De Palma a la Mod

Monday, July 1, 2019

FLASHBACK 2007-JURY OF PEERS ROARS LION TO DE PALMA
COMING SOON: A BRIEF TIMELINE OF DE PALMA-SCHRADER

Pictured at left, from 2007, is Alejandro González Iñárritu, handing Brian De Palma the Silver Lion for Best Director for Redacted at that year's Venice Film Festival. Iñárritu was a member of that year's jury, which awarded the prize to De Palma. Also on the jury that year: Zhang Yimou (jury President), Ferzan Ozpetek, Paul Verhoeven, Emanuele Crialese, Catherine Breillat, and Jane Campion. Speaking at the podium after receiving the award from Iñárritu, De Palma told the audience, "Prizes are always great because it helps your film to be seen. But critics and prizes just tell you what the fashion of the day is. We don't make movies to get prizes."

I had added the pic and information above as a comment to a Facebook post and comment by Paul Schrader last Friday. That Facebook post, which was entirely deleted by Schrader a few hours later, began as a critique of Jordan Peele's Us. Mustafa, who comments regularly here at "De Palma a la Mod," had commented on Schrader's post, mentioning that Peele's film includes "obvious homage to De Palma, the split diopter." Schrader then responded to Mustafa, "Don’t get me started on Brian DP. I rewatched Redacted last night because I thought that given total artistic freedom he could reach for the stars. And he did. But the stars were beyond his reach. The script is trite, it is weak. That’s because is Brian is trite, Brian is artistically weak. Skate fast on thin ice. That’s his story. That’s his con."

Schrader's comments spread through Twitter Friday, leading him to delete the entire post, but the comments continued to spread over the weekend. Sometime soon, I will post a brief timeline, with quotes, between De Palma and Schrader. For now, here's an image of Schrader's FB post from March of 2015:

Posted by Geoff at 9:00 AM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 2, 2019 5:04 PM CDT
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Monday, July 1, 2019 - 6:09 PM CDT

Name: "Mustafa"

Earlier this ear, I also commented on a post of him, I asked what happenned between him and De Palma, as they used to be friends as well as artistic collaberators. He was kind enough to respond to me saying that recently in an event he went to say hello to BDP (Brian De Palma) and DP just ignored him and passed by!

So there must be a deep crack that happenned between them long ago for DP to ignore him like that and for Shrader to hold such a grudge and change his position from his former friend and collegue. Even if DP isnt the warmest person, but I saw a photo of him for Scorsesse and Copolla couple of years ago when Marty screened his movie Silence, so, he is still in touch with friends who reach out to him.

It is very low and irrational I would say from Schrader to say about him "artistically weak" what on earth could got to him to say such a utterly false baseless statement? It doesnt take anything from DP, but it make Schrader as, sorry, but a real jerk!

Frankly DP's movies are still seen and talked about after decades from being made, which is something I cannot say about Shcrader's movies, yes he is an excellent screenwriter, but as a director, he doesnt comes even close from DP's best work!

Oh and thank you for mentioning my name up there!

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Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - 10:21 AM CDT

Name: "Tom"

Indeed it's realy strange. Shrader atended to "De Palma" screening, in NY. What could have happened between those guys?

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Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - 1:10 PM CDT

Name: "Chris"

Mustafa, I think you nailed it. It's an interpersonal conflict and it's been one for years. Schrader's recent comments were pretty nasty and I'm glad to see he deleted them - frankly they were embarassing and reflected poorly on him.

As everyone already knows, their collaboration on Obsession turned contentious when De Palma basically excised the entire third act (on Bernard Herrmann's advice). Schrader was very unhappy and, from what I gather, shared his disparaging comments about De Palma pretty widely in Hollywood at that time. I'm speculating that De Palma's iciness is rooted in that. Whether one agrees that it makes sense for De Palma to continue to be icy and to ignore Schrader to this day is debatable, I guess, but Schrader knows very well where it's coming from.

Their relationship is unreconcilable at this point, I would imagine.

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Thursday, July 4, 2019 - 12:57 AM CDT

Name: "neil"

at one stage Mr De Palma was set to direct Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind from a Charlie Kaufmann script. That would have been a movie to remember. What a pity it didn't happen.

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Friday, July 5, 2019 - 1:36 AM CDT

Name: "JJ Abely"

Poor Paul. He still hasn't gotten over Pauline Kael, his "second mother," as he says, demolishing nearly all of his directorial efforts, like HARDCORE, for which she famously wrote: "For Schrader to call himself a whore would be vanity; he doesn't know how to turn a trick." "Mother," of course, praised many of De Palma's efforts.

Why doesn't De Palma talk to Schrader? Why would he? He likely didn't appreciate Schrader very publically trash-talking the altered ending of OBSESSION, for one (even though shooting Schrader's ending would have been commercially disasterous).

Schrader's a brilliant writer, yes, but then "mother" always told him he should write. Just write. And nothing else.

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