Roger Ebert Points People To The 'Ebert-Edit' Of Psycho On The Pirate Bay

from the celeb-endorsements dept

Ever thought you'd see Roger Ebert endorsing a "pirated" movie found on The Pirate Bay? Keith alerts us to an Ebert tweet, in which he states, that he's "opposed to piracy," but still links to a fan edit of Psycho, noting that it "proves a point." You see, Ebert has said for a while that he thinks Hitchcock screwed up the ending of Psycho:

For thoughtful viewers, however, an equal surprise is still waiting. That is the mystery of why Hitchcock marred the ending of a masterpiece with a sequence that is grotesquely out of place. After the murders have been solved, there is an inexplicable scene during which a long-winded psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) lectures the assembled survivors on the causes of Norman's psychopathic behavior. This is an anticlimax taken almost to the point of parody.

If I were bold enough to reedit Hitchcock's film, I would include only the doctor's first explanation of Norman's dual personality: "Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over, probably for all time." Then I would cut out everything else the psychiatrist says, and cut to the shots of Norman wrapped in the blanket while his mother's voice speaks ("It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son..."). Those edits, I submit, would have made "Psycho" very nearly perfect. I have never encountered a single convincing defense of the psychiatric blather; Truffaut tactfully avoids it in his famous interview.

While Ebert wasn't actually so bold, in this day and age, anyone can edit a movie (not necessarily legally), and someone took up Ebert's challenge, and made exactly that fan edit and put it up on The Pirate Bay, leading to Ebert's tweet.

Of course, in this day and age, with Twitter potentially suspending accounts of users who link to websites that link to content that might sorta kinda be deemed infringing, he should be careful. And, of course, let's not forget that the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division these days seems to believe that a mere link to infringing content could be enough to file criminal charges.

And yet... most of us with any sense of perspective knows that this is crazy. No one is "harmed" by allowing someone to take Ebert's suggestion and create a fan edit of the movie. It's not likely that anyone is going to download and watch that and decide they don't need to watch the real version. If anything, it may make people interested in comparing. And, realistically speaking, the only people likely to watch the fan edit are those who were already fans of the original. So what harm has it done?

Filed Under: fan edit, psycho, roger ebert
Companies: the pirate bay