North By Northwest

Behind The Scenes With Alfred Hitchcock

I’ve previously posted here uncovered lost footage from interviews with Alfred Hitchcock on his movies Shadow of a Doubt and The Birds, plus a deleted scene from Dial M For Murder. Here’s yet another piece of lost Hitchcock interaction. This time, early behind the scenes footage of a discussion between Hitchcock and his screenwriter for North By Northwest, Ernest Lehman.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR NORTH BY NORTHWEST

HITCHCOCK: (waving screenplay around) I’m sorry to say, Ernie, that I have a few problems with the script.

LEHMAN: You do? Huh. That’s strange. I stuck very close to your original notes.

HITCHCOCK: (raising eyebrow) Really? Let’s go through it then, shall we?

LEHMAN: (pulling out his notes) Let’s.

HITCHCOCK: First, we have the main character, Roger Thornhill. Now, I specifically asked you to make the scene where he was wrongly accused of murder as undramatic as possible.

LEHMAN: (confused) Undramatic?

HITCHCOCK: Yes. I wanted to subvert expectations. Have it be very subtle and quiet, as we send our hero on the run. Instead, you have the man to whom he’s talking murdered in broad daylight at the United Nations by a knife flung into his back by the villain’s henchman, with Thornhill framed for the murder, and the shot of him holding the knife on the front page of every newspaper in the country! In what way is that undramatic?

LEHMAN (frowning and checking his notes) Ahhhhhh… I see what’s happened. (showing Hitchcock his notes) Look.

HITCHCOCK: (unimpressed) You’ve written ‘UN dramatic!’

LEHMAN: (shrugging) Sorry. I guess I got confused.

HITCHCOCK: (sighing). Okay. Never mind that. (flipping forward in the script) But what about this? After Thornhill is framed for murder, I asked you to have a scene in which he meets up with the movie’s love interest, Eve Kendall, who teaches him how to be a spy. And, instead, you’ve got the two of them flirting like crazy!

LEHMAN: (consulting notes again) Now, now, now. What you actually said, Hitch, was that you wanted a scene where Eve and Thornhill ‘train together’. And that’s what I gave you.

HITCHCOCK: (sighing) Okay. I guess that’s a reasonable misunderstanding. (flipping deeper into the script) But what’s going on in this scene, where Thornhill’s stranded in the middle of nowhere? I said I wanted something simple, maybe even a little hackneyed. Instead you’ve got poor Cary being attacked by a cropduster!

LEHMAN: Well, I hate to do this to you again, Hitch, but you didn’t say you wanted something ‘simple and hackneyed’, did you? You said you wanted something ‘plane’ and…

HITCHCOCK: (interrupting) … and ‘corny’. Yes, yes. I see what you’ve done. You’ve misunderstood what I meant by ‘plain’…

LEHMAN: Also, I figured, what’s cornier than cornfields?

HITCHCOCK: (unimpressed once more) Fine. But, you see, I didn’t want the big action set piece at this point of the movie, I wanted it in the next major scene. In fact, I specifically told you: have Thornhill escape from Vandamm’s goons in a big action set piece!

LEHMAN: (surprised) Wait… action set piece?

HITCHCOCK: Yes.

LEHMAN: (hesitantly) Huh.

HITCHCOCK: (rubbing his temples) You thought I said ‘auction set piece’?

LEHMAN: That’s what I have in my notes. (chuckling) I swear, I can’t read my own handwriting sometimes.

HITCHCOCK: (another sigh) Let’s just cut to the ending then. Why does the film finish so abruptly? One second, you’ve got Thornhill and Eve dangling in peril, then, in the space of half a page, the bad guy’s shot, he’s pulled her up, they’re married and already on the honeymoon! It all happens so fast.

LEHMAN: But that’s what you asked me to do!

HITCHCOCK: I most certainly did not!

LEHMAN: You did! Look. Here, in my notes. You specifically said ‘let’s make the ending rush more’.

HITCHCOCK: (hitting him with script) You nitwit! I meant Mount Rushmore. Let’s make the ending Mount Rushmore!

LEHMAN: (understanding) Ahhhhhhh… so when you said you wanted him at risk of plummeting to his death via a Lincoln?

HITCHCOCK: I meant via Abraham Lincoln, yes.

LEHMAN: Not crashing off a perilous mountainside road while driving in a Lincoln convertible?

HITCHCOCK: No.

LEHMAN: Okay. (hopefully) Maybe we can move that scene to earlier in the movie, though?

HITCHCOCK: (weighing this up) Sure. But let’s make it a Mercedes Benz.

LEHMAN: (scribbling notes) Great.

HITCHCOCK: Also, we need more bourbon.

LEHMAN: In the scene, or in this conversation?

HITCHCOCK: (pouring two glasses) Let’s do both.

If you enjoy the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, or would like to learn more about them, you should listen to HitchPod, the podcast I do with Cat Jones. We’re currently doing a rewatch countdown of Hitchcock’s top twenty movies as voted on by our listeners and are up to… North By Northwest.

Earlier Hitchcock Interviews and Deleted Scenes