BRIAN DE PALMA'S PRACTICAL VIEWS ON FILMMAKERS & FILMMAKING BEYOND AGE 60
Perhaps because Quentin Tarantino has publicly stated for the past several years that he will retire from filmmaking after his tenth film (which he is currently prepping to make), the question keeps popping up as to whether or not Brian De Palma has "retired" from filmmaking. As far as I know, De Palma has never made any such a proclamation, and I wouldn't expect to hear any such words. Tarantino aside, how many filmmakers ever make any such announcement? In between Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut are twelve years in which Stanley Kubrick worked on several project ideas, and in the 1990s, nearly went into production on Aryan Papers. Kubrick passed away shortly before Eyes Wide Shut was finally released, but he was working creatively all the way to the end. De Palma, throughout his career, has habitually worked on screenplays in the mornings, and we can guess that he contines that practice today. Maybe one of those will become a film, maybe one will turn into a novel. Who knows? We have seen that sometimes a project will get to the development stage and then fall apart for whatever reason, and sometimes things come together very quickly, and he suddenly finds himself filming in Berlin with Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. Sometimes the money falls out while already on location in Almería and the whole production is waiting around in hotels for the money to come in so they can continue filming. You just never know. Director Alan Rudolph hadn't made a film for fifteen years, and then in 2017, Ray Meets Helen shows up, starring his regular player Keith Carradine. Creative people are going to create, and maybe we'll see it, maybe we won't.
De Palma's monologue in the Baumbach/Paltrow documentary De Palma was filmed when De Palma was 69 years old. Here's what he says near the end of the movie:
Having studied a lot of directors and having lived now to practically being 70, you see that your creative periods are in – most directors who are in their 30’s, their 40’s, and their 50’s. And obviously, they can go on and make another twenty movies or ten movies. But you’ll probably only be talking about those movies they made in their 30’s, their 40’s, and their 50’s. You know, and I’ve always thought Hitchcock was a great example. Because, you know, after Vertigo, and Psycho – and you can talk about The Birds all you want, and all the other movies he made after that, and then of course the critical establishment finally caught up with him and started to write about what a genius he was – except those movies aren’t as good as the ones he made in his 30’s, his 40’s, and his 50’s. You’ve got to be a strong, physical person to do it. It physically wears you down. There’s no question about it. I think William Wyler said, you know, “When you can’t walk anymore, you’ve got to stop.” The thing about making movies is, every mistake you made is up there on the screen – everything you didn’t solve, every shortcut you made, you will look at it the rest of your life. So, it’s like a record of the things that you didn’t finish, basically.
Posted by Geoff
at 3:31 PM CDT
Updated: Monday, June 12, 2023 6:53 PM CDT
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Updated: Monday, June 12, 2023 6:53 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (2) | Permalink | Share This Post