De Palma a la Mod

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

KLASFELD: WHAT IS OPPOSITE TO CHILDREN? SCARFACE
AND ILLINOIS GRADE SCHOOL FIELDS SCORES OF CALLS

In the video above, CNN's Mike Galanos acts mightily perturbed by the viral video showing Scarface reenacted by kids. To emphasize his point that the subject matter is naturally appalling when represented by children, one of the clips shown from the Marc Klasfeld-directed video actually censors out some of the "motherfudging" dialogue with audio beeps. Galanos aggresively chastizes Klasfeld, hardly giving him a chance to speak his mind much of the time. Of course, Klasfeld is really only there to sell commercials for CNN, which is using his video for the entertainment of its viewers while simultaneously denouncing it with stern introductions such as "Watch this...".

A more even-tempered article by Ninette Sosa appears on the CNN website, where Klasfeld states that in comedy and satire, opposite is what attracts. "What is the most opposite film there is to children? It's Scarface." In both the video (where he is accused of nothing more than self-promotion) and the article, Klasfeld suggests that his aim is to start a dialogue about how our media culture is saturated with sex and violence, and, as Sosa puts it in the article, "how it blankets children on a daily basis." Regarding the art of viral videos, Klasfeld is quoted, "I love the aesthetics, and it's a brand new avenue of expression for filmmakers to express themselves freely."

FLURRY OF ATTENTION IN BARTONVILLE, ILLINOIS
Meanwhile, NBC Chicago reports that parents of Grade School District 66 in Bartonville, Illinois (which "cindymomof6", the identity of the person that posted the clip on YouTube, listed as "her" hometown), have been concerned. According to the report:

Superintendent Shannon Duling has fielded scores of phone calls about the video that range from incensed to disappointed. “We’re a really small school so most people know that it didn’t happen here,” Duling said. “Most of our parents are just upset that we’re getting a bad rap.”
But a few callers fell for the hoax.
“One called and was upset because they thought it actually happened here,” he said. “I think it’s interesting how quickly people jump to conclusions.”

Posted by Geoff at 11:54 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, April 1, 2010 2:35 AM CDT
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"SCHOOL PLAY" WAS CREATED BY VIDEO DIRECTOR
AND OLIVER STONE ON THE MOST FAMOUS LINE FROM SCARFACE

The Scarface as school play video that caused a stir yesterday was created by the award-winning viral, commercial, and music video director Mark Klasfeld and his company Rockhard Films. According to TMZ, the Scarface video was produced in Los Angeles "within the last few weeks and the audience members were a mix of cast family members, colleagues and friends." The child actors were "selected through a casting agent known for finding child actor look-alikes for adult stars."

Klasfeld told Geoff Boucher at the L.A. Times blog Hero Complex that (as Boucher puts it) he is "smitten with the wildfire immediacy of viral video." Klasfeld told Boucher, "It's a rare place where you can be creative and express yourself freely and it's a very democratic process and I'm very excited to part of it. It was a lot of fun." Boucher's post continues:

With the quirky homage to "Scarface," Klasfeld said "we had a great cast, great kids and great parents ... they enjoyed the process." The director said it was amusing to watch the pockets of outrage as the purposely provocative video spread out across the Internet.

"We definitely suspected that would happen," said Klasfeld, a father of two who says he wonders why the most vocal critics of the ironic video don't speak out more against the sexualization of young girls in American culture or the relentless violence on screens of all sorts.

"Everyday when I wake up with my daughter and I turn on the television for her and we're constantly guarding her against all these unnecessary sexual [messages] bombarding her ... so for us to see the reaction against this, well, that was a little shocking," Klasfeld said. "I found it all fascinating."

What's next? Klasfeld said he's going to sit back and enjoy the parodies, mash-ups and imitations of "Scarface School Play" that have already begun. Despite the success of his viral video he quickly dismissed the idea of making a sequel like, say, "Taxi Driver School Play" or "Leaving Las Vegas Schoolplay." "No, I don't see that happening."

OLIVER STONE ON "SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND"
Meanwhile, Oliver Stone was asked by New York Magazine's Vulture blog if he thought there might be a line in his upcoming Wall Street sequel to match his "greed is good" catch phrase from the first film. "When I wrote Scarface," Stone replied, "I wouldn’t have been able to say what people would pick up on. I mean, ‘Say hello to my little friend!’? Who the fuck thought they’d pick up on that?"

Posted by Geoff at 2:02 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 6:22 PM CDT
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Monday, March 29, 2010

SCARFACE SCHOOL PLAY
"CAN'T YOU STOP SAYING FUDGE ALL THE TIME?"

If the online identity is to be believed, a 38-year-old mother of 5 boys and 1 girl posted this video on YouTube today, with the note, "Jaydon's school put on a kids production of Scarface." The viral video is spreading rapidly over the internet, with some questioning the authenticity of both the video and the user who posted it. At least something seems certain: there were these kids who performed "Scarface" in front of a crowd who applauded at the end. And it is very entertaining!

Posted by Geoff at 8:38 PM CDT
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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

RODRIGUEZ ON VIOLENCE IN REPO MEN
"MAKES SCARFACE SEEM LIKE THE LITTLE MERMAID"

The Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez shared an interesting story on his blog last week about seeing the new film Repo Men and overhearing a mother tell her son just before the start, "If this movie gets too gross, we're leaving." Rodriguez' blog post continued:

What followed was, quite possibly, the most violent R-rated film I've ever seen - this thing makes Scarface seem like The Little Mermaid - and yet the mother and son remained in their seats, munching happily on their popcorn, bonding over a fun night out at the movies.

Rodriguez surmises that kids today have "an infinitely higher tolerance for gore" than he did in his youth, and also that "the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board has become just as desensitized to violence as audiences." Rodriguez stresses that he doesn't state this as a criticism of the film itself...

I was just struck by how much the film gets away with, while Brian De Palma had to trim the motel room/chainsaw sequence in Scarface repeatedly in order to avoid an X rating. In Repo Men, that scene would qualify as boring character exposition.
I've never thought of myself as squeamish - quite the opposite - but eavesdropping on that mother-son conversation tonight, and then watching the movie that followed, made me feel like a bit of a wuss. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Posted by Geoff at 1:15 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 1:15 PM CDT
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Monday, March 22, 2010

SCARFACE TOPS IMDB-DE PALMA POLL
OBSESSION GETS 46 VOTES AS BEST DE PALMA FILM
The poll below was suggested by a user at the Internet Movie Database, which ran the poll yesterday as part of its "Daily Poll" series. Some of the most interesting (and telling) votes were the non-votes (alas, I wonder how many voters thought Obsession was "that movie with Beyonce"). However, 98 voters would have chosen a De Palma film not offered on the list-- as this is the IMDb, one would think voters would be able to choose from any one of the director's films.

Posted by Geoff at 8:45 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, March 22, 2010 8:51 PM CDT
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

SCARFACE AS HEALTH REFORM STORY

Posted by Geoff at 8:58 AM CDT
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Thursday, March 11, 2010

A PROPHET IS THE "ANTI-SCARFACE
ALTHOUGH DIRECTOR AUDIARD LOVES DE PALMA'S FILM

Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, which is now playing in cinemas throughout the U.S., swept the César Awards last month, winning best picture, best director, and best actor (Tahar Rahim). The film, about an Arab who rises up in the Mafia while in prison, was also nominated for best foreign film at this year's Oscars. Audiard told the L.A. Times' Chris Lee last month that he wanted A Prophet "to be the anti-Scarface not because I don't like Brian De Palma's Scarface -- I've seen it five times! But there's not much to like about him, and you cannot relate to a character who is all bad." Audiard elaborated on that point last week to Geoff Pevere at the Toronto Star, saying, "Don't get me wrong, I love Brian De Palma's movie and I love the character of Tony Montana. But the reason that I love him is also the reason I wanted to make a very different kind of film. Tony is a character with no interiority at all. He's all surface. Everything you need to know about him is right there. What about a guy about whom you know absolutely nothing? Whose entire character unfolds as you're watching him. That's the challenge that I was interested in. A character like Tony Montana has no ambiguity about him whatsoever. What's interesting to me is a guy about whom we really know nothing, except for a few hints like scars that appear on his back, but whom we follow as he does things we may not approve of or even understand. We watch him becoming a person. That was the kind of character I wanted to create. And to watch."

Posted by Geoff at 11:22 AM CST
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Monday, January 11, 2010

SCARFACE CALMS BABY
ON ABC'S MODERN FAMILY

Last week's episode of ABC's Modern Family (on Wednesday nights) hilariously brought Brian De Palma into prime time sitcom. In the episode, titled "Up All Night," a gay couple are fighting over the best way to get their daughter, Lily, to learn to sleep. Mitchell is trying to "Ferberize" the baby by allowing her to cry herself to sleep, but Cameron cannot stand to hear her endless cries in the middle of the night. Mitchell confronts Cameron, who is holding Lily in his lap in front of the TV. Cameron gives Mitchell an excuse for why he is holding Lily in the middle of the night, and the following exchange ensues:

Mitchell: No, no, you got up to comfort her, but that only teaches her that every time she cries her daddy will come in and cuddle her and put on her fave—[turns to the TV with shock on his face] What are we watching?!?

Cameron: Brian De Palma’s controversial masterpiece Scarface.

Mitchell: For the baby?!?

Cameron: She happens to like it. I don’t know if it’s the colors, or the sounds… Oh here comes the nightclub massacre, she loves it. Watch her little eyelids, it’s so cute, they get so heavy.

Posted by Geoff at 2:34 PM CST
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Thursday, December 3, 2009

Posted by Geoff at 11:58 AM CST
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Sunday, August 16, 2009

SCARFACE RERELEASED IN U.K. THEATERS
"DEFINITIVE" '80S MOVIE HAS "ALL ITS DIALS TWISTED UP TO 11"

A digital version of Brian De Palma's Scarface was released in U.K. cinemas this weekend. A couple of U.K. critics had some interesting takes on the rerelease, with one suggesting that Scarface is the "definitive" film of the '80s, while the other finds tongue-in-cheek relevence to the current political atmosphere.

The Guardian's John Patterson

It's not the best film of the decade (that might be Raging Bull) or the most influential (except among gangsta rappers), or the most elegantly crafted (good god, no), but somehow Scarface manages, both intentionally and utterly accidentally, to capture the 1980s' atmosphere of unflagging greed, moral emptiness and materialistic crassness to a tee. It's as irreducibly 80s as Reagan's black plastic hairdo, Madonna's bustier and the Jane Fonda Workout. Scarface is a movie with all its dials twisted up to 11. No one does lines of cocaine (a loathsome drug for a loathsome era), they do piles of cocaine; chainsaws are brandished, not switchblades; the vague, censor-baiting hints at Borgia-syle incest in the original morph here into Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio screaming at her brother, "Ya wanna fuck me, huh, Tony? Huh?"
But Tony is a fully-fledged 1980s-style unzipped capitalist go-getter, worthy of admiration given the Friedman-fundamentalist economic fumes wafting through the zeitgeist back then; he's a Horatio Alger hero with a hole through his septum, he's Arkan in the making.

The List's Paul Dale

All of which makes this brilliant, cold-blooded masterpiece rather a strange proposition at a time when President Obama is opening up relations with the seemingly progressive sibling Raúl Castro. Myth has it that during his time as 46th Vice President of the United States in the Bush era, Dick Cheney liked to spend his downtime staring at a corporately revised map of Cuba which showed which US conglomerate would go where come the day that the US colonise the Caribbean island again. Could it be that Universal has been promised a spec there? A little place in the sun to wait out another Depression? Where multimillion-dollar mergers can be brokered by Skype and movies can be made for a tenth of the price? Could the re-release of Scarface be the beginning of their chainsaw wielding march on Cuba? Either way it’s great to see you again Tony.

Posted by Geoff at 12:22 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, August 16, 2009 12:24 AM CDT
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