Rope, Hitchcock, and Murder on Screen

Well, hey, everybody, this is Jeremy Schwartz.

You are listening to American Criminal, and this is gonna be a really fun episode because I have some pals of mine here with me, Michael Federico and Christie Vela, who host a fantastic little podcast called Terror & Tacos.

Guys, please tell us about that show.

Well, I mean, I feel like it's in the title, Jeremy.

We talk about horror movies, and we talk about tacos.

Two of our favorite things, and we have been doing it for years, really.

Started on a whim and was like, hey, we should talk about horror movies because we both love horror movies.

We made a horror movie together.

Christie directed and I wrote called The Finale.

On Amazon.

Available on Amazon Prime.

You guys are amazing.

That was perfect.

Yes, that's sort of the basis of it and you want to add anything exciting?

Yeah, I mean, we basically we used to go to the movies together and we had jobs that enabled us to go to see horror movies during the day.

Those were the days.

Those were the days.

And, you know, after a couple of them, after a few of them, we just decided to throw a microphone on a table while we were eating tacos and talk about the omen.

And that's what started Terror and Tacos.

Well, everybody check it out.

We'll mention it again here at the end of the show, but make sure you check it out.

Terror and Tacos.

All right, everybody, let's get started.

So I'm really glad that you guys are here because we're gonna, this episode that we're doing today, it's a bonus episode for our Leopold and Loeb series.

And because I have two movie buffs here, we're gonna be talking about Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, which was based on the Leopold and Loeb case.

The perspective that I kind of wanted to jump at this from was looking at how this crime, in particular, inspired so many movies.

And a whole genre, really, of film, kind of came out of this crime.

And I wanna talk about why that is, and let's talk about the movie, and maybe some other movies.

But first, Christie, how do we know each other?

Jeremy and I know each other from doing theater together.

We met a long time ago in Nineteen Lerner, doing a play at the infamous Undermain Theater called Shiner, yes, about the beer, where we played husband and wife.

And part of the play was Jeremy running away from his job at Huntsville Prison, and me running after Jeremy all over Texas, as we both were followed by a terrible serial killer.

It was a fun show, so heartwarming.

Which is not unlike our actual real life friendship.

Exactly, yeah.

And Federico, we went through the same high school, was just a two year school, so we missed each other by a few years, but we went to the same school.

Yeah, and I very much looked up to Jeremy in the speech world.

If you had done something and succeeded with it, three years later, they'd hand it to me, and they'd always be like, just do it like Jeremy did.

And then many years later, as adults, I played Jekyll to your hide in Jekyll and Hyde that Christie directed, which was super fun.

Oh, that's right.

I directed both of you in that play.

That was a blast.

Yes.

Oh, it's all a blur.

The show was awesome, but let's talk about Leopold and Loeb.

What do you all know about the actual case itself?

Michael, you're in the hot seat.

I mean, yeah, to me, Leopold and Loeb, and I had known about it when I was younger just because it's been such a famous case for so long.

Yeah.

And years ago, I had seen a musical based on it called Thrill Me, which it's like, I think, cold in the Leopold and Loeb story.

But I was for quite a time over the last couple of years, not currently, but I was a true crime writer.

And so Leopold and Loeb always came up because it is, I think, along with cases like the Dr.

Crippen case that came a couple decades before it at the turn of the 20th century.

I think it's one of the cases that fueled the birth of what we would call true crime now because it happened at a time when technology was changing so rapidly and people could communicate much faster than they could in the past.

And so all of a sudden, you have a story that's able to grip not only America, like across the country, but reach overseas very quickly.

And people can follow it almost in real time, like not in real time the way we could today, where it's like you turn on your phone or whatever.

But we're really seeing this international audience watching this incredibly salacious crime, right?

It had rich kids and a murdered child and all of these things.

And so to me, it's one of the many cases that would get slapped with the Murder of the Century title.

But I mean, it really does sort of fit the bill.

I mean, it was, people were obsessed with it.

Totally, absolutely.

It was 1923, 1924, when it happened.

And we talked about this a little bit on another episode, about the psychology is the same, in my opinion.

The main motivating thing is entitlement.

This feeling that you can get away with it because you deserve it.

And these guys went all the way with that.

They were sort of able to lean on his uber-mensch, you know, theory to an absolute extreme, you know.

There's a great line in the movie that kind of speaks to these philosophical ideals and whether they are true or whether there's already something in you, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's like, everybody has these thoughts, right?

Every, I mean, at some point, everybody's kind of like, I want to kill that guy or whatever.

But there's got to be something in you already.

That's a perfect segue that completely just organically presented itself.

Let's talk about the movie aspect.

So Alfred Hitchcock's Rope was made in 1948, written by Arthur Lawrence.

A fantastic film, I mean, for so many reasons.

Well, actually, it's based on a play by Patrick Hamilton, and the screenplay is Hume Cronin and Arthur Lawrence.

Well, I thought Hume Cronin got the story credit, and then Arthur Lawrence got the writing credit.

Oh, weird.

But that's, who knows?

We'll ask Dr.

Google.

No, no, it blew my mind that Hume Cronin was involved.

I know.

I know.

When I found that out, I was like, that guy does everything.

I bet he's still alive.

He did everything, including marry Jessica Tandy.

I know.

But most people know him from Cocoon.

But that's not what we're talking about today.

I do love that movie.

Okay, back to Rope.

So this was loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb story, more going after the aspect of pursuing that Ubermensch idea that we were talking about.

That's what Rope does.

But another interesting film to talk about is Compulsion, which was actually about Leopold and Loeb.

And that was directed by Richard Fleischer.

That was made in 1959.

This guy directs this movie that's really considered kind of the first true crime film, like ripped from today's headlines.

That didn't, it changed names and some things, but it really stuck to the story, down to having Orson Welles come in and essentially play the Clarence Darrow role.

I think I might be incorrect.

I'm pretty sure that Leopold sued the novelist or the writer who wrote the book that Compulsion is based on, because it exposed so much about his private life.

And again, Darrow is such an amazing, weird, real life person too.

Oh, I know, my gosh.

They talk about his eight hour closing statement, and the judge cried at the trial.

Yeah, yeah.

Brilliant.

But who wants to sit there for eight hours listening?

Oh my god.

Ah, who knows?

I would let them go just out of prison.

I just want to go eat.

Yeah.

All right, everybody, we'll be right back.

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So what is it about this story that has given it such life in the public consciousness?

One of the things that struck me and why I think it was able to inspire so many different films and plays like Rope and Compulsion and all these things, it was like, it blew my mind because it still seemed so modern.

Like you had people being like, it's this crazy jazz music that's making these kids kill.

And it had two very famous attorneys, especially in Dara, but the DA of Chicago was also really famous.

And so it had aspects that are still so prevalent in these huge, I know not to go back to OJ or whatever, but that kind of thing, right?

Or like in the 80s when they're like, heavy metals making kids murder, whatever the hell we were dealing with when we were kids.

It made me murder.

Yes, absolutely.

Christie, you're being recorded.

Oh, sorry.

So it's just like this weird, even back in the 20s, you're already seeing the groundwork being laid for all of these future cases.

Whenever a kid does something bad, it's the end of society and blah, blah, blah.

I think that's another reason why that case specifically has inspired multiple films and plays and stuff.

And the crime itself, yes, it was a hundred years ago at this point that it was done, but it's still shocking and awful and-

Oh my God, it's terrible.

Just horrid and disgusting and it's hard to top that one, even today.

Well, I mean, they were teenagers themselves, right?

But this is like a child we're talking about, like a 14-year-old kid.

And then brag about it.

I mean-

Yeah.

But it's interesting that we have become, in my opinion, and because you all deal more in the cinema world, if we were to make a film today about the exact same crime, we'd show the murder.

We'd show the kid getting thrown into the culvert.

We'd show him take his last breaths.

Is it the amount of crime and the level of crime?

Is it our exposure to it, our knowledge, like you were saying earlier, because we have our phones now, we can find out about something instantaneously?

What is it that desensitized us to it and made the art, therefore, more graphic?

These are huge questions.

I'm going to push back a little bit on the, I don't know if the movie was made today, if we would actually show a child getting killed.

I mean, that's kind of like an unspoken rule.

And it's been broken several times, you know, starting with back in the 70s, Day of the Locust, right?

But like, I think showing a child being killed in a horror movie is still controversial.

What do you think, Mike?

Yeah, I think it is.

I do think someone would figure out a way to do it.

I don't know.

Just in listening to that though, it's funny, Christie, we sort of texted, I think, the only truly violent act in Rope is the hanging, which is so fast at the very beginning.

Yeah, the strangulation.

Strangulation, yeah.

I don't know how or when it started.

I mean, I think probably the end of the Hayes Code had some effect on it in the 60s, where one director pushes the envelope towards violence in a way, and it sort of sparks this growth over years.

And part of me, and I'm old, and I think a lot of directors forgot that sometimes what you don't show is scarier than what you show.

And I think people nowadays, we do lean so heavily on showing everything.

To me, it's often less scary.

But yeah, I mean, god, rope and compulsion are so, as far as the violence is concerned, so tame compared to what we see, not even in film, but in everyday television.

You know, Hitchcock straight up lied to the writers and said, we're not gonna show the strangulation on film.

We won't do that.

There was, you know, talk about it.

And the writers were like, no, we can't show that.

We can't do that.

And Hitchcock was like, we won't, we won't do it.

And then he totally did because he's Hitchcock and he doesn't care.

What was the movie just a few years before that where he blows the kid up on the bus who's got the bomb that he doesn't realize that he has in London?

Sabotage.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

And they keep showing the clock and they keep cutting to the kid on the bus and they keep cutting to everybody else.

And you know that that kid's got a bomb and that bus is going to blow up and that kid is going to die.

Yeah.

And they didn't show it, but he spent a good three minutes building up to that bus blowing up.

Well, he's good at that, right?

Like he is a master of building tension on film, you know.

I also think he is the master.

I'd have to keep harping on the Hays code.

I think he's the master of navigating the Hays code.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Like the way he handles the relationship in Rope without ever saying anything, that straightforward that they're a romantic couple that could possibly get him in trouble or whatever or not get put on screen.

But it's so obvious, like.

Clearly.

I mean, all the times they talk about like, oh, we're going out of town together.

We're going to the...

And like the maid is like, yeah, this is totally normal that they always go up to the farm.

We're going to see my mother.

Everything they talk about is as though they were a married couple and it is never even mentioned.

It's masterful.

Absolutely.

You know, it's like you talk about the bus blowing up the kid.

He doesn't show it.

You talk about the knife never actually piercing Janet Leigh in Psycho.

But if you watch The Shower, you know, which is one of the most famous scenes ever in American movies.

You walk away thinking that you saw it.

You convince yourself you saw her get stabbed.

Yeah.

He's so good at that stuff.

And he squeezes what, 48 cuts into that sequence.

That's like 15 seconds long, something like that.

It's crazy.

Can you imagine sitting in the theater when Psycho first came out and watching that scene happen and nobody had ever seen anything like that on film before?

It must have been like people pooping in their pants.

Must have blown people's, I mean, still mind blowing, but it must have blown people's minds.

Yes.

I'm just trying to picture, because everybody dressed so nicely, even to go to baseball games back then.

So I'm just trying to picture people pooping in their pants while seeing this movie.

You ruined your suit, Morty.

You ruined your chinos.

Even Rope, which all takes place, you know, at this one dinner party for like eight people or whatever.

And it's like, well, we're all in cocktail dresses and suits.

Formal attire.

Yeah, and what a weird array of guests.

And it's like, nobody really explains why anybody is there specifically.

Well, no, the sister's there because she's in town.

Oh, yeah.

She came in town to buy a diamond.

Yeah.

My wife was sick, so I brought my weird sister.

He's going to come look at these old books.

He's going to look at these first editions.

So bizarre.

One of the very cool things about that film, I think, is the fact that the clouds very subtly move in the backdrop of the city.

You know, the movie was shot in like 10 shots.

It's insane.

Yeah.

Every time they cut behind the couch or push in on somebody and it goes dark, that's them changing reels.

Yeah, yeah.

I also think it's kind of fascinating to see, because I, you know, not to say nobody would do this today, but I mean, it would be rare that, like, you have this just like full on ethics, morality debate between these people just hanging out at a party.

And it's a really effective scene.

But it's like, man, can you imagine now, like, pitching to a studio, like, eight people sitting in a room debating German philosophy.

We'll call it lifeboat.

Another Hitchcock.

Oh my God.

Another Hitchcock.

Right.

Totally.

Yeah.

It's just such a different world, you know, in addition to not showing violence in the way that we show it.

Just like the subject matter is just so different than what I'm used to seeing in horror movies.

Right.

This felt like a play, right?

Rope felt, I know it's based on a play, but it felt like a play.

Well, and he purposefully shot it like that.

Yeah.

You know, and those sets roll around too.

Like, I was reading a little bit about it.

And it's like every time the camera kind of pushes in through those doors into the dining room, there were people running around behind moving walls and actors being told, don't step on that cable and all that kind of stuff.

And it was one of the first movies too, where the camera operators got like big title card billing because there were four different camera teams.

Yeah, there's a story.

I don't know if it's true.

I mean, it's, you know, it's just part of the lore of this movie that there was someone, a production assistant or someone on set who was standing in the way of the dolly, like his foot was on the track or whatever.

And the thing went over his foot and actually broke his foot.

And he was gagged and like tackled and rushed off the set just to not bust the tape.

Like Kim Novak.

Yes, like Kim Novak.

Hitchcock was just terrible to people.

Oh, he was terrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did also find it, it's sort of fascinating because I think this is Jimmy Stewart's first Hitchcock movie.

And like for me at least, it was like a very different Jimmy Stewart.

It's one of my favorite performances of his.

You know, it wasn't, who was it supposed to be?

It was supposed to be someone else.

Cary Grant was one of the people that, and yeah, Jimmy Stewart felt like it was not him.

And it's his least favorite of his Hitchcock performance.

I think it's great.

I thought he was, I thought it was great.

That monologue, that great monologue I'm talking about where he's, you know, like, I only talked about it, but there must have been something in you.

The monologue was like, thank you for making me feel shame, essentially, about these ridiculous theories that I'd put out.

Yeah, I kind of loved to go back to the Leopold and Loeb, that Hitchcock sort of tees up the Ubermensch thing and then has Stewart shoot it down.

Whereas, like, I think in court, those two guys never wavered, never apologized, never felt any remorse, never sort of wavered about their belief system.

It's so strange to me, still.

So this is 1948.

So is Hitchcock, like, this is after World War II, like right at the end?

Yeah.

He's doing something, right?

Like, he's clearly using this story to say something.

Do you all think?

Yeah.

And they have the argument about Hitler.

Brandon, at one point, is like, when they're arguing, he's like, yeah, but I would have killed Hitler because he's stupid.

Right.

That's his argument for killing Hitler, not genocide or whatever.

Yeah.

He just finds Hitler and his followers to have been stupid, and so decides they wouldn't have deserved to live.

He's doing some stuff.

Yeah.

Who's doing stuff like that now?

Who's that director, you think?

I don't know.

I mean, I think I'm going to take a chance here.

I mean, I think someone like Oz Perkins asks big questions.

Yeah, I think Ari Aster.

Ari Aster, Robert Eggers.

Yeah, I think there are some directors, in horror at least, trying.

It's funny, every time Christie and I watch the Hitchcock movie for Terror and Tacos or just whatever, without fail, one of us will text the other and just be like, how is he so much better at this than everybody?

He's like better than everybody.

Okay, next we will get into the Hitchcock of it all.

We'll be right back.

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Okay, so let's talk about Hitchcock.

Yeah, oh man.

I think the first Hitchcock movie I ever saw, because it was one of my father's favorite movies, or still is, I guess, was Rear Window.

And so, even as a kid, clearly when I couldn't fully understand why, I was obsessed with that movie.

And part of it was probably because I had a crush on Grace Kelly or whatever, but there was something inherently captivating to me about what he was doing even long before I could sort of rationalize or understand what he was doing as a filmmaker.

There was just something so compelling about his work.

There's some great tracking shots in that movie too that are like macro and micro, right?

Like all those wonderful tracking shots of the windows.

But then there's a great tracking shot of just what Grace Kelly is wearing, you know?

And inevitably, we will text each other and be like, just marry her.

Like, what the hell is wrong with you?

Right?

Right?

Seriously, dude, come on.

Just what's wrong with you?

You do not deserve her.

But like visually stunning too.

Like I recently watched Vertigo.

I love it, but it's not one of my favorites.

But I recently watched it again.

And it's just gorgeous.

Like some of the stuff that, so beautiful.

Yeah, oh man.

It's gorgeous.

So we're talking about the influence of this crime on this movie.

Now, let's talk about the influence of entertainment on crime.

Do you think that filmmakers should be held accountable?

Maybe not accountable isn't the right word because it's not their fault.

They're not making the choice for these people.

But like, is art responsible for crime?

Is crime responsible for the genre getting more intense?

Is it Nora Barris?

Maybe I'm in the minority in this.

I don't know, but I don't think that filmmakers or artists should be held accountable if people take what they see and then go out and say, well, it was in that movie.

I'm going to go and do it.

You know, it's, and it's argued in Rope.

Like, that's exactly what Jimmy Stewart, I mean, Rupert Cadell is arguing.

He says, I can talk about this stuff.

We're both talking about it all the time.

But the same, there must have been something in you inherently already that would make you go and do the thing.

And there was always something in me, even though I'm cynical, even though I hate people, even though I think murder can be an art form, there's always something that's been in me that would prevent me from doing that.

Just, I don't think so.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I agree.

I don't even know if this is quite connected.

Like, having worked in true crime, I am almost numb to horror films now, to the point where I don't think as gruesome or whatever, or as gory or crazy or what as a director can get.

I still think they fall so far short of real world horror.

Yeah, nothing is more terrifying than actual people.

Yeah.

Agreed.

And I think that's why you get, when you get sort of these very popular, it's such a weird word to use, dealing with murder.

But when you see something like, you know, we're talking about Leopold and Loeb a hundred years later or whatever.

It's fascinating to me how horrific those two guys are still.

And I think the real life them is still more interesting.

And I love Rope.

I think it's great.

But to me, the real life guys are still far more terrifying and fascinating than even the two guys in the movie, you know?

Yeah.

I think it's like, for me anyway, and there's this need, as far as like my, yeah, it's weird to say popular or enjoyment or, I'll say consumption of like true crime media, right?

It's this need to figure out what compels a person to commit such horrendous things.

Like, what is it in that person that is missing?

It's not a fascination.

It's not like, oh, that's cool.

It's not like, I like.

It's a need to understand the human behavior and why is it nature?

Is it nurture?

Is it both?

We still don't understand in this day and age.

We still don't know half of what our brain does or how it works, right?

And so trying to work out what in the world would compel this other human to do such a thing.

And is that in me also?

Did I just get super deep?

No, I mean, yes, but it was fantastic.

And it's like to me, and yeah, that's way deeper than what I'm about to say.

Like to me, that's why it's so easy to latch on to something like the Leopold and Loeb, because they don't have the base motive, right?

They don't need money.

They can have anything they want.

Like when I found out how rich their families were in the 20s, like people who would be multimillionaires today.

So like, these kids had anything they wanted, you know?

And it's not a sort of like romantic, there's romance between the two guys, but it's not like a jealousy-motivated murder.

So it's like these kids who seemingly have everything, could have had anything, done anything they wanted, gone anywhere they wanted, were still compelled to do this horrific thing, I think is even more compelling, or draws people in more than like, this guy was desperate for cash, he murdered this other dude.

It's not great, but you kind of get it, you know?

You kind of get it.

So this is unrelated, but it's kind of related.

We all know who Elizabeth Bathory is, right?

Blood Countess, famous, you know.

She was one of the richest, richest, richest women in Europe.

Super privileged at her time, you know, Countess, but basically a queen.

And there are stories and arguments made that her killing these young women, right, which were in the hundreds, she was not compelled by like any kind of like evil thing, but it was because she was so privileged.

And she felt like these people belonged to her.

And she was interested in science and interested in how the body worked.

And so it was, they belong to me.

I can do whatever I want because I am who I am and I have money and I own land and this is who I am.

See, again, entitlement.

It's not like a new thing.

I think it's eat the rich.

Is that what we're saying?

Sure.

Basically, I mean, that's eat everybody.

That's the world we're living in now.

Get your forks out.

And on that happy note.

And on that happy note.

Yay, crime.

Yeah, you know, it's funny because we're all actors.

And for me, playing a villain, the first thing that I try and do is, and I've said this before, try and remember the fact that this person had a teddy bear or a bicycle or was hopefully loved by somebody at some point in their life.

And then something happened to screw this person up.

Now, granted, that's not always the case.

Some people just, they come out screwed up.

But humanity is not that simple to un-box.

What's your way in when you're playing a character like that?

This is a very specific question.

Is there any character that you've played like that, that you've had particular difficulty putting down?

I find my way in very similar to you, Jeremy.

I always think that objectives or goals that are motivated by love or the search of love or the want of love, and love can be lots of things, are stronger than I'm evil and I'm oil can hairy, twirling my mustache.

I also always try to remember that they're motivated by a very real human need that they have, and that the consequences of it might be terrible.

Okay, so I played Tamera in Titus Andronicus, and she's one of my favorite roles.

If somebody asked me, what role would you play for the rest of your life?

I'd say Tamera in Titus Andronicus, even though she's a horrible, horrible person.

But she is motivated by the love of her children.

She's motivated by the fact that she's lost everything and that her child was killed in front of her after she begged on her knees, do not kill my child, please do not kill my son.

You've already won.

You've already taken everything I've had.

I'm already your slave.

Please spare my son.

And he is disemboweled in front of her.

And she says, all right, it's on, right?

And that's her motivation.

And that's personally how I feel about my own children, you know?

So it's like events in her life have forced her to behave in a way that she may have not behaved.

You shouldn't have killed my kid.

You shouldn't have killed my kid.

I begged you not to.

Eat the rich, don't kill kids.

I'm making a list.

Guys, I got to tell you something.

This was a lot of fun.

I would love to do this again at some point.

It's just great to see you all.

First of all, I haven't seen you all in so long.

I need to leave my house more, Jeremy.

I think that's the problem.

I don't see anybody.

Yeah, we need to do something together.

Yeah, this was a blast.

Thank you for having us, man.

Too much fun.

You all are super smart.

Please, everybody, check out Terror & Tacos.

You can find it anywhere where you can get your podcasts.

It's all over the place.

It is a delightful show.

Three quarters as delightful as the actual people themselves.

Christie and Michael, thank you so much for joining us today on American Criminal.

Thanks, Jeremy.

Thank you, Jeremy.

American Criminal is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing and sound design by Emily Burke.

Music by Thrum.

Special thanks to Michael Federico and Christie Vela.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.