two aborted projects with Paramount: Flamingo Feather and No Bail for the Judge. He disliked stars' salary demands and trusted only a few people to choose prospective material, including Robertson. Paramount executives balked at Hitchcock's proposal and refused to provide his usual budget. In response, Hitchcock offered to film Psycho quickly and cheaply in black and white using his Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series crew. Paramount executives rejected this cost-conscious approach, claiming their sound stages were booked, but the industry was in a slump. Hitchcock countered that he personally would finance the project and film it at Universal-International using his Shamley Productions crew if Paramount would distribute. In lieu of his usual $250,000 director's fee, he proposed a 60% stake in the film negative. This combined offer was accepted, and Hitchcock went ahead in spite of naysaying from producer Herbert Coleman and Shamley Productions executive Joan Harrison. Screenplay James P. Cavanagh, a writer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, wrote the first draft of the screenplay. Hitchcock felt the script dragged and read like a television short horror story, an assessment shared by an assistant. Although Joseph Stefano had worked on only one film before, Hitchcock agreed to meet with him; despite Stefano's inexperience, the meeting went well and he was hired. The screenplay is relatively faithful to the novel, with a few significant changes by Hitchcock and Stefano. Stefano found the character of Norman Bates unsympathetic—in the book, he is middle-aged, overweight, and more overtly unstable—but became more intrigued when Hitchcock suggested casting Anthony Perkins. Stefano eliminated Bates' drinking, which evidently necessitated removing Bates' "becoming" the mother personality when in a drunken stupor. Also gone is Bates' interest in spiritualism, the occult and pornography. Hitchcock and Stefano elected to open the film with scenes in Marion's life and not introduce Bates at all until 20 minutes into the film rather than open with Bates reading a history book as Bloch does. Writer Joseph W. Smith observes that "her story occupies only two of the novel's 17 chapters. Hitchcock and Stefano expanded this to nearly half the narrative". He likewise mentions the absence of a hotel tryst between Marion and Sam in the novel. For Stefano, the conversation between Marion and Norman in the hotel parlor in which she displays a maternal sympathy towards him makes it possible for the audience to switch their sympathies towards Norman Bates after Marion's murder. When