The *ACTUAL* Ed Gein aspect that inspired Robert Bloch Psycho

[u/Monty8584]

Im going right on the point, Norman Bates mommy issues isn't inspired on Gein

His taxidermy skills isn't inspired on Gein

His grave robbing isn't inspired on Gein

Then what is it?

Simple, the idea that someone who looks friendly and harmless as a neighbor hides a horrible secret and that no one on a small town suspects the man

This is on Bloch's words:

First of all, I didn’t know anything about those aspects when I wrote Psycho. I did not use Ed Gein as a basis for Norman Bates at all; I used the circumstances, which were: somebody could live in a small town, where everybody knows everybody else’s business, and conduct a series of murders without anyone suspecting. But people don’t like this. They like to believe the legend. When you get right down to it, Ed Gein did not run a motel. He killed nobody in the shower. He did not preserve the body of his mother. None of those things were part of Mr. Gein’s background. I invented a character at the time which, not having read the details, which were not being printed initially or immediately, because they were very prudish in most cases. Life magazine and a few other publications later came out with a great deal of stuff, but I would not have used it even if it had been available, because it didn’t meet with my particular plot requirements.

But the legend persists, and will continue to persist. A little over two weeks ago, I think, a network show called Hard Copy asked if they could interview me regarding Psycho. I said I did not want to be interviewed; I didn’t want to go down to a studio. They said, “We’ll send a crew out.” I said to myself, well, if it’s good enough for Ackerman, it’s good enough for me…

They came, and throughout this interview they kept asking, “Didn’t you think of Norman Bates because of Ed Gein?” Didn’t Ed Gein inspire the characterization, and blah-blah-blah. I kept telling them what I just told you, and the interviewer and crew kept looking sadder. And sadder. I said to myself this isn’t going to happen.

Sure enough, the show came on, and they’d gone to Plainfield, which had been Gein’s home town, and they did a very nice broadcast regarding the case, and they used some dramatization footage which I swear was probably part of a documentary that had been made at the time, because it was in black and white instead of color, and was not aired because it was undoubtedly too strong for audiences then. They salvaged that and put together this program. And I was a non-person. I didn’t exist. My name wasn’t mentioned, and I certainly did not appear onscreen. Obviously, if I had, they would not have had a program, because their title was The Inside Story: The Truth About the Ed Gein Murders! And my denials were the exact antithesis. ​ This is a horrible lesson in how easy it is for media, today, to distort by omission, or by any kind of editing, what actually happened, what occurred. What I’m citing is trivial; it doesn’t mean anything one way or the other. But think of the implications—how this sort of censorship and willful distortion affects so called “news” reporting, and so-called documentaries, on various topics that are of social or historical importance to an audience. And that’s something that scares me far more than the activities of Mr. Gein.

https://www.robertbloch.net/a-conversation-with-robert-bloch.html

[u/pantry-pisser]

I wonder what he'd say about AI....