La Furia Umana

Didier Truffot / Brian De Palma avec Rudolf Arnheim

Benjamin Léon / L’écran dans l’écran : Notes sur le plan-séquence chez Brian De Palma

Daisuke Akusaka / Farce in slow motion

Eirik Frisvold Hanssen / To look, to respond: vantage points and mixed media in Brian De Palma’s 1960s and 2000s

Raquel Schefer / The Early Politics of Brian De Palma

Alain Hertay / Hi, Mom ! ou les simulacres

Julien Oreste / Two Sisters. Brian De Palma & Douglas Buck

Jessica Felrice / Dread And Time Travel

Covadonga G. Lahera / Efectos personales: la huella de Some Came Running en Blow Out

Carlos Losilla / Naturaleza uerta. A propósito de Dressed to Kill

Fredrik Gustafsson / Body Double

Kim Nicolini / The World Is Yours: Tony Montana’s Paradise Pie in Scarface

Nicole Brenez / L'impossible au sérieux

Sigismondo Domenico Sciortino / Dell'inevitabile e del multimediale

Adrien Clerc / Quand les corps font écrans

Guillaume Rouzaud / Au-delà de la suture

Ricardo Adalia Martín / La cuestión humana. Cinco apuntes sobre Passion

Louis Daubresse / Passion pour le Tout-Image

Toni D'Angela / Il testo im-possibile : Passion

Monica Munoz Marinero / John Litghow, a imagen y semejanza

The issue also has a section of essays about Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause.

The Projection Booth

The Fred Caruso interview begins around the 1:36 mark. Caruso tells the podcast that it was his idea to include the Mummers Parade in the film's final act, as well as the fireworks going off in the background. Caruso says there was a big question from the studio and producer George Litto about whether Nancy Allen's character should die at the end. But De Palma said, look, that's the ending. If they like it, fine, if not, so be it. He also mentions that De Palma drew his own storyboards and had his entire office filled with them, from the first scene to last.

The Nancy Allen interview begins around the 2:06 mark. She talks about the heart and warmth that John Travolta brought to what on the page was a very dark piece. She also talks about how she and editor Paul Hirsch thought Travolta had to save the girl, but "John and Brian said nope, that's not happening." She also talks about the remake of Carrie (which she doesn't seem to have seen at the time of the interview), saying she is not a fan of remakes. She doesn't see the point unless you can somehow make it better, and doesn't think that is possible with Carrie. She and Paul Verhoeven did a Q&A after a screening of Robocop last year, and when someone brought up the upcoming remakes of that film and last year's remake of his Total Recall, Verhoeven said, "It's very depressing. I should be dead." Allen laughed and said she really gets that. Allen also confirmed that it was really her scream in Blow Out.

At about the 2:42 mark, there is a conversation with Dennis Franz, who at first says he does not remember much about Blow Out, having only watched it once around the time it was first released. But after the host mentions some things, Franz begins to remember a little more, including the fact that it was shot in Philadelphia, where Franz met his future best friend, who happened to be De Palma's driver at that time. Franz recalls De Palma calling him as Dressed To Kill was in theaters, saying, "Looks like we have a hit on our hands." De Palma asked Franz if he was interested in a part in this new thing he was working on. After listing off some of the potential roles, De Palma laughed. "Why are you laughing?" Franz asked him. De Palma said he had this character named Manny Karp. Franz immediately said, "I'll take it. You're laughing about him, I like the name, I'll take it." Franz told the podcast that once De Palma starts a job, he crawls into his shell and focuses, while Allen, who De Palma was married to at the time, enjoyed being social and having people over, which weighed on De Palma a little bit after long days on the set.

ON 'THE DEMOLISHED MAN'
Farris: "The film rights belonged to a Hollywood wannabe who was in the hotel business. I don't recall his name. Brian [De Palma] was attached to write the screenplay and direct and the project was set up at Paramount. Mike Eisner thought Brian's script needed work, although he was thrilled with the project, etc. I was brought in at Brian's suggestion. Read his draft, which I thought was excellent. I did a 30-page treatment, adding new angles but not straying far from the novel. Brian okayed the treatment. I did the new screenplay. Next thing I knew [Frank] Yablans was involved, took the project away from Paramount and gave it to Fox. There were heavy-duty politics involved in this move. But Fox passed and Brian was irate. For mnore on that story, you would have to talk to Brian. He never mentioned The Demolished Man to me again."

ON DE PALMA'S EARLY LIFE AND AFFECT ON HIS CAREER TRAJECTORY
In the interview (which was conducted via e-mail), Dumas tells Farris, "A friend of mine -- a grad student in film studies at the time -- once had an opportunity to as Oliver Stone about De Palma; Stone replied that De Palma was 'the saddest person' he'd ever met. (I assume that by 'sad' he meant 'despondent,' rather than something like 'pathetic.') Did he strike you as a melancholy sort?"

Farris responds, "Brian was 36 when he made The Fury. I found him to be somewhat shy, not overly talkative but humorous and engaging when his guard is down, intensely observant but not judgmental, far too intelligent to be anything but annoyed by the Hollywood game, impatient with anything or anyone that caused him to lose focus. And, I think, disappointed that his career hadn't taken off like that of his friends Spielberg and Lucas. Friends, but rivals, in what Brian has referred to as 'The Competition'.

"A friend of mine since high school had played the female lead in Hi, Mom! and had briefed me on her experiences with him during filming. As a fledgling director he gave her a tough time. But he was younger then, and still unravelling the emotional knots of growing up in a prosperous but dysfunctional family. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze him. Adolescence wasn't paradise for most of us. But having heard from Brian about certain incidents in his early life, which are strictly his business and will not be related here, it's clear that they profoundly affected the direction, or trajectory if you will, his career has taken. For complex studies of where his fascination with, and terror of women has led him creatively, try watching Sisters, Dressed To Kill, and Raising Cain one after another.When Dumas asks how these things came up in the context of writing films together, Farris answers, "That grew out of discussions over lunches at Musso and Frank's, relevant to the script of The Fury and how much of the relationship between Gillian and her mom should be in the movie. Also there is something about me that often has near-strangers eager to talk about moments in their lives they wouldn't confess to a priest. Basically I guess I'm just a good and uncritical listener."

FARRIS & DUMAS DISCUSS OTHER DE PALMA FILMS
Dumas asks Farris what De Palma films he had seen prior to working on The Fury. "I had seen Sisters, Obsession and Carrie," replies Farris, "brilliant exercises in what can be done when you have almost no money to spend. Other than what my actress friend had told me about Hi, Mom! I didn't know anything about Brian's student-film years."

Dumas then continues, "Have you kept up with all of De Palma's movies since then? You mention Raising Cain, which I still think is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, like Preston Sturges remaking Psycho -- did you have a similar reaction to it? I wonder what you thought of the particularly political ones, like Casualties Of War and Redacted and even Snake Eyes, and I especially wonder what you thought of Scarface, given its initial failure and its unprecedented second life on home video."

Farris then responds, "Scarface is my second-favourite De Palma movie, after The Untouchables. It has a near-hallucinatory quality, wonderful script and a visual flair to make any of his rivals in 'The Competition' envious. I also liked The Bonfire Of The Vanities. That one was a lose-lose situation for Brian, based as it was on an overhyped, revered 'masterpiece.' If you don't 'get' Brian, then you hate the movie. Pauline, where were you when he needed you?

"Casualties Of War is another good one. Haven't seen Redacted. As for Cain, I think it's a minor masterpiece waiting in the wings to be properly acknowledged by film scholars. The only movie Brian has made, and at a very stressful time, that is so obviously about himself."

UNREALIZED PROJECT: 'WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN'
Near the beginning of the interview, while telling Dumas how The Fury came together as a film project, Farris mentions another adaptation he and De Palma had been working on together. While working on the screenplay for The Fury between 1975 and 1976, Farris says, agent Bob Bookman "put me together with another client, Brian De Palma, to work on an adaptation of the Mary Higgins Clark best-seller Where Are The Children? which Brian was attached to direct. I spent a couple of months on a screenplay that would work. By then Brian was bored with the project. Carrie had been released and was a big success and he wanted something more challenging than a fairly mild mystery. 'What are you working on?' he asked me.

"So on January 17 we all met in Frank's office, agreed that day on Kirk Douglas as the lead, called him, and then the real work began. Seven drafts of the screenplay later, Brian began filming on a beach in Chicago."

Where Are The Children? was eventually made in 1986 by director Bruce Malmuth, with the screenplay credited to Jack Sholder. The film starred De Palma's friend, the late Jill Clayburgh, who had played the female lead in De Palma's first film, The Wedding Party. The plot/storyline synopsis on the IMDB has a similarity or two with the plot of De Palma's Femme Fatale, regarding a woman who loses her children (they are later found dead). After being convicted of their murder and then having that conviction overturned, the film moves ahead "seven years later," where the woman has changed her identity and hair color, and has a new life married to a realtor. One day she opens the newspaper and is stunned to see her picture in the local section.

SPOILER ALERT: Femme Fatale has a woman who has a premonition that she has assumed the identity of a look-alike who has committed suicide following the death of her child. The story moves ahead "seven years later" where a paparazzo takes her picture and it gets plastered in the streets of Paris, causing her to fear retribution from the thieves she had swindled in her earlier life.

When asked by Dumas whether the scenes involving the song-and-dance couple were ever filmed, Farris tells him, "Donald O'Connor and, I believe, Gloria De Haven were signed to play the song-and-dance couple and construction was underway on their apartment set when they were cut from the script, a few days before we began shooting in Chicago." Dumas further asks whether any test footage might have been shot, and Farris answers, "Test footage on O'Connor and Gray? I don't think anyone tested for The Fury. Brian knew who he wanted and what they could do."

Farris indicated above that he wasn't quite sure about who the female half of the song-and-dance couple was. According to Dumas, Farris had originally stated that the female was Dolores Gray, but just before the booklet went to press, Farris told him he was mistaken, and that it was actually De Haven. However, according to a 2005 article at Classic Images, it was Vivian Blaine. The Classic Images article also suggests that the scene with the couple may have been shot and then left on the cutting room floor.

"The Fury starring Kirk Douglas and made at Fox cast Donald O'Connor and Vivian as a song and dance movie team, similar to Marge and Gower Champion," writes Classic Images' Colin Briggs. "With a very gory horror plot, it was based on the best selling novel of the same name. When the film was previewed it was way too long and as their parts were expendable (they both meet an extremely gory end) their scenes were excised. Vivian's comments: 'My fans were disappointed but have them know, the pay was tops.'” (Thanks to Bill Fentum for sending in this article a while back!)

WILLIAM FINLEY'S DUNWOODIE ASSASSINATION SCENE CUT DURING EDITING
Farris also reveals a couple of cut/altered scenes, saying that the bus ride in the final act was originally written as a ferryboat ride across Lake Michigan (it was cut due to "budget and logistic considerations," according to Farris). "as for locations," Farris tells Dumas, "Brian wanted to do the beach scene in the Chicago Museum of Art. No Chance. As you know, the scene with Dunwoodie shadowing the girls and tuning into Gillian psychically he later adapted to great effect for Dressed To Kill. Dunwoodie's assassination and a nice overhead shot of his sprawled body with beachgoers walking around it were cut in editing." (Note: this sounds very much like the way the death scene of the former Castro confidante killed by Tony Montana in the refugee camp near the beginning of Scarface was staged and shot. The character's physical features suggest that this dying figure could have been played by Finley himself.)

There's a lot more great stuff in this interview. I'll do a second post about it tomorrow.