PROMISES NOT TO LET BRIAN DE PALMA'S VOICE BE SILENCED
"We've gotta preserve films made by men." That is the skewed perspective of the sketch above from an upcoming episode of IFC's Portlandia (this one will air February 9th). "If you look at a newspaper, blog, television show," begins one of the two male programmers in the sketch, "what do we hear about? Women in film." The small group of men in the audience nod in agreement. Soon after, the programmer played by Fred Armisen begins by pulling from a container one of the audience's anonymous suggestions of films and directors to showcase: "I see the name Brian De Palma." [Applause] Turning to a young boy in the audience, he asks him if he's heard of Brian De Palma. "No. I was born in 2003." The other programmer (played by Carrie Brownstein) chimes in, "So, you've probably only heard about female film directors." They bring up Kathryn Bigelow, and the boy nods in agreement. After riffing on her, the Armisen male gets animated: "Brian De Palma is this guy who worked overtime to make movies." Brownstein: "Carrie. The Untouchables. Scarface." Armisen: "Do you guys know these movies? No, not so much. Well, we're going to educate you." Brownstein: "We will not let his voice be silenced."
Hot on the heels of 
Piper Laurie will be on hand at the 
The photo at left, taken by Marion Curtis, shows Brian De Palma with Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks at a luncheon hosted by Paramount Pictures this past Tuesday to celebrate the studio's National Board of Review award winners (Scorsese and Cocks won best adapted screenplay for Silence). The three have been friends, of course, for many many years. Cocks did the documentary-within-the-film for De Palma's Sisters, and the two are also credited together with rewriting George Lucas' opening crawl for Star Wars (back when it was just called Star Wars). In 1998, Cocks co-wrote De Palma's unrealized project Nazi Gold.
