Every once in a while, a story about Hollywood comes along and reminds us how much overlap there truly was between the old guard and the modern masters. Take for example the legendary near-meeting of Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock, two incredible filmmakers whose works collectively span over a full century of cinematic history. Hitch’s directorial debut came in 1922, before the advancement of sound and color on screen, while Spielberg infused the New Hollywood era with a sense of blockbuster spectacle and big, personal emotions beginning in the early ’70s.
The two filmmakers couldn’t be more different, but legend has it they once nearly crossed paths. Spielberg requested a meeting with Hitchcock, but the “Psycho” and “Vertigo” filmmaker denied his request. Why? Because according to Bruce Dern’s 2007 memoir “Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have,” Spielberg made Hitch feel, in the master of suspense’s own words, like a “whore.”
According to Bruce Dern, Spielberg visited the set of Family Plot
Dern worked with Hitchcock on his final film, the polarizing dark comedy “Family Plot,” and wrote that he sat by the director and talked with him throughout production. He wasn’t the only one who showed up for a chance to bask in the genius of the man behind some of the most thrilling movies of the century: according to Dern, a young Spielberg also often showed up on set. “At Universal, Steven Spielberg used to hover in the back on ‘Family Plot,’ and Hitch would always turn to me and say, ‘Bruce. Who is that boy?'” The director had by that point apparently already wrapped “Jaws,” and was likely working on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (though that, curiously, was from Columbia Pictures, not Universal).
According to Dern, he identified the lurker as Spielberg, telling his boss, “Look, Hitch, he just wants to talk to you for ten minutes. Five minutes.” Seemingly oblivious to his own influence, Hitchcock replied, “Well, what does he want?” Dern explained that he was no doubt Spielberg’s idol, and that the up-and-coming director wanted to learn from the best. “He just wants to sit at your feet for five minutes and chat with you,” Dern recalled telling Hitchcock. He continued: “He doesn’t want to ask you anything technical, he just wants to tell you what a fan he is and he appreciates your filmmaking ability. If there’s any pointers you could give him, he’d really appreciate it.”
Hitchcock felt unexpectedly guilty about Jaws
Hitchcock, hilariously, responded by asking if Spielberg was “the boy who made the fish movie.” When Dern confirmed that yes, he had directed “Jaws,” Hitchcock confessed that he was “panicked.” Hitchcock finally admitted that, in his words, “I could never sit down and talk with him, because I look at him and feel like such a whore.” Dern was understandably confused, but says he responded, “What do you mean, ‘such a whore’? Get over it, Bud.” Everything about this story is funny, from Hitchcock calling “Jaws” “the fish movie” and worrying about feeling slutty to Dern telling him to get over it without knowing the context of his feelings to Spielberg wandering around the set of “Family Plot” for reasons that are unclear to its director.
Everything started to make a bit more sense (but got no less comical) at a later date, when Dern, sitting alongside Hitchcock while he directed “Family Plot,” asked about Spielberg again. “Why do you feel Spielberg makes you feel like that?” he inquired, noting that both he and Hitch always looked out towards the set during their conversations, rather than at one another. Finally, Hitch fessed up: “Because I’m the voice of the ‘Jaws’ ride. Universal paid me a million dollars. I took it and I did it. I’m such a whore.” The director, ashamed of his selling out for an amusement park ride, concluded, “I can’t sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie.” To make the meeting more potentially awkward, it turned out he’d also never seen the film — something Dern said was usual for Hitchcock. “Was the fish movie any good?” Hitchcock asked about the summer blockbuster that redefined horror for a generation. “I’ve never sat through a whole movie, including one of my own.”
Despite the near-miss, Hitchcock still inspired Spielberg
The ride in question here is most likely the very first “Jaws” ride at Universal Studios, which opened in 1976 according to the website Jawsride.net. The earliest iteration was a part of the studio’s famous tram tour, and at first it focused more on set pieces from the movie — including Quint’s Bait and Tackle Shop and the shark fishing boat The Orca — than on the big shark himself. However, Hitchcock doesn’t seem to be credited anywhere as a voice of this ride (which would typically be narrated by the tram tour guide), leading sites like The Daily Jaws to conclude that the director probably meant he voiced a Universal Studios promo spotlighting the ride. As this story demonstrates, Hitch wasn’t always big on the details (like the name of the movie) at this point in his life.
Dern writes that whenever he tells this story to Spielberg, the director always says, “God, I get goosebumps.” Even the idea of a near-meeting with Hitchcock seems to have been meaningful for the director. It’s a shame the pair never got to pick each others’ brains, as the “fish movie” employed some classic Hitchcock moves to keep its audience enthralled. Spielberg has said in interviews that the infamous mechanical problems the animatronic shark faced behind the scenes of “Jaws” were a blessing in disguise, one that forced him to rethink the movie in a way that would show viewers much less of the monstrous sea hunter — all while making us super afraid of it regardless.
“The film went from a Japanese Saturday matinee horror flick to more of a Hitchcock, the less-you-see-the-more-you-get thriller,” Spielberg once told The Roanoke Times. It’s the same strategy that made “Psycho” so successful: the movie manages to make audiences fear Mrs. Bates without actually showing her to us, delivering a whole lot of suspense that culminates in an all-time-great fake out. Hitchcock used the less-is-more strategy plenty of times over the years, but due to his own self-consciousness, he may have never realized that it helped inspire the career of one of the most successful directors of all time.
