A director, Orson Welles says, is someone who presides over chaos. Every director except Hitchcock, apparently, whose example and influence during the sound era has nonetheless been comparable to that of D. W. Griffith on silent cinema. How could a director whose methods—born of his fears—were so thoroughly unique to him, be an example to anyone? The answer is that the picture of Hitchcock [most people have, of a director obsessive in his pre-planning] is a myth, promulgated initially by Hitchcock himself, but exaggerated by the people writing about him, who are as a rule uninterested in the details of film production and prone to rely on interviews with collaborators whose recollections are shaped somewhat by the myth, but even more by the questions they are asked.