On May 6, 2007, I was interviewing the stars of the motion picture Shrek the Third on the green (not red that day) carpet during the world premiere at Westwood Theater in California.

Sandwiched between Entertainment Tonight and a Japanese program correspondents, I had a great vantage spot for the quick interviews and photographs.

Among those I spoke with were Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Eric Idle, Larry King, Cheri Oteri, and Amy Poehler.

Among those I didn’t speak with, but photographed, were Eddie Murphy, Julie Andrews, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, John Cleese, and Terri Hatcher.

Following Griffith and Banderas, was an older, sophisticated lady with two young girls–their grandmother, I supposed. We started a conversation, but I could tell she was more interested in something else near the entrance of the theater.

“You might want to get your camera ready,” she pointed at my Canon. “You don’t want to miss this.”

“Look, Justin (Timberlake) and Cameron Diaz are about to see each other since they broke up a few months ago,” the attractive lady smiled. “He’s nine years older than her, you know.”

I did not know their age difference, much less anything about their four year relationship until the woman told me.

At this point, my camera was ready and aimed.

After I clicked and showed the photo, she congratulated me, squeezed and patted my arm, and walked towards Melanie Griffith. 

Who was this kind lady? 

I asked the lady next to me from Entertainment Tonight.

“That’s Melanie Griffith’s mother, Tippi Hedren,” she replied.

“TIPPI HEDREN,” I gasped. I had just spoken with the star of one of my favorite movies as a child.

The Birds (1963) is widely regarded as a horror classic and one of the first horror movies, along with subsequent classics such as the shark film Jaws, where nature takes revenge against humanity.

I was 7 years old when Tippi Hedren wore the same green suit throughout the movie. She was provided with six identical green suits to accomplish this.

During the harrowing scene where Hedren is attacked by seagulls in the attic—which took seven days to film, and after which she spent a week in the hospital to recover—crew members set up a device inside her hairdo. It was a blood-filled tube that was designed to explode with blood and air once a fake gull swooped down and reached her head.

After makeup man Howard Smit applied the cosmetic “injuries” to Tippi Hedren’s face, she reportedly took a gander at herself in the mirror, said, “Pardon me, Howard,” exited her trailer, and vomited.

In order to entice birds to fly directly toward the camera, meat was attached right next to camera lenses during certain scenes.

The schoolhouse used in the movie was rumored to be haunted. According to Tippi Hedren, she got the creepy feeling that “the building was immensely populated, but there was nobody there.” When Hitchcock heard that the house was supposedly haunted, it only encouraged him to film there.

In the birthday-party scene where the gulls suddenly attack and start popping balloons, crew members placed pins inside the gulls’ mouths and taped their beaks shut. One of the gulls flew away with its mouth still taped, but crew members were able to find it after hours of searching. If they hadn’t found the bird, it would have died.

According to Veronica Cartwright, who played Mitch Brenner’s younger sister Cathy, most of the birds you see gathered on the jungle gym and swing set in the infamous playground scene were not real. She says most were made out of paper or cloth, with only a few real birds mixed in.

Rod Taylor claims that the seagulls in “The Birds” (1963) were fed a mixture of wheat and whiskey. It was the only way to get them to stand around so much.

Mitch Zanich, owner of the Tides Restaurant at the time of shooting, told Alfred Hitchcock he could shoot there if the lead male in the movie was named after him, and Hitchcock gave him a speaking part in the movie.

Hitchcock agreed: Taylor’s character was named Mitch Brenner, and Mitch Zanich was given a speaking part. After Tippi is attacked by a seagull, Mitch Zanich can be heard saying to Mitch Brenner, “What happened, Mitch?”

Hitchcock briefly considered Cary Grant for the role of Mitch Brenner, but decided against using the hugely expensive actor, because he felt the birds and the Hitchcock name were the big attractions.

Like everyone else in the film ,the character of Mitch Brenner had to withstand a barrage of avian attacks. One particular bird really had it in for Taylor. There was a captive raven named Archie who seemingly went out of his way to attack the actor, even when the cameras weren’t rolling.

“Every morning, if we were on the set together, he’d come over and … bite me,” Taylor revealed in Universal’s DVD documentary All About the Birds.

“I hated him and he hated me.” It got to the point where Taylor started making inquiries about Archie’s whereabouts as part of his daily, on-set ritual. “I’d walk in and say, ‘Is Archie working today?’ And they’d say, ‘Uh, I don’t think so Rod. I think we’re working with seagulls.’ And out of the rafters would come Archie. [He] hated me and would lie in wait for me.”

The famous scene where children are running downhill from the schoolhouse to the center of town was partially reshot on a backlot at Universal Studios. The children “ran” on a treadmill while footage of attacking birds was projected behind them on a screen.

The infamous scene at the gas station where an explosion occurs after a man throws his match on the gasoline-filled street was filmed on a soundstage. At the time, the gas station didn’t exist. Many years after The Birds was filmed, a gas station was built outside the Tides Restaurant in the exact spot where it appeared in the movie. 

Alfred Hitchcock intentionally left out the phrase “THE END” as the film ended because he wanted to convey the sort of terror that never ends. The studio slipped in a “THE END” during the film’s first print, but all subsequent versions had it removed.

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