April Wolfe: So I wanted to talk a little bit about these extras scenes.

Barbara Crampton: Yeah...

April: It's one of the things that we actually rarely talk about when it comes to Raw, but it makes it so, so good, and something you brought up, when they do the hazing rituals...

Barbara: Right...

April: Ducournau personally cast all three hundred of them.

Barbara: No way...

April: Yes. Exactly. So you hear Barbara's shock at that-- that doesn't happen. There's usually a casting person who does the extras casting.

Barbara: Yeah (laughing), it's whoever's available.

April: Yes!

Barbara: Because you don't get paid a lot!

April: No! So she personally cast all three hundred of these extras-- like, she was single-handedly constructing this veterinary school. She said she tried to keep their characters in mind, and use them in scenes that would fit with how they had appeared in other scenes, really building their characters. And, you know, it made for a better, fuller film. It felt realistic.

Barbara: Yeah.

April: But also, it was a way to get the extras invested in the film, because they would have to be there for the full 37 days of shooting, which is a huge undertaking if you're an extra.

Barbara: Oh my God, yeah, you want to feel like you're a part of the project. That's so smart!

April: It is! And I thought it's honestly so wonderful when a director takes that kind of care with every actor on set, no matter...

Barbara: Who they are-- yeah...

April: Exactly. Even if you have a small part. I was thinking in terms of your role in De Palma's Body Double.

Barbara: Mmm-hmm...

April: Because I had read some interviews with you where you had said that, like, they did so many takes, and he was so interested in getting the scene right, and you got to work with him on so many things. And even if some of that stuff got cut out, you were still, you know, working towards kind of a perfect moment.

Barbara: We actually did that scene all day. I mean it was all day. From different angles. Forty takes from all different angles. It was hundreds of takes. It was incredible. I will say, when I first got that film, there were two other scenes in the movie that I had dialogue in. And the night before I was to start shooting, I got a call: "Oh, oops, they cut the dialogue scenes. You only have this one scene with Craig Wasson in bed." And I thought, hmm... was this on purpose? Or, is this legitimate? But it's Brian De Palma, so I should work with him, and it was great to be with him on set, and I did it and it was super fun.

April: It was really early in your career, too.

Barbara: I think it was like the first thing I actually did on film, because I was on Days Of Our Lives for about a year, and that was my first job, and I think that was my second job.

April: What do you think you learned from that set?

Barbara: To relax, and to just have no fear. I mean, that was the first thing... because everybody was just kind of laissez-faire in a way. You know, when you're making a movie, and I just said, oh, you have to hurry up, you have to go, and you have to be right on point, and you do... and I'm sure even on a film like that, you have to be on point, but it felt like I... I could see the other actors who were on set, they... they were really calm. And relaxed, and I think you want to feel secure, and centered, and it was nice to see everybody on set just, you know, doing their job, but, and fast, but relaxed. You have to be relaxed.

April: [laughter]

Barbara: Well, I like relaxing, so that's good for me to be reminded of that all the time.

[You might think Wolfe is laughing because Crampton has brought up the title of the Frankie Goes To Hollywood song that features in Body Double, but no-- her laughter comes from picturing the actors in Raw being relaxed while making such an intense film]

Previously:
Crampton shares details of two dialogue scenes cut from Body Double

Crampton: "I am still waiting for that call from Brian De Palma"

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?!"

Popular, wildly flamboyant Pino Donaggio horror soundtrack gets facelift! Columbia Pictures presents, Brian De Palma directs, Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry - and a really big drill star. De Palma pays homage to Hitchcock with this fascinating tale of murder and obsession. Donaggio, frequent collaborator with De Palma, provides vivid, full-blooded score with balance of French horn-led power, string-led romance, quasi-soft rock beat to cover all the bases of this over-the-top thriller. Donaggio offers haunting, achingly beautiful theme for piano, strings over the titles to anchor, but interestingly precedes it with intentionally cheesy faux-horror vampire music for on-screen low budget film in production. With two ideas established, Donaggio then takes listener on multi-path listening experience: source music with rhythm at core, dramatic suspense material, powerful fortissimo horror sequences, rousing chase music, gentle melancholy, you name it. Donaggio excels with the horror genre, especially for De Palma. Dressed To Kill, Blow Out, Carrie are other favorites of the genre and Donaggio brings each a blend of haunting beauty and terrifying thrills. Body Double is arguably the most involved in terms of scoring, offering the widest range of material and the most florid in execution. The highlights are numerous: sensual major-key melody of “The Telescope” with its sexy female voice mingling amongst the orchestral colors, varied action and orchestral drama of “Rendezvous; Purse Grab; Tunnel Claustrophobia”, lengthy and incredible unison French horn power of “The Big Drill” underscoring hair-raising murder scene, hypnotic repeating phrases of “Detective McClane, Please!”, pulsating action of “A Night On Mulholland Drive; A Grave For Holly”, “Terror In The Grave”, many others. Orchestrational tidbit: Donaggio scores for full symphony but tacets trumpets. Resulting brass sound imbues score with darker, intenser quality. Originally premiered by Intrada in 2008, new 2017 edition of Body Double is presented from all new master incorporating several important sonic advantages including much-improved levels, stereo balancing of many tracks, courtesy pristine source elements from Columbia Pictures. New edition also premieres original trailer music by Jonathan Elias, with its lush, romantic John Barry-ish vibe, also presented in stereo. Otherwise, selections and packaging remain similar. Crisply recorded at The Burbank Studios across two weeks in September 1984. Pino Donaggio composes, Natale Massara conducts. Intrada Special Collection CD available while quantities and interest remain!

Petra Collins: Do you like Fiona Apple? I remember seeing the ‘Criminal’ video – seeing someone displaying themselves so honestly and showing to us that she was sick, it scared me. She turned the ‘heroin chic’ thing on everyone by saying, ‘This is how I am, this is real.’

Selena Gomez: I love Fiona, and that video. My mom introduced me to her. I’ve been listening to her since my childhood. She was doing something very raw for her time. She is an icon, what she does creatively is on another level.

Petra Collins: What is your current obsession or ‘fetish’?

Selena Gomez: Right now, I have a fetish for Brian De Palma films. The way he shoots women is so sexy. I’m printing out pictures to hang up in my new house right now. Melanie Griffith in Body Double. So sexy.

Petra Collins: Oh my God. Brian De Palma. I love him. I’m with you on that one, that’s my fetish right now too.

I think if I had to choose, like, a fun guilty pleasure movie, I really like Brian De Palma’s Body Double. He’s kind of the king of guilty pleasures—he makes these beautiful movies that are really kind of cinematic objects, but that also have, like, a lot of sleaziness to them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I kind of love them all.

Brian De Palma made Body Double coming off of a lot of criticism of his previous film, Dressed To Kill. A lot of people said it was a little too gory, and that it focused a little too much on sex. But of course, being Brian De Palma, he just wanted to double-down on those criticisms.

It’s a big role for Melanie Griffith—I think a lot of people probably remember her character, Holly Body. And while this movie might seem a little trashy, she really credits it for doing a lot for her career. Specifically, she thinks she wouldn’t have gotten Working Girl or Something Wild without this movie kind of divorcing her from her childhood image as Tippi Hedren’s daughter.

My favorite sequence in it—and this is totally weird and out of place, but delightful—is in the middle of the film it breaks out into this Frankie Goes To Hollywood music video.