Monday, February 19, 2007

THE HITCHCOCK PROJECT: Good Evening

Over a year ago, back when this enterprise was still being spawned, I wrote a foolishly hopeful post about my plans for future writings. Oh, I was gonna become my very own New Yorker, from the looks of things. In particular, I made a bold promise about future projects:

...including two that I'm particularly looking forward to starting, but can't just yet. I'm going to be a tease and save a discussion of them for later. When they're ready to go.


Unlike our president, I'm haunted by the stupid things I've said in the past. There's something about your word being your bond that resonates with me. Plus, that comment led to responses like, "Consider me teased," which means that in addition to just failing to keep promises, I'm letting people down. Blogging is great for self-esteem.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think one of the two secret ideas was my much-ballyhooed, now-horribly-embarrassing mystery serial. I'm not embarrassed by the story, mind you. I'm embarrassed by the fact that it just sits there, unfinished, unremembered, unloved. Even worse, I've said more than once that I would be returning to it, and that hasn't happened. So that fits in with the overall blog track record.

But the other one -- and it's taking me way too long to get to this -- I'm sure about, and that's a little something called "The Hitchcock Project". Welcome to it.

The genesis for this idea came in Christmas of 2004. That's when my mother gave me, as a present, a copy of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan. It is, as you might imagine, a biography of the great film director, and it's huge. It's something like 800 pages, so if you choose to read it, you definitely want to settle in to the notion that it's gonna take you a while to get to the end.

So I put it off for a while, but eventually, I got started, and I soon found there was a much bigger obstacle than the length of the book. What was far more interesting was that, as I was reading, I found that I wanted to see the films I was reading about. I own about 10 Hitchcock movies, and I've seen probably a dozen more. But Alfred Hitchcock made 53 feature films, so I haven't even seen half of his career. So as McGilligan was talking about all these films I haven't seen, the urge to see them just got stronger and stronger.

It was just as Hitchcock was preparing to make his first sound movie that I fully committed to The Hitchcock Project. I set the book aside and loaded up my Netflix queue with every one of his films. Of course, that proved to be an early sticking point, since one of them -- The Mountain Eagle -- is apparently lost to history. And several of his early silent films are hard to come by. Particularly his very first movie, The Pleasure Garden. So I bided my time, figuring it would eventually come out. Everything comes out on DVD eventually. I own Krull, for crying out loud.

That was at least two years ago.

By gum, I am going to finish some of the things I set out to do before I leave this earth. And The Hitchcock Project is going to be one of them. Between March 1, 2007 and March 1, 2008, I will read this Alfred Hitchcock biography, and I will watch the available 52 movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock (and I will look at the surviving still frames from the 53rd). I may even watch a couple of the TV episodes he directed. And I will tell you all about it. This can be done; I've checked, and the Chicago Public Library has a copy of The Pleasure Garden. No more excuses; this can be done. I'm staking my dubious honor on this.

And if nothing else, you can be sure I'll be quoting this a year from now to show what a liar I am.

LATER THIS WEEK: Young Alfred's father throws him in jail to prove a point, and the seeds of his affinity for the wrongfully accused take root.

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