Obsessions

In 1968, young German actor/ producer Dieter Geissler had a job for a certain Martin Scorsese who had recently filmed his debut Who's That Knocking at My Door in Amsterdam. And so 25-year-old Marty sat down and refined a Dutch Peeping Tom script with his very genius. „Very good!", he encouraged with a blue pen, or reprimanded: „Whole masseuse-chase sequence is much too detailed." While he penned those priceless suggestions, Hitchcock buff Francois Truffaut recommended composer Bernard Herrmann to director Pim de la Parra, and BH – hold on to your hat – actually had a few sheets left on his escritoire he had forgotten there in 1932. Apart from the opening sequence, next to nothing works in this ill-conceived Rear Window homage despite (not all too much) sex, drugs and, erm, Bernie's ghastly dated soundtrack. At least the masseuse-chase scene was trimmed – it makes no f*ckin' sense anyway –, and Marty returned to the Netherlands six years later to ask his old friend Pim whether he knew someone who could do the soundtrack for his latest project Taxi Driver. Oddly enough, a few weeks later Bernard Herrmann churned out a quite cool and modernist jazz score for that one. While Marty recalled with a smile that those Dutch fellows had paid him 500 American bucks for his expertise back then. With a smile, yes, but more of a knowing grin: There's plenty of ways to spend half a grand in Amsterdam.