“My single meeting with Hitch: Joan (series producer) told me the master was actually going to direct one of his TV shows–this one his very favorite story–”The Voice in the Night,” to be the flagship episode for his one-hour Suspicion series. Joan drove me to his home up Bellagio Road, one of those canyon streets off Sunset Boulevard where you drive in through a gate.

“Hitch was charming. Congratulated me on the scripts I’d done for the half-hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents shows, personally made me a scotch and soda and sat me down with my yellow pad.

“I wouldn’t trade the hour that followed for anything I can think of at the moment… The man was BRILLIANT. He fucking dictated the script to me–shot by shot, including camera movements and opticals. He actually had already SEEN the finished film. He’d say, for example, ‘The camera’s in the boat with the boy and the girl. The move in is very, very slow–while we see the mossy side of the wrecked schooner. Bump. Now the boy climbs the ladder. I tilt up. i see him look at his hand. Something strange seems to have attached itself. He disappears on deck. I’m shooting through this foreground of–of stuff–and I’m panning him to the cabin door. Something there makes him freeze. He waits. Now the camera’s over here, and I see the girl come to him. Give me about this much dialogue, Stirling.’ He holds up his hand, thumb and forefinger two inches apart. I jot down–’Dialogue, two inches.’ As I say, the whole goddamned film–shot by shot, no dialogue–just the measurements of how much dialogue in the entire short story. It’s all introspection and the memory of horror, and the writer didn’t want to spoil it with dialogue. Lotsa luck, screenwriter. ‘Give me two inches of dialogue right here.’”

– screenwriter and TV writer Sterling Silliphant