PSYCHO FOR NORMAN: An Interview With Robert V. Galluzzo

October 19th sees the release of The Psycho Legacy, a doc­u­men­tary on the Psycho film series that was directed by fan, jour­nal­ist and now doc­u­men­tar­ian Robert V. Galluzzo.  He co-founded the pop­u­lar Icons Of Fright inter­view web­site and The Psycho Legacy is a log­i­cal exten­sion of that work that offers a 90-minute his­tory of the series (the accom­pa­ny­ing DVD set also offers much more via sev­eral bonus fea­tures).  Rob was kind to grant Schlockmania an inter­view and the result is an infor­ma­tive chat that will take you through the ins and outs of this documentary’s pro­duc­tion.  Enjoy — and if you like what you read, sales links to The Psycho Legacy are avail­able below…

You’ve worked exten­sively in fandom as a writer and inter­viewer - what inspired you to make the leap to doc­u­men­tar­ian with The Psycho Legacy?

To be hon­est, a lot of it was naivety on my part. I didn’t have any desire to be a doc­u­men­tar­ian.  Really, I’d been a musi­cian for many, many years and occa­sion­ally dab­bled with the idea of being a film­maker; pri­mar­ily in junior high when I was mak­ing VHS videos with friends.  Music, how­ever, was truly my passion.

I had co-created Icons Of Fright.com as a labor of love for the genre about 7 years ago and gained quite an edu­ca­tion and a lot of expe­ri­ence at inter­view­ing peo­ple. I was think­ing of ways to apply that else­where and I got to think­ing about PSYCHO.  PSYCHO has always been one of my all time favorite film series and I was dis­ap­pointed that there wasn’t any mate­r­ial about the mak­ing of the sequels. The orig­i­nal is of course a clas­sic and well-documented but I grew up with the sequels and I was fas­ci­nated to learn more about them (con­sid­er­ing no infor­ma­tion was read­ily available).

I had one friend with a cam­era, John Torrani, and he was crazy enough to fol­low me on this jour­ney to see if we could doc­u­ment some of the never-before-heard behind-the-scenes sto­ries regard­ing the PSYCHO sequels. It started with a few emails and phone calls, pretty much the same process we imple­mented to get inter­views on Icons of Fright and low and behold, before we knew it, we had tons of inter­view footage together and the begin­nings of what even­tu­ally became THE PSYCHO LEGACY were there.

As a fan, this is a doc­u­men­tary that I’ve always wanted to exist. So in a weird way, I willed this to hap­pen because oth­er­wise I don’t think any­one ever would’ve made it. Also, I think Laurent Bouzereau’s Making of PSYCHO release is a fan­tas­tic doc­u­men­tary. I didn’t want to try to com­pete with that, nor did I want to repeat the infor­ma­tion that was in that, so I look at THE PSYCHO LEGACY as a com­pan­ion piece to his film. It’s more of an “unof­fi­cial” sequel. Watch ‘em both back to back and I think you’ve got the entire PSYCHO fran­chise his­tory covered.

How did the doc­u­men­tary find a home at Shout! Factory?

We brought the doc­u­men­tary to sev­eral poten­tial dis­trib­u­tors, but Shout Factory was the one that totally got it from the begin­ning. What impresses me about that com­pany is their desire to deliver really inter­est­ing genre fare in the best pos­si­ble qual­ity. The spe­cial edi­tions they’re putting out for the Roger Corman stuff is all stel­lar, they’re all die-hard hor­ror fans work­ing there, and I get the feel­ing that they’re doing now what Anchor Bay was doing about a decade ago — really putting qual­ity and care into their genre releases. So once I met with them and found out what huge PSYCHO fans they were, it just seemed like a no-brainer.

You’ve also worked with Shout! Factory on the sup­ple­ments for some of their Roger Corman Cult Classics releases.  How did you get involved with those projects and do you have a favorite mem­ory from work­ing on them?

Oh wow!  You know about that!  Well, tech­ni­cally I’ve worked with Red Shirt Pictures who pro­vide a lot of the sup­ple­men­tal mate­r­ial for Shout Factory’s releases, mostly their Roger Corman titles.  The team con­sists of Michael Felsher, Aine Leicht and Buz Wallick and every project we’ve worked on together has been a truly ful­fill­ing adven­ture.  The doc­u­men­tary we did for the GALAXY OF TERROR DVD is prob­a­bly my favorite thing we’ve done thus far because I think we got to speak to just about every­one involved in that film.  Andrew Kasch did an amaz­ing job edit­ing that together and per­son­ally I think the doc on that disc is bet­ter than the actual movie!  It’s a great pack­age and I’m thrilled the way GALAXY OF TERROR came out.

Back to the main sub­ject — what’s your favorite Psycho sequel and why? (you gotta pick just one!)

This is the tough­est ques­tion ever for a fan like myself.  I look at all 4 PSYCHO films as the 4 acts of one long story.  But if I absolutely had to pick… I’ll go with PSYCHO 3. Mainly because it’s the one I remem­ber most from my child­hood and it’s the great­est char­ac­ter study of Norman Bates.  It’s PSYCHO 1 if we know the twist and with Perkins direct­ing it, I think he gave us such inter­est­ing insight into what’s going on in the mind of Norman Bates.  Also, while I obvi­ously have a great deal of affec­tion for the entire doc­u­men­tary, I per­son­ally love the PSYCHO 3 seg­ment.  I think we got just about every­one for that one and it’s the most inter­est­ing sto­ries to me about Anthony Perkins as a direc­tor, which I don’t think we’ve ever really heard about before.

What was the most mem­o­rable inter­view you did for The Psycho Legacy?  Please feel free to explain why.

I know this is a typ­i­cal answer but because this whole process took me 3–4 years, I truly savored every sin­gle inter­view and expe­ri­ence along the way. I have an epic story behind each and every sin­gle inter­view; how I got in touch with them, actu­ally meet­ing these peo­ple I grew up admir­ing, etc.

But I guess the Jeff Fahey inter­view was pretty mag­i­cal.  He at the time lived out of the coun­try and just hap­pened to be in NJ pro­mot­ing GRINDHOUSE at a con­ven­tion.  I had tried to sched­ule some time with him at the con­ven­tion appear­ance but there was a bit of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and he didn’t know I was com­ing.  I explained to him who I was, my intent with the project and how this was a labor of love for me.  He was so hum­ble and sweet.  He offered to meet me at my cameraman’s apart­ment in NY a few days later and true to his word, he showed up with his sis­ter to our place.

And the rea­son I loved the inter­view so much is because it truly was the first time he’d thought about PSYCHO 3 in 20 years.  So get­ting his nat­ural rec­ol­lec­tions truly made it stand out.  You’ll see in his extended inter­views some of the fun ban­ter we had back and forth.  Jeff is truly a class act and I love him for being a part of this documentary.

You pared down count­less hours of inter­view footage into 87 min­utes.  What was the edit­ing process like — and did you have a game plan going in or did you have to “find” the doc­u­men­tary in the editing?

It was very dif­fi­cult.  Again, this is my first fea­ture project so if I can be can­did, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing or how I should approach it.  But what I quickly real­ized was that all my writ­ing expe­ri­ence from Icons of Fright to Fangoria mag­a­zine through Shock Till You Drop and FearNet all came into play in terms of learn­ing how to edit.  It was the same as putting together an arti­cle.  You’re pulling the best quotes and arrang­ing them in a way to tell an inter­est­ing and engag­ing story.

Plus, I have to give tremen­dous credit to my edi­tor Jon Maus.  He stuck with me every step of the way since day one and never gave up on me, despite how many chal­lenges we faced.  I’d hit him with an idea and he’d show me some­thing 10 times bet­ter.  All the graph­ics and tran­si­tions you’ll see were mostly his inge­nu­ity and pas­sion shin­ing through and I’m glad we were able to bring that out in each other as collaborators.

The interest­ing thing is I did have a blue-print for how I thought the doc should be, ini­tially I wanted to include every­thing — the books, the BATES MOTEL TV pilot, the remake; but as we edited it, it became clear that it was actu­ally a doc­u­men­tary about Anthony Perkins por­tray­ing the char­ac­ter of Norman Bates through the major­ity of his life and com­ing to terms with that.  Those other sub­jects just didn’t fit, so I was pleas­antly sur­prised by how it all came together and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the final result.

You also pro­vided sev­eral supple­ments for the DVD set.  Do you have a favorite and, if so, why?

Well, this is obvi­ously not a Universal release so I only was able to use footage and pic­tures from the actual PSYCHO films in the doc­u­men­tary itself, which meant for the fea­tures I had to be really cre­ative. So I tried to think of fun seg­ments that would only com­pli­ment the doc­u­men­tary and the series as a whole.

Anything we don’t answer in the actual doc, I’m fairly cer­tain you’ll find in the extended inter­views and deleted scenes. Myself, Tom Holland (PSYCHO II’s writer) and Andrew London (PSYCHO II’s edi­tor) did a seg­ment where we look through the pos­ses­sions left behind by PSYCHO II direc­tor Richard Franklin that I think a lot of fans will appre­ci­ate. Personally, I get a kick out of the HYAENA GALLERY PRESENTS seg­ment where I talk to artists about the fas­ci­na­tion with ser­ial killers and we do a bit of his­tory on Ed Gein, the basis for Norman Bates.

But the entire DVD is worth it for the 45 minute panel with Anthony Perkins from a 1988 con­ven­tion.  I believe his only con­ven­tion appear­ance.  He’s often rather seri­ous in inter­view clips that you find on You Tube, but for this, he’s really charm­ing and funny and I’m glad fans will get to see that side of him here.  That’s eas­ily my favorite bonus feature.

What was the most dif­fi­cult moment in the process of mak­ing this doc­u­men­tary — and was there a moment that made it all worthwhile?

There a lot of dif­fi­cult aspects in putting this doc­u­men­tary together but it was all a learn­ing expe­ri­ence and I cher­ish the entire expe­ri­ence.  The moment that made it all worth­while was see­ing the final DVD pack­age from Shout Factory.  Opening it up, look­ing at all the amaz­ing art­work, pop­ping the discs in and see­ing the great job they did on the menus and the fea­turettes.  Seeing 3 years of my hard work neatly wrapped in a lit­tle DVD pack­age is pretty amaz­ing and I thank them for not only believ­ing in me, but as fel­low fans for doing an amaz­ing job with the DVD pack­age too.

Have you set your sights on a project to fol­low this one? If so, please give us a few details.

I’m actu­ally flirt­ing with sev­eral projects after this one and it’s just a mat­ter of which one will take promi­nence first.  There are 2 sim­i­lar doc­u­men­tary projects I’m look­ing into that would be a lot of fun, although PSYCHO LEGACY did lit­er­ally take the life out of me, so I’m approach­ing with cau­tion!  I’m col­lab­o­rat­ing with film­maker Drew Daywalt and actor A.J. Bowen on a web-series right now that we’re hop­ing to start pro­duc­tion on within the next month or so.

I also helped pro­duce a series of shorts called TWISTED TALES with Tom Holland writ­ing and direct­ing. The two of us became great friends after I inter­viewed him for THE PSYCHO LEGACY.  And I’m also in the early stages of set­ting up a pas­sion project, a nar­ra­tive fea­ture called SOUTH TEXAS BLUES which is being writ­ten and directed by Christopher Garetano.  Either way, it’s going to be a very busy and pro­duc­tive year and I look for­ward to get­ting to all of the above!

Are there any final words you would like to Psycho fans and/or poten­tial viewers?

PSYCHO fans, I am one of you!  I made this PSYCHO LEGACY pack­age to com­plete your PSYCHO col­lec­tions.  If you own every­thing else, I hope this will round out your set.  And if you don’t know any­thing about the sequels, I hope the doc­u­men­tary will make you seek them out and check them out, because they are con­sis­tently great movies that deserve to be cel­e­brated and not for­got­ten.  Thank you all for the support!

The Psycho Legacy The Ultimate Retrospective on the Most Influential Horror Series of All Time!In 1960, Director Alfred Hitchcock unleashed the mother-loving, mur­der­ous Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) onto screens in Psycho and scared audi­ences sense­less. With its shock­ing shower scene and unheard-of-at-the-time twist end­ing, it single-handedly changed the hor­ror genre for­ever. Psycho was so suc­cess­ful that it spawned three sequels, one remake, one TV series pilot, count­less imi­ta­tors and is now con­sid­ered the “grand­fa­ther of mod­ern hor­ror”. The Psycho Legacy is the first doc­u­men­tary to unravel the screen­writ­ing, cast­ing and direct­ing of all of the Psycho films and reveals sev­eral sur­prises and insights that every fan of this clas­sic fran­chise will want to know.Director: Robert GalluzzoStars: Robert Loggia, Olivia Hussey, Henry Thomas, Diana ScarwidIncludes never-before-seen inter­view footage with Anthony Perkins and ultra rare inter­views with stars of the sequels.