Video interview: Alfred Hitchcock

Here's another gem from the Web -- the first part of an interview with Alfred Hitchcock. In it, the famed director of such classic movies as Rear Window (1954), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960) talks about Red Riding Hood, how his target audience is women, "pure cinema," the necessity of avoiding cliches, and much more, all in 7 minutes.



How about that for a money quote: "I believe in putting the horror in the minds of the audience, instead of up on the screen."

By the way, Hitchcock received 20 writing credits in his movie career as well as directing 64 movies.

UPDATE: In comments, Jeff Shear talks about Hitchcock and his take on the concept of the "MacGuffin." In the Wikipedia article, it's interesting that to Hitchcock, a MacGuffin is merely a device that is of little or no importance (finally) to the plot, whereas George Lucas asserts that a,"MacGuffin should be powerful and that the audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on-screen." Somewhere along the line, the typification I picked up about a MacGuffin was the proverbial "briefcase full of cash," like in the movie 48 Hours -- it's everyone's object, the entire reason for the plot, but per Hitchcock, ends up being meaningless.