Also discussed is Zsigmond's technique of flashing the film, which he did on Blow Out to create less contrast and more shadow detail. This is a technique Zsigmond had developed on previous film projects in order to compensate for the slower film stocks of the day. "I flashed certain things to get more speed out of the film, more shadow detail," Zsigmond tells Silberg. "If we had a big scene-- like the fireworks at the end of Blow Out, where we had to show a whole city block at the port-- I would flash the film at least 10 percent to get a good exposure and detail in the shadows." The article goes on to explain that this was a risky process, involving the threading of exposed and unprocessed negative onto a printer. If there was any mistake made, or some kind of problem with the negative, a large amount of work could be lost for good. Fortunately (and incredibly), this never seemed to happen.

"THE FEWER CUTS YOU HAVE IN A FILM, THE MORE INTERESTING IT IS TO WATCH"
Also discussed is De Palma's penchant for single-take scenes:

"We would sometimes do shots that lasted four or five minutes," the cinematographer recalls. "Brian is very good at that-- he knows exactly what he wants. It's very easy for me to light those kinds of shots on his movies, because I know exactly where he wants the camera to go. And I know he's going to use it all because he loves using those shots-- abd there's no way to cut away. Sometimes he'd go five, six, eight or even 10 takes, knowing that the scene would play out as one shot on the screen."

ZSIGMOND: "I NEVER LIKED THE LOOK OF SOME OF THOSE SHOTS AS MUCH AS I DID IN THE BLU-RAY"
The article also discusses the 360-degree shot in Jack's sound studio. "The space wasn't big enough to lay down tracks," Kiesser tells Silberg. "We had the camera in the middle of the room, and we kept panning around and zooming to keep up with the action. In those days, the camera didn't have a battery; it was powered from an external source, so we had to twist the power cable around the tripod and then untwist it during the shot."

Also discussed is the use of the Little Big Crane, which was designed by key grip Richard "Dicky" Deats. "The Little Big Crane let us get into places we might not have been able to access with a larer crane," Kiesser tells Silberg. "We had also used it a lot with Vilmos on Heaven's Gate. This was before remote heads, so I would ride the crane and time the camera movement to the crane's position. My strongest memory of [shooting Blow Out] is sitting up there in the cold and wind."

For the fireworks scenes at the end, according to the article, the production used real fireworks for the wider shots. Zsigmond, who notes that the fireworks were more blown out (or overexposed) than he would have liked, recalls to Silberg, "I brought in as many big lights as I could to bring up the darker areas. I never liked the look of some of those shots as much as I did in the Blu-ray that came out recently. I wasn't involved in timing it, but Brian must have been, or somebody who understood what we were going for, because the colors are more intense than we could get them [photochemically]. Today, we would finish with a DI, and we would have more control." The Criterion transfer of Blow Out was, in fact, supervised by De Palma.

Silberg's article also briefly covers the heartbreaking shot of Jack cradling Sally's body as the camera seems to spin around them:

At the end of the chase, Jack cradles Sally in his arms as the camera spins 360 degrees and reveals the fireworks above them. The shot was one of the film's few optical effects. "The production couldn't possibly create real fireworks in the sky as we spun the camera," Zsigmond explains. "We put the actors and their lighting on a turntable in front of a bluescreen, and we positioned the camera on one side of the turntable facing the bluescreen, where it remained static as we turned the actors around 360 degrees. Because the lighting was moving with the actors, it looked as if the camera was circling them. The fireworks were added in post."

"IT ISN'T IMPORTANT THAT WHAT WE'RE WATCHING IS 'REAL'"
The article concludes with Zsigmond expressing, in Silberg's words, "a particular fondness for the unabashedly stylish films he shot with De Palma" (the other films are Obsession, The Bonfire Of The Vanities, and The Black Dahlia). "I've worked on so many films where we aimed to be 'real,' and we would never have done some of the shots I did with Brian," Zsigmond tells Silberg. "But in a movie by Brian De Palma-- or Hitchcock-- it isn't important that what we're watching is 'real.' We're telling a story, and the most important thing is that the audience has fun watching it."

The magazine, as usual, is worth buying not just for the great article, but also for the terrific array of photographs. The cover story interview with Roger Deakins about his work on Andrew Niccol's new sci-fi thriller In Time is also worth checking out. It's a steal at only $5.95.

The show was a tremendous hoot; the BROS are a talented and dedicated bunch, and it was a true multimedia extravaganza. (And the show sold out; I assume it did just as well the next night.) Basically, they screened the film, but every time the film got to a musical number, the film would stop, and they’d perform it live, with a live band, etc. Then, the film would resume from the point at which the musical number ended. (So they weren’t shadowcasting; the film and the live stuff was never happening simultaneously.) They had great costumes, and were kind of witty about the whole thing. For example, when Winslow plays Faust at the piano, as you know, the camera circles around him, as it does around Carrie and Billy as they dance. So the BROS had Winslow and the piano on a big lazy Susan, and a couple of stagehands rotated the piano as Winslow played, so you got the same spinning effect, but without the camera. During the montage sequence, as Winslow’s playing and dreaming of Phoenix, they projected a montage sequence that looked very similar, except that it had THEIR Phoenix in it, rather than Jessica Harper. Beef’s electrocution was accomplished with a neon lightning bolt that came down from the rafters. They had a full size replica of the Beach Bums’ car, which did a lap through the audience (up and down the aisles), before (sort of) exploding. They managed to be both extremely faithful to the film, and very original and creative at the same time.

(Thanks to Ari!)

Elsewhere in the book, Lithgow recalls the first time he met De Palma, when the filmmaker, who could be heard cackling wildly during a Lithgow performance on stage in Princeton, New Jersey in the summer of 1966. Lithgow writes that De Palma "was effusive in his praise" after the show, and years later, suggested Lithgow to the filmmaker Paul Williams, who was looking for someone to play "a patrician Harvard undergraduate dope dealer" in the film, Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues.

This led to Lithgow spending a flash of a month in Hollywood, finishing off with a disastrous casting meeting with Terrence Malick and Lynn Stalmaster, who were looking at Lithgow to potentially take on the role that eventually went to Sam Shepard in Days Of Heaven. But prior to that, Lithgow writes about meeting with De Palma and Raquel Welch for a part in what was obviously Fuzz. Here is the excerpt from Lithgow's book:

I even had lunch with Brian De Palma and Raquel Welch at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel as part of Brian's (failed) plot to get me approved for a movie he ended up not directing. Me? Playing comedy sex scenes with Raquel Welch? Had the world gone crazy? It was as if I had fallen down the rabbit hole.

In a 1980 Rolling Stone interview with Jean Vallely, De Palma used a story about casting Fuzz to help illustrate the distorted ways Hollywood views success, and how a filmmaker easily gets wrapped up in that distorted view:

I was in California, at the bottom of my career. I had a picture on the shelf, Get To Know Your Rabbit. I couldn't get arrested. I was trying to get Sisters off the ground, but it was hopeless and I realized I'd have to raise the money independently. Then Marty Ransohoff offered me Fuzz. It was a funny New York cop picture, and I thought I could do something with it. We started to pick the cast; I went after Burt Reynolds and got him in the picture. Then I was told the studio heads wanted to cast Yul Brynner and Raquel Welch for the foreign market. [De Palma's eyes light up.] Yul Brynner and Raquel Welch in a New York street-cop movie! I went to the writer and producer, and we met with Ransohoff. He said, 'I've got United Artists on the phone, and if you don't put those fucking people in the picture, United Artists won't finace it. You guys better go back and talk it over.' [De Palma shakes his head.] Anyway, I ended up not doing the picture, but it's that kind of thinking-- you're in a desperate situation, you gotta have a job, you're offered a lot of money... It affects you. I think the only way not to be affected by it is to try to keep away from that kind of crafty, commercial, capitalistic world as much as possible. The key to that kind of system is, 'What's his price? How can he be had? How can we get him interested?' And there are a lot of people a lot smarter than I am who think about nothing else twenty-four hours a day. I'm smart enough to know they might find some way to get to me. You just try to keep on a different road.

De Palma a la Mod reader Chris took his family to see "An Evening with John Lithgow" in San Francisco last month. During the Q&A session afterward, Chris asked Lithgow if he had anything to relate about working on De Palma's Raising Cain. According to Chris, "He said that he had been on the phone with De Palma two hours earlier, the first time he’d spoken with him in some time (did he say 12 years?). De Palma had called him because he’d just read the book. Lithgow was effusive in his praise for De Palma, saying that he’d loved working with him and that the director’s extreme thouroughness and preparation created an atmosphere in which an actor could relax, knowing that he was in good hands; he mentioned Hitchcock’s having planned and storyboarded things to such a degree that the actual filming seemed only a follow-through on the creative work already done, and that De Palma was the same way. He said De Palma was one of three 'old school' directors he’d worked for — with George Roy Hill and Bob Fosse — and a master craftsman and that, further, he chose extremely talented people for all aspects of the production (he particularly mentioned Vilmos Zsigmond)."
(Thanks Chris!)

IS 'CARRIE' THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR A CAMP FILM EVENT?
The Chicagoist's Eric Hehr asks, "Is Carrie really the right choice for a camp film event? Does an Oscar nominated film that has become a staple of its genre deserve to be reduced down to the status of a B-movie and exploited for cheap laughs by comedic commentary?" Hehr continues:

Granted, aspects of Carrie have not aged well (mainly Travolta’s hair), and the horror genre is exceedingly fickle to begin with. However, we’re not talking about Killer Clowns From Outer Space or Motel Hell here. We’re talking about one of the few horror films nominated for Academy Awards (Spacek and Laurie received nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively). Carrie garnished an immense amount of positive reviews when it was released, grossing more than 18 times its budget ($33.8 million) and being hailed as one of the best films of 1976.

Hehr makes some great points, all of which I agree with, yet the idea of Laurie being present at such an event seems an appropriate irony. Laurie writes in her memoir that she originally connected to the Carrie screenplay by reading it as comedy. Viewing the film camped up with what Hehr calls "Mystery Science Theater 3000-esque commentary" should make for a very interesting Q&A with Laurie afterward.

Others have noted a De Palma influence on The Skin I Live In. DVD Talk's Jason Bailey concludes that a De Palma comparison doesn't hold water, yet his argument suggests structural links to De Palma's Femme Fatale:

The Skin I Live In has been diagnosed in countless reviews as the Spanish filmmaker's homage to Hitchcock, and on the surface, that's true enough; you can hear it in Alberto Iglesias's gloriously, almost deliriously over-the-top score, and you can see it in the dirty kick of certain scenes that alternately call to mind Hitch and his cinematic pupil, Brian De Palma.

The A.V. Club's Noel Murray and Scott Tobias suggest a cross between Cronenberg and De Palma, while a discussion last May at Plunderphonics brought in comparisons to De Palma's Femme Fatale and Body Double.

The interview also touches on Dressed To Kill and several other films and filmmakers Litto has been involved with. In other news, Arrow Video will release a regular DVD edition of Obsession on January 30, 2012. This past summer, Arrow released a Blu-Ray edition of the film.

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At the time, Brian De Palma was such a hard-on for me. I was just really losing my shit, to work with him (on Femme Fatale). I was on set for as much as I could be, which was probably a month, and I only shot for four or five days. But, I did do that one, long steadi-cam shot that is the Brian De Palma signature. That was so awesome for me. It was following me! Who even cares about the rest of the movie? No. In my formative years, Brian De Palma taught me by watching him. From when I was 18 to 25, there was nothing better than Brian.

According to The Playlist's Jeff Otto, Tarantino said that with Human Zoo, "Rie Rasmussen makes an electrifying directorial debut. It’s as shocking and violent as it is moving and charming." It is worth noting that Rasmussen has worked with cinematographer Thierry Arbogast on all three of her formulative films, first meeting him on De Palma's Femme Fatale, then working together on Besson's Angel-A before shooting Rasmussen's Human Zoo. Rasmussen told Collider that her next project as director will be Good and Evil, which is written by Nicolas Constantine as an adaptation of Philip Carlo's novel The Night Stalker, based on the life of Richard Ramirez. Prior to Rasmussen's involvement in that project, James Franco had been rumored to be interested in playing the lead role.