Shock from Newspaper delivery in the shower

No matter what anyone says, anything can be famous. This is one of my favorite moments in cinema photography. It is an homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Instead of a phycological thriller with the mother being stabbed to death in the shower, it is now the bellhop delivering a newspaper to Mel Brooks in the shower in a fit of anxiety and rage from being hounded into getting the paper. So this moment of shock and not death delivers a good laugh at what could have been a moment of horror. This  is what I love about Mal Brooks take in his movie High Anxiety. The first shot is a recreation of the scene from Psycho with her face of shock and death being shown in close and pulling away, but in Mal Brooks’s interaction, he is only in shock and complains about not giving a tip to the bellhop. This is why I see this as a new scene while paying tribute to the original inspiration for a moment and thus not a recreation. A moment just before a punch line at what is a moment of dark humor.
This shot was a lot harder to make than I initially thought it was going to be as I was doing this with my camera on my phone and by myself. The angle I couldn’t make adjustments while looking at the subject myself, and the water would dry or fall off my face too quickly to get a better comparison. It was funny to try to get into character thinking about how someone broke in and stabbed me with a newspaper before leaving screaming about, hoping that I am happy that they gave it to me. The confused and acquired mindset I tried to put myself in. It would have been easier if I had someone be the model, but I didn’t find anyone willing to do the scene, even with a bathing suit on. Well, I can’t blame them, and a time crunch is never really healthy for any of us.