DE PALMA AND MORE INTERVIEWED IN CURRENT FANGORIA
Fangoria's Carrie issue (#321) has hit the stands. It includes an interview with Brian De Palma, as well as interviews with William Katt and P.J. Soles. There is also a terrific interview with Jorn Seifert, of the German FX shop Twilight Creations, which was called to create the mask resembling Rachel McAdams for De Palma's current film, Passion. The issue also includes a look at the work of Pino Donaggio, with quotes from Joe Dante, as well as a look at key murder scenes from De Palma's oeuvre. Fango editor Chris Alexander, who did this issue's interview with De Palma at last September's Toronto Film Festival, explains in the opening editor's letter that the issue was originally planned to coincide with the release of the Carrie remake. However, the release date for the remake got pushed back to October, so they expanded the De Palma element of the issue. The issue does include, nevertheless, and interview with Kimberly Peirce in which she mentions De Palma's help several times as she recounts preparing to direct the new film.What we'll focus on right here is something that comes up in the De Palma interview. About a year ago, our old friend Peet Gelderblom put together Raising Cain Re-cut, in which, aided by a copy of the original screenplay for De Palma's Raising Cain, he pieced together as best he could what that film might have looked like the way De Palma had originally conceived it. De Palma talks about it in the Fango interview:
FANG: Have you ever thought of remaking one of your own films?
DE PALMA: Hmm... [Pauses] Well, as a matter of fact, somebody put RAISING CAIN together the way it was originally supposed to be done, and it gave me lots of food for thought. RAISING CAIN was originally supposed to start with the woman's story-- you'd follow her for the first 20 minutes-- and then Lithgow's doesn't start until you see him smother her. But when I was cutting the movie, I didn't think her story was interesting enough to sustain the long beginning, so I reversed it and put the Lithgow stuff firstand used the opening scenes as kind of a flashback. Somebody got ahold of the original script and put it back the way it was supposed to be, and I thought it could be really interesting to actually do it the way I always wanted to.
FANG: You mean re-edit, or go back and completely remake it?
DE PALMA: Redo it. It's a very good idea. It was based on an experience I had with a woman who was in the midst of a divorce. She used to come by my house after work, we would spend a few hours together and then she would go home. But she would fall asleep all the time because she had been working all day, and I would sort of watch her sleep, and I thought about what would happen if she slept through the night. That was the initial concept for RAISING CAIN: the fact that she's with her lover and we know she doesn't go home. It's a very good idea, but I just didn't think it was strong enough in relationship to the Lithgow stuff, and that may have been a mistake.
FANG: Isn't that concept an extension in many ways of Angie Dickinson's subplot in Dressed To Kill?
DE PALMA: Yes, to some degree. But we're not always so conscious of these things the way people who study these films and look for all the signs are. We do things intuitively, and then you remind us of the similarities, and maybe you're right.