Hollywood Gothique

Wow, I just heard that 84-year-old screenwriter Joseph Stefano – who adapted Robert Bloch’s novel PSYCHO into the Alfred Hitchcock classic – died recently. I remember interviewing him in the 1990s, shortly after the death of Anthony Perkins (who played Norman Bates in the movie), and Stefano was lamenting that, as each year went by, the number of survivors from that film was dwindling. Now the number has dwindled to almost nothing.

UPDATE: Fangoria has a brief news item on Stefano’s death – according to which, the writer died on August 25 in the hospital, after hurting himself in a fall at home on Monday.*

UPDATE II: I am quoted briefly in the Los Angeles Times obituary of Stefano, regarding his work on the first season of the original OUTER LIMITS:

“He took the show that was begun as a fairly straight science-fiction show and turned it into gothic horror, with heavy Freudian undertones.”

The obituary also makes extensive use of an interview I did with Stefano, in which he discussed the PSYCHO films, particular the original and Part IV, both of which he scripted. You can read my interview here; you can read the entire L.A. Times article here.

*NOTE: According to the Times, Stefano died from heart failure.

(Originally posted on August 28, 2006 at 1:58pm, PST)