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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:

Domino is
a "disarmingly
straight-forward"
work that "pushes
us to reexamine our
relationship to images
and their consumption,
not only ethically
but metaphysically"
-Collin Brinkman

De Palma on Domino
"It was not recut.
I was not involved
in the ADR, the
musical recording
sessions, the final
mix or the color
timing of the
final print."

Listen to
Donaggio's full score
for Domino online

De Palma/Lehman
rapport at work
in Snakes

De Palma/Lehman
next novel is Terry

De Palma developing
Catch And Kill,
"a horror movie
based on real things
that have happened
in the news"

Supercut video
of De Palma's films
edited by Carl Rodrigue

Washington Post
review of Keesey book

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Exclusive Passion
Interviews:

Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario

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AV Club Review
of Dumas book

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« November 2020 »
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De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


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The Virtuoso
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Carrie...A Fan's Site

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No Harm In Charm

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Movie Mags

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The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
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Scarface: Make Way
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The Big Dive
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Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
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The Carlito's Way
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FilmLand Empire

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italkyoubored

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This Recording

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Entries by Topic
A note about topics: Some blog posts have more than one topic, in which case only one main topic can be chosen to represent that post. This means that some topics may have been discussed in posts labeled otherwise. For instance, a post that discusses both The Boston Stranglers and The Demolished Man may only be labeled one or the other. Please keep this in mind as you navigate this list.
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Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
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Monday, November 30, 2020
'CARRIE' ART BY DAVID SEIDMAN
"I DECIDED TO DO THIS LITTLE PIECE AFTER RECENTLY REWATCHING 'CARRIE' FOR THE 100TH TIME"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/davidseidman.jpg

David Seidman, who describes himself on his Instagram page as an "artist specializing in dark surrealism," posted the image above on Halloween a month ago, with the following caption:
Happy Halloween everyone!! I am a die hard Stephen King fan, so I decided to do this little piece after recently rewatching Carrie for the 100th time! I absolutely love everything about this movie. Hope everyone is making the best of their spooky holiday!

Posted by Geoff at 8:21 PM CST
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Sunday, November 29, 2020
SPANISH BLU OF 'RAISING CAIN' HAS SPLIT COVER CHOICES
INCLUDES GELDERBLOM RECUT, INTRO, VIDEO ESSAY, & 28-PAGE BOOKLET
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/spanishcaincarter.jpg

Reel One Entertainment's new Spanish Blu-ray edition of Brian De Palma's Raising Cain offers the buyer's choice of cover, with exclusive art by David Ribet. One shows Cain, and the other shows Carter. Both of them contain the theatrical version of the film, as well as Peet Gelderblom's recut, in which he reassembled the film according to De Palma's original screenplay. Also included are Gelderblom's intro to the recut, his video essay, and a 28-page booklet, which includes a forward by Albert Galera, curator of a 2018 De Palma exhibition in Catalonia, Spain, and coordinator of that exhibition's accompanying book, De Palma vs De Palma.

Posted by Geoff at 10:54 PM CST
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Saturday, November 28, 2020
THAT SON OF A --
MORE VARIATIONS ON A THEME, WITH SPOILERS, OF COURSE
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/misonofabitch2.jpg

On repeat viewings of Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible, the viewer now knows that Claire knows that Jim Phelps is alive. Armed with this knowledge, Claire's line to Ethan in the scene above -- "I want to get the son of a bitch who did this" -- sounds suspiciously scripted by Jim "I prefer the theater" Phelps himself. Phelps, in fact, will refer to that "son of a bitch" in his own meeting with Ethan later, in London.

In that meeting, we see a variation of the meeting in Body Double between Jake Scully and Sam Bouchard in the bar, which itself is a variation of the date between Jon and Judy in Hi, Mom!. In each of those previous scenes, a person (Jon in Hi, Mom! and Sam in Body Double) is attempting to manipulate the person they are speaking with through lies and improvisation.

In the case of Mission: Impossible, however, Ethan is not so easily duped, and Jim Phelps knows it. In fact, as much as Jim works from his own script that Kittridge was the mole, he watches Ethan intently to see if he is buying it. Ethan is also watching intently, because as soon as Jim Phelps tries to tell him that Kittridge is the mole, Ethan knows that none of it adds up. In his mind, he plays out the only scenario that seems to make sense, even is acting for Jim as if he believes his lie about Kittridge.

Martin Scorsese had a very similar dynamic in play in his 1991 remake of Cape Fear, a discussion that is punctuated by a hilarious cut to Nick Nolte forced to sleep on the couch. And to bring it all back home, the son-of-a-bitch being discussed in the Scorsese film is Robert De Niro. See it all below:


Posted by Geoff at 8:27 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, November 29, 2020 7:54 AM CST
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Friday, November 27, 2020
'HE HAD THIS KIND OF GRIN'
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/rogerparks0.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 8:58 PM CST
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GLOWING?
PODCAST DELVES INTO THE DETAILS OF 'BODY DOUBLE'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/glowing1.jpg

This week's episode of the podacst TheNecronomi.Com finds co-hosts James Sabata and Don Guillory welcoming guest Bob Pastorella to talk about Brian De Palma's Body Double. As they delve into the devious machinations of Sam Bouchard, one of the hosts defends some of the elements involved, saying that "De Palma doesn't tell us every detail of the story," and that some of those details display "a great level of forethought on De Palma's part." Yes, indeed.

Then the host brings up a radical possibility that makes the other two involved in the discussion stop to think: was Sam Bouchard the man who is, er, with Carol when Jake Scully walks in on them? It would make Sam's scheming even more extreme, but I do think after the people on this podcast go back and review the film, they will spot the telling moment when Sam, already on the lookout for a poor schmuck to play the part of the witness in his murder scenario, overhears Jake asking a friend if he knows of any apartments available.

Sam Bouchard here is a bit like Jon (Robert De Niro) trying to manipulate Judy (Jennifer Salt) in Hi, Mom!, taking what his pawn gives him and then bonding with him, improvising a story that may have been roughly sketched in his mind beforehand. Although De Niro's Jon in Hi, Mom! has actually weaved his way into Judy's life after surreptitiously spying on her with his camera from across the street, I think we can see the very moment in Body Double when Sam Bouchard begins to pay attention to Jake Scully:


Posted by Geoff at 12:34 PM CST
Updated: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 5:04 PM CST
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Wednesday, November 25, 2020
'FLIGHT ATTENDANT' SERIES IN VEIN OF HITCH & DE PALMA
REVIEW: PLAYS LIKE FEIG'S 'A SIMPLE FAVOR' BY WAY OF 'VULGER AUTEUR DARLING BRIAN DE PALMA'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/flightattendantposter.jpg

Premiering on HBO Max this Friday, The Flight Attendant is an eight-episode thriller series based on a novel of the same name by Chris Bohjalian. According to Brent Hallenbeck at the Burlington Free Press, the novel "has undergone some major changes" for the HBO series, which was written by executive producer Steve Yockey, who, discussing the tone he was going for, mentions Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma:
Yockey, at the time working as a writer on the TV show “Supernatural,” was hired to oversee adapting “The Flight Attendant” to the screen.

“What Chris did so beautifully is create this kind of pressure cooker for Cassie,” Yockey said. But to adapt the story for a series, Yockey wanted to amplify some of the novel’s scenes.

“This event, this traumatizing event of waking up next to Alex’s body, kind of sends her on this ultimate journey that kind of makes her face the truth,” said Yockey, adding that the central theme of “The Flight Attendant” is “What happens when you have to stop lying to yourself?” He wanted to take a thriller and make it darkly comedic, in the vein of directors Alfred Hitchcock or Brian De Palma.

Yockey realized early that Cuoco was the right person for the job. “You kind of know 10 minutes after talking to her the first time, she has this incredible professional drive and this incredible specificity, but it’s there, this effervescence, this charm, this sense of ease that wants to pull you in,” Yockey said.

Bohjalian had almost no role in adapting the book for the screen. He had phone conversations and text exchanges with Cuoco early in the process and met her at a shoot in New York City last December.

“One of the great things about Kaley that was clear to me early on was how much respect she had for the material and how well she understood Cassie Bowden,” Bohjalian said, “so I knew it was in the best hands imaginable.”

He met Yockey at that December shoot as well. Bohjalian said he was struck by “how brilliantly he had plotted out what he wanted to do to turn this novel into eight hours of really fun, surprising, interesting television.”


Meanwhile, an early review of the HBO limited series by The Gate's Andrew Parker begins:
The limited series equivalent of a comedically nasty, but pleasingly intoxicating beach read, The Flight Attendant is an intricately drawn mystery that moves at a swift, effortlessly bingable pace. A project that finally gives star and producer Kaley Cuoco a proper, headlining showcase, The Flight Attendant deliriously rolls through its twists and turns through the lens of an unreliable, frequently blackout drunk narrator and the input of a long dead corpse. If that sounds strange, you’d be right, but within the weirdness of The Flight Attendant is an effective character study and a genuinely fun whodunit. The fact the show – adapted by series creator Steve Yockey from a novel by Chris Bohjalian – seems to have little clue where it’s heading next is part of the fun, and a great reflection of the trainwreck main character at its centre.

Later in the review, Parker brings up De Palma:
The tone of The Flight Attendant plays like Paul Feig’s A Simple Favor by way of vulgar auteur darling Brian De Palma, complete with an obvious affinity for multiple split-screens in every episode.The Flight Attendant is nasty business, but a lot of it is played for cheeky laughs that are both in bad taste and yet wholly appropriate given the outlandish premise. While The Flight Attendant handles Cassie’s alcoholism as appropriately tragic, the character herself comes down perfectly between self-awareness and obliviousness. Cassie isn’t a dummy, but she’s prone to doing stupid things in hopes of numbing the pain of her existence. She needs help, but her friends and co-workers have known her to be a functional alcoholic for so long that they figure Cassie will just figure things out on her own and come out on top in the end.

Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Thursday, November 26, 2020 6:22 PM CST
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Tuesday, November 24, 2020
MYSTERIOUS WHISPER
"I'LL THINK ABOUT IT"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/blowoutwhisper1.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 11:34 PM CST
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Monday, November 23, 2020
'OUTPOST' DP USED TO BE STEADICAM OPERATOR
HE LOVES THE STEADICAM IN 'CARLITO'S WAY' AND THE WAY DE PALMA DOES THOSE SHOTS
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carlitosteadicam0.jpg

Lorenzo Senatore, the cinematographer for Rod Lurie's latest film, The Outpost (which, like the bulk of Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, was shot in Bulgaria), began his career as a steadicam operator in Italy. The Outpost, "set at a military camp in Afghanistan completely surrounded by steep mountains," according to The Wrap's Joe McGovern, includes several long takes and sequences. Senatore recently talked to McGovern, who eventually asked Senatore about his favorite long shot:
Do you see a lot of potential in cinematography thanks to how lightweight cameras have become?
Well, in a sense. But I was influenced a lot on this film by things I saw many years ago in “Das Boot,” the Wolfgang Petersen submarine film. It was a huge inspiration for me as a DP. I was obsessed with knowing how they got the camera to go through the really small bulkhead doors in a submarine. They had built the submarine on a soundstage but they had built it with all the real dimensions. You can cheat all you want in movies, but they didn’t do it. So it was the camera operator who was running through these tiny doors, holding the camera by hand, not on the shoulder, kind of like a hybrid between handheld and Steadicam. It worked fantastically.

The cinematographer’s job is to light things, but there are a number of scenes in “The Outpost” that take place in near darkness.
It’s a natural instinct, for sure, to light scenes properly. If you’ve seen my previous work, you always have a clear sense of what’s going on, so I had to force myself a bit here. Rod was really pushing me for the darkness. We had a lot of real veterans on the location and even in the movie. They were all telling us that at night, they wouldn’t even start fires or shine lights. They would not go outside the barracks if there was a full moon. If it was total darkness, they only had little glow lights around their neck. We wanted to preserve that for the film, but it’s very challenging. Anyone who looks through their iPhone camera at night can understand that. So I did a lot of tests on the night lighting. And then after we finished shooting the night scenes, I still dropped the exposure down a bit in post-production.

The battle sequence is really 45 minutes of relentless combat. It’s not quite done in real time but it’s very visually consistent. How did you manage that?
It was an all-location shoot, obviously. Unfortunately, we had an accident in pre-production when one of the actors (Scott Eastwood) broke his ankle badly. But it meant that we got extra time to spend as production shifted back a bit. I did a lot of brainstorming – first splitting up the whole big puzzle of the battle, then assigning each piece to the best part of a day to shoot, and then reassembling it all. So one morning we would shoot the first part of a shot. But we’d save the second part of the same shot for the next morning, so we would have consistent light.

Were those long shooting days?
Well, we were shooting without lunch breaks. That’s actually a big plus for us in the camera department. You keep the momentum going. When everybody takes a break for an hour, by the time you get the machine going again, it’s already late afternoon and the lighting is completely different. It meant a lot that we were able to complete a sequence with the same look from beginning to end.

Also some of the shots in the ambush sequence are lengthy.
That was the other big advantage. We were shooting long shots and when you are doing that, it’s a big plus for continuity. You definitely dedicate more time in planning and rehearsing and choreographing the shot. But then when you start shooting, you get the result in this little window, after two of three takes. There was a period during the final sequence where we were shooting only two shots a day.

What’s your philosophy about long takes? Do you love the challenge or is it too much trouble?
It makes the job more complicated but I love it. My background is in Steadicam and long takes are part of the magic of Steadicam. Also, when I began working, I was doing a lot of longer Steadicam shots and that’s how I built my career. I would just be called in for a day, because it was extremely expensive 20 years ago to have a Steadicam on set all the time.

What’s your favorite long shot in movies?
I love Brian De Palma and the way he does them. Spielberg is a master as well. There is one in “Carlito’s Way,” Al Pacino is hiding from some guys in Grand Central Station in New York. That was done with Steadicam by a camera operator named Larry McConkey, who’s one of the legends in the movie business.

Do you still strap on the Steadicam?
From time to time. I didn’t on this movie because it was very physically demanding. I didn’t want the physicality of the operating to interfere with the goal we were going for. I had an incredible operator from Canada called Sasha Proctor, who was in much better physical shape than I was. I did it for 20 years, so I’ve got the scars on my back.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
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Sunday, November 22, 2020
'YOU SHOULD MAKE THIS INTO A MOVIE'
HOW LUMET CAME TO DIRECT 'PRINCE OF THE CITY' INSTEAD OF DE PALMA
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/princeofthecity.jpg

Maura Spiegel's biography of Sidney Lumet from last year, Sidney Lumet: A Life, includes a depiction of how Lumet eventually came to direct Prince Of The City, even though Brian De Palma had already spent a long time working on his own adaptation of the Robert Daley book with screenwriter David Rabe. John Travolta was originally going to play the lead, and would have portayed the real-life narcotics detective at the center of the book, Robert Leuci, who wore a wire while working undercover. Travolta dropped out of the project to make Urban Cowboy, after which the lead was offered to Robert De Niro and also Al Pacino. A year later, after Lumet had made his version of the story with Treat Williams in the lead, De Palma and Travolta moved on to Blow Out, which includes a flashback in which Travolta's character is the sound recording expert who wires up an undercover cop.

De Palma, who, with Rabe, had several meetings with Bob Leuci, spoke with Spiegel for her Lumet biography. Leuci "had a kind of remarkable magnetism about him," Spiegel states, adding that, "as De Palma put it, he was 'the most charming guy in the world; he could stab you in the back and you'd still love him.'"

Here is Spiegel's account of how Lumet got involved:

At eighty-two years old, Burtt [Harris] enters a room with a boom blast of energy; his bright blue eyes instantly get a bead on you. In another life he would have made a great cop; in fact, Burtt was often Sidney's conduit to the police. "They, the cops, trusted me because I was into that macho stuff." He had known "all the French Connection cops," meaning the real-life counterparts of Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (played by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider), who busted an international narcotics ring in the early 1960s. "The didn't smack people around, they just petrified them," he said, adding, "All those guys wanted to get into the movies." Sidney, Burtt said, didn't "hang out" with cops at bars like Burtt did, "but he met with them and talked with them, and rode around with them some." He remembered being approached by a cop in a bar in Greenwich Village who knew what Burtt did for a living. "You should make this a movie," he said, handing him the book Prince Of The City. The cop said he was one of the characters in the book, Bob Leuci's partner after Leuci got acquitted. "Everyone wanted to shoot him," he told Burtt, "bad guys and good guys. We had to keep our eyes on him all the time."

Burtt recalled screenwriter Jay Presson Allen "grabbing the book out of my hand." "Where'd you get this?" she asked. When she finished reading Robert Daley's account of Bob Leuci, the real-life NYPD narcotics detective whose decision to expose police corruption resulted in tragic consequences, including the suicides of two of his closest partners and the near destruction of his own life, she thought, "Oh yeah. This is Lumet!" When she showed it to Sidney, "he just flipped." It turned out the book had already been sold to Orion, with Brian De Palma as director and David Rabe as screenwriter. Allen told the studio that if the De Palma deal fell through, she and Lumet wanted it. They waited and waited to see if something would come of it. "Sidney was within twenty-four hours of signing up for another movie when we got the call," Allen recalled.

From De Palma's perspective, Sidney "stole that picture" from him. He and Rabe had spent months in meetings with Bob Leuci and had been in discussion with both Al Pacino and John Travolta about starring in it. De Palma acknowledged that they were moving slowly on the script, and maybe that was why they lost the movie-- or, he acknowledged, maybe Lumet and Presson just carried more weight over there.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Monday, November 23, 2020 12:03 AM CST
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Saturday, November 21, 2020
CARNIVAL ATMOSPHERE
"THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES HAD BECOME A FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/fallowarrives1a.jpg

In the prologue of her book The Devil's Candy, about the making of the film adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire Of The Vanities, Julie Salamon describes Wolfe eating breakfast at the Caryle Hotel in Manhattan, in 1990, diplomatically speaking "about how the people from Hollywood were progressing" with the movie version:
He wasn't willing to criticize the moviemakers -- just yet. "I think it's bad manners in the Southern sense to be sharp and critical of it," he said. "I did cash the check." However, with his good Southern manners the author had made it clear to the Hollywood people right after he accepted the $750,000 they paid him for the rights to his book that he didn't want to have anything to do with the making of their movie.

"To tell the truth, I've never wanted to write any script based on something I've done," he said. "From my standpoint it's too bad that movies don't run nine or ten hours. The way I constructed the book, almost every chapter was meant to be a vignette of something else in New York as well as something that might advance the story, and to me one was as important as the other."

The author paused briefly. "It's a fairly simple story. It's not a complicated story. But I wanted there to be all these slices, one after another. Not that I gave very much thought to how the movie could be made, but I never could see how you could do that."


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Sunday, November 22, 2020 12:32 AM CST
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