Friday, November 17, 2006

An Anthill, 2 Taxis & a Simile-Conscious Psycho


Similes on the Big Screen, Take 2
From Hitchcock:

He says that San Francisco's like an anthill up the foot of a bridge. (Cathy Brenner, “The Birds,” 1963)

When two people love each other, they come together – wham – like two taxis on Broadway. (Stella, “Rear Window,” 1954)

She's like a queen bee with her pick of the drones. (Jeff, “Rear Window”)

Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms. (Leonard, “North by Northwest,” 1959

Dialog from “Psycho,” 1960:

Norman Bates: You - you eat like a bird.
Marion Crane: [Looking around at the stuffed birds while eating] And you'd know, of course.
Norman Bates: No, not really. Anyway, I hear the expression 'eats like a bird' - it-it's really a false-false-false-falsity. Because birds really eat a tremendous lot. But I - I don't really know anything about birds. My hobby is stuffing things. You know, taxidermy.

And…

Norman [thinking as his mother]: He was always bad and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man, as if I could do anything but just sit and stare like one of his stuffed birds.

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