Brian de Palma: Vision, Obsession and set-up

Brian De Palma (born 1940) is one of the most inventive film directors that America has produced. Formed in the counter-cultural scene of the 1960s, he has never abandoned his interest in formal, modernist innovation, nor his ultimately pessimistic view of society and politics. This series will take you through the major phases and tendencies of his career so far, from anarchic comedy and complex plotting through to Hitchcockian ‘pure cinema’ and social satire. The ultimate goal of the course is to elaborate the extremely complex and thrilling ‘machine of sound and vision’ that De Palma creates with the elements of film.

Cinema Experts
Cristina Álvarez López
Cristina Álvarez López is a film critic and video maker based in Vilassar de Mar (Spain). Her work has appeared in MUBI Notebook, LOLA, and De Filmkrant, and in books on Chantal Akerman, Bong Joon-ho, Philippe Garrel, and Paul Schrader. More info.

Adrian Martin
Adrian Martin is an art critic based in Vilassar de Mar (Spain). He is the author of eight books, including the forthcoming essay collection Mysteries of Cinema (Amsterdam University Press). His ongoing archive website of film reviews, covering 40 years of writing, is at filmcritic.com.au.

Lectures and Screenings on Brian de Palma

July 18 — De Palma’s Beginnings: Art, Music and the Counter-Culture
Phantom of the Paradise (1974, 92’, DCP)
July 19 — The Hitchcockian Model and its Variations
Obsession (1976, 98’, DCP)
July 20 — Vision and Sound: The Complex Machine
Carrie (1976, 98’, DCP)
July 21 — Story, Identity and Point-of-View
Body Double (1984, 114’, DCP)
July 22 — The Langian Model: Narrative and Society as Trap
The Black Dahlia (2006, 121’, 35mm)

If anyone can turn the Stormy Daniels scandal into something unforgettable on the big screen, it’s got to be Brian De Palma. The director perfected the art of the erotic thriller in films such as “Body Double” and “Dressed to Kill,” and his touch of heightened sensuality would really make the story about the shady dealings between an arrogant businessman and a porn star pop. Just imagine the meeting between Daniels and Trump with De Palma’s crooked angles, sharp editing, salacious dialogue, and suggestive lighting. He’d give the story the wicked sensationalism it deserves while going for the jugular by criticizing every viewer’s fascination with it in the first place. Trump wouldn’t stand a chance against De Palma.

Noah Baumbach has been making movies for more than 20 years, and in that time, has developed a distinctive voice in American cinema. His stories of neurotic New Yorkers are loaded with memorable moments of self-obsession and narcissistic showdowns. But Baumbach didn’t become a filmmaker overnight; he learned much about filmmaking from watching other movies. Raised by novelist Jonathan Baumbach and film critic Georgia Brown, Baumbach grew up surrounded by cinema, and it played a critical role in his evolving love for the medium.

The filmmaker looked back on some of these key influences during a conversation at the Film Society of Lincoln Center shortly before a screening of his latest effort, the ensemble comedy “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” which Netflix releases later this month.

The Movie Brats

Baumbach was born in 1969, which placed on the younger end of the spectrum of moviegoers influenced by the movie brat generation — the collection of mainstream filmmakers who produced iconic studio movies at a transitional moment in Hollywood history. “I’m the age of ‘Star Wars,’ and everybody’s the age of ‘Star Wars,’ but I was actually seven when it came out and grew up with it,” Baumbach said. “At that age, I wanted to make all kinds of movies.” He was also a big Steven Spielberg fan. “I could see all these movies — not ‘Jaws,’ I [wasn’t allowed] to see that — but all the others. They were so meaningful to me… ‘E.T.’ was my favorite film.”

Baumbach’s cinephilia blossomed in the late eighties and early nineties. That’s when he first discovered another ‘70s-era breakout, Martin Scorsese. “Like everybody, you’re seeing the luck of the draw,” he said. “It’s like, who’s your James Bond? What was your first Scorsese? I saw ‘King of Comedy,’ then ‘After Hours’ and ‘The Color of Money.’ Those were my Scorseses. Of course, then I went back and saw the others.”

These days, Baumbach’s favorite filmmaker from that generation may be Brian De Palma, the subject of the documentary “De Palma,” which Baumbach co-directed last year. “I’m friends with Brian, but I couldn’t see those movies at that age,” Baumbach said, referring to his childhood. “I couldn’t go to ‘Dressed to Kill’ or ‘Blow Out.’ Those I caught later. The first Brian movie I saw was ‘Wise Guys,’ which was a strange one, a comedy.” However, De Palma’s meta gangster drama “The Untouchables” hit theaters in 1987, a sweet spot for the young Baumbach. “I was lucky that he made that one right when I could see it,” Baumbach said. “Even though my parents would tell it was ‘lesser Brian,’ I was like, not in my mind. It was great.”

It’s a little jarring to think that Noah Baumbach has been directing movies now for 22 years. In some ways, he still seems like that fresh-faced kid who released Kicking and Screaming when he was only 26. Somehow, behind a curtain somewhere, Baumbach became a full-fledged “veteran director.” (To put this in perspective, Baumbach’s at the same stage of his career that Scorsese was when he was making Goodfellas and Cape Fear.) Baumbach, like contemporaries such as frequent collaborator Wes Anderson, have now been doing this a long time. They are no longer the new wave of directors, they are just “the wave.” And now, Baumbach may just have made his best movie.

And that’s not a claim made lightly. Baumbach’s filmography includes Greenberg, The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha, Margot at the Wedding – and one of the best documentaries ever made about a filmmaker, De Palma (co-directed with Jake Paltrow). But with The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), he’s arguably made his deepest and most complete film.

Dustin Hoffman plays Harold Meyerowitz, the father of Danny and Jean (Adam Sandler and Elizabeth Marvel), and their half-brother, Matthew (Ben Stiller). Their stories are divided in half, which builds anticipation because we have two of the biggest mainstream comedy stars of the last 20 years finally in a movie together, yet for a good portion of the film, they don’t share any scenes. Of course, Baumbach knows exactly what he’s doing. When the characters finally come together for the final act it’s truly powerful.

Baumbach does not like doing short interviews. So we had plenty of time to take a deeper dive into what he was trying to accomplish with The Meyerowitz Stories. And Baumbach can get a little skittish when talking about his movies and himself – like any normal person would – but it’s pretty obvious even Baumbach knows this movie is special.

The Meyerowitz Stories is currently playing at the New York Film Festival, as well as his partner’s film, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, a movie that is also getting rave reviews. This is the first time the pair has had competing films (after collaborating many times) and as Baumbach admits, yes, it’s weird. Ahead, Baumbach also discusses who else he’d have loved to have made a filmmaking documentary about in the same style of De Palma. (It’s a legitimate “what could have been” reveal)...

...When it comes to a documentary based on a filmmaker, I’ve heard the phrase, “Well, it’s no De Palma,” used a few times. That’s got to be a nice feeling that you’ve made a documentary based on a filmmaker that’s so well received.

Well, it’s nice to hear. I love it. That’s a project that I can un-complicatedly talk about because I feel both proud of what we did with it, but also, obviously, it’s a celebration of Brian. Brian’s work speaks for itself. We didn’t create an advertisement for Brian, which some of these very entertaining documentaries sometimes feel like. You know, they’re there to remind you how important this person was. And I felt like, whether you know Brian or not, that would be clear by watching the movie. But also that wasn’t what we were setting out to do. But I loved working on it because it just meant picking cool Brian De Palma clips to go with what he’s saying – it’s a pretty good day at work.

Could you do something like that with someone else?

Well, yeah. I mean, it’s obviously singular to Brian. I think, yeah, there are people I wish I had actually done it with, people who I got to know who passed away who I loved talking to and talking about movies. Jake Paltrow and I and Brian are just very close, close friends. And the thing really is a document of our dinners, our hanging out, our asking him about what happened on this movie and what happened on this movie. I mean, we did it obviously in a more formalized way for the documentary, but it’s all stuff we talk about and talked about anyway.

So that’s obviously an important ingredient in why that feels so personal, in a way. I know from my own experience, and I know it from other people who I know who are well known and do interviews or whatever, it’s just, no offense, but you can’t kind of enter into the same kind of ease that you can with a friend – and a friend who does exactly the same thing as you. So that was really part of what makes that. I mean, you look at other great documents like Peter Bogdanovich’s interviews with directors…

Who you got to work with a couple years ago.

Yes, well, I’ve known Peter for a long, long time. And those are unbeatable, too, because they’re just so much about filmmaking. You have them answering the questions and talking about the things that are, I think, really about filmmaking. And that’s always, for me, the stuff that I’m most interested in reading or watching.

Who do you wish you would have gotten a chance to do a documentary with?

Mike Nichols. Bob Altman. I got to know them pretty well, and I think they both would have made – and very much in their own ways – you could have done an interesting, great version of what we did with Brian.

“For me, when I was a kid, it was Blade Runner, it was Tron, it was The Shining,” Leto told Rotten Tomatoes. “It was these kind of elevated genre movies really blew my mind, as well as films like Clockwork Orange and Scorsese [movies] and the early work of Brian De Palma. But Tron is another one that I feel like is a world that we’re not done with yet. There’s so much more to explore and to see there. I would absolutely love to expand upon the world of Tron and see what we could do to bring that to life.”