Episode 106: The Birds (1963)

The Bit Players

The guys take the coast highway to Bodega Bay with pockets full of birdseed on this week's podcast on Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film, The Birds. The Bit Players discuss the interesting ways the film subverts audience expectations around every bend, with Tippi Hedren'sMelanie Daniels character playing the coy débutante taking things into her own hands, meeting various characters like love interest Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), and Hitchcock's umpteenth reimagining of Jacosta in Jessica Tandy's Lydia Brenner in very unique and interesting ways, to the fact that those character interactions somehow take center stage in a film about killer birds dive-bombing into eyeball sockets left and right. The guys talk about their first experiences with the classic film and other of the director's iconic works, how it both conforms to and rejects what could be considered a typical Hitchcock narrative, and the cultural relevance of the film today given recent controversies around other predatory male Hollywood figures. They try to make sense of the art vs. artist discussion in terms of Hitch the man and Hitch the director.

Featuring "The Wee Cooper O'Fife"

03:07 Number-Crunching 13:18 The Birds Introduction 13:50 First-Time Viewing Experiences 16:50 What Does the Film Do That Isn't Done Today? 18:00 The Melanie Character 22:00 How The Film Subverts Expectations 26:00 How We Would Take Down the Birds 27:20 The Restaurant Scene and the Ornothologist 30:00 Sparse Human Interactions 31:48 The Sound of The Birds 40:00 Does Hitchcock Ask Us To Think Critically About the Film? 42:00 The Environmental Themes in the Movie 49:39 The Art vs. The Artist 57:25 Clark's Corner: Recasting the Remake, Blu-Ray Combo Pack, Shyamalanian Twist, and More 1:07:00 Ratings