In 1959, Alfred Hitchcock opens his latest film, North by Northwest, to considerable success, but is troubled by a reporter's insinuation that it is time to retire. Seeking to reclaim the artistic daring of his youth, Hitchcock turns down film proposals like adapting Casino Royale in favor of a horror novel called Psycho by Robert Bloch, which is based on the crimes of murderer Ed Gein. Gein appears in sequences throughout the film in which he seems to prompt Hitchcock's imagination regarding the Psycho story, or act as some function of Hitchcock's subconscious mind (for instance, drawing Hitchcock's attention to sand on his bathroom floor, the quantity of which reveals how much time his wife Alma has been spending at the beachhouse with Whitfield Cook).