Everybody remembers the killer’s name, Norman Bates, but nobody remembers the victim’s name. Anthony Perkins is Norman Bates, Janet Leigh is Janet Leigh. The victim is required to share the name of the actress who plays her. it is Janet Leigh who enters the remote motel owned by Norman Bates.

He’d been standing for more than three hours, looking. This was the fifth straight day he’d come here and it was the next-to-last day before the installation shut down and went to another city or was placed in obscure storage somewhere.

No one entering seemed to know what to expect and surely no one expected this.

The original movie had been slowed to a running time of twenty-four hours. What he was watching seemed pure film, pure time. The broad horror of the old gothic movie was subsumed in time. How long would he have to stand here, how many weeks or months, before the film’s time scheme absorbed his own, or had this already begun to happen? He approached the screen and stood about a foot away, seeing snatches and staticky fragments, flurries of trembling light. He walked around the screen several times. The gallery was empty now and he was able to stand at various angles and points of separation. He walked backwards looking, always, at the screen. He understood completely why the film was projected without sound. It had to be silent. It had to engage the individual at a depth beyond the usual assumptions, the things he supposes and presumes and takes for granted.

He went back to the wall at the north end, passing the guard at the door.