion on what to name one of his movies. Originally, he wanted the classic Cary Grant flick “North by Northwest” to be called “The Man in Lincoln’s Nose.”
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’
