There were massive lines outside the Cinematheque in Paris tonight for the screening of Blow Out. 15 minutes before the film the line was almost 100 yards (and growing). Massive security with armed police were on hand.

De Palma seemed in great spirits for screening of Blow Out the at the Cinematheque retrospective tonight. The event has long been sold out.

After a standing ovation De Palma gave a five minute introduction to the movie. He joked about how he was allowed to do anything after making a big hit with Dressed to Kill. "And they would regret in dearly once they saw it."

De Palma talked about how the executives told him "A movie about a soundman.. That doesn't sound like a big hit like Dressed to Kill.."

But once Travolta decided he was interested in the part they told him to make the film "bigger and bigger". "So I made it real big", De Palma added. "And spent a lot of money. And after we screened it for them they were in shock."

The film played beautifully and the crowd laughed in the right places. The print looked pristine with detail and vivid reds and blues. The ending still holds up as one of cinemas most haunting and powerful comments on America.

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The director did not abandon the cinema. He is currently working on a new feature film, Domino. "I do not know yet when the film will come out, we had a lot of problems with the financing", laments Brian De Palma. But finally, after many starts and stops, "the last stroke of the crank took place last week".

Speaking of which, De Palma and Lehman were at the Fnac des Ternes bookstore yesterday, and Nowayfarer Guitarist posted five videos from the event and discussion on YouTube. In part 5, De Palma is asked about Domino, and responds, "Oh boy... a very difficult situation. A film that was underfinanced. I was in many hotel rooms waiting for the money so that we could continue shooting. I was in many fabulous cities, waiting in hotel rooms. I was here a hundred days in Europe, and shot thirty. However, somehow we managed to make a movie out of this completely chaotic production situation, and hopefully you'll be seeing it in your local cinemas sometime in the future."

BBC News adds a bit more from De Palma, in regards to the #MeToo movement: "It will be interesting to see when women start controlling the aesthetic, what is going to happen. It would be interesting to see if their gaze is so much different than ours. Because a lot of movies are about the male gaze, what the male sees."

The quotes from Le Parisien caught on like wildfire today all over the place, with some other aspects of that interview being sprinkled into the articles here and there. Here's the whole thing, with assistance from Google translation:

The plot of your novel "Are Snakes Necessary" was supposed to be a movie?

Brian De Palma. I had tons of ideas I'd written over the years, thinking about scenarios. And then one day, I told Susan: What if we made a novel? I gave her the intrigues and the dialogues, and Susan developed the characters. When you write for the cinema, you do not work the characters too much, because they depend a lot on the actors who will embody them ...

Susan, was it hard working with Brian?

Susan Lehman. No, it was very pleasant! Brian has millions of ideas all the time. We tried to have fun with each other and we often arrived there.

Brian, it makes you happy, this retrospective at the Cinémathèque?

B. de P. I am very honored that the French recognize my work, as they did in 2000 at the Center Pompidou. That's why we published our book in France and not in the United States: because you seem to understand me better than "those" Americans.

Of all your movies, which ones are your favorites?

B. de P. I hate this question ...

So which one is the most undervalued?

B. de P. "Casualties Of War", which had bad reviews at its release, while I think it is the best movie about the Vietnam War.

And you like "Scarface"?

B. de P. "Scarface" is a wonderful film, very special. This is an example of a perfectly successful collaboration between different talents.

You have just finished "Domino", a film about terrorism, shot in Denmark, Belgium and Spain ...

B. de P. It was a horrible experience. The film was underfunded, it was far behind, the producer did not stop lying to us and did not pay some of my staff. I don't know at all if this feature will be released.

But you like it?

B. de P. Yes, it is good.

S.L. It's very good.

"Passion", your last movie, dates from 2012. Why did you wait five years before making a movie?

B. de P. If you do not just make a blockbuster, it's very hard to redo a movie ... I could never have done "Casualties Of War" (in 1989) if I had not done "The Untouchables"(in 1987).

You're mad at Hollywood ...

B. from P. Hollywood has changed. Dinosaur and superhero movies are made for kids! You can not make serious movies over there ... unless you are Spielberg and you are the studio. After "Mission: Impossible", when Tom (Cruise) said he wanted to make another one, I said, "Are you kidding?" Why do I want to make another movie like this? ... After that, I did "Snake Eyes", "Mission to Mars" and there I said: Stop. I was tired of these big movies, where you fight with the studios to know how much the special effects cost.

What movies did you recently like?

S.L. We love "A French village". We watched all the seasons and we will see them again.

Brian, have you been offered to make movies for Netflix?

B. de P. Yes, but I need a big screen because I am a visual stylist.

Since October, the world of cinema only talks about the Weinstein affair ...

B. de P. I'm writing a film about this scandal, a project I'm talking about with a French producer. My character won't be named Harvey Weinstein, but it will be a horror film, with a sexual aggressor, and it will take place in the film industry.

De Palma / Hitchcock part. MMMMMDCCCLXXXVIII

The picture immediately below accompanied an article posted at Le Parisien

Greg Cwik, Slant Magazine

First Reformed's intellectualized, detached, and emotionally reticent notion of suicide recalls Bresson's The Devil, Probably. Bresson, along with Ozu and Dreyer, formed a trinity at the heart of Schrader's book Transcendental Style in Film, and the filmmaker has faithfully returned to them again and again, channeling them in most of his directorial efforts, working within the so-called “Tarkovsky Ring” (films made within this ring will find commercial distribution, films like those of Bresson and Roberto Rossellini, while films outside of this ring are destined for museum and festival existences). Schrader was raised in an austerely Calvinist home, but at the age of 17 he converted to cinema. First Reformed is about Schrader's film theories, about the transcendent possibilities of the medium, as much as it is about religion.

The film is, even by Schrader's standards, a bleak endeavor, concerned with the durability of spirituality, its susceptibility to corruption and radicalism, and its place in modern American life: with the slow decay of the planet, as well as with pain, penance, and the validity of suicide and murder. Invidious, at times startlingly beautiful, and at others startlingly ugly, it encapsulates Schrader's cinematic philosophies, the testament of a man who worships film. It's a churlish and controlled film, suffused with dolor yet agleam with the prospect of hope, each assiduous and apoplectic composition as neat and orderly as the garments Toller adjusts during his morning routine.

Shot by Alexander Dynan, First Reformed has a mostly familiar, competent aesthetic, with subjects and their surroundings structured in a geometric style reminiscent, again, of Ozu. The repetition of shots—what film theorist David Bordwell refers to as “planimetric shots,” faces isolated in the frame, buildings filmed head-on, the camera unmoving and observant—insinuate a life of tedium, devoid of variety. There's little ambiguity in the deep focus. The camera isn't liberated. But as Toller's faith grows increasingly strained, his revelations more and more exceptional, the shots go aslant, the camera moving more. The final shot, twirling oneirically, the camera jubilant as it circles around Toller and Mary in bloody embracement, feels torn from a Brian De Palma film, out of place with the phlegmatic style of Schrader's. It suggests a dream, an Empyrean awakening. It brings to mind a bible quote, from Revelation 17:6: “And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled greatly.”

First Reformed feels like a culmination of and response to Schrader's career. It harks back to Martin Scorsese's New York nightmare Taxi Driver by using a journal as a narrative device. Both films use a laconic, unexpurgated voiceover to elucidate on the inner turmoil of a man whose well-being is eroding and whose disdain for the people around him grows with each passing day and toward a violent epiphany. Schrader has said that he knows his obituaries will read, “Writer of Taxi Driver,” despite his own idiosyncratic career as a filmmaker. With First Reformed, he seems to be rewriting his own legacy, revisiting the infatuations and compulsions that inspired the Scorsese film.

Travis Bickle wants to wash from the streets the decay he perceives in modern life. He's a man who anoints himself an angel of death, come to smite New York City's miscreants. The backseat of his cab is, at the end of each night, doused in blood and cum, the way the faithful are awash in the blood of the lamb. In Travis one finds the seeds of Schrader's obsessions: penitence, sin, tortured veterans, working-class malaise, men with complicated relationships with sex. Like Travis, Toller sees grotesqueries and unforgivable misdeeds, and his notion of atonement becomes more extreme. He turns away the longing of his ex-wife, Esther (Victoria Hill), who leads the megachurch's choir and secretly pines, in pain, for Mary. His faith, while tested, never corrodes; it becomes more steadfast, more Old Testament-like. Misery begets penance, suffering ameliorating the sins of humanity. Toller rejoices in his suffering, and through him Schrader has found his faith in cinema renewed.

For the role of the conflicted clergyman, Schrader said Ethan Hawke was an easy choice.

“There’s a certain physiognomy in playing a man of the cloth, be it Montgomery Clift in ‘I Confess,’ Belmondo in ‘Leon Morin’ or Claude Laydu in ‘Diary of a Country Priest.’ So, you’re thinking about actors who have that physiognomy, maybe Jake Gyllenhaal, Oscar Isaac, but Ethan was 10 years older than them and his face was getting some very interesting wrinkles. I started thinking he’s just right for this. I sent him the script and he responded right away.”

Hawke’s performance goes from contemplative to harrowing as he considers ecoterrorism.

“He’s going to blow up a church, but this pregnant woman arrives and he can’t do it, so he reverts to turning himself into the sacrifice. This is a pathological fallacy deeply embedded in Christianity, the notion of suicidal glory, that my own suffering can redeem me. It’s not what the Bible teaches, (nor) what Jesus taught. It is a fallacy that is virtually the same as Jihadism.”

Hawke’s self-purgation finds him drinking Drano and wrapping himself in barbed wire.

“It’s a reference to Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Wise Blood’ (by) John Huston, where Hazel Motes at the end of that book puts his eyes out, wraps him up with wire and goes out preaching.”

This sacrifice is ultimately alleviated when Seyfried enters the room and the two embrace amid a swirling camera. It’s the first time the camera moves. Schrader uses a static camera with a 4:3 aspect ratio for the entire movie, before unleashing a circling camera like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958) or Brian De Palma’s “Obsession” (1976), which Schrader wrote.

“When you start working on the spiritual side of the street, the still side of the street, you have to stretch time,” Schrader said. “This is a very static film. The camera does not move, pan or tilt. It just sits there. It is very passive aggressive and takes too long to do everything. All of a sudden at the end, it jumps like a bird from a cage into a kinetic, whirly-gate soul in flight.”

As the camera circles, the soundtrack delivers the spiritual hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” Film buffs will recall Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), though Schrader insists it’s a reference to singer George Beverly Shea of the Billy Graham Crusade.

“That song, my father would play over and over again,” Schrader said. “(The final scene) is meant to be read in different ways. If you want to say he’s dead and imagining this, I wouldn’t object. If you want to say it’s a miracle, I wouldn’t object. If you want to say it is a redemption, I wouldn’t object. In fact, I don’t know the answer. It’s all of those things put together.”

This isn’t Schrader’s first ambiguous, dreamlike ending. A similar fate befell Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976), who similarly attempted an act of terror before embracing his better angels. In that case, it was a political assassination before shifting to vigilante justice by killing the pimp (Harvey Keitel) of a teen prostitute (Jodie Foster).

Jennifer Fox isn’t new to Hollywood—the accomplished documentarian has directed and produced many of her own docs and supported others work as well. She can count Hollywood legends like director Brian De Palma and Oren Moverman as friends and mentors. (Both of whom were more than willing to call up Laura Dern on her behalf.) Though many would be apprehensive to divulge their personal histories on film, Fox was excited to do so with The Tale.

Premiering on HBO this Friday, May 26, The Tale tells the true story of Fox’s own childhood. When Fox (played by Dern) was 13, she wrote a short story documenting her relationship with an older man. When her mother Nettie (Ellen Burstyn) discovers the story decades later, Fox is forced to take a hard look at her childhood sexual abuse and the memories she twisted and repressed.

The Tale is gut-wrenching and tough to watch, but with Fox’s deft hand as a documentarian and a towering performance from Dern (who De Palma told Fox was the only actress to have the guts to take this role), it is a complex and unflinching look at the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

Based on Fox’s own life—Dern and Nélisse play Jennifer Fox at different ages—The Tale deals with the moment, years after the fact, that Fox was forced to grapple with the memories of her first sexual encounter aged 13. “It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that what I called a relationship, all of a sudden I realized was abuse,” she noted.

Fox, whose storied work in documentary film includes the highly personal series Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, turned to narrative film for the first time to construct a wholly unique portrait of the way memories can shift and rewrite themselves in our minds. It is with the rediscovery of an essay written when she was 13 that the older Jennifer Fox, played by Dern, is forced to confront the 13-year-old version of herself (Nélisse), who framed her relationship with a much older running coach in the language of first love and unforced desire.

“It took me years to write [the film] because it was such a complicated telling, and it’s really more about the stories we tell ourselves to survive, and why we need to tell ourselves stories,” the filmmaker explained. “There are so many things that are too heavy to deal with when you’re younger, that it takes until maturity to be able to face.”

Dern’s journey with The Tale stemmed from a conversation with filmmaker Brian De Palma, an important mentor to Fox. Dern recalled De Palma’s powerful and compelling brief: “[He] said, ‘You’re going to receive a script that is difficult and painful and brave…But take it seriously. It’s so radical, it’s so brave, and you should go on this journey.'”

For Dern, “What’s extraordinary about this time is that we all are considering together how we’ve normalized behavior, to ourselves, as a community, as a culture. It has been a reckoning for many of us individually, to see how we said things like, ‘Well, it was the ‘70s,’ or ‘I looked very mature for my age.’ We took the blame, and we were silenced by our own cultural shaming.”

It was a welcome, if unexpected, climate in which to launch the film, she said, noting the conversations about taking on this story began many years ago. “This zeitgeist has said that there is restorative justice here,” Dern said. “There is reward in being a witness to something and sharing your voice, and that has really changed the conversation. There is therefore less fear, through a piece of art that you make, to all have conversations together, and hopefully, allow it be the groundbreaking time we all so desperately need.“

Fox noted the particular courage shown by Jason Ritter in taking on the role of her abuser Bill. “I think, Jason, you’re the most courageous, actually, of all of us,” she said. “We know from statistics that 93% of perpetrators are known by the children who they abuse. That means that they don’t look evil; they’re part of communities; they’re successful, they’re loved. Jason really embodied the kindness and the complexity of what I wanted to bring to this telling.”

But by the time he’d read it, he insisted, “there had already been so many incredible acts of courage that led up to this moment—Jennifer writing it, people coming on board. If I was going to be the coward to back out at the end, I wouldn’t have been able to look at myself. The truth was that I read the script and I thought it was so profound and incredibly honest, and I felt like I was opening doors in my mind that I hadn’t even cared to open, looking at this experience and getting a deeper understanding of what this can be like.”

When filmmaker Jennifer Fox was 13, she wrote a story for English class about a young girl who is coerced into a sexual relationship with her 40-year-old running coach.

Little did her teacher know, the story was true.

"I got an A," says Fox, now 58. "My teacher wrote on the back, 'If this is true, it's a travesty. But since you're so well-adjusted, it can't be.' "

Four decades later, Fox has adapted her account into a harrowing feature film, The Tale, which premieres on HBO Saturday (10 ET/PT). Two-time Oscar nominee Laura Dern plays an adult Jennifer — a successful documentarian and professor — as she confronts the truth that her childhood "romance" with Bill (Jason Ritter) was sexual abuse. With the support of her mother (Ellen Burstyn) and boyfriend (Common), she reconnects with people from her past in an effort to remember what happened after years of suppression.

"The film is about memory and the stories we tell ourselves to survive," says Dern, 51, who was brought the script by director Brian De Palma, Fox's friend and mentor. "I think we all find that relatable, not just people who have experienced sexual abuse or assault."

Dern identifies with Fox's story, having grown up as a teen actress on movie sets, where she experienced sexual harassment. She says she never recognized it for what it was until the Me Too movement started last fall, as women and men came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct and abuses of power.

"I didn't realize until recently that my experiences of harassment were harassment," Dern says. "For so many young girls and boys, behavior is justified because it's like, 'Well, they did that. Maybe that's normal.' We presume that's just the way it works in Hollywood."

Like her fictionalized character in The Tale, Fox didn't fully process her trauma until middle age, as she interviewed women around the world for her 2006 documentary Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman and began to hear similar stories. She's careful to make the distinction between sexual assault and abuse, when someone is manipulated into thinking "he or she is agreeing to something which is sexual, but it isn't often violent," Fox says. "It's different from rape."

"Scarface is a timeless film that has influenced pop culture in so many ways over the last 35 years," Screenvision Media's Darryl Schaffer said in a press release. "We're thrilled to partner with Universal Pictures and Tribeca Film Festival to bring it back to the big screen in celebration of its anniversary. The Tribeca Film Festival talk was an important commemoration of the film. We're excited to extend it to the big screen and provide fans a behind-the-scenes insight into what production was like in the 1980s."

Paula Weinstein, EVP of Tribeca Enterprises, added, "Tribeca has a rich history of producing legendary reunion events. We are thrilled to be able to replicate the Festival experience with audiences across the country. Our gratitude to Screenvision and Universal. Scarface has had a strong influence on popular culture and reuniting the cast for the 35th anniversary was an evening not to forget."

About a week after the Tribeca event last month, Jesse Kornbluth, who moderated that on-stage Q&A, defended himself in a post at Head Butler, with the headline, "So I Asked Michelle Pfeiffer A Question...."

Recently, the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated the 35th anniversary of “Scarface” with a screening at the Beacon Theatre, followed by a panel discussion featuring Al Pacino, Brian De Palma, Michelle Pfeiffer and Steven Bauer.

I moderated the panel discussion.

There never was an audience for “Scarface” like the 2,894 film fans at the Beacon. Of course they knew all the great quotes, but even more, they cheered like opera buffs after the great scenes. And when it ended, better believe they were eager to be in the same air space as the stars.

I brought the actors onstage one by one. Bauer got some love. Pfeiffer got more. De Palma got a roar. Then, with one chair empty, I teased the audience: “There’s one more… I forget…. Oh, I got it….Al Pacino!” The theatre went nuts. Al basked at the standing ovation. “Still got it!” he said.

And then we began. I started with the person who had the idea to remake the 1932 classic: Al Pacino. I asked Bauer about being the only Cuban in a major role. I asked De Palma about getting around the repeated X-ratings, quoted Chekhov’s remark that a gun on the wall in the first act must be fired in the second and asked if having a chainsaw murder in the first 15 minutes of the film made him question if topping it in the final scene might be too much violence for any audience. And, of course, I prompted Pacino to deliver the most quoted line of his career: “Say hello to my little friend.”

Michelle Pfeiffer has described herself as a “set piece” in this film — the attractive woman who looks good on the arm of the leading man but who’s not essential to the story. And because questions of misogyny and female agency are no longer background noise, I asked her to look back at “Scarface” from the perspective of 2018. She spoke eloquently about what she learned as a very young actress paired with a powerful star giving one of his most aggressive performances: “One of the things that hit me the strongest from the beginning was watching him fiercely protect his character and really at all costs and without any sort of apology. And I have always tried to emulate that. And I try to be polite about it. But I think that’s what really makes great acting.”

Pfeiffer’s crisp, smart responses got little media attention. Only one exchange did. I was curious about her preparation for the role as a cocaine freak whose diet seemed to consist of cigarettes and Scotch. And I thought of my daughter, who is exactly the same height as Pfeiffer. She is thin. In “Scarface,” Pfeiffer was dramatically thinner. So I asked: “As the father of a daughter, I’m concerned with body image. During the preparation for this film, what did you weigh?”

The crowd — not all, but a vocal contingent — reacted instantly. There were boos. Someone shouted, “Bad question.” I also heard “Why do you need to know?” and “Why!”

I turned away from Pfeiffer to speak directly to the audience: “This is not the question you think it is.”

Press reports said that Pfeiffer was dismayed at the question and paused before answering. Not so. She paused because, like a professional, she was waiting for the crowd to settle down. And then she answered my question — at length: “I don’t know. But I was playing a cocaine addict, which was part of the physicality of the part, which you have to consider… The movie was only supposed to be a three-month, four-month shoot. Of course, I tried to time it so that as the movie went on, I became thinner and thinner and more emaciated. The problem was the movie went six months. I was starving by the end of it because the one scene, which was the end of the film, where I needed to be my thinnest, it was ‘next week’ and then it was ‘next week’ and then it was ‘next week.’ I literally had members of the crew bringing me bagels because they were all worried about me and how thin I was getting. I think I was living on tomato soup and Marlboros.”

At the end, the stars got a standing ovation. There was a small after-party. Around midnight, I went home and, as I generally do, logged on. To my surprise there was a YouTube report of my question to Pfeiffer, but because I wasn’t named as the moderator, I laughed and went to bed.

Friday morning I woke up to 20 emails. And to items in the Post and the Daily News and half a dozen other publications. All took me to the woodshed for asking an insensitive, inappropriate question.

By mid-morning, I was asked to comment. I replied:

“It is true that a gentleman should never ask a woman about her weight. But that was not my question. It is a comment on the knee-jerk political correctness of our time that no one would be shocked if you asked Robert De Niro about the weight gain required for his role in ‘Raging Bull’ but you get booed — not by many, but by a vocal few — for asking Michelle Pfeiffer about the physical two-dimensionality required for her to play a cocaine freak in ‘Scarface.’”

Finally, I caught a break: In the Daily News, Linda Stasi wrote a column headlined “Sorry, PC police — it’s not body shaming to ask Michelle Pfeiffer how much she weighed during ‘Scarface.’” Her first sentence: “What a bunch of fat heads!”

Later, I had a chance to add to my response:

Nobody booed when I asked Michelle about how she was able to “own and claim” her performance against one of Al’s fiercest performances.
Nobody booed when I asked Michelle if she could imagine a remake in which Tony Montana was Toni Montana — a woman.
Nobody booed when I asked Brian if he were making this movie now, would Tony be a Russian — or even Mark Zuckerberg?
Nobody booed when I quoted Tony Montana — “Who put this thing together? Me!Who do I trust? Me!” — and asked Al: Who does that sound like?

I’ll go further. Not to defend myself — it’s not possible to defend yourself against the accusations of people who know you better than you know yourself — but to tell you what I learned from this experience.

First, there’s a double standard here. When a man gains or loses weight for a role, that fact is served up to the media as an asset. It’s not just De Niro in “Raging Bull.” Matthew McConaughey lost 50 pounds and Jared Leto shed 40 for “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” Matt Damon lost 40 pounds for “Courage Under Fire” — the reporting of their preparation for roles is invariably admiring. For women, the topic of weight can also be an asset — if she reveals it, as Charlize Theron did when she told Entertainment Weekly about the 50 pounds she gained for her role in a new film. So why is it “insensitive” to ask Michelle Pfeiffer about her physical instrument in a movie she made 35 years ago? Has something happened in the last 35 years to turn a young actress who had the strength to stand up to Al Pacino into a timorous Victorian maiden who needs protection from a man asking a question about her public persona?

Before we went on stage, I quoted Oscar Wilde to Pfeiffer and Pacino: “There are no impertinent questions, only impertinent answers.” Yes, I could have worded that question better. And if the question, in any form, offended Michelle Pfeiffer, I apologize.

More to the point: If I knew the audience was hardcore liberal PC, I would still have asked that question, though I would have asked it another way. But I had no idea there are New York movie lovers who see little difference between a man asking a woman about something she did professionally and Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women between their legs. It’s not heartbreaking, but it’s really, really disappointing to learn that people who presumably deal with complexity and multiple levels of meaning in their careers can be as stupid and close-minded as people who watch Fox and think Pizzagate and Obamaphones are real.

Bottom line: I call BS on the yahoos who booed.