It is revealed that the acclaimed filmmaker had a specific grudge for the other renowned director
They say that great minds think alike, but it seems that in cinema it is not always like that. In a new memoir, an actor close to Alfred Hitchcock has revealed that the British director refused, on several occasions, to meet Steven Spielberg, a director who was a big fan of his, and all because of a strange, but apparently important, connection between the master of suspense and the film that started the summer blockbusters.
According to The Independent, actor Bruce Dern has revealed in his memoir that Alfred Hitchcock refused to meet Steven Spielberg, who tried to become close to him on several occasions. The reason, as explained by the actor who worked with the British in his last film, is that Hitchcock had recorded a trailer for the Universal Studios tour about the Jaws themed game, the classic of the then young American director and that made it feel bad.
This is how Dern remembers the conversation with Hitchcock when he asked her why he refused to meet him:
He told me 'isn't that the boy who directed the fish movie? I could never sit with him and talk to him, I see him and I feel like a prostitute.' I said 'why would Spielberg make you feel like a prostitute'. 'Because I am the voice of the Jaws game. They paid me a million dollars and I took it and did it. I am a prostitute. I can't sit and talk to the kid who made the fish movie. I couldn't even shake his hand.'
It seems that Hitchcock actually recorded a trailer for the studio's park in general, which had fragments of the themed game based on Spielberg's classic. As it has been revealed, the young man who would later direct classics such as E.T., The Extraterrestrial - 98% and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 78%, even went to the set of Trama Macabra - 95%, the last film of the British, hoping to meet him, but upon finding out he was there, asked security to remove him from the place.
Hitchcock died in 1980, so he did not get to see the rest of the great films that Spielberg would later direct, which might have made him reconsider his feelings about him. And the condescension with which he supposedly spoke of the “boy in the fish movie” seems ironic given that one of his best-known works is The Birds - 96%, a film in which, as in the American film, the animals are the terror that threatens a group of characters.
Spielberg, who ended up having a career just as enviable as that of his idol, is and was a friend of many other great characters in the history of cinema, such as George Lucas or even Stanley Kubrick himself, whom he also admired and to whom he paid tribute. a tribute in his most recent film Ready Player One: The Game Begins - 78%, where he recreated an entire part of the Overlook Hotel as it was represented in The Shining - 92%.
Apparently, Hitchcock's disdain for blockbusters and theme parks might have made him closer to Martin Scorsese, who in 2012 placed Vertigo-98% as one of his favorite films on a Sight and Sound list. Meanwhile, Spielberg fans can expect his next film, the remake of Love Without Barriers-94%, later this year if the pandemic allows.
