Not in front of the children

I'm not a rabid devotee of This American Life with Ira Glass, but I usually end up listening to at least part of it on Sunday while I'm driving around doing errands. (The radio is permanently tuned to NPR. I don't even know the call numbers of any other stations in my area).

There's always one segment that really grabs my attention, forcing me to sit my car, in the parking lot of whichever store I'm at, until it's over. Today, I heard the show's production manager, Seth Lind, talk about seeing an inappropriate movie as a child. When he was 6 years old, he watched The Shining and had nightmares and trouble falling asleep for two years afterward. (Lind is also a member of the improv group Thank You, Robot.)

The segment got me thinking about my age-inappropriate movie - Psycho. As a horror movie, it would probably be considered pretty tame today - I mean, it's not even in color - but it was scary enough for me. Actually, for me, it would be inappropriate at any age. As I mentioned in my review of the play The 39 Steps, I'm pretty squeamish.

I started watching Psycho on tv once when I was a little kid (or maybe not so little, I don't remember). I got as far as the shower scene. It made me so nauseous that I had to flee to the safety of my bedroom. I don't remember any nightmares or sleepless nights. But because of that experience, until fairly recently I pretty much swore off all Alfred Hitchcock movies. You can't be too careful.

I've never revisited Psycho and I'm certain I don't want to - ever. But I've mostly overcome my fear of Hitchcock and I've enjoyed many of his films over the past couple of years, including Vertigo, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble with Harry, North by Northwest and The 39 Steps, all without any ill effects.

Okay, I'm not big on heights, so I was a little nervous about Vertigo, but knock on wood, it went well. Of course, none of those is really scary. I've stayed away from The Birds, though. I have a feeling that one would be a little too intense and I don't want to press my luck.

Dan Fogler - master of suspense

I was catching up on Filmspotting, one of my favorite podcasts, while I was exercising the other day and my ears perked up when the talk turned to Dan Fogler, a Tony winner for his performance in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Fogler seems to be concentrating on his movie career nowadays, and I'll admit I haven't seen any of the movies he's been in. I just haven't been all that interested in Balls of Fury or Good Luck Chuck or School for Scoundrels.

But his biggest role is coming up and it's one that does interest me. He'll portray the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, in a murder mystery called Number 13. Now, I saw The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on tour, so I missed Fogler's performance as William Barfee (that's Bar-fay). Although I caught a little bit of it on the 2005 Tony awards, and he was pretty funny.

The cast of Number 13 looks great. In addition to Fogler, it features Ewan McGregor, Emily Mortimer and Ben Kingsley. I've never heard of the director, Chase Palmer, who also wrote the screenplay. But in 2005, Filmmaker Magazine listed him as number 23 in its list of 25 new faces of independent film.

Unfortunately, there's very little current information about the movie. It's listed on imdb as being "in production" this year. A 2006 post from Cinematical says the story takes place during the filming of a movie and finds the director "caught up in a Hitchcockian dilemma when he ends up in a love triangle with two crew members while making the film. When the lead actor turns up dead, the editor suspects the director and tries to uncover the truth."

The most recent mention I could find is a story from February that appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, which said that the movie would begin filming sometime this year in Cologne, Germany. The article says that the drama "focuses on Alfred Hitchcock's first film, the 1922 thriller Number 13, which was never finished and has been the source of much speculation by Hitchcock fans and film historians."

In an interview with MTV last year, Fogler said "[The movie is] cool if you're a Hitchcock fan. Just like Shakespeare in Love, you see how he comes up with certain ideas [for future films] from events that happened during the course of the movie."

The 39 Steps

I came late to Alfred Hitchcock. The shower scene in "Psycho" sent me running into the bedroom for cover when I was a little kid, and over the years I've only grown more squeamish. But as an adult, I've come to realize that there's scary Hitchcock and suspenseful Hitchcock. Now, after having seen "The 39 Steps" in a pre-Broadway engagement at Boston's Huntington Theatre, I can add another category: hilarious Hitchcock homage.

Four actors play all the roles in the award-winning 90-minute British play. It's a virtually scene-for-scene retelling of the classic 1935 film starring Robert Donat as a man who finds himself caught up in an international spy ring. And the way it's done is absolutely inspired. In fact, it reminds me of another favorite of mine, "Wicked," in the way it reimagines a familiar story. I couldn't believe what was accomplished with a few low-tech special effects, some props and lots and lots of quick costume changes. Imagine a suspense story told in the style of a screwball comedy in which the male and female leads aren't in on the joke.

Charles Edwards, who plays the protagonist, Richard Hannay, is the only holdover from the British cast, and he's superb. Edwards has to be very serious and deadpan, like he doesn't realize there's a comedy going on all around him, like he really has been caught up in the middle of an international spy ring and accused of a crime he didn't commit. He's very suave, dashing, self-assured, not a hair out of place even as he flees for his life across the Scottish Highlands. The perfect 1930s hero. Even a week later, thinking about his escape across the top of a train makes me laugh. And the man sure does a lot with a raised eyebrow!

Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders play all the other male roles. Much of what they're called on to do is very slapsticky, physical humor. They're identified in the program as "clowns," and that's the perfect description. They reminded me of a two-man circus act or a couple of old-time vaudevillians. They wear lots of hats, literally and figuratively! Rounding out the cast, Jennifer Ferrin is great playing three very different parts, although her turn as a secret agent did remind me a little of Natasha from "Rocky and Bullwinkle." But in a good way!

"The 39 Steps" isn't perfect. While the first act moves very quickly, things slow down a bit in the second act, which has two longish scenes, in a hotel and at a political rally. And I don't know whether it's just that I'm getting old or the actors weren't projecting well enough, but I was straining a bit to hear everything from the back of the orchestra. Also, it's difficult to say whether I would have gotten as much out of it if I hadn't seen the movie first. A big part of the fun comes from knowing what's coming next and wondering how they're going to pull it off. And there are some delicious shoutouts to classic Hitchcock movies that you'd miss if you weren't a fan. The great man himself even makes a cameo appearance!

Still, the play stands on its own even if you haven't seen the movie or aren't at all familiar with Hitchcock. I don't think I've laughed so hard, so consistently from beginning to end, at the theater all year. Or at a movie, for that matter. Yeah, maybe at times "The 39 Steps" is a little too self-aware, in an "aren't we clever" kind of way. But you know what, it is clever, and funny and wickedly entertaining.