The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks wo is the Cubs second baseman of the century so far?
Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the grooviest gathering of night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us for a while. There’s no cover charge. Dress code is casual. We can check your coat. The hostess will take you to your table. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last week, I asked you for your pick for the Cubs’ second baseman of the quarter century. You went with Alfonso Soriano, who edged out Ian Happ by a margin of 40 percent to 34 percent.
Here’s the part where we listen to jazz and talk movies, and our BCB Winter Hitchcock Classic is now down to the semifinals. But those of you who skip that can do so now. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Sometimes you just got to play the hits. Here’s trumpeter Lee Morgan with “The Sidewinder.” Joe Henderson is on tenor sax, Barry Harris plays piano, Bob Cranshaw is on double bass and Billy Higgins plays the drums.
You voted in the BCB Winter Hitchcock Classic and our number-one seed Vertigo came out on top over the eight-seed, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).
So that leaves us down to the Final Four and it’s the four films that we expected to be there. I wouldn’t say the votes before this were easy, but there four films are generally considered to be Hitchcock’s best. There are the four films that ranked in the top 50 films of all time in the most recent BFI Sight and Sound poll.
So now, the calls get really hard. Tonight Psycho (1960) takes on Rear Window (1954). I’ve already said a lot about these two films. Hopefully, you have a lot to say in the comments.
Psycho (1960). Starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Janet Leigh.
Here are my original comments about Psycho.
What can one possibly say about Psycho? It’s certainly one of the best-known films ever made. The shower scene is probably the most famous movie scene ever shot. Even if you haven’t seen the movie—and I’m having trouble believing you haven’t seen the movie unless you’re a teenager—you know the shower scene. It’s Hitchcock’s most famous movie and financially, at least, his most successful.
I’ve said in the past that you can divide American cinema into two periods—before Bonnie and Clyde and after. But honestly, you could make the division seven years earlier at Psycho as well. It certainly stretched all limits of the Production Code to the point where producers began to see it as toothless, which started the road to its abolition. (Although it should be noted that Some Like it Hot was released the year previous without the approval of the Production Office and was a huge hit.)
The other way that Psycho revolutionized cinema was in Hitchcock’s insistence that no one be allowed in the theater after the film started, which had never been done in America before. It was common practice before multiplexes to show up at a theater whenever and sit through a film and then hang around until the next time it showed to catch the beginning. It’s where the phrase “This is where we came in” originated.
It seems funny today, when people are still watching and re-watching Psycho 65 years later, but at the time, Hitchcock thought the film would have a short shelf life. He believed that once people knew the secret behind Norman Bates’ mother, their interest in the film would end. So he started a campaign against spoilers, warning people not to reveal the ending. He wouldn’t let Leigh or Perkins do a traditional promotional tour. But he was also worried that if someone showed up in the middle of the film, they’d miss Janet Leigh and demand refunds because the posters said Janet Leigh was in the movie.
That’s another way that Hitchcock broke down conventions. Stars might die at the end of a film, but no one ever killed off a major star like Leigh a little over a third of the way through a movie before. In fact, Hitchcock’s goal in Psycho was to continuously subvert the audience’s expectations. He wanted us to first think the film was about a woman who stole money. Then he wanted us to believe it was about her giving the money back after speaking to the odd motel owner. Then we’re supposed to think it’s about her murder and a private detective on the case. Then it’s the dead woman’s sister’s search for her. All the while, Norman Bates’ mother remained mysterious.
Heck, Psycho was the first American picture to show a toilet. That’s another break from the past.
Hitchcock had become obsessed with low-budget horror films in the fifties that seemed to make a lot of money. He thought most of them were poorly-made and disposable, but what if a truly talented director like himself tried to make one? Famously, no studio agreed to finance Psycho because of its lurid story. So Hitchcock had to produce the film himself and use the black-and-white film crew from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents to get the job done cheaply. (Hitchcock also had a non-financial reason for shooting in black-and-white. He thought the shower scene would be too graphic in color.) In any case, Psycho turned out to be Hitchcock’s biggest box office hit. It also truly looks great despite the low budget.
Anthony Perkins’ portrait of Norman Bates is obviously one of the most iconic performances in all of cinema. In the Robert Bloch book the film is based on, Norman is an older, paunchy, balding, middle-aged man. But again, Hitchcock wanted to play with our expectations and he figured that anyone who looked like that would immediately repel the audience. So he had the inspired idea to cast Perkins in the role.
Perkins’ twitchy performance was all him. For example, Hitchcock generally hated it when actors came to him with ideas, but it was Perkins’ idea to have Norman stutter over words that upset him. Hitchcock loved the idea. Perkins alternately played Norman as sympathetic and creepy, friendly and menacing, normal and odd.
Leigh impressed Hitchcock by showing up on the set with a complete life story of Marion Crane written out. Leigh threw herself into the part and even though we only know Marion for a little over 40 minutes, she makes us know her. Perhaps most shockingly to audiences of 1960, Marion Crane is a sexual being, as noted by the opening scene and her affair with Sam Loomis (Gavin). She commits her crime in a moment of desperation and then alternates between reveling in the deed and fearing the consequences. She eventually decides to come clean, only for her redemption arc to be cut short by the most famous murder in movie history.
The last half of the film involves Sam and Lila Crane (Miles) searching for Marion and the script originally had a lot more backstory about Sam and Lila. But Hitchcock decided that by that point in the film, the audience only really cared about the search for Marion and the mystery of Norman’s mother and cut almost all of it. But Gavin and Miles do excellent and often-overlooked jobs conveying that these two characters have a lot more going on that simply a search for Marion. Lila Crane is clearly a woman of action that you didn’t often see in films of 1960.
I haven’t even mentioned Martin Balsam. He’s terrific too. And him going down the steps at the Bates Mansion is a masterpiece in film technique.
Not only is the shower scene arguably the most famous in movie history, the Bernard Herrmann score for Psycho is arguably the most famous musical score in film history. Deservedly so. Herrmann used an all-string orchestra—and he used to strings thematically as knives to slice through the story. Hitchcock famously wanted the shower scene to be without music. Herrmann told him it needed a musical accompaniment and that he had exactly what the scene needed. It was one of the few times in his life that Hitchcock admitted he was wrong about a film. You can’t picture the knife in your mind without Herrmann’s score punctuating each blow.
Hitchcock thought Psycho would have a limited shelf-life once audiences knew the twists. But the reason we’re still watching and talking about Psycho 65 years later is that it’s simply a masterpiece. I’ve only scratched the surface here as to all the reasons why people still love Psycho.
I’m just going to add that Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter for Psycho, would go on to create The Outer Limits. Stefano also personally wrote 12 episodes.
You can watch the entire movie here on YouTube.
Here’s the opening credits for Psycho, created by Saul Bass and featuring Bernard Hermann’s iconic all-string score.
Here’s the trailer again from the film, which, as I have pointed out, contains no actual footage from the film in line with Hitchcock’s paranoia about spoilers. And yes, that’s Vera Miles, not Janet Leigh, screaming in the shower.
Rear Window (1954). Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey and Thelma Ritter.
Here’s my essay on Rear Window.
In the preface to the revised edition of Hitchcock/Truffaut, French new wave director François Truffaut relates an incident that happened in 1962 as he was promoting his film Jules et Jim:
“I noticed that every journalist asked me the same question: ‘Why do the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma take Hitchcock so seriously? He’s rich and successful, but his movies have no substance.’ In the course of an interview during which I praised Rear Window to the skies, an American critic surprised me by commenting ‘You love Rear Window because, as a stranger to New York, you know nothing about Greenwich Village.’ To this absurd statement, I replied ‘Rear Window is not about Greenwich Village, it is a film about cinema, and I do know cinema.’”
And really, that sums up what Rear Window is all about. It’s about us, the audience, and the visceral pleasure we get from just watching the lives of others. Of course, we also love it because it looks glorious and it features Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr and the guy who would go on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks (Ross Bagdasarian). But most of all, we love Rear Window because it shares with us the sheer pleasure we get from watching the movies.
Next time you watch Rear Window, notice the way that Hitchcock frames the action. Every scene is shot from the point of view or the apartment of Jeff (Stewart), the wheelchair-bound voyeur who immerses himself in the lives of his neighbors, with two exceptions. One is the climax when Jeff falls out the window, naturally enough. The other scene to take a more general point of view is the crucial turning point when the death of the dog is discovered. That one change of perspective is a way of telling us that something really important has happened, even if it’s not immediately apparent why it’s important.
The setup of Rear Window is easy enough to understand. Jeff is a jet-setting photographer who is going crazy because he’s stuck in his room after a serious accident broke his leg. His beautiful and rich model girlfriend Lisa (Kelly) is deeply in love with him and wants to marry him. Jeff doesn’t want to get married and he claims the reason is that Lisa is just too perfect. But the real reason is that Jeff has some very traditional ideas about women and marriage and he simply doesn’t want to be tied down to a woman who doesn’t share his adventurous outlook. Jeff just doesn’t want to be domesticated. Yet while he’s recovering, he immerses himself in the sheer domesticity of all of his neighbors.
Jeff follows the lives of the people in seven different apartments across the courtyard from his in Greenwich Village. It works out nicely thematically that all of their stories revolve around love and/or marriage, the very issue that Jeff is struggling with as to Lisa.
While we can occasionally hear noises coming out of these apartments, particularly music from The Songwriter (Bagdasarian), it’s generally difficult to pick out any words and certainly eavesdropping on a conversation is nearly impossible for Jeff. (Again, the exception here is the turning point of the death of the dog.) So basically Jeff has seven silent movies to watch, which feeds in to the idea that the key to understanding Hitchcock is being familiar with his origins in the silent pictures era. There’s also a weird television connection that whenever one apartment/story is over, Jeff can change the channel to another one.
Of course, anyone familiar with Rear Window (and I’m assuming all of you who take the time to read this are) knows that one story begins to dominate the narrative because Jeff believes he’s witnessed a murder. Jeff sees Thorwald (Burr) arguing with his wife (Irene Winston) at the beginning of the film, but soon thereafter, she disappears. Jeff thinks she’s been murdered, but Lisa, his nurse Stella (Ritter) and a police detective who is a friend of his (Corey) dismiss it as the delusions of the overactive imagination of a man who has been cooped up in his room too long. But slowly, the evidence starts to build up against Thorwald and Lisa and Stella, at least, come around to Jeff’s point of view. Additionally, the rich model whom Jeff has dismissed as a fragile china doll previously starts to engage in some truly dangerous activities to try to prove Jeff right. This begins to alter Jeff’s opinion of Lisa—if she survives.
Making Lisa an heiress and a model gives legendary costumer Edith Head a chance to go nuts on making Grace Kelly look fabulous. It also allows for the costume change at the end of the film—where Kelly is wearing more sensible clothes but still looking incredible—hit more. The film also ends with the interesting note of Lisa reading a book about the Himalayas, only to put it down and pick up a fashion magazine once Jeff falls asleep. She’s willing to compromise and meet Jeff halfway—but she’s not willing to become a completely different person to make Jeff happy.
There’s also never been a movie that wasn’t made better because Thelma Ritter was in it. She was one of the legendary character actresses of all time.
I should mention the beautiful set that Hitchcock had made for Rear Window. There wasn’t a stage big enough to contain a three-story apartment building, so the set designers had to cut out the floor so they could use the stage basement for the bottom floor of the apartment. There was also a very elaborate lighting system to recreate four different times of day. Grace Kelly said she was sad to leave it when filming was over—that it had felt like home by the time they were done.
Hitchcock’s one complaint about the film in Hitchcock/Truffaut was the musical score by Franz Waxman. Hitchcock had worked with Waxman before in Rebecca, but then he was very much making a film to please David O. Selznick. Hitchcock had some very strong ideas about what the music in his pictures should sound like and this wasn’t it. In particular, he wanted the score to tie in much more strongly with what The Songwriter was working on. Still, I doubt anyone really hears the Waxman score and thinks poorly of it. It’s not up to the standards that Hitchcock would achieve with Bernard Herrmann starting with The Trouble With Harry in 1955, but it’s good.
The real genius of Rear Window is that Hitchcock gives the audience the illusion that they are watching a movie about a murder when they’re really watching a movie about themselves. And honestly, like Jeff, we don’t come off looking that well, even if we’re proven correct in the end.
Here’s director Martin Scorsese on Rear Window. He makes a good point on Stewart. He’s doing a bunch of really questionable stuff but we excuse it because we all love Jimmy Stewart so much.
And here’s the trailer for Rear Window. And yes, this trailer is from a re-release in the sixties.
Now it’s time to vote.
You have until Wednesday to vote. Good luck. And don’t make me choose.
Next up, Vertigo takes on North by Northwest.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
Tonight we’re going to continue our look at the Cubs of the quarter century with a look at second base.
I’m not going to do every position. In fact, when there’s some news and I have something else to write about, I’ll probably discontinue it. But until then, it’s a fun little exercise. On top of that, it’s a nice trip down memory lane.
I don’t think there’s much doubt who the Cubs’ second baseman of the 20th Century was. But now it’s time to ask you who you think is the Cubs second sacker of the 21st so far. The candidates are as follows. All of their stats are only from their time with the Cubs, but they are not necessarily just from their time playing second.
Eric Young Sr. (2000-2001) .288/.351/.396. 12 HR. 196 runs scored. 85 steals.
Mark Grudzielanek (2003-2004) .312/.360/.421. 9 HR. 105 runs.
Todd Walker (2004-2006) ,286/.353/.447. 33 HR. 148 runs.
Mark DeRosa (2007-2008) .289/.373/.451. 37 HR. 167 runs.
Mike Fontenot (2005, 2007-2010) .269/.338/.419. 22 HR. 132 RBI.
Darwin Barney (2010-2014) .244/.290/.335. 18 HR. 218 runs. Gold Glove.
Ben Zobrist (2016-2019) .269/.362/.411. 40 HR. 243 runs. World Series MVP.
Nico Hoerner (2019-2024) .278/.338/.381. 29 HR. 289 runs. 102 SB. Gold Glove.
I debated whether to include Javier Báez. He was never a full-time second baseman for the club. It was the position he played the most at in 2017 and 2018 but it was under 50 percent of his games in 2017 and just around 60 percent of his games in 2018. In the end, I decided to exclude him because I think he’d win easily—but for his time at shortstop and not his second base tenure. It’s just a more interesting question without him. You can yell at me in the comments.
I included runs or RBI based on which statistic had the higher number. As none of these players were really power hitters, that number is usually runs scored. I included steals if they were a significant part of the player’s game. I also mentioned any relevant awards, especially Gold Gloves.
Of course, you don’t need to base your vote on those traditional stats. You can use whatever stats you want. Or you can vote on “heart” and “hustle.” Or leadership. Or because the player was nice to you once and gave you an autograph. The only thing is that I ask you to vote just on their Cubs’ career.
Going through the list, I forgot that Eric Young Sr. was a pretty good player for the Cubs. I do remember him being awesome in a baseball video game I had, but I figured that was just the video game.
So now it’s time to vote.
Thanks for stopping by. Stay dry out there. Get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow for more BCB After Dark.