WITH "FREE T-SHIRTS TO FIRST 100 PATRONS" AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE IN LOS ANGELES
LOS ANGELES TIMES, Nov 1 1974 - "GOTHIC EXPRESSIONIST FEEL"
"I JUST GOT CAUGHT UP IN THE VIBE THAT IS BRIAN DE PALMA"
A great read over at Bloody Disgusting: "The Phantom Lives: An Oral History of ‘Phantom of the Paradise’" - including these nice bits from Paul Williams:
I had become friends with Liza Minelli. Liza was going up to Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe to play Harrah’s for a month. And she said “I want you to open for me.” I’m doing two shows a night with nothing to do during the day and I’m writing the songs. I had my road band with me. And my road band is the one that played on the Phantom soundtrack, on Bugsy Malone. We became so close that I’d walk in and start singing something and they’re playing chords behind me. And I could walk in and go “Okay, we’re doing a Beach Boys thing. Bum-ba-ba-da-bum… Upholstery.” And all of a sudden, it’s sounding like a Beach Boys record.Because we were fans of the music that we were satirizing – certainly all of us knew it well enough to recreate it. I had never written anything like “Somebody Super Like You” or “Life at Last”. But I just became a member of a rock and roll band. I became a member of a metal glam band. And the script is the bible. And the script was very fluid and it was developing along the way, and I just got caught up in the vibe that is Brian De Palma. Something happened and it came out of me musically.
And this bit, again from Paul Williams:
It was so much fun, as you can imagine. And Brian seemed to embrace this total, very uncharacteristic for him sentimental side. I remember putting this little piano thing in when Bill is dying. And Brian said “Oh my god. There won’t be a dry eye in the house.” And my side of it is “And let’s show a really good closeup of the face in the record press.” It’s like we traded personalities during the shoot.
AMAZING HANDHELD SHOT
There's another very nice tidbit from Paul Williams included in Laurent Bouzereau's latest book, The De Palma Decade:
Larry Pizer was the great cinematographer on the film, but Ronnie Taylor, who became an Academy Award-winning DP with Gandhi [1982], was the camera operator. He did that amazing handheld shot from the point of view of the Phantom, which starts outside the Paradise, goes backstage, up the stairs, and ends inside the wardrobe storage room where he selects his leather outfit, finds the one-eyed mask, and puts it on, literally, over the lens of the camera. This was done in one shot before the Steadicam [existed], and it is spectacular.
Updated: Friday, November 1, 2024 12:25 AM CDT
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