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De Palma interviewed
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Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
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Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
At left is new art created by Tommy Lee Edwards for the 40th anniversary screening of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, which happens Wednesday, July 30th, at the Arclight in Hollywood. The limited edition screen print, which will be available for purchase at the event, will also be given to those with VIP tickets, according to the Swan Archives.
In 1982, Spielberg was still fairly close with his fellow "Young Lion/Movie Brat" director friends: Lucas, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and John Milius. In the shot below, on the very right, underneath a poster for Ridley Scott's Alien, what appears to be a toy yellow taxi sits on a shelf, possibly a nod to Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
After the mother makes the bed, she sits on it, and notices that she doesn't hear the bird tweeting. She looks toward the birdcage, concerned...
And when she gets up to get a better look, finds the bird lying upside down, dead, the positioning of which seems likely to be a visual nod to the Death Records logo in De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise...
This last homage idea is further reinforced by the fact that, according to the recent book, Interviews Too Shocking To Print! by Justin Humphreys, Tobe Hooper himself had been a big fan of Phantom Of The Paradise, which led to him working enthusiastically with William Finley. Perhaps Spielberg storyboarded the scene above and Hooper ran with it. We could say it is just a dead bird, but since both visionaries in the room (Spielberg and Hooper) would have been so familiar with De Palma's film, it seems very likely each of them would have been thinking about the Death Records logo when they staged the shot.
Scream Factory today released the details about its upcoming Blu-ray edition of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, which will be released August 5th. If you pre-order straight from ShoutFactory ($21.95), they are offering an exclusive 18"x24" poster of the new cover artwork, but only while supplies last. The Scream Factory press release repeats the news that the Swan Archives reported a couple of weeks ago: that there will be two discs included in the package. The first is a Blu-ray of the original movie, along with several new commentaries and new interviews, and the second disc is a DVD packed with special features old and new. Below is the rundown from the press release, but be sure to check the Swan Archives' News Page for a details about where each feature originally appeared. High-Definition transfer of the film
NEW Audio Commentary with Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham and the Juicy Fruits (Archie Hahn, Jeffrey Comanor and Harold Oblong aka Peter Eibling)
NEW Audio Commentary with Production Designer Jack Fisk
NEW Interview with director Brian DePalma (36 minutes)
NEW Interview with Paul Williams talking about the music of PHANTOM (30 minutes)
NEW Interview with Make-up Effects wizard Tom Burman discussing the Phantom Helmet
DISC TWO (DVD):
Paradise Regained – documentary on the making of the film featuring director Brian DePalma, Producer Edward R. Pressman, William Finley, Paul Williams, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham and more… (50 minutes)
Interview with Paul Williams moderated by Guillermo Del Toro (72 minutes)
Interview with costume designer Rosanna Norton (10 minutes)
NEW Interview with producer Edward R. Pressman (15 minutes)
NEW Interview with drummer Gary Mallaber (15 minutes)
NEW Alvin’s Art and Technique – a look at the neon poster (15 minutes)
NEW Phantom of the Paradise Biography by Gerrit Graham - 1974 Publicity Sheet written by and read by Graham (8 minutes)
Alternate Takes (40 minutes) Swan Song Outtake Footage (10 minutes)
Radio Spots
TV Spots
Theatrical Trailer
Still Gallery
'PHANTOM' AT THE NEW BEVERLY SATURDAY
Meanwhile, Phantom Of The Paradise will be screened from DCP at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles this Saturday at midnight.
VULTURE: MICHAEL JACKSON HOLOGRAPH MAKES HIM AKIN TO THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
This past Sunday, the Billboard Awards show on ABC-TV included a Michael Jackson holograph performing one of the songs included on the new posthumous release, Xscape. Today, Vulture's Geeta Dayal posted an essay that, at one point, linked the ghostly Jackson to the Phantom Of The Paradise. Here's an excerpt from Dayal's post:
Xscape — a potpourri of exhumed Jackson demos and discarded tracks, organized by L.A. Reid and fleshed out by top producers including Timbaland and Rihanna hitmakers Stargate — is currently the No. 2 album in the country. While it’s a bit odd to see the King of Pop lagging behind the Black Keys, the current No. 1 act, being second best isn’t too shabby when you’ve been dead for five years. All in all, Xscape — eight “new” songs in total, which go back as far as 1983 — is an admirable effort to make a full meal out of reheated leftovers...
Part of what made Jackson’s holographic performance so bizarre was the song itself: “Slave to the Rhythm,” a song on Xscape that was originally recorded in 1991 during the Dangerous sessions. The song is not half bad, though it’s easy to see why it was kept on the cutting-room floor until 2014. “She’s a slave to the rhythm,” Jackson sings, ostensibly about a woman. “She danced through the night/In fear of her life/She danced to a beat of her own,” Jackson continues urgently, filling in gaps with his requisite “hee-hees” and perfectly placed hiccups. But the song sounds autobiographical — you could think of it as Jackson’s ghost, talking about his own tortured afterlife. Jackson, five years after his death, is a slave to the rhythm — shackled by the corporate interests that refuse to let him rest in peace. He’s the phantom in Brian De Palma’s creepy 1974 classic Phantom of the Paradise — the sad, undead guy in the skintight black leather outfit who forgot that he signed a recording contract in his own blood, who’s now trapped in a recording studio and forced to craft megahits for eternity.
Jackson is an unending source of income, spinning out in all directions until the end of time. Like the Star Wars franchise, there will be sequels — and when the sequels are done, there will be prequels. Hundreds of unused songs — demos, outtakes, and other bits and pieces — are said to be in Jackson’s vaults. As holographic technology inevitably improves, the possibilities for live performances in the future will be endless. But perhaps we should leave Jackson be instead of trying to digitally reanimate him for eternity. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith, after witnessing a Darth Vader hologram slay a Jedi, “I can’t watch any more.”
A little late to the table on this, but it turns out that that Brian De Palma/Scream Factory interview last week (which actually took place April 3rd) was conducted by the Swan Archives' Principal Archivist. On the Swan Archives News page last Thursday, the Archivist posted, "Mr. De Palma spent some time talking Phantom today with our Principal Archivist (who is co-producing Scream's disc) in New York City. Excerpts of the discussion will appear as an extra on the disc, for which a lot of other new material is being prepared as well!" The Archivist, of course, also played a big part in the Arrow Video Blu-ray of Phantom, which was released in February. Looks to continue to be a great 40th anniversary year for this De Palma classic!
