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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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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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Friday, January 5, 2018
FRIDAY TWEET - 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tweetespncow.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CST
Updated: Saturday, January 6, 2018 12:04 AM CST
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Saturday, December 23, 2017
JERRY GREENBERG HAS DIED AT 81
OSCAR-WINNING EDITOR WORKED ON 5 DE PALMA FEATURES & SPRINGSTEEN VIDEO
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/jgreenberg2016.jpgJerry Greenberg, the Oscar-winning editor (for The French Connection) who collaborated with Brian De Palma on six projects, passed away yesterday at the age of 81. Greenberg worked on five features with De Palma: Dressed To Kill, Scarface, Body Double, Wise Guys, The Untouchables, and the music video for Bruce Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark. In Susan Dworkin's 1984 book Double De Palma, De Palma said of Greenberg, "I can just talk to him on the phone, and he'll know exactly what I want. And can even do it better."

In an interview about a year ago with CineMontage's Michael Goldman, Greenberg said it was only coincidence that he ended up working with De Palma more than any other director:
Greenberg says his success on his two films with Friedkin was in part a result of the fact that his collaborator was a director “of considerable ability when it came to taking a point of view on how a film is to be presented.” He puts the director with whom he has had his longest and closest association into that same category: Brian De Palma. The pair teamed on five films in the 1980s, including Dressed to Kill (1980) and Scarface (1983).

The editor was initially attracted to working with De Palma when the director interviewed him for Dressed to Kill at the behest of De Palma’s longtime editor, Paul Hirsch, ACE, a friend of Greenberg’s, when Hirsch’s schedule precluded him from taking the gig. The reason he wanted to do the film, Greenberg says, was the fact that De Palma had crudely storyboarded the entire movie himself, including minute details.

“He had me down to his office, which was a residential apartment in Manhattan,” Greenberg recalls. “He took me into a small dining room that was, because of the size, completely mirrored to make it appear larger, I guess. On the dining room wall, all around, he had taped three-by-five-inch file cards, storyboarding the whole film. All the drawings were his — simple stick figures most of the time, where he would try to indicate camera movement with little arrows and stuff like that.

“That might seem threatening to another editor,” he continues. “But to me, I thought, ‘Here was a director who knew how his film should be edited.’ I liked that the director knew a little bit about editing, and I felt encouraged. I loved editing that movie. It wasn’t necessarily just the performances or the hooks, the usual things that get you into it. I was doing it completely for the camera work — the way he used the camera, and that was very exciting.”

Still, Greenberg insists the fact that he worked with De Palma five times — more than he worked with any other single director — “was just a coincidence.” Indeed, he emphasizes that he is an editor who never pursued a single collaborative partner on which to hang his hat.

“I don’t think of myself that way in a working sense,” he offers. “I don’t think I generate a lot of confidence in directors in that way. Consequently, although maybe Brian De Palma is an exception, I don’t think I inspire that kind of ‘I’ll just continue working with him’ thing with directors. But then, I never wanted to do that anyway.”

Indeed, Greenberg says he doesn’t view “collaboration” as being just about his relationship with the director. Nor does he express common concerns among editors about being asked to re-cut his work, or even having others re-cut his work. He’s experienced it all over the years — from having wide latitude to having almost no latitude at all. And it’s all fine with him, he says, because, in his view, the nature of a collaborative art like filmmaking involves a work being in a sense passed around and “embellished” by different people repeatedly, a process he says he loves.

“Usually, the task goes from one to the other, so that at every step in passing it, it is embellished and then witnessed by other people, whatever the embellishment was,” he explains. “That is the kind of collaboration filmmaking is. It isn’t a sure thing, but it is a wonderful thing. Being able to pass a responsibility, and different ways of seeing things, from one person to the other, even if it goes on and on — I think that’s terrific. Because, if you have an open mind, what you can do is change what you had done originally, and make it something you could never have thought of on your own. That’s why I’m never threatened by anybody who wants to re-edit my work. I feel like maybe their ideas will spark more ideas in me.”


Greenberg, who also worked on Bonnie And Clyde, Heaven's Gate, and Reds, was nominated for two more Oscars in 1980, for Kramer vs. Kramer and Apocalypse Now.

Posted by Geoff at 2:19 PM CST
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JERRY GREENBERG HAS DIED AT 81
OSCAR-WINNING EDITOR WORKED ON 5 DE PALMA FEATURES & SPRINGSTEEN VIDEO
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/jgreenberg2016.jpgJerry Greenberg, the Oscar-winning editor (for The French Connection) who collaborated with Brian De Palma on six projects, passed away yesterday at the age of 81. Greenberg worked on five features with De Palma: Dressed To Kill, Scarface, Body Double, Wise Guys, The Untouchables, and the music video for Bruce Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark. In Susan Dworkin's 1984 book Double De Palma, De Palma said of Greenberg, "I can just talk to him on the phone, and he'll know exactly what I want. And can even do it better."

In an interview about a year ago with CineMontage's Michael Goldman, Greenberg said it was only coincidence that he ended up working with De Palma more than any other director:
Greenberg says his success on his two films with Friedkin was in part a result of the fact that his collaborator was a director “of considerable ability when it came to taking a point of view on how a film is to be presented.” He puts the director with whom he has had his longest and closest association into that same category: Brian De Palma. The pair teamed on five films in the 1980s, including Dressed to Kill (1980) and Scarface (1983).

The editor was initially attracted to working with De Palma when the director interviewed him for Dressed to Kill at the behest of De Palma’s longtime editor, Paul Hirsch, ACE, a friend of Greenberg’s, when Hirsch’s schedule precluded him from taking the gig. The reason he wanted to do the film, Greenberg says, was the fact that De Palma had crudely storyboarded the entire movie himself, including minute details.

“He had me down to his office, which was a residential apartment in Manhattan,” Greenberg recalls. “He took me into a small dining room that was, because of the size, completely mirrored to make it appear larger, I guess. On the dining room wall, all around, he had taped three-by-five-inch file cards, storyboarding the whole film. All the drawings were his — simple stick figures most of the time, where he would try to indicate camera movement with little arrows and stuff like that.

“That might seem threatening to another editor,” he continues. “But to me, I thought, ‘Here was a director who knew how his film should be edited.’ I liked that the director knew a little bit about editing, and I felt encouraged. I loved editing that movie. It wasn’t necessarily just the performances or the hooks, the usual things that get you into it. I was doing it completely for the camera work — the way he used the camera, and that was very exciting.”

Still, Greenberg insists the fact that he worked with De Palma five times — more than he worked with any other single director — “was just a coincidence.” Indeed, he emphasizes that he is an editor who never pursued a single collaborative partner on which to hang his hat.

“I don’t think of myself that way in a working sense,” he offers. “I don’t think I generate a lot of confidence in directors in that way. Consequently, although maybe Brian De Palma is an exception, I don’t think I inspire that kind of ‘I’ll just continue working with him’ thing with directors. But then, I never wanted to do that anyway.”

Indeed, Greenberg says he doesn’t view “collaboration” as being just about his relationship with the director. Nor does he express common concerns among editors about being asked to re-cut his work, or even having others re-cut his work. He’s experienced it all over the years — from having wide latitude to having almost no latitude at all. And it’s all fine with him, he says, because, in his view, the nature of a collaborative art like filmmaking involves a work being in a sense passed around and “embellished” by different people repeatedly, a process he says he loves.

“Usually, the task goes from one to the other, so that at every step in passing it, it is embellished and then witnessed by other people, whatever the embellishment was,” he explains. “That is the kind of collaboration filmmaking is. It isn’t a sure thing, but it is a wonderful thing. Being able to pass a responsibility, and different ways of seeing things, from one person to the other, even if it goes on and on — I think that’s terrific. Because, if you have an open mind, what you can do is change what you had done originally, and make it something you could never have thought of on your own. That’s why I’m never threatened by anybody who wants to re-edit my work. I feel like maybe their ideas will spark more ideas in me.”


Greenberg, who also worked on Bonnie And Clyde, Heaven's Gate, and Reds, was nominated for two more Oscars in 1980, for Kramer vs. Kramer and Apocalypse Now.

Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
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Friday, December 15, 2017
HOWARD GOTTFRIED HAS DIED
EXEC-PRODUCER ON 'BODY DOUBLE' WAS 94
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/gottfried.jpg

Howard Gottfried, the executive producer on Brian De Palma's Body Double, died of a stroke a week ago today in Los Angeles. He was 94. Here's an excerpt regarding Gottfried from Susan Dworkin's book, Double De Palma, on the making of Body Double:
She had come to Brian's attention during the winter before Body Double started shooting, when Howard Gottfried, the executive producer, went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The X-rated home video marketers had been denied space on the convention floor, but their wares and their stars were available in hotel rooms close by.

Howard threw up his hands. "Can you imagine, I went to Las Vegas with my casting lady to look at porno movies?! Can you imagine, I go in, I say..."--he straightens his jacket which he always wears with jeans and cocks his head like David Niven--"... Uh hello, I am from Columbia Pictures and I would like to talk with you about a major motion picture.... I mean, they look at you like you're some kind of lunatic!"

It is true that Howard Gottfried is not the sort of man you would ordinarily imagine as a sex scout. A voluble New Yorker with a burning concern about social issues, he made his name in the film industry as the partner of Paddy Chayefsky in such literate and relevant films as Hospital and Network and Altered States. Culturally and intellectually, Howard was made a little crazy by the porn connections of Body Double, all the more so because unlike Brian, unlike Steve Burum, the director of photography, and Joe Napolitano, the first assistant director, Howard Gottfried had children. Howard was the one who had to go home to his family in New York and be assaulted by feminist friends at dinner parties who wanted to know if it was true, was Howard really making a pornographic movie?! ... It was lucky for Howard, therefore, that he had a sense of humor. And Brian De Palma's sense of humor meant as much to him as any other element in the movie.

"Why do they say Brian hates women more than other filmmakers?" Howard asked. "Saturday Night Fever treated women like pieces of meat. And look at Flashdance. Sure she had a job, she had ambition, she was liberated. But how does she show us she's liberated? When the ex-wife stops at the table and asks, 'What do you two do?' she answers 'We fuck our brains out.' It's insulting to women because it means to be a serious portrayal. Now, look at this scene in Body Double with Linda Shaw. Is this a serious portrayal? They're both on these water beds and she's massaging her breasts in this television interview and she's screaming, 'I'm coming! I'm coming!' and the interviewer says, 'So while she's coming, we'll break fr this clip.' Now that's funny. That's fun-nee! How can all these women despise a guy who's as funny as that?!"


Posted by Geoff at 10:37 AM CST
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Sunday, December 10, 2017
FANDOR VIDEO LOOKS AT DE PALMA'S USE OF COLOR
CLICK IMAGE BELOW TO GO TO VIDEO
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/fandorcolorindepalma.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 11:50 PM CST
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Saturday, December 9, 2017
TWEET - 'PURPLE RAIN' STAIRCASE SETUP
WAS INSPIRED BY SOMETHING DE PALMA DID IN 'SCARFACE', ACCORDING TO PRINCE MANAGER
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tweetpurplescarface.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 7:14 PM CST
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Thursday, December 7, 2017
THURSDAY TWEET - GOD'S EYE VIEW TRIPLET
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tweetgodseye.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 7:53 AM CST
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Friday, December 1, 2017
DONAGGIO TALKS DE PALMA, 'DOMINO', 'CARRIE', ETC.
SAYS HE ALWAYS WANTS TO SCORE EVERY DE PALMA FILM, BUT DE PALMA FEELS HE IS BEST FOR SUSPENSE
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/pinotorino.jpg

Pino Donaggio took a break from working on the score for Brian De Palma's Domino this week to appear during the De Palma retrospective at the 35th annual Torino Film Festival, where the composer received the Grand Prize prior to a screening of Dressed To Kill. Film.it has some highlights from Donaggio's press conference there-- here's a rough Google-assisted translation:
The thirty-fifth Torino Film Festival invites Pino Donaggio as the representative of the retrospective dedicated to Brian De Palma. An author for whom Maestro Donaggio wrote the music for six of his films. We all know the titles - Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Raising Cain, and (the less famous) Passion - but listening to the composer's stories instantly provokes goosebumps: "Do you remember Carrie's ending? When Amy Irving walks past the grave and we see her hand jump off the ground accompanied by the music? I saw George Lucas jump during that scene, he jumped from the cinema chair. And he started laughing as if he wanted to say: 'You cheated me!'".

Another anecdote about Carrie is about Martin Scorsese: "We were in New York and in a cinema showing Carrie ... with the title in the luminous sign in big letters, and at the bottom, but much smaller, there was the title of the second film: Taxi Driver. Brian took the picture of that sign and sent it to Scorsese! I have wonderful memories of that period: Brian was very close to Spielberg, Scorsese and Coppola."

Maestro Donaggio still works with De Palma today. He is currently busy creating the music for his new thriller: Domino. What will we see on the screen?
The plot is simple: the films of Brian are, at least the ones that I do with him which are those full of suspense, action and sex. Domino opens with a death: they kill the companion of a policeman and then this protagonist goes around all over Europe to look for the perpetrators. Among other things, he also meets ISIS members and other terrorists while he continues to hunt for the guilty. There will be a great finale set during a Bullfight with people running up the stairs.

You named De Palma's friends: Scorsese, Spielberg and Coppola, that is, authors who almost always work with the same troupe. Are there any De Palma films that you did not participate in - I think about Scarface or The Untouchables - were you too busy at the time?
No. I wanted to do them all. But he had made up his mind that I was good at making that kind of music for that kind of suspense film. He said that he had worked with many but that he found me "the best of all on those films in particular". He thought I was not suitable for more dramatic films like The Untouchables, or Casualties Of War. The strange thing is that when this happens, he avoids me. He does not want me to do even the audition, because he feels uncomfortable telling me no. I remember in the eighties I was in New York: I was working on the music of The Fan ... he was in the same building I was in. I wanted to say hello. He told me he was busy. The truth is that he was starting another movie. And he could not tell me that I would not have done that movie. He is a bit like that. But when he comes to Venice we always see each other. (Smiles)

You have worked a lot also for Italian cinema. Is there a film you would have liked to participate in, which you did not do?
We should have done with Benigni and Troisi the following: Nothing Left To Do But Cry. It was scheduled but then it was different after the death of Troisi. It was a lot of fun to work on that first film: Benigni and Troisi came to me to ask me the theme. They left me free: "You and we listen to him" - they told me. And then in that movie we played with the music. There were musical gags like in the scene in which they open the door hoping to find themselves in the present and instead find the musicians of the Middle Ages.

Returning to the cinema of De Palma. One of the greatest fans of the director is Quentin Tarantino. Have you ever discussed with him about a potential project to be developed together?
Tarantino used the Blow Out theme in his Death Proof. Once I read an interview in which he said: "I love the music of Donaggio" ... yet he never called me (smiles). Another who loves my work is Benicio del Toro. He said: "When I prepare a film I listen to Donaggio's music" ... he too has never called me though. Maybe he does not have my number yet!


Posted by Geoff at 1:31 AM CST
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Wednesday, November 29, 2017
DE PALMA'S 1987 LETTER TO THEATER PROJECTIONISTS
"THERE ARE TWO OR THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT 'THE UNTOUCHABLES'"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/depalmainstructionsuntouch.jpg

Thanks to Metrograph for tweeting the image above last weekend, as the New York City movie theater screened Brian De Palma's The Untouchables. The image shows a letter that De Palma had written to theaters that were getting ready to show The Untouchables in 1987. "Dear Theater Manager/Operator," begins the letter. "There are two or three things you should know about The Untouchables." The letter continues:
Firstly, it is important to realize that the 70mm prints were blown up from a 35mm anamorphic negative which means in order to maintain a 2.35:1 screen aspect ratio, it became necessary to introduce frame lines top and bottom that, unfortunately, may be projected.

Therefore, any help you can provide toward alleviating this problem (either by adjusting your screen masking or cutting new projector mattes) would be greatly appreciated.

It is also hoped that in converting your print to a platter format, clear rather than opaque tape be used to join the reels and that fast drying white ink or some other commercially available marker be employed to mark the joins.

Though these procedures may take some extra time, they are plainly in the interests of our audience.

Finally, a note on changeovers.

If you intend to screen your print on 2,000 ft. reels, be advised that the changeover cue marks at the end of reel 1 may be difficult to see. As scribed in, they occur at the end of a scene in which Robert DeNiro (Capone) reads a paper in bed while smoking a cigar.

Fortunately, these cues are the only ones you need to worry about, as the rest are clearly visible.

Thank you for hearing us out.

We wish you much succcess with The Untouchables and trust you won't hesitate to call the T.A.P. hotline (1-800-545-2525) should any problems arise.

Sincerely, Brian DePalma


Posted by Geoff at 12:04 AM CST
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Saturday, November 18, 2017
CRITIC - 'WE BLEW IT' SUMMONS SPECTRUM OF DE PALMA
DURING SEQUENCE IN WHICH CAMERA TRACES ROAD OF JFK ASSASSINATION
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/weblewit.jpgFilmed during the year leading up to the election of Donald Trump as president, Jean-Baptiste Thoret's documentary We Blew It takes its title from a line spoken by Peter Fonda in Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider. As The Hollywood Reporter's Bernard Besserglik describes it, "Jean-Baptiste Thoret's enthralling documentary We Blew It tackles the riddle of the 1960s head-on — a riddle that has been the subject of lively debate virtually since the day the decade ended. How, after that heady upsurge of youthful idealism and revolt, did we get to where we are now? What happened to the dreams and visions of the peace-and-love generation? What were the twists and turns that brought us from Easy Rider to Donald Trump?"

CineSeries' Guillaume Meral brings up Brian De Palma in his discussion of a shot that traces the road in Dallas where JFK was assassinated in 1963 (a description that cannot help but also remind of the scene in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, when Travis meets the gun dealer):
Basically, We Blew It is a film that deals with the question of the years '60-'70 by questioning their very existence. The work of a director who evolves in a landscape of images and is all too aware of the impact of these images themselves not to wonder if they have not printed in the retina of the popular unconscious a reality that never took place. A dialectic that is found in particular in the staging bias of Thoret. Filmmaker obviously cinephile, the author multiplies the references to New-Hollywood to question his own references. We think of the scene where the camera is walking in Dallas, on the road on which JFK died as if it were scanning the traces of a perennial trauma. As the screen sweeps the asphalt, an oppressive music straight out of a film by Brian De Palma, THE filmmaker who made this fatal day of November 15, 1963 the reason for his cinema, accentuates and invades the entire sound space. As if Thoret summoned the spectrum of the director of Blow Out to derealize what he films and plunge into an agonizing abstraction, which exceeds the factual historical event to touch something more disturbing. For those who arrive in the empty room of all references, the tools work in the first degree, but for the viewer initiated to its author and his cinephilia, Thoret brings a historical event to his cinematographic representation, as if the passage of a historical event in a regime of specific images had altered the initial reality. Did New Hollywood invent these years? Has cinema created America? This is the agonizing question that runs through the author's approach, seeking the traces of cinema in what he films.

Posted by Geoff at 10:28 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, November 18, 2017 10:31 AM CST
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