Joseph Stefano (May 5th, 1922 - August 25, 2006) was the screenwriter of Psycho and Psycho IV: The Beginning.
Joseph Stefano in The Making of Psycho (1997)
History with Psycho[]
Hitchcock had originally utilized James Cavanaugh from the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but it was agreed after reading Cavanaugh's treatment of the original novel as a cinematic screenplay, but it was dismissed as being "dull". Soon after the rejection of Cavanaugh's treatment, agent Ned Brown suggested his client, Stefano, as the writer for the screenplay. Hitchcock was familiar with Stefano's prior works, albeit not very fond of them. Nevertheless, Hitchcock decided to hold a meeting with Stefano to see if he had any ideas to bring to the script. Not only did Stefano successfully convince Hitchcock that he could in fact write the screenplay, but the way he had envisioned the script kept perfectly in line with Hitchcock's signature style of suspense and solved the main problem of the script: the fact that Norma has been dead the entire time, and the audience isn't supposed to know until the ending.
Script Contributions[]
Stefano brought several key contributions to the script, not the least of which being that the story would not start at the Bates Motel, but instead, having the story begin with Marion's affair, insert her into a situation where she comes into a large sum of money, steals it, gets lost in a storm that brings her to the Bates Motel, meets the proprietor of the motel, and decides to return the stolen money. As she takes a shower after making her decision, someone comes into the bathroom and murders her. Hitchcock was impressed with the idea of misleading the audience into believing that the film would be about one character, and then abruptly end their time in the movie only a half hour into the running time. He ended the meeting by saying "we could get a star to play the part [of Marion],"
Stefano couldn't sympathize with Norman Bates as he was depicted in Robert Bloch's novel, a short, overweight, reprobate. He reimagined the character as a younger, more slender man more aligned with the physicality of Anthony Perkins. Hitchcock agreed that that would be a much better way to shift the audience's sympathies after Marion is killed. In penning the script, Stefano was concerned that if there was to be a scene that took place in a bathroom, he was interested in the idea of having a toilet be shown on screen. Hitchcock was amused at the prospect and told him that if he wanted to see that, he would have to make the toilet irremovable from the script.
Because he was in Freudian analysis at the time of the penning of the script, he decided that early in the film the motif of characters having some sort of connection to their mothers, another significant contribution that contributed to the film's overall atmosphere. The psychiatrist speech at the end of the film was something that Hitchcock originally had reservations about including in the script, however, Stefano convinced him that it was a necessary explanation at the time to relate to the audience not only what Norman was doing when he assumed his "Mother" disguise but also explaining his motivations.