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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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« May 2023 »
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Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


Enthusiasms...

De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
of the 7th Art

The De Palma Touch

The Swan Archives

Carrie...A Fan's Site

Phantompalooza

No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Snake Eyes
a la Mod

Mission To Mars
a la Mod

Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule

Movie Mags

Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!

Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy

The Big Dive
(Blow Out)

Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site

The Phantom Project

Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
Fan Page

The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

Astigmia Cinema

LOLA

Cultural Weekly

A Lonely Place

The Film Doctor

italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

Medfly Quarantine

Not Just Movies

Hope Lies at
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Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
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So Why This Movie?

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Nothing Is Written

Ferdy on Films

Cashiers De Cinema

This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

Every '70s Movie

Dangerous Minds

EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
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The former
De Palma a la Mod
site

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.
All topics  «
Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
BAMcinématek
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Beaune Thriller Fest
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Carlito's Way
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Cop-Out
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De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
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Dionysus In '69
Domino
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Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
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Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
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Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
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Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
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Magic Hour
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Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
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Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
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NYFF
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Oliver Stone
Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
Parties & Premieres
Passion
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Paul Schrader
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Phantom Of The Paradise
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Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
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Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
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Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
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The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
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Thursday, May 4, 2023
VIDEO - ISOLATED DONAGGIO SCORE - CLIP FROM PASSION
"Perversions and Diversions"

Posted by Geoff at 11:47 PM CDT
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Wednesday, May 3, 2023
FILMMAKER'S INSTINCT - 'STILL - A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE'
USES CLIPS FROM FOX'S FILMS TO TELL HIS STORY - "I FORGOT THE CAMERA WAS THERE"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/still275.jpg

Anticipating the May 12 Apple TV+ premiere of the documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, The Globe And Mail's Barry Hertz interviewed Fox himself. "The new film is constructed in a uniquely engaging fashion," Hertz writes in the article's introduction, "with director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) and editor Michael Harte mixing footage of Fox’s on-screen work with scripted re-enactments to tell the story of one Canadian kid’s rise to the top of the Hollywood ecosystem, and how being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease changed his life – for the better. Narrated by Fox – who is the only “talking head” featured here, another rejection of the typical celebrity biopic format – Still is as honest as it is adventurous."

Here's an excerpt from the interview portion:

In the new film, there’s one point where you’re talking about seeing your face on magazine covers and you say, ‘it was never a true reflection of myself.’ Is this doc, then, a true reflection of yourself?

True as it could be under the circumstances. As a young man, I was pretty naïve but I always knew when I was selling a movie or enjoying the attention. This was different. When I met Davis and he told me how much my books affected him, I agreed to go on a journey with him and see where it goes. I had no agenda. I didn’t hope it would respark my film career or anything like that. I just wanted to see how a guy who thought in a similar way, and had a great track record of filmmaking, would treat this material.

How closely involved were you in Davis’s decision to construct this film in such a unique fashion?

We talked about it early on, but it’s his genre. I remember my lawyers calling me up and saying, “Here’s how it works: you’ll get three strikes to take major plot points out,” and all these other measures to defend myself against the filmmaker. But I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to make a movie. So I waived all those provisions and I’m glad I did because god forbid I would have gone in and said don’t use my source material as part of the narrative. I thought that was so clever.

I love watching that scene where it’s talking about my relationship with [wife Tracy Pollan] and it’s footage from Bright Lights, Big City. It reminded me how lucky I’ve been in my career to work with everyone I have. Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader. It was so nice to look back and not only reflect on what was going on in my life at that point, but remember all the people I’ve met along the way.

I suppose that anybody who takes time to do this kind of exercise will find some regrets, faults in their decisions. But on the opposite end, I’m curious whether there is anything you initially felt was a mistake, a bad time in your life, that was actually much better than you initially felt, in retrospect?

I’m a goofy, optimistic guy, so all the things that have happened to me were great. I seriously wouldn’t change a thing. The difficulties I had with my early diagnosis, turning to alcohol, getting rid of that to save my marriage – as difficult and painful as all that was, I wouldn’t be the same person I am today without it, and my family wouldn’t be the same family without it. So I don’t question things, but I do celebrate them.

Some of the things in the film, people might wince at. But I was going, yeah, cool. Like that moment of me laying on the floor looking up at Tracy and finding her bored with my alcoholism and realizing that was the moment I needed to change. Yeah, I made the right decision coming out of that. The great thing about this film is the moments with my family. The way we were laughing. You can’t fake that laughter. I laugh so much it’s all you can do to get my face to not stretch beyond its skull and blow off.

Well there’s an image for a movie. Actually, it sounds pulled from The Frighteners.

Peter Jackson, I got him between masterpieces.

Hey, The Frighteners is a favourite film of mine.

I wouldn’t joke about it if I didn’t believe that, too. He’s a great filmmaker. I first met him in Toronto, when Heavenly Creatures premiered at the festival. I flew up to see it, and then agreed to make that film.

There is at one point in this doc where Davis says that you get close to the tough stuff and then dart away. How hard did he push you – and how hard did you push yourself – to get to the more difficult material?

Davis did a brilliant thing, in that he put the camera 15 feet away from where I’m sitting, back up against the wall, and he left it on. I forgot it was there. The painful stuff, when I’m looking vacant and drooling in that blank, concrete Parkinson’s stare, I couldn’t have manufactured that for him. He had the filmmaker’s instinct to know how and where to get that. I didn’t see footage until the end, so I didn’t even know what he was up to. He wasn’t going to do talking heads – the one talking head was just mine, even though my head can barely talk some time. If I had any prenegotiated control over the material, it would have been a disaster.

I would, though, like to see a sequel where it’s just talking heads of collaborators you’ve worked with.

They gave me an Academy Award this year for my humanitarian work, which was great because Woody Harrelson presented it. He gets up and starts telling these stories and I thought, oh Jesus. Someone once said to me that we were “eighties famous,” and that’s true. We had a different perspective. There were none of these things [points to his smartphone]. It was just hardcore.

Woody starts to tell this story about when we were in Thailand, and I took them through the jungle. It was me, Woody and [hockey player] Cam Neely, and we found this little hut. It was Deliverance in Southeast Asia. This kid comes out who I had met before, and I gave him this big bag of baht, and he took me to this concrete wall and we jumped over. That’s when Woody and Cam realized there were like 35 cobras in there. I just sat there until they picked up a cobra. Its blood was drained and mixed with Thai whiskey and we drank it. “Brotherhood of the snake,” or something goofy like that. Madness. If we got a whole group of my friends and told these stories, we’d never get out of there.

I think you just found the title of your next doc, though. Michael J. Fox: Brotherhood of the Snake.

Or Fox Eats Snake.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Tuesday, May 2, 2023
MOD ECHOES - OP ART
THE RESPONSIVE EYE - MURDER A LA MOD - SISTERS
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/55mod3.jpg

"Are you sure this is the right kind of clothes? I mean, it's kind of op-art and everything, you know what I mean?"


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Monday, May 1, 2023
'MURDER A LA MOD' OPENED IN NY 55 YEARS AGO TODAY
DE PALMA'S FILM SCREENED ON A DOUBLE-BILL WITH PAUL BARTEL'S 'THE SECRET CINEMA'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/55mod1.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Sunday, April 30, 2023
'DE PALMA LET ME BRING ALL MY FRIENDS' FOR CLUB SCENE
LEGUIZAMO: "THOSE ARE ALL MY FRIENDS, AND MY EX-WIFE" IN 'CARLITO'S WAY'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carlitolegend75.jpg

IndieWire's Christian Zilko summarizes part of a GQ video interview (below) in which "John Leguizamo Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters" -
In an interview with GQ, Leguizamo revealed that he was so sick of auditioning to play drug dealers early in his career that he considered passing on his now-iconic role as Benny Blanco in Brian De Palma’s “Carlito’s Way.”

“I’m a Latin guy and I didn’t wanna play another drug dealer. I was just kind of sick of that kind of routine,” Leguizamo said. “So I turned it down three times.”

He continued to resist the role, only to learn that one of Hollywood’s other rising Hispanic stars, Benicio Del Toro, was also in the mix for it. Once he learned Del Toro was interested, Leguizamo said that he opted to do the film after realizing it was a good career move.

“The producers said, ‘Look, this is the last time I’m coming to you. We’re gonna go to Benicio,'” he said. “Okay, I’ll take it!”

Leguizamo’s thoughts about not wanting to play drug dealers echo similar comments he made in a recent interview with IndieWire. The actor explained that the limited range of roles he was considered for as a young actor shaped his view about the importance of representation in films.


But the really interesting stuff about filming Carlito's Way comes after that. "I did a lot of research," Leguizamo says in the video. "I hung out with a lot of drug dealers in the L.E.S. And I was crazy, because I thought I had celebrity immunity, and then I realized nobody's going to care about it when they shoot them up. One of the guys I was running with, his brother got shot. I'm glad I left, because, yeah, I would have got shot, too. But all that research paid off, and Brian De Palma let me bring all my friends in the club scene. Those are all my friends, and my ex-wife. So I felt really comfortable and at home, and I improvised all that dialogue with Pacino. De Palma taught me how to act on film, on this flick. He let me do... I did, like, thirty takes of my entrance, on film. Which is unherad of. You did an independent film back then, you had to beg for another take. You had to have a good reason, because it was too expensive. And he did thirty takes on my entrance, and I would do crazier things, and he'd laugh. I'd knock people's trays down, I'd throw my cigarette at people, and he loved it."

 


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Monday, May 1, 2023 12:26 AM CDT
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Monday, April 24, 2023
GENTLY MOCKING
BLOODY DISGUSTING COLUMNIST LOOKS AT DE PALMA'S "SELF-AWARE META COMMENTARY" BODY DOUBLE
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/quietplease545.jpg

Last week, Bloody Disgusting's Joe Lipsett posted an editorial/"Sex Crimes" column headlined, "The Self-Aware Meta Commentary in Brian De Palma’s Body Double" -
As we’ve discussed in previous entries, Erotic Thrillers owe a great deal to Film Noir, which – thanks to the Hays Code – tended to end by reinforcing a morally black and white view of the world. Body Double refuses this script: not only does Holly disapprove of being forced into Jake’s crusade and nearly being buried alive, but the pair don’t wind up together. And while the end of the film confirms that Jake has overcome his claustrophobia and returned to work, the final scene plays like it is gently mocking Jake’s B-movie role as a pervy vampire who is still working with body doubles.

In this way, Body Double works both as a great Erotic Thriller, and as self-aware meta commentary by De Palma about the subgenre and his own reputation within it. That’s pretty clever.



Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Tuesday, April 18, 2023
'THERE WAS NO BODY BECAUSE THERE WAS NO MURDER'
'SISTERS' AT 50-ISH
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/sisters50th16.jpg

Although Brian De Palma's Sisters premiered at Filmex in Los Angeles in November of 1972, it did not roll out into mainstream theaterical release until 1973. After seeing the film at Filmex, Paul Schrader wrote about it for LA magazine:

According to the catalog of the American Film Institute, Sisters carries a copyright date of April 18, 1973. This is when it landed in theaters in Los Angeles, although, moving throughout the U.S., it would not reach New York theaters until October of 1973. That month, De Palma was interviewed by The New York Times' Charles Higham:

De Palma gets up, coldly answers a persistent telephone caller, and then sinks back in his chair, looking tired and puffy. “I'm much happier with ‘Sisters.’ That is mine from beginning to end. American International took on the distribution — but they didn't tamper with it at all. It was shot on location on Staten Island, I liked the idea of a very suburban setting for a horror story about a small‐town girl reporter who sees a murder from her apartment window.”

Not all of “Sisters” was shot on Staten Island, however. “We built the set of the apartment where the murder takes place on East 4th Street, right next to the Cafe La Mama. I loved the voyeuristic mood of the story —here is this girl, this amateur sleuth, who gazes through windows and sees a man murdered and all kinds of horrifying things going on. Things half‐seen. Like most directors, I'm a voyeur at heart. I loved dragging the audience through the whole psychodrama of an insane situation. The audience becomes this girl, peering through a psychological hole. Since, in a way, I am the girl, the people out there can be her, too.”


 


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Monday, April 17, 2023
'SNAKE EYES' A SLEEPER FOR DE PALMA & CAGE
BARRY WURST AT HOLLYWOOD IN TOTO SAYS THRILLER BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN BOTH
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/snakeeyesmoralsplit.jpg

Barry Wurst at Hollywood in Toto looks at "why Snake Eyes brings out the best in Nicolas Cage and Brian De Palma" -
De Palma’s incredible one-take intro to Santoro and his sleazy existence shows us arounds corridors, up and down escalators down to ringside. It’s dialog-heavy, incredibly complicated in its staging and so exciting to watch.

One of Santoro’s best friends, Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise) sits alongside him on ringside seats. When a shot rings out and a powerful figure sitting near Santoro is now dead, the event erupts into anarchy.

Santoro and Dunne immediately sweep the area and round up the suspects. Who took the shot, why did they do it and is there one person responsible for the public assassination? How do you solve a murder that takes place in plain sight with “14,000 eyewitnesses?”

Because it’s De Palma, the expected Hitchcock visuals and themes are present. However, even with those aspects in place, there are more neo-noir themes on hand, as well as De Palma doing Robert Altman taking on “Rashomon.”

There’s a McGuffin about Air Guard Missile Tests but the core of the film is Santoro’s belatedly finding a moral center in a corrupt world.

De Palma is once again exploring media manipulation and distraction through large-scale diversion. It could be interpreted as political satire as just flat out American social commentary.

De Palma is dipping his toe into the “Blow Out” (1981) pool once more. “Snake Eyes” is a smaller film than De Palma’s anti-commercial, challenging tour de force of the original “Mission: Impossible” (1996) but still made with a bravado showmanship to match the work of his leading man.

Snake Eyes” isn’t an action movie but a thrillingly staged mystery, which made it an odd attraction during the summer of 1998. Coming off of his back-to-back blockbusters of “Con Air” and “Face/Off” and the surprise hit of “City of Angels” earlier in the year, Cage was on a roll that lasted for years.

Playing Santoro, Cage is on fire from his first entrance. The character simmers down as the discoveries of the investigation become increasingly grave. Cage is not being over the top but playing a brash, inhibition-free jerk whose lack of a moral center changes drastically in a single evening.

There is no convincing naysayers who loathe any period of Cage’s work, whether it’s his early post-“Peggy Sue” choices, his commercial breakthrough after winning the Oscar, or the on-again-off-again era of wild creative peaks and valleys he’s currently in.

Cage always takes big swings and is rarely (if ever) accused of being subtle.

Nevertheless, the actor’s willingness to give nearly every project he takes on an above and beyond approach, giving it his all when the movie itself may not need or deserve it, has made him one of my favorites.

Alongside his incredible turn in Werner Herzog’s off-the-wall “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009), this is my favorite of his “big” performances.

In both cases, the initial bravado of the characters masks the moral rot beneath, as both characters find a form of redemption but, in the end, haven’t entirely reformed their wicked ways.

The shot of a bloodied bill and the final, painful look Santoro gives it, says everything about the character and how far he’s come. It’s the film’s most important shot and solidifies the film’s neo-noir identity.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
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Sunday, April 16, 2023
PODCAST - FILM AT FIFTY DISCUSSES 'SISTERS'
"HORROR FROM THE '70S TAKES SOME WEIRD, WILD TURNS"

Posted by Geoff at 3:16 PM CDT
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Saturday, April 15, 2023
CUSTOM 'ONE-OF-A-KIND' PHANTOM FIGURINES
FAN-MADE BY "ROSS AND SANDI BLAIR"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/rosssandiblair1.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 11:57 PM CDT
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