PRINT THE LEGEND
But what has happened to Print The Legend, De Palma's proposed Iraq-themed follow-up to Redacted? De Palma said he would love to experiment with these new forms of storytelling again, "but we couldn't get it financed. No one wants to make this kind of anti-war [film] now." Print The Legend had been announced by The Film Farm at Cannes last May, along with an untitled political thriller written by De Palma, with the understanding that Print The Legend would be made first. One can guess that if no one wants to finance an anti-war picture right now, investors might be similarly wary about financing a political thriller by the same man who has made his views on the current war in Iraq abundantly clear. While De Palma said that he still has no title for said political thriller, he was able to provide a clue as to what it is about (which he nevertheless presented in the capitalized form of a title): "Sex and Lies on the Champaign Trail."

CAPONE RISING, AND DE NIRO...
I also asked De Palma if he thought Capone Rising might get off the ground again (that project was stalled over questions about who owns the rights to the property). De Palma said it's "always possible-- it's a very good script." When I mentioned there had been rumors that Robert De Niro may appear in the film as the Mayor of Chicago, De Palma replied, "Haven't heard that one."

OTHER TIDBITS: LUDIVINE SAGNIER

A couple of weeks ago, Ludivine Sagnier, now appearing in Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut In Two, was interviewed by Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle. Sagnier mentioned a conversation she'd had with De Palma while auditioning for a role in one of his films (which must have been The Black Dahlia). Sagnier recalled:

I auditioned once for a part with Brian De Palma, but he decided he didn't need a European actress for the role. But I remember he said, "Why don't you learn better English, learn a proper accent, and come down to L.A.?" And I was like, "No, I'm sorry, sir. I don't want that." And he was like, "Come on, you lazy cow." And I said, "No, it's not a question of being lazy. I just want to blossom in nice roles, whatever the geography." It's very difficult, the path of young actresses. For example, Scarlett Johansson started out to be a very indie actress, with very edgy roles. But even she - it seems like, ooh, suddenly something has reached her, and that, ooh, she's falling into the trap of too much exhibition, too much money, too much advertisement. And I want to say, "Oh, slow down girl! Slow down! Life is so long! Don't take it as a sprint. Take it as a marathon."

SNOOP DOG & JAKE SULLY
Finally, here are two more little tidbits, courtesy of Rado. Snoop Dog is currently on tour, and the screens behind the stage are showing clips from Scarface edited with Snoop-reenacted versions of them. Rado also notes that the main character in James Cameron's upcoming 3-D extravaganza Avatar is named Jake Sully. Of course, the main character in De Palma's Body Double was named Jake Scully, but there is another odd connection here in the fact that Gale Anne Hurd, who was once married to Cameron and once married to De Palma, has produced projects for both directors (but neither Body Double nor Avatar). Hurd, no longer married to either director, is currently producing The Boston Stranglers for De Palma to direct.

Brian De Palma kicked off the week by reminding us to always be assertive; to seize every opportunity. He spoke of meeting young filmmakers who complained about their lack of money and studio attention, or worse, filmmakers who did not take charge of their own careers. De Palma feels that breakthroughs in video technology over the past 10 years has erased any lingering excuses. "If you can’t go get a digital camera and get some actors together," he asked, "why are you here?" However, his best advice was regarding clear communication on set. "Be careful," he told us, "Not with what you’re saying, but what they’re hearing. Red to one means blue to another." Solid advice.

On September 10, 2008, to celebrate Brian De Palma's 68th birthday on the 11th, the Swan Archives website was expanded to include newly-discovered, never-before-seen deleted footage and outtakes from his 1974 masterpiece, "Phantom of the Paradise." This new material is exclusive to the Swan Archives and, we believe, constitutes the most significant Phantom-related archival discovery ever. 
 
The footage includes, for the first time anywhere: 
 
- The entire sequence in the record factory, where Winslow comes out of the record press, runs across the factory, and is shot by the guard. 
 
- Multiple takes of Beef getting the plunger stuffed in his face. 
 
- The original title sequence, as it looked before the film's title was changed from "Phantom" to "Phantom of the Paradise". 
 
- Nearly all the footage that was deleted or modified in the wake of the "Swan Song" dispute, as it looked prior to deletion/modification. 
 
- Two complete takes of Phoenix doing "Special to Me" (including a brief on-camera exchange between Jessica Harper and Mr. De Palma.) 
 
Three complete takes of the Juicy Fruits doing "Goodbye Eddie", including never-before-seen dance steps and other shenanigans. 
 
And, as Winslow might say, "there's more! Much more!" About 30 minutes in all. 
 
Some of the footage can be found at http://www.swanarchives.org/Production_Outtakes.asp and the rest appears at http://www.swanarchives.org/Production_Fiasco.asp 

Scott Foundas filed a review of The Hurt Locker yesterday from Toronto at his LA Weekly blog: 

The Hurt Locker saves its most inspired strokes for last, when Renner returns home after his tour of duty and Bigelow, in a 10-minute sequence of pure cinema, creates a more palpable sense of the disorientation experienced by many a combat vet suddenly extracted from the war zone than Stop-Loss managed in its entirety. Finally, as Toronto hits the half-way mark, here is another movie worth getting excited about.

WELLS ANGRY ABOUT BUYER WARINESS
Jeffrey Wells is also raving from Toronto about The Hurt Locker:

Something is very wrong with life, the world, human nature and the film business when a movie this knock-down good is still hunting for distribution. I'm obviously aware of all the Iraq War films that died last year but this movie is something else. You don't shun movies like this. If you're a distributor and that's your judgment -- walk away, we can't sell it, we'll lose our shirts -- then you need to get out of the movie business and start selling refrigerators or cars. A buyer told me a little while ago that it only cost about $15 million or less. How could the numbers not work?

...I don't want to reveal too much here, but the only thing that didn't feel quite right was a close-to-the-end sequence when Renner goes home to his (divorced?) wife and kid, and right away we can spot the familiar syndrome of the war veteran who can't quite settle down and groove with a midle-class, comforts-of-home lifestyle. I don't want to register a major complaint about this; it doesn't work against the film as much as it fails to add anything significant. This is probably the best film I've seen at the Toronto Film Festival so far.

The Hurt Locker has since been picked up for U.S. distribution by Summit Entertainment.

Young writes in her review that "Hurt Locker's refusal to take a moral stance on the war should widen its audience to the U.S. military, while lowering its chance for a a major festival prize." (Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler won the Golden Lion at Venice-- can't wait to see that!) The Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik wrote an article for the site's Risky Business blog quoting publicists of various upcoming Iraq-themed films who say that, after the low box office of last year's Iraq-war films, they are doing everything they can to avoid using the work "Iraq" when promoting these films. Neil Burger's The Lucky Ones (the promising trailer for which you can watch at the top of this post), about three soldiers returning from the Gulf who end up renting a car together on the way home, will premiere at Toronto this Wednesday. Howard Cohen of Roadside Attractions, the company distributing the film, told Zeitchik that "'Iraq' is a dirty word in film marketing right now."

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times today ran a joint interview with Tony Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio about their upcoming Body Of Lies, which they both think, according to the article by Chris Lee, "will be the Iraq-war movie that finally draws a crowd." Lee writes that the film (which will open October 10) "presents the most stinging screen portrayal of American foreign policy by any Hollywood studio movie in recent memory. DiCaprio portrays Roger Ferris, an idealistic field agent operating out of Iraq and Jordan who resorts to elaborate subterfuge -- concocting a fictitious sleeper cell and staging a mock bombing -- to flush a terrorist mastermind out into the open." Lee writes:

KOEPP COMEDY A MODEST AFFAIR
Screen Daily has filed the first review of David Koepp's new film, Ghost Town, which premiered a couple of days ago at the Toronto fest. Calling it "a minor studio comedy," the review states that Koepp "has a light touch with the comic material and actors, and there's a sweetness to the supernatural storyline that gives the film its heart." Jeffrey Wells writes elsewhere that Ghost Town is "a playful mainstream studio wanker that has no business being in Toronto, really, except to satisfy the ambitions of its distributor, Paramount Pictures." Koepp collaborated with De Palma on a trio of films in the '90s: Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, and Snake Eyes.

LINKLATER PRESENTS A "DAZZLING" WELLES
Also of interest at Toronto, Richard Linklater's Me And Orson Welles has been reviewed by Screen Daily's Allan Hunter as "a sweetly entertaining putting-on-a-show period drama that celebrates a defining moment in the life of American theatre and one of its most iconoclastic stars." Hunter is particularly taken with Linklater's casting in the role of Orson Welles, writing:

If you are going to make a film about Orson Welles then you need an actor who can provide a brilliant impersonation of this colossus of the New York stage. They have found such an actor in Christian McKay who gives a superlative performance. He captures both the look and sound of Welles, convincing in every aspect from his sing song cadences to the mischievous twinkle that dances in his eyes. It is a performance that achieves the same kind of verisimilitude and depth that earned Philip Seymour Hoffman plaudits and a Best Actor Oscar for Capote.

Brian De Palma

WILLA HAS 'STAR QUALITY'