Instead Van Sant forced him into sticking to a cheap imitation of Anthony Perkins. There are a lot of sides to a character as complex as Norman Bates, and I suspect that Vaughn may have wanted to explore them. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but this is ridiculous. Gus Van Sant put nothing of himself into this film. If a film, like Psycho, is so good to start with why on earth do you want to try and improve on it? If you insist on tampering with perfection, why then do you have to try to recreate it in it's whole? There is nothing original here. I have never understood the idea of a remake at all. This is easily the worst remake in film history. And like a dutiful son, covered up all traces of the crime he was convinced his mother had committed! That set off the 'jealous mother' and 'mother killed the girl'! Now after the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep. Fred Simon: When he met your sister, he was touched by her. Therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild.ĭr. And because he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumed that she was jealous of him.
Now he was never all Norman, but he was often only mother. At other times, the mother half took over completely. At times he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. So he began to think and speak for her, give her half his time, so to speak.
Even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep. So he had to erase the crime, at least in his own mind. most unbearable to the son who commits it. Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all. Now that pushed him over the line and he killed 'em both. and it seemed to Norman that she 'threw him over' for this man. His mother was a clinging, demanding woman, and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Now he was already dangerously disturbed, had been ever since his father died. you have to go back ten years, to the time when Norman murdered his mother and her lover. that is, from the mother half of Norman's mind. Now to understand it the way I understood it, hearing it from the mother.