PART OF INDIEWIRE'S AFTERNOON TALK SERIES, MODERATED BY ANNE THOMPSON

![]() Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website. Here is the latest news: |
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E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com
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Recent Headlines
a la Mod:
Listen to
Donaggio's full score
for Domino online
De Palma/Lehman
rapport at work
in Snakes
De Palma/Lehman
next novel is Terry
De Palma developing
Catch And Kill,
"a horror movie
based on real things
that have happened
in the news"
Supercut video
of De Palma's films
edited by Carl Rodrigue
Washington Post
review of Keesey book
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Exclusive Passion
Interviews:
Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario
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De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002
De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006
Enthusiasms...
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense
Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule
The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold
Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!
Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy
Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site
Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records
Five years ago, you brought to “Redacted” to Venice, instant-film on the war in Iraq. Now you return to the thriller.
"It’s been years since I did this kind of movie. I found this material and I started to see the images of the story: an exciting adventure. For the music I called Pino Donaggio, who's been with me on so many films, from "Dressed to Kill" to "Body Double." The thriller is a genre that allows me to stage my visions. In "Passion" there is a terrifying dream sequence: a ballet, "The Afternoon of a Faun" choreographed by Jerome Robbins, which fits perfectly in the film."
You are a regular at the Venice Film Festival.
"The public has always welcomed my films. I love Venice and I frequently attend as a guest of my friend Pino Donaggio."
With Scorsese, Lucas, and Spielberg, you founded the New Hollywood. Do you visit with them these days?
"We were friends in the seventies and eighties. We came a long way together. Every now and then we'll see each other. But each of us has our own world. We live in different places, do different things. I continued my research and I now have relationships with younger directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson. I love and I attend this generation, living in Greenwich Village. We meet, we exchange scripts and advice."
Who is your heir? "Tarantino. He always does visually exciting things. I admire the visionary talents of Christopher Nolan. But apart from the blockbuster special effects, there are few films told in pictures. It is as if we are at the end of a way of storytelling".
When you were 30 you directed Orson Welles in "Get To Know Your Rabbit."
"Welles is a great example of what not to do in Hollywood. A master filmmaker who worked with me, for two weeks, because he needed money for his films. It is not easy to immediately make your masterpiece and spend the rest of your life trying to get back to that peak. At the time of "Citizen Kane" he was considered a money machine, but when he came out from the circle of Hollywood he suffered. He was a masterful director and an actor who could do everything. Fascinating storyteller."
You are also a director who divides and causes debate.
"I've always been an avant-garde auteur outside of the establishment. I remember a headline in the New York Times: "Here's another film by De Palma to argue about." The public knows that I do not pull back from uncomfortable subjects that are not politically correct, I'm not a member of the Academy. This means nothing to me. I know what's right and wrong when I film, the rest does not concern me."
Are a filmmaker’s films like children, all the same?
"Sometimes you do certain films because they are the only ones the business allows you. Sometimes you're in a low moment of your career and you have to accept the proposals. Sometimes you do films that are not exactly what you want. Sometimes great successes allow you to finance a film that is important to you that no one wants: thanks to "The Untouchables" there exists "Casualties of War". There are films ahead of their time, cut down and then re-evaluated. Others that I would like to have not made due to the circumstances or reactions. I’ve made so many different films. Not all I like, but I love them all."
A shot in the trailer shows Rapace in front of a poster for the ballet, The Afternoon Of A Faun. Last May, we learned that instead of going to a movie, as she does in Love Crime, in Passion Rapace's character attends a ballet. It appears that the ballet is the appropriately erotic and scandalous Afternoon Of A Faun.
SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE TRAILER FROM AROUND THE WEB
The Wall Street Journal
"Take a large portion of Basic Instinct, add a healthy helping of Eyes Wide Shut, mix in a bit of Wall Street, sprinkle on the last two 'Sherlock Holmes' female leads (Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace) and heat to the temperature of Body Double and what do you get? Maybe Brian De Palma’s latest film, Passion?"
Vulture
"Passion is Brian De Palma's remake of the recent French thriller Love Crime, but since this new teaser trailer is brief enough, we prefer to see the movie through our own specific lens: Obviously, this is a sequel to both Mean Girls and Prometheus. Noomi Rapace has clearly escaped the dangerous aliens and made her way to a lesbian business planet where Rachel McAdams, as Regina George, lives in exile. Very quickly, after a constant diet of corporate-training videos and sexually charged, Black Swan–themed slumber parties, Regina George is entrapping Noomi in devious mind games (watch out for her "So you agree?" and four-way phone-conversation gambits, Noomi!) and from then on, it's just a matter of time before they're stroking each others' faces and engaging in masked cunnilingus. Shut down the world! We have found the perfect movie."
Wired
"It’s not as crazy as the scene in Prometheus where Noomi Rapace’s character performs surgery on herself, but things do get kind of weird for the Swedish actress midway into the new trailer for Passion."
Jezebel
"If you're a Brian De Palma fan (and why wouldn't you be?), you know that a lot of his movies feature vaguely threatening women doing vaguely threatening things. Sometimes, those things are not always what they seem, WINK WINK (I'm winking, fyi), which means that there's a twist, or what M. Night Shyamalan would haughtily call a paradigm shift. There's no reason to suspect that De Palma's latest pyscho-sexual thriller, Passion, will be any different, as it features a gleefully self-centered Rachel McAdams and her lover (?), played by a strangely quiet Noomi Rapace. Intrigue and nakedness no doubt ensue."
Hollywood Outbreak
It takes a lot to wake me up from my emotional slumber, but I applaud the Toronto International Film Festival (let’s just call them TIFF) for giving me my daily cup of cinematic Joe with the Official Trailer to Brian De Palma’s new film Passion."
Rachel Fox
"My friend curated a selection of his own unique cocktails, all named after Brian de Palma films. Can't wait to tell him about PASSION. Yum!"
Movieline
"Watching the trailer for Brian De Palma's upcoming film Passion, I get the feeling that he could be a fan of SCTV's classic Whispers of the Wolf Ingmar Bergman parody. Yes, I know that De Palma's erotic thriller is based on the late Alain Corneau's final film Love Crime (2010), about two international business women locked in a power struggle — but there's something about Noomi Rapace's vacant stare in the first scenes of the trailer that reminds me of the great Andrea Martin's performance in the SCTV comedy gem. (You can see both videos after the jump.) And Rapace's co-star Rachel McAdams strikes me as a more vulpine version of the also-great Catherine O'Hara. I couldn't help but notice that both clips feature masks, by the way, although based on the contents of the sex drawer that gets opened in the Passion trailer, De Palma's movie is going to be way kinkier than anything that ever ran on Count Floyd's Monster Chiller Horror Theater."
INTERVIEW: He'd need a good disability insurance. But in your profession a blocked nose can't be helpful either. What would you do?
HERFURTH : During my last week of shooting with Brian De Palma I got an allergic reaction. The night before my most important scene, with the most English-language text, which I'd preped for weeks! But if I'd called in sick, the whole crew would have had to suspend shooting for the day. That's incredibly expensive, one should only do that in case of absolute emergency. Otherwise: go act!
INTERVIEW: Would you say you get sick out of sheer excitement?
HERFURTH: I don't think so. But it's true that before an emotional scene I get unusually sad or even cry. And then I remember that my subconscious is also rehearsing the scene. It's like I'm always double-checking whether I can call up a particular emotion.
INTERVIEW: Sounds tough.
HERFURTH: That's my job.
NYFF will open with the world premiere of Ang Lee's highly anticipated Life Of Pi, and close with the world premiere of Robert Zemeckis' Flight. Other films include Alain Resnais' You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, Léos Carax's Holy Motors, Olivier Assayas' Something In The Air, Michael Haneke's Amour, and Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha. Resnais films bookend the NYFF's 50 years, as his film, Muriel, Or The Time Of Return, screened at the very first festival in 1963, according to the article.