SECOND PART UPLOADED TO YOUTUBE TODAY
Updated: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:40 PM CDT
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Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website. Here is the latest news: |
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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
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rapport at work
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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
At the start of his post on the film, Prime writes, "In 1987, Brian De Palma and iconic key collaborators including spitfire screenwriter David Mamet and legendary composer Ennio Morricone, set out to realize a historical crime epic like none other. De Palma is a larger than life director known to embrace bold stylistic choices, Mamet writes dialogue that comes out of some kind of curse-laden meta-reality, and Morricone’s score contains in itself a storybook quality, that every moment is deliberately crafted to dramatize history, to realize a respectful spectacle."
"They were all sent to me," De Palma told Sullivan, "so I know exactly what they're all about. I was the top of the list." De Palma, however, turned these projects down. "We should leave the man alone," he told Sullivan. "He's a great master, and these are kind of disturbing views of him and making these movies."
A Huffington Post article by Lynn Elber starts off with this:
Make that stunned silence, as the room took in the film's depiction of a scorned, vindictive Alfred Hitchcock physically and emotionally abusing Hedren during production of "The Birds."
"I've never been in a screening room where nobody moved, nobody said anything," Hedren recounted. "Until my daughter jumped up and said, `Well, now I have to go back into therapy.'"
'CAPONE RISING' LANGUISHING IN DEVELOPMENT
Also in the MTV interview, Sullivan asked De Palma about the Untouchables prequel, Capone Rising. "It's quite a good script," De Palma told Sullivan, "but it's owned by Paramount. We had it together with different casts at different times, but it never seemed to work out. It's still there. I've always been amazed to think about how many scripts are sitting in studio vaults that are actually great scripts, that if anybody would go down and read them, they would be amazed at what's there. There must be tons of them."
Back on September 13, De Palma was asked about the prequel by Collider's Phil Brown. "I don’t know," De Palma said regarding whether the film will ever happen. "We’ve had it cast many times, but we’ve just never been able to get everything together at the same time. It’s owned by Paramount so there’s nothing I can do." When asked who he'd planned to cast in it, De Palma replied, "At one point I think I had Nicolas Cage playing Capone. Gerald Butler was going to do the Sean Connery part. I think we even had Benicio Del Toro as Capone at one point. We had so many great people attached. It’s one of those legendarily great scripts that actors would die to play, but we’ve just never been able to get it all together with Paramount."
Yes, there was a script but it was just, it was more descriptive than dialogue. It really read like a story. Michel [Hazanavicius, writer/director] really did a beautiful job -- it was bound and on each side of the page there were photographs of Berenice [Bejo] and Jean [Dujardin] in period costume, and period locations. It was very picturesque. It was definitely unusual, so I did get this almost hesitant call from my agent saying, "They're making this black and white silent film and it's set in the 20s." That perked me up because I love the 20s, and I asked, "Well, who is in it?" He said, "The two leads are French and the director is French," and I'd never heard of them nor could I pronounce their names [laughs]. And I thought that this was getting more interesting by the minute.
Miller told the Orange County Register's Richard Chang a bit more details about that initial phone call, and her first meeting with Hazanavicius:
Q: How did you get cast for this picture?
A: My agent, who has a relationship with the casting director, called me. I was interested in at least reading it. There were actors who weren't interested. They're probably kicking themselves right now. There are those of us who are willing to take that leap of risk, who had faith. Obviously, it was a very far-fetched notion. In "Chaplin," you could hear the dialogue. With this, this is like a full-blown silent film.
But I love the '20s. I'm an old movie buff. I'm very nostalgic about old Hollywood. I sort of welcomed the opportunity and thought this could be kind of fun. It definitely could be a real hit or a real miss. If it was a miss, oh well, I can move on.
Q: What was it like to work with director Michel Hazanavicius? He isn't that well-known in the U.S.
A: When I met him, I discovered he'd really done his homework. He had a really strong vision. I told him we both shared the passion for the old movies. He knew how he wanted to film it, what he was doing. He really hired the top of the line to work with him. The cinematographer was the guy he's always worked with. The hair and makeup worked with some real big stars. People on the technical side loved the artistic side of the film. How many opportunities do you get to make a movie like this? It wasn't going to be a huge, long schedule. I took it for the art of it.
HAVANAVICIUS ON SIX SILENT FILMS THAT INSPIRED 'THE ARTIST'
When Havanavicius accepted the best picture award at tonight's Oscar ceremony, he thanked Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder, and Billy Wilder. But back in November, Hazanavicius shared with Indiewire's Eric Kohn notes on six silent films that inspired The Artist. The first of the six listed is Josef von Sternberg's Underworld. Released in 1927, the screenplay for Underworld was written by Ben Hecht, who was awarded the first-ever Academy Award for Best Screenplay for the film. Hecht went on to write the screenplay for Howard Hawks's Scarface, and De Palma's remake of that film is dedicated to Hawks and Hecht. Havanavicius states, "All of Scarface, and even Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, comes from Underworld. The way that director Josef von Sternberg shot women was incredible. It's super-sensual, and really amazing to see a gangster movie as good as anything by Tarantino from this period."
The other five silent films noted by Havanavicius are Tod Browning's The Unknown, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise and City Girl, King Vidor's The Crowd, and Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.
When De Palma yelled cut, “Smitty” grabbed Kevin by the arm and raced towards me. We were introduced and Kevin had a firm handshake, and a great sincere smile. “Smitty” like many others, of course, told the Errol Flynn Story and yet another actor, (Costner) was a fan of Errol’s. De Palma saw a group forming and didn’t realize I was on the set. When he came over, he bear hugged me and told his crew, take an hour, we are going to lunch. Off Kevin, “Smitty”, Brian and I went in his limo to eat.
For the next hour, Kevin sat there listening to stories that “Smitty”, Brian and I, shared, all the time, asking great questions and soaking in any and all acting advice we could give. He was very humble, and even offered to pick up the tab, but of course, De Palma wouldn’t allow that. At the end of our lunch, Kevin and I had bonded, exchanging numbers.
For many years after our first meeting, Kevin and I have stayed in touch with him still being that humble person I met some 26 years ago. So when the rest of the world praised his eulogy at Whitney Houston’s funeral last week, I just smiled because the class act that I have known Kevin to be way away from the glaring lights of a movie set, shined through.
Specifically, Dean's star struck moments of meeting the leader of The Untouchables was pure awesome. It was very cool to see an iconic hero like Eliot Ness gain that Supernatural edge by making him a hunter, and it made perfect sense. It was also great that he was able to reference the fantastic Brian De Palma film, The Untouchables, with lines like "because that is the Chicago way" and punching out the witness because that's what he watched Eliot Ness do in the movie. At the same time, attempting to imitate the film fell flat for Dean, making it even more humorous for his character as he tried to fit in and seem as cool as his counterpart.