 Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website. Here is the latest news: |
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Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website. Here is the latest news: |
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E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com
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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
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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De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002
De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006
Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule
The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold
Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!
Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy
Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site
Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
The Art Of The Title has been looking at single-take opening shots, and part 3, posted December 21st, looks specifically at steadicam long takes, including three in which the great Larry McConkey was the camera operator: Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Brian De Palma's The Bonfire Of The Vanities, and De Palma's Snake Eyes. The takes at Art Of The Title are supplemented with commentaries and entries from Afton Grant's SteadiShots, including the following from McConkey himself, discussing the opening shot from Bonfire Of The Vanities:Each take was a full 500' and the shot was over when the end of the film flapped through the gate.
I wanted a device to let Bruce pass by me a little too close to the camera for focus in the elevator, and he came up with the idea of scooping up some Salmon Mousse, and twirling a little drunkenly past me. This also delayed the action enough for the rest of the crew (same group as before except for Larry H. and the boom woman with a wireless boom mike who rode with me) to exit the elevator next to us. They were timing their elevator to synchronize with ours on the way up to maintain a good RF link to the mixer. If the elevators rose side by side it worked fine, otherwise complete dropout. After exiting, I wanted to get back in front of Bruce so he came up with the Mousse Toss onto the wall thereby backing away from the camera enough to allow me to make a clean exit. There were many other devices like this throughout that I came up with to make the shot flow... I figure the more work everyone else does, and the less work I have to do, the better it will look...
(Thanks to Rado!)
The June 2009 issue of Empire celebrates the 20th anniversary of the British film magazine with guest editor Steven Spielberg. Tom Hanks is interviewed in the issue by assistant editor Ian Freer, who notes to Hanks that his first Empire cover was for The Bonfire Of The Vanities in 1991. Hanks has some very interesting things to say about the film: That's a very interesting thing because, when we were making it, that movie was huge. We couldn't make a move anywhere in New York City. Everyone was talking about it: "They took this book that had entered into the national consciousness and now they're making a film out of it and everybody is miscast!" Everybody was miscast, me particularly. Brian De Palma deals with iconography more than filmmaking. He is the most uncompromising filmmaker-- both in a good way and a bad way-- that you'll ever come across. This is the guy who made Scarface. Motherfucking Scarface. So his take on it was just one of those things. You can't take a book like that, that has changed the way people talk and think-- Masters Of The Universe, Styrofoam peanuts, and $900,000 a year and still going broke-- and change it into a palatable movie, or alter the thrust of what the source material is talking about. It may not translate in a way that is going to work.
(Since I could not find a scan of the Empire cover mentioned above, I dug up this American Cinematographer cover from the same period.)
Meanwhile, over at the Huffington Post, Michael Showalter cites James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential to explain why he thinks Palin keeps using the tough-to-pronounce word "Ahmadinejad" to con her audiences into thinking that she is making sense. Palin then leads Showalter to think of The Bonfire Of The Vanities:
With the latest revelation that Sarah Palin has spent more than four times what Joe the Plumber makes in a year, $175,000 to be exact, on her wardrobe so far, I couldn't help but thinking of another book: The Bonfire Of The Vanities. I also thought of the movie, or to be more exact, the making of the movie. The making of the movie version of Bonfire of the Vanities as detailed in the book The Devil's Candy by Julie Salamon is the story of a pretty good idea that became a really, really bad idea really fast. I think that the publisher's comments sum it up well: "When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade...This riveting insider's portrait provides a timeless account of an industry where art, talent, ego, and money combine and clash on a monumental scale."If only John McCain's presidential bid were just a movie. Then again who thought really thought that the movie about the chihuahua would do so well?