If there is one film maker I remember for the fright value, it’s Hitchcock. What is fascinating about him is that the primary tool that spearheaded his talent was fear. Read the book review by Dennis Drabelle of the story of the making of Hitchcock in Alfred Hitchcock: ‘A superb fantasist of fear’:
Ackroyd reminds us what an outsider Hitchcock was. Raised Roman Catholic in Protestant England, he was perennially unhappy with his appearance, especially his spherical figure, and beset by multiple fears: of heights, policemen, imprisonment and, simply, other people. Even after he was well-established in a job with quasi-dictatorial powers — movie director — he “still did not like to cross the studio floor in case a stranger came up to him.” Such a cluster of neuroses would send many of us running to a shrink, but instead Hitchcock harnessed them to his talents. He was, Ackroyd sums up, “a superb fantasist of fear.”
While there are many articles like this one on how to harness your fear, not many writers know how to make stories out of them. What frightens you the most? Can you make a story out of it? That looks like a prompt for the day.
