NICK CHEN FROM 2016: "THEIR FILMMAKING PHILOSOPHIES MAY SEEM CONTRADICTORY, BUT THAT MEANS COMMON GROUND MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY'
I've only just discovered this 2016 Little White Lies article by Nick Chen, headlined, "How Brian De Palma influenced the films of Noah Baumbach." In light of the more recent, more overt influence of De Palma on Baumbach's White Noise, it's very interesting to see how Chen had delved into De Palma's possible influence within Baumbach's earlier work. "Although Baumbach grew up watching the likes of Dressed to Kill and Body Double, any lasting effect isn’t immediately obvious," Chen writes. "Greenberg isn’t shot with split-screen sequences, and Frances Halliday isn’t a voyeur with a telescope. Yet there is actually plenty of overlap in the films of Baumbach and De Palma, it simply requires us to zoom in a little closer."
With that, Chen breaks things up into five sections, including: Insert yourself into the story (As seen in: The Squid and the Whale (2005)); and Use the geography of the room (As seen in: Mistress America (2015)). In the latter, Chen writes:
For the Criterion release of Dressed to Kill, Baumbach cross-examined De Palma on the gripping 10-minute sequence in which Angie Dickinson is pursued across a vast museum. “It’s very important when you go to a space, to walk around it,” De Palma explains to a nodding Baumbach. “Take photographs. See what’s unique about the space… have them look in various ways so the audience gets acclimated to the geography of the location.”This patient build-up is a De Palma staple, from the first shootout of Carlito’s Way to the pre-bloodbath prom scenes of Carrie. Similarly, in Baumbach’s Mistress America, a house tour sets up the elaborate second act’s double-crossing, eavesdropping and squabbling over a chess set. Gerwig and her gang are led through the ground floor and, as with Dressed to Kill, they scrutinise the decor (“this place is amazing,” “it’s really fucking nice,” “are those my cats?”). And then everyone splits up for intersecting subplots. As De Palma tells Baumbach: “The chess game can begin, but you’ve got to know the board.”
In a section called "Look to your peers (and elders) for inspiration," Chen quotes De Palma from the Baumbach/Jake Paltrow documentary, as well as from an onstage discussion at Lincoln Center:
“This was the Warner Bros youth group,” De Palma says about himself, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader in the ’70s. “We were all incredibly supportive of each other, passing scripts back and forth, looking at each other’s movies.” Nowadays, De Palma’s cinephile BFFs are Baumbach, Paltrow and Wes Anderson. Their filmmaking philosophies may seem contradictory, but that means common ground must be taken seriously. For instance, when Baumbach mentioned the possibility of casting Gerwig in Greenberg, De Palma did his homework: “I said, ‘Who’s Greta’?’ And I looked at every mumblecore movie and said, ‘My god, she’s really good!’”
Updated: Monday, February 6, 2023 8:30 PM CST
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