Bagpipes or a pig? – Thomas Beecham and Alfred Hitchcock

A fan of the famous English conductor Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) asked him once what music instrument would he recommend to her baby boy.

"The bagpipes," Beecham suggested, “because they sound exactly the same when you have finished learning them as when you start learning them”.

 

 

 

Famous English film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980) also made a funny joke about bagpipes. He said:

"I understand that the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of sound achieved by the pig."

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Interrupted kiss – Alfred Hitchcock

At the time when Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was making  the movie "Notorious", and that was in 1946, the Motion Picture Production Code (in other words - censorship), popularly known as Hays Code (after Hollywood's chief censor of the time, Will H. Hays) prohibited scenes of a kiss longer than three seconds.

However, Hitchcock wanted for the kissing scene of the main characters in this film, actress Ingrid Bergman and actor Cary Grant, to go into the history as the most beautiful movie kiss, and also the longest movie kiss, so he decided to extend that kiss with any means possible.

Finally, cunning Hitchcock edited that kiss like this: Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are kissing for three seconds, then they are saying something to each other for a few seconds, then they are kissing again for three seconds, then they break away for just a second, then kissing again for three seconds, then they are whispering something to each other on the ear, and then again kissing for three seconds, and so on…

Their kiss lasted for two-and-a-half minutes, and it is perhaps the most intimate and erotic movie kiss ever.

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Opera is not a thriller – Alfred Hitchcock

“What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out”, claimed famous British film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980).

When he was asked why he never wrote some operatic piece, the creator of "Psycho" answered:

- “Well, after the second act all the main characters would certainly have been murdered. Who would then remain to sing?”

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