John Michael Hayes: On Writing Rear Window

Rear Window (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

John Michael Hayes wrote the screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Based on a Cornell Woolrich short story, the screenplay for Rear Window was Hayes’ first project with a major director. A keen writer of dialogue, Hayes quickly understood that because Hitchcock grew up in silent films, he had a tendency to rely on the camera as much as possible. He later recalled: ‘I caught some of that spirit. Hitchcock taught me about how to tell a story with the camera and tell it silently.’

Rear Window (1954) is an enthralling Hitchcockian filmic study of human obsession and voyeurism. This cinematic masterpiece was shot entirely on a single set constructed at Paramount Studios - a realistic courtyard comprised of 32 apartments at a fictitious Manhattan address. Each of the other tenants provides an astute commentary on marriage and a comprehensive survey of male/female relations, while the protagonist observes them via his'rear window.' The camera angles are mostly from the protagonist's apartment, which means that the film spectator (in a dark theatre) sees the tenants of the other flats almost exclusively via his eyes - sharing in his voyeuristic surveillance. 

Parallel to the crime-thriller theme of mysterious apartment neighbours is the struggle of the passively observant and immobile protagonist (James Stewart), a magazine photographer who is impotently confined to a wheelchair while recuperating in his Greenwich Village apartment and fearful of marriage's imprisoning effects. Confined by his plaster cast, he fights to overcome his ambivalence and unwillingness to marry his high-fashion model fiancee-girlfriend (Grace Kelly).

Rear Window grows into an immersive universe, and Alfred Hitchcock brilliantly places us in it to the point that we are compelled to participate in the film’s narrative. We are, in a sense, accomplices in the protagonist’s voyeurism. 

Working with his long-time collaborator, cinematographer Robert Burks, Hitchcock moves the camera gracefully and purposefully through the play area he has created. The camera catches items with intent and a clarity that goes beyond merely creating the sense of being in the area; it creates the sensation of being right there with Stewart, staring out into the courtyard. 

You also get a sense of the genuine core of visual filmmaking, as his ability to suggest and even persuade the audience is imprinted on us by what he thinks vital. Hitchcock establishes practically all of Stewart's biography in a wordless tour of his room as our protagonist sleeps.

Hitchcock builds suspense incrementally via various changes in perspective, time of day, and persons entering and exiting the building. Our one point of contact is Stewart, who is confined to a wheelchair.

The primary focus of Rear Window is a horrific mystery thriller that unfolds in a methodical manner that is unsettling in part because Hitchcock has condensed everything into a limited area. Additionally, he has disabled his protagonist, and the outsiders continuously urge us to second guess or reconsider our preconceptions, whether it's Stella (Thelma Ritter), Jefferies' police officer pal (Wendell Corey), or his best friend Lisa. Each character stands in opposition to Jefferies at various points while also serving as a sounding board for his implausible notions that begin to show some resemblance to reality. We have the opportunity to be a part of it all. 

As with Vertigo four years later, there is an unsettling sensation that Hitchcock is tapping into some of humanity's fundamental urges to watch and spy on others for pleasure without consequence or vulnerability.

The critic Chris Wehner takes up this idea in a 2002 interview with John Michael Hayes in which he discusses the writing of Rear Window. It provides a fascinating insight into Hayes’ working methods and his relationship with the great director:

Rear Window is considered to be Hitchcock’s most ‘cinematic‘ picture. At times it had to communicate a lot to the audience without a word ever being spoken. This isn’t surprising as Hitchcock started directing in 1922, during the silent era, making several silent films. By 1954, the year Rear Window was released he had clearly mastered the art of directing. However, before he could unleash his visual brilliance there had to be a great script from which to allow such a great movie to be made.

Think of the drawbacks to the story. First, the protagonist is bound to a wheelchair and is most of the time a reactive participant who is essentially isolated. Second, the antagonist doesn’t say more than a dozen words (at least that we hear), and isn’t confrontational with the protagonist until the very end. Hitchcock often said, ‘the better the villain, the better the picture.’ The obstacles placed in the protagonist’s way were rooted in circumstance and happenstance – nothing placed by the antagonist. Thirdly, the entire movie takes place in an apartment and what is seen from the window. What might at first be seen as limitations were most likely viewed as cinematic possibilities and challenges that Hitchcock could not refuse.

John Michael Hayes’ screenplay was based on Cornell Woolrich’s original 1942 short story ‘It Had to Be Murder’. He was assigned to write the script after one meeting with Hitchcock.

Hitchcock didn’t sign on to direct the picture until after reading a thirteen page treatment by playwright Joshua Logan. Logan’s work laid the foundation from which Hayes wrote his treatment.

The short story lacked several important details which were added to the screenplay. It did not have a strong female character, or love interest, and Logan keenly injected that into the narrative. But, for the most part, it stuck closely to the source material. Logan’s treatment opens with New York City and Jefferies (the name is spelled ‘Jeffries‘ in Woolrich’s story and Logan’s treatment), who’s isolated in his apartment due to a broken leg in a cast. Logan created Trink, a love interest for Jeff, who is later renamed Lisa by Hayes. Also, in Logan’s treatment, Jeff is a sports writer, which is later changed to a photographer by Hayes. As in the final movie, Logan’s treatment has Jeff’s love interest go into the killer’s (Thorwald) apartment where she is discovered. The killer later comes after Jefferies when he is alone. But before he can kill Jefferies he is himself killed. Which, of course, was changed by Hayes.

Logan’s treatment clearly laid the foundation for Hayes to build on, but it had several problems and lacked numerous elements that Hitchcock and Hayes would add to strengthen the story: story elements, richer characters, more conflict, and better visuals.

Hayes constructed a convincing narrative with richly drawn characters and keenly raised the emotion and drama by injecting well placed conflict. Hayes knew that everything hinged on Jefferies’ character. He had to build a sympathetic protagonist the audience would absolutely love spending time with in order for the movie to work. He fleshed out Jefferies’ background, his relationship with Lisa, and his own internal conflict and emotional resolve. The result is a classic Thriller.

Tell me about your first meeting with Hitchcock.
I was given a copy of the Woolrich story by my agent, and was told to meet with Hitchcock later that week for dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My job was simple: Read the Woolrich piece, and be prepared to discuss it in great detail and length. It was not unlike preparing for the most important book report of one’s life.

The meeting itself was a near fiasco. It felt much more like a personal test of endurance than anything resembling a story conference. Hitchcock arrived late and, with time to sit and worry over his arrival, I had a couple of drinks, which I wasn’t entirely used to. Upon his arrival, we had a feast for the ages, along with copious amounts of alcohol.

Plied by the liquor, I rambled on for much too long about Hitchcock’s prior films. And I wasn’t entirely complimentary. Hitchcock appeared to listen, but once the meal itself was finished he abruptly left. And we had never even spoken about Rear Window at all. Later, after returning home, my wife asked how the meeting went. I told her we’d better start packing our bags, as I felt quite strongly that my opportunity with Hitchcock had vanished along with any future career I had envisioned in the industry.

Amazingly, upon reporting for work on Monday, I was told that Hitchcock immensely enjoyed our dinner and that I was to be hired immediately.

When you started working on a story in outline or treatment form, did you start with characterizations, plot, situations, structure, or what?
In crafting any story, you need to go into it holding dearly a clear understanding of where it is you want to end up. If you delve into a script with no clear concept of how you want it to end, you’ll flounder while looking for ways out of the problems you’ve brought upon your own script. In other words, any lack of direction in regards to your ending directly affects the entire script itself. You’ll spend days trying to re-vamp problems you’ve created by not having a clear direction from the get-go.

In Rear Window there isn’t your typical strong villain and the protagonist is bound to a wheelchair, so how difficult was it to maintain a level of tension and suspense? 
Having non-typical characters was of no real hindrance to the establishment of tension and suspense. In reality, there was a lot to work with. With a non-typical villain, you had the built-in opportunity to engage the characters in a ‘It couldn’t be him. Could it? He’s just a regular fellow’ form of banter, just as much as having the protagonist limited in his physical actions helped the suspense of, ‘How in the world is he going to defend himself, if need be?’ Writers sometimes habitually overdo it in how their characters move, act, and depict themselves. Grand flourish in a villain works for Bond movies, I suppose, but, in the world you and I live in, true villains don’t act as such. At least not on any level you or I may have experienced. There’s a form of everyday villainy that is largely forgotten now in cinema. And that’s what audiences can align best with –what it is they see and know in everyday life.

You really fleshed out Cornell Woolrich’s short story by adding the love story and fully developing Jefferies’ character, among other things, which were not in the book. Was this your idea or Hitchcock’s? 
The idea of adding the Fremont character was mine, and it was based upon my wife, Mel, who was in fact a high fashion model herself. The love interest is a requirement, or at least it was at the time and place in which the story was crafted. My opinion was, and still is, that we all fall very hard in love sooner or later, and can clearly relate to the concept of peril brought upon those that we strongly care about. As well as the simple fact that having a headstrong, yet imperiled, female character could add a great bounty to the story. As for Jefferies, it was necessary simply due to the relative brevity of the original work. That much was clearly visible by all from the beginning of the project.

While you were writing the treatment and script for Rear Window, how involved was Hitchcock? 
Early on he was still working on Dial M for Murder. One of the greatest assets of working with Hitchcock was that he essentially left you, the writer, alone to do your work. Once I completed the work expected of me, Hitchcock and I would then literally pore over the material almost shot by shot. That was primarily his biggest involvement at that stage of development – after I had completed the first expectations of my task. Unlike a lot of other directors and producers, he didn’t bother you constantly for pages in order to summarily reject them.

What were the best and worst things about working with Hitchcock? 
The best part of working with Hitchcock was the autonomy to do the job you were hired to do without interference, as I’ve mentioned above. The worst part was his distinct stinginess in being able to offer credit where credit was due. It was of paramount importance for him to be seen as a one-man show, but that just simply wasn’t the truth, at least not in my experience.

Looking back on how the two of you parted ways, what do you suppose it was? 
What it was is exceptionally simple: He wasn’t for a moment willing to allow anyone to believe he couldn’t do it all on his own. I believe in application of credit where credit is due – if you’ve earned it, you need to be respected, regarded, and properly credited for it. At times in our work together, Hitchcock wasn’t willing to allow that...

– From ‘Chris Wehner: Interview with Rear Window scribe John Michael Hayes’ (Screenwriter’s Monthly, Dec. 2002)

 

‘Stronger Than Reason’: Interview with Alfred Hitchcock (part two)

Psycho (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

This is the second part of an interview with Alfred Hitchcock from 1963 prior to the release of The Birds in which the acclaimed director discusses his recent films, his use of special effects, working with writers, and tension in narrative. 

In ‘Psycho’ you presumably intended the audience to identify with Janet Leigh.

I wouldn’t say Psycho was necessarily the best example. Because I felt there that the characters in the second part were merely figures. I was concentrating much more on the effect of the murder and the menace and the background of the boy/mother situation, rather than the other people. But in the case of The Birds, I think three of the four characters do go through a process which ties them directly in to the bird attacks.

In ‘The Birds’ you have worked without stars—or without big stars. Why?

I felt that one should have anonymous people, not too familiar, because the subject matter itself is not quite so facetious as that of other films: although the Birds do attack, it is treated quite realistically. One of the most—to me—satisfying scenes in The Birds is where there are no birds seen at all. You have a room which is boarded up—it comes toward the end of the picture—there are four people in the room: a child, young man and woman, and a mother, mother of the young man, sitting there in silence just waiting for them. I just keep that silence going for quite a bit until the first sounds come, then you begin to hear the attack outside and you don’t see the mass of birds at all. And it’s that kind of thing which permitted one to have comparatively unknown people because the thing belonged as a whole. It wouldn’t have looked good to have had a familiar film star sitting there waiting, you know; it’s hard to describe why; but this is quite an interesting sequence; to me it’s really satisfying because there I threw everything to the audience to use their imagination; to help them along a little bit, I had one shutter blow open. The young man has to pull the shutter to and then you see just the close-up attack on his hand and the seagulls biting and drawing blood.

North by Northwest (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

The atmosphere sounds similar to that of the sequence in ‘North by Northwest’ where Cary Grant waits at the road-side for Kaplan.

That was, I would say, an amusing approach. This thing in The Birds is not. We’ve shown the audience sufficient samples—I had one sequence where 300 crows wait outside the schoolhouse for the children, and when the kids come out they are chased down the road: montage sequence of individual crows attacking each child on the back, pecking at them and so forth.

Little menacing bits of dialogue—do you write these yourself: ‘Crop-dusting where there ain’t no crops’ in ‘North by Northwest’?

Oh that’s my line, yes.

How much of your scripts do you in fact write yourself?

Oh, quite a bit. You see I used to be a writer myself years ago. The difficulty is that one is working in the visual so much—that’s why I so rarely use film writers—I always use novelists or playwrights, definitely, not people working in the mystery field. They’re no use to me at all. In The Birds, I opened the film with the shot of birds in their nicest—what we think are their nicest—surroundings: in their cages. They’re chirruping away, and they’re all beautifully set—all very happy, ostensibly, and there’s a little light-hearted sequence. I treat the film in the beginning as a light comedy and there’s some byplay with the girl and the young man where a canary gets out of a cage, and the girl is a rather rich society girl, and she is not aware that the young man knows her identity—when he gets the bird from under his hat he says, ‘Let’s put Melanie Daniels back into her gilded cage, shall we,’ and that’s his way of telling the girl he knows who she is. The pay-off on that one line comes much later in the story when the centre of the town is attacked by seagulls and the girl seeks refuge in a phone booth—it’s glass-walled and she can’t get out. I take high shots and you see birds beating all around: The gulls are the people now you see and she’s the bird. So I have to write these lines in myself because I know it’s going to help appreciably later on. There’s no comment made about it, but it’s very clear that she’s in a cage but it’s no longer gilded.

The Birds (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

You expect quite a lot of your audience.

For those who want it. I don’t think films should be looked at once. I think they go by too fast. But the critics sit in there at their 10:30 a.m. sitting, and they see a film through once and that seems to be sufficient. But I don’t really think it is. Most films should be seen through more than once.

Why is ‘The Trouble with Harry’ a comedy rather than a thriller?

I think it was a nice little pastorale, you know. A typically English piece of humour, though it was set in America. It was an English novel and we followed it pretty closely. I laid it in the autumnal setting to counterpoint the macabre of the body, but I even tried to photograph that in an amusing way.

How do you choose your subjects?

I don’t probe particularly deeply. If something appeals to me... I think instinctively one would go for a subject very often that would lend itself to one’s treatment. I’m not terribly keen on just taking a stage play. As far back as when I made Juno and the Paycock I felt very frustrated about it and kind of rather ashamed when it got terrific notices. It wasn’t anything to do with me. It belonged to Sean O’Casey. My job was just to put it on the screen. I think that’s the job of any craftsman, setting the camera up and photographing people acting. That’s what I call most films today: photographs of people talking. It’s no effort to me to make a film like Dial M for Murder because there’s nothing there to do. On the other hand, you say to me: why do you make a film like Dial M for Murder? Because I run for cover when the batteries are running dry: You know, I might be engaged in a subject which is abortive—I’ve done that many times, I’ve been half way through a subject and found it didn’t work out after all—so immediately, instead of waiting, to keep one’s hand in you go for something which is fairly routine while the batteries are recharging.

In ‘North by Northwest’, Grant seems to want Eva Marie Saint dead: he’s happier when she’s an enemy or in danger than when she seems to be an available wife or lover.

What’s that old Oscar Wilde thing? ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’. That I think is a very natural phenomenon, really.

You don’t find it somewhat perverted?

Well, everything’s perverted in a different way, isn’t it?

North by Northwest (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

Was the falling body at the end of ‘North by Northwest’ a superimposition?

Yes, that’s a double printing job. You photograph your background first and then you get a white backing and a large arm sticking out of the backing and you strap the middle of the torso to the arm and then with a side worm gear men can take that body and do that (twisting gesture) with it—Jimmy Stewart’s done it as well. Now you take the camera close and whip it back on rails and then also by making the movement slow you can undercrank it too, so that your whip back can be taken care of that way. Then it’s superimposed on the background. We’re working in The Birds on the sodium light system. We’re having to double-print a lot of birds over existing birds, where we have a small quantity of birds, trained ones, moving in and out, or whatever they’re doing, then you print over that scene a lot of other birds. And we’re using a sodium light process, which is a background which is lit by sodium—those yellow fog lights, you know—so that the camera picks up just the images, the background goes back, you get your colour image. And in the camera is a prism and that prism also makes the silhouette matte at the same time on a regular b/w film so that it doesn’t register colour. The filter in the prism turns the image black and the sodium background plain. So you make your travelling matte at the same time as you’re photographing: we use an old technicolour camera for that.

You must have been very thrilled with your ‘Vertigo’ effect.

I’ve been trying for fifteen, twenty years to get that effect. I first tried it in Rebecca. I wanted to get, in an inquest scene, Joan Fontaine to start to faint and see everything receding from her. I tried everything—I even thought of printing a photograph on rubber and stretching the middle.

Vertigo (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

You obtained the stretching of the perspective by simultaneously tracking in and zooming out, didn’t you?

Yes.

We have an argument about ‘Rear Window’. One of us says that a good deal of the suspense comes from one’s not being sure whether James Stewart is right, whether he’s making a fool of himself. The other says that you’re meant to be certain that he’s right and the suspense comes from whether he will prove it in time.

I would say that it’s the latter, because it’s frustration you see. The audience are with Stewart, the identification is direct and therefore they must feel superior to the other characters with him, but the frustration is there all the same. The interesting thing I think about Rear Window is that there’s more pure film there, even though it’s static, than in many films I’ve made. After all you get the famous examples that Pudovkin experimented with—where you get Stewart looking, what he sees, and his reaction to it. And there, after all, is the most powerful thing of film. You’ve got three pieces of film. Let’s assume, for example, Stewart looks, you see a mother and child; then you go back to Stewart and he smiles. Now you see he’s rather benevolent or benign, call it what you like. Take the middle piece away and put a nude girl in there and he’s a dirty old man.

Would you say that your films now are rather more thought out than instinctive, and were more instinctive in the thirties?

I would say so, yes. Well, I think you can have a bit of both really. But I think I got that (i.e. more intellectual) when I was aware of the global implications of audiences. That’s one thing that you do learn in America, because America is a polyglot country. I often tell people, there are no Americans, it’s full of foreigners. You become very audience-conscious because there are so many different types of people. Axiomatically you’re appealing to your Japanese audience and your Latin-American audience as well.

Rear Window (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

The idea of ‘Stage Fright’ intrigues us a great deal. Do you like it?

No. It wasn’t well done. You remember I said I liked to work with playwrights and novelists preferably. I went a bit overboard—I had James Bridie and he was too careless for me, structurally. He used to say, ‘Well, what does it matter?’

Whose was the basic idea of the flash-back that wasn’t true?

That was mine, but that was probably an error. That was going a bit too far because I suppose people are so accustomed to flash-backs being true that it was just confusing when it was untrue. It’s like the boy with the bomb in Sabotage. I should never have let that bomb go off. It was a cardinal error to let that bomb go off. If you work an audience up, it’s obligatory to relieve them, to release them from that.

Having built them up, the explosion didn’t release them?

No, of course not. It got them mad.

What next?

I’m going to do the Marnie picture next. The story of the compulsive thief that I was going to do with Grace Kelly.

Who’s taking the Grace Kelly part?

I’ve got a girl in mind, but we’re not letting on yet.

You’re going back to big stars?

Not necessarily. Sometimes I think big stars are useful but today they don’t help a picture any more. They help it if it’s good, but if it’s not good the public won’t go.

And ‘Psycho’ showed you could get along without them...

Yes.

The interview by Ian Cameron and V. F. Perkins with Alfred Hitchcock originally appeared in Movie, No. 6, January 1963.