'SISTERS' RESTORATION MAKING THEATER ROUNDS
JENNA STOEBER - SISTERS "DELIVERS WEIRDNESS IN A WAY MODERN MOVIES DON'T"
"The movie might not get many midnight showings," Polygon's Jenna Stoeber stated about Brian De Palma's Sisters last month, "but it’s still a cult classic." Well, here we are just a month later, into the new year, and Sisters is in the middle of a two-screening run at The Texas Theatre, and also played tonight at The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA. Last month, Stoeber's article caught the attention of Joyce Carol Oates, who tweeted the headline and link: "Brian De Palma’s Sisters delivers weirdness in a way modern movies don’t."

"Watching Sisters," Stoeber's article begins, "Brian De Palma’s 1973 psychological horror film, is like meeting your best friend’s parents for the first time and suddenly understanding something about your friend that couldn’t have known otherwise — where they came from, and how far they’ve come. A relatively early entry in De Palma’s long and storied career, Sisters features plenty of the style he would become known for, with eyes firmly on Alfred Hitchcock."

After some plot description, Stoeber continues:

Sisters features de Palma at his most Hitchcockian. It’s full of homages, with cheeky nods to the repercussions of voyeurism and the instability of sanity. It even features a piercing score by frequent Hitchcock-composer Bernard Herrmann.

But more than that, the technical skill inherited from Hitchcock can be seen in de Palma’s ability to make even mundane events sinister and captivating. Before the stabbing, when Danielle and Phillip are getting frisky on the couch, we get a careful zoom-in on the wide mound of scar tissue down her hip. A low-angle tracking shot follows Phillip as he brings in a birthday cake — and a knife to cut it with. It brings to mind shots of the house looming over Bates Motel, or Norman Bates surrounded by taxidermied birds. The anticipation of violence heightens the tension long before the knife flashes.

From start to finish, Sisters is weird, but it rarely feels like it’s just for the sake of being weird. Some of the plotting might feel familiar to modern audiences; the idea that one conjoined twin is evil and the other good is borderline cliché at this point. But the story is infused with so many off-kilter details that even when you know what’s going to happen, you can never predict how you’ll get there.

In the scene in which the police investigate of the apartment, you imagine that Danielle is going to charm her way out of the situation. Collier discovers the birthday cake bearing two names, proof Danielle lied about being in the place alone and for a moment it seems like she’s going to be caught. But in her haste to present it to the police, she fumbles and drops it directly on the detective’s shoes.

It’s a shockingly funny moment, and it’s the sort of strong tonal shift that most modern thrillers or horror movies don’t dare attempt. Sisters has a lot of diversions that are almost slap-stick, and it can afford to because de Palma is so deft at creating tension. Even in this early stage in his career, he breaks the mood knowing he can rebuild it later, more than practically any other director, including his contemporary peers or Hitchcock himself.

In an interview published as part of the new Criterion Collection edition, de Palma explains that he was emulating Hitchcock “in order to work out my own problems as a storyteller.” Since then, he’s directed a startling number of movies that have indelibly changed American culture, like Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible. As far as exercises in self-improvement go, I’d say Sisters is a remarkable success.

DE NIRO ON QUASI-COMEDY OF GREETINGS & HI MOM
"WHATEVER THE LABEL WOULD BE", DISTINGUISHES THEM FROM COMEDY OF 'ANALYZE THIS' OR THAT


In an interview with The New Yorker's Michael Schulman, posted last week, Robert De Niro is asked about his shift into comedies:

The first decades of your career you mostly played dramatic roles. That seemed to change around the time that “Analyze This” and “Meet the Parents” came out. Was comedy something you were itching to do?

I mean, I’d done things that were—they’re not comedies, but “Greetings,” “Hi Mom!,” stuff like that. Quasi-comedy of a certain type, whatever the label would be. But, with “Analyze This,” Billy Crystal had this script and he wanted to get it to me, and so he got it to me. And I said, “O.K., let’s have a reading of it and let’s see.” Because I thought it would be kind of fun to do this if we got it right, and if we got the characters more real. Not doing caricatures but doing characters.

In a way, that character is a comic version of mob characters that you had been playing in dramas. Did you have a feeling that you wanted to play off your own image?

Yeah, I didn’t mind that. I thought it would be O.K.

The interview opens with Schulman asking about the pipe bomb that had been sent to De Niro's office in late October, one of several that had been "sent to high-profile Democrats and critics of the President," according to Schulman. This leads into discussion of Donald Trump, De Niro's recent recurring role on Saturday Night Live, and eventually touching on De Niro's experience as a young man in the late 1960s:

When did you find out about the bomb? Where were you?

I was in my house, working out. I got a call early in the morning that it was there in the office.

What went through your head?

There’s so many crazy people. The state of the country is so terrible now, with a person who has set such a bad example of bad behavior. I’m waiting for the bad dream to end. So what are you gonna do? What am I gonna do?

How much blame do you place on the President for something like that happening?

I think on a subconscious or subliminal level, and many other levels, it gives the O.K. to other people who are maybe more on the verge of thinking, or fantasizing, that he’s somehow given the O.K. to do that. I used to think, Well, maybe once he becomes President, he’ll maybe—he’s a New Yorker. Not that that means anything, in certain ways, but it does in others. I thought, Maybe he’ll come around. But then he’s been worse than I ever could think. ’Cause he has no plan. He has no center whatsoever. He even gives gangsters a bad name. ’Cause a gangster will give you his word and will pride himself—or herself. He doesn’t even understand that kind of logic. He thinks he’s slick and all that. There’s something wrong with him mentally.

It’s interesting that you compare him to a slick mobster guy—

Well, he thinks he’s a mobster. He’s a mutt. And I’ve said that before. I’ve said it publicly. And everything that he says about other people—that they’re losers, that they’re this and that, every terrible thing he says—he’s really saying about himself. I don’t know what his parents did, I don’t know how they treated him, whatever, but it’s all projection.

I imagine that a lot of people out there in the country who admire him are also people who’ve admired you over the years, even just demographically. Older white men tend to like President Trump. And I would think that they might see in him things they could have seen in Vito Corleone or Jake LaMotta, these guy-guys who don’t take any bullshit.

There’s a difference. He doesn’t represent—he likes to act like he does, I guess from that stupid show he did, that a lot of people bought and believed that he would act a certain way. And I remember seeing a documentary about these two writers who helped create the whole aura, the whole look, the office, the presentation, and everything. These two schlubby guys, two writers. They said, as I remember it, they said, “We created this thing.”

You mean the makers of “The Apprentice,” who created the character.

The character. And now he’s in reality and he’s got to make real decisions. I don’t know if I’m answering your question. You’re saying people who like me—yes, there is a similarity with my characters. But I’m an actor. Those are characters I play.

Have you seen any kind of backlash from your fans, people who are Trump supporters?

No. I can’t worry about that.

Did you ever interact with him personally over the years?

I met him once at a baseball game.

What happened?

I was there with a few of my kids. He came into the box that I was in, said hello, and we shook hands. I never wanted to meet him. Because I think everybody’s onto what he’s about. What amazes me is that people buy into it—people who have a responsibility to the country, not to him. They have gone along with this. And we all know who they are. Republicans who can go into the private sector and get a job making more money in a law firm or something. Instead, they opt to stay in this situation with a criminal and sell themselves. And everyone who’s involved with him has been tainted, and people will never forget it. The only one is Mattis, a little bit, and he stumbled the other day when he went down to the Mexican border and tried to give a Pancho Villa story. I felt bad, because I have great respect for him, and we all do.

And now he’s gone.

Yeah, I don’t blame him. It’s dangerous that he left. We’re in a crisis in this country. We have a fool running it, and, when a guy like Mattis finally has to go, we have a lot to be concerned about. I don’t see how we can go two more years with this guy.

I assume that the reason the person sent you a bomb was because of what you said at the Tony Awards, which was not what I expected to happen at the Tony Awards. Was that a decision you made beforehand or was it impromptu, to say, “Fuck Trump”?

It was impromptu. I feel that more people should speak out against him and not be genteel about it. At Tribeca, I said, “I’m tired of being nice about it.” They have ads on CNN about truth. “This is a banana, this is an apple,” or whatever they have. That’s what we’ve come to with all the “fake news” stuff.

How did your role as Robert Mueller on “Saturday Night Live” come about?

Actually, my wife, who—we’re [searches for the word and pulls his hands apart] separating now—but she had thought of it. I said, “What can I play on ‘S.N.L.’?” Because I love “S.N.L.” And she came up with Mueller. So I told Lorne Michaels. This is how I remember it—I could be wrong.

Is there a key to playing Mueller?

Mueller is the hope. Mueller is our hope. And he’s doing everything—he’s doing it perfectly.

But he’s not someone who’s seen in public very much these days. How did you decide to play him?

I didn’t. It’s a skit—the makeup and everything. They put jowls and prosthetics on, the chin, the nose, eyebrow.

Did you grow up in a political household?

Not really. Some but not much.

What was your experience of the antiwar movement, the politics of the late sixties, early seventies?

I felt that the war was not a just war. And, you know, it was a turbulent time in America, as I think it is now. It might even be worse now.

Did your parents have a particular kind of politics that they spoke to you about?

My mother was a little more leaning toward the left, in some ways, but never telling me much. My father was an artist. He was apolitical, pretty much.

BOB EINSTEIN HAS DIED
BEGAN CAREER AS WRITER FOR SMOTHERS BROTHERS, APPEARED IN 'GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT'


Bob Einstein, who won an Emmy in 1969 as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he got his start, has died of cancer. He was 76.

"On Smothers Brothers, Einstein crafted the humorless, helmet-wearing motorcycle cop Officer Judy who would perpetually ride in to sketches to 'bust' other characters," according to an obituary by Variety's Cynthia Littleton. "During his tenure on the groundbreaking and controversial CBS series, Einstein was a writing partner and roommates with future comedy superstar Steve Martin."

Einstein reprised the Officer Judy role in Get To Know Your Rabbit, pictured above, which was Brian De Palma's first major studio picture. In an interview from the early 1990s, Einstein described the creation of Officer Judy:

The first time I did Officer Judy was... we had Judy Collins on the show, and we were trying to come up with a way to have fun with one of her records. And she just, you know, she sings beautifully, so it was kind of difficult. So we came up with an idea... "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today" was the song. Absolutely beautiful. And Judy Collins had been on once in the show, and then in the second half of the show, Tom says, "Ladies and gentlemen, once again, here's Judy." And the music started in front of the audience, "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today." Curtains open, and I'm there with my motorcycle, lip-synching "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today," her voice. Finish, and we cut over to Tom and Dick, and Dick says, "What was that, Tommy?" He says, "That was, uh, that was Officer Judy." That's how the name happened. And he said, "What was going--" He says, "Well, I got stopped. I was speeding coming over here. And I got stopped." And Dick said, "And you promised this cop he could be on the show?" And he said, "Well, not just once, I think it was six." And at that point, I came in, back to the camera, blocked the whole thing and said, "How did I do, Tom?" He said, "You were great." That was the frst time he was ever on. It was just kind of a fun idea because it was a show with a policeman. And any time things-- you know, we were always in the news about, we've gone too far, or we're stretching this or we're pushing that, and we had our own policeman now to come on and be very straight and to make sure the show would keep at a certain level. And then I arrested Liberace on the Emmy show, which was a lot of fun.

3-DAY ARGENTO-DE PALMA SERIES JANUARY IN L.A.
A "VARIATION" ON THEIR ANNUAL GIALLO SERIES


"We kick off 2019 with a variation on our yearly January Giallo series with three nights of Dario Argento/Brian De Palma Jan. 24-26 at the Egyptian Theatre," Cinematic Void posted on its Instagram page yesterday. The double feature series will pair up Suspiria / Carrie, Blow Out / Inferno, and Dressed To Kill / Tenebrae at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles.

MONDO RELEASED MI SOUNDTRACK ON VINYL THIS YEAR
DANNY ELFMAN SCORE WITH RETRO COVER ON LIMITED EDITION RED LIGHT-GREEN LIGHT VINYL
I somehow totally missed this last August, but earlier this year, Mondo released a double LP edition of Danny Elfman's score from Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible, with a very retro-looking cover sleeve. Two vinyl versions were made available: a limited edition Red Light,Green Light Vinyl (limited to 1,000 copies), and a Translucent Red Vinyl version. The album includes liner notes by Brian Satterwhite, himself a soundtrack composer. Either edition costs $35 at the Mondo website.

THE MIRROR AS VARIANT REALITY IN 'BLOW OUT'
DUTCH ESSAY - DE PALMA CREATES A MIRROR THAT REFLECTS ON THE ESSENCE OF CINEMA


At Sabzian, Gerard-Jan Claes and Nina de Vroome have written an interesting article that looks at Brian De Palma's Blow Out, citing Lewis Carroll and Roland Barthes, and illustrated with generous amount of images from the film. Here's an excerpt, with the assistance of Google translation:

De Palma reports as a painter who can only report on painting by making a painting himself. It is as if he realizes that in the end you can only say something about the body of a film by creating a new body. His cinema is essentially always a making-of, not as an instructional video that explains technically how a film is created, but as a mirror that reflects on the essence of cinema. A mirror is always more than a two-dimensional plane that reflects an opposite image. It also opens up a space in which another variant of reality lives. The mirror image shows the things you never saw before, peculiarities and details that never before stood out but at the same time remain uncomfortably recognizable. The familiar image is given a new form as reflection, like the characters in a book that is held in front of the mirror.

In the editing studio, Jack is instructed by the director to find a scream that fits the image. As a professional sound man he goes out that night to collect sounds. At a bridge over a river Jack takes sound close-ups. Through his headphones we are made part of the sensory closeness of the sound of the things that Jack captures. He holds his microphone with his bare hand, as if it were a gun, and shoots his listening ear into the distance. There is a couple on the bridge. The woman whispers in our ear: "What is he, a Peeping Tom or something?" In light of the first scene even the benign curiosity of our Jack gets a suspicious side. Listening is listening, because in the chair of cinema it becomes clear that looking and listening are never innocent. An owl, the loving couple and a frog unleash themselves from the night scene to show themselves to Jack as isolated figures. Suddenly he hears the hard bang of a car tire, slipping wheels, the railing of the bridge breaking into pieces and a great splash. Together with the car, an attractive passenger sinks into the depth. Jack intervenes and saves her from death. But what appears? Beside her was a man who leaves behind a bubbling trail of air bubbles.

A bit later, Jack, together with the drowning woman, seeks refuge in a motel where he again hears the sound, this time not to verify whether it can be used for a gratuitous film scene, but to bring a hidden truth to light. What actually happened during the recording? He starts a reconstruction. With his pencil he does the movements he made with his microphone. The line that pulls the directed microphone through the space seeks to connect the area with a possible perpetrator. With the pencil in his hand Jack manages to bring that conscious evening back to life. In this scene it becomes tangible that sound initiates a much stronger reminder mechanism than image. By playing the sound again and letting the pencil move with it, Jack tries to find out the origin of the sound. The sounds he hears become the soundtrack of his memory. They are able to bring back the image that had slipped into this memory. We see him in a motel room, but his physical presence is subordinate to his mental absence. Just as Jack relives a moment from the past, the spectator in the cinema is similarly always split in the meantime. The voices and faces in a film always refer to a different moment, to the moment of recording. The viewer always looks at events that have already taken place. He looks back at things that have been lost, that have been erased by time and that brings the film back to life as a reminiscence. Discovery and re-experience take place simultaneously in a present that consists of the past.

The technique that Jack uses to "rewrite" his memory with the pencil does not take him any further. He continues his research into the possible murder. He not only tries to fathom the conspiracy, but at the same time works as an accomplice of De Palma, who seizes Jack's quest to further dismantle the cinematic device. He comes into contact with a journalist who has been able to record the accident in a series of photographs. The photographs themselves do not suffice as evidence. Unlike the photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up Jack does not lose himself in the analysis of dust and dots in the texture of the photo. He immediately looks for a way to "uplift" the medium from photography to cinema, as if the value of a photo can only be named as a film still for him. Only when successive film stills are placed synchronously on a sound band, does the miracle of reality arise. When he looks at his montage, his mouth falls open, because of what becomes visible in this film, but also for the appearance of cinema itself.

All of this leaves the graceful drowning woman Jack has fallen in love with cold. Sally has no interest in his search. But was she not right next to the man who is no longer alive? From her point of view, Jack's discoveries should have aroused her interest, but not according to the logic of the film: the excitement in Blow Out stems in part from the fact that everyone works against Jack, that no one believes him, that nobody cares about the truth. De Palma also argues that he is free of that obligation. It does not matter what the truth is. It only matters that the viewer feels that a truth is buried in the fabric of the film. As in a B-movie, the viewer has to be served and as long as set-up and payoff are connected, according to De Palma every narrative obligation is met. A real conspiracy has an ideological agenda and he does not burn his fingers. Meanwhile, the viewer is continually being misled and delusions and reality start to mix. There are a number of strong plot twists that defy every logic. Like the spectator, Jack gets entangled in conspiracy theories. Is he crazy? Or is there something wrong?

This brings us to a next lesson from De Palma. In the cinema you are constantly looking for hints and directions. Something always happens. Is it not visible in the picture, or hidden behind the scenes. The work of the mastermind that makes everyone believe that a serial killer is ravaging the country is reflected in the work of the director who is in charge. Watching a movie has always had to deal with the feeling that it works simultaneously behind the scenes and in full view. It is dealing with the chimera of a conspiracy, with the idea that you are being defrauded. Because whether you are being manipulated or not, there is always a concrete result: as a spectator you get misled in a specific way, you become connected to the world on the screen with a "technical umbilical cord" (Lauwaert). Always that ambiguous experience: suspension of disbelief and the feeling that someone is listening to you.

SAM IRVIN & NANCY ALLEN TELL LIV ULLMANN DTK STORY
ACTRESS WAS DE PALMA'S FIRST CHOICE FOR ROLE ULTIMATELY PLAYED BY ANGIE DICKINSON


Sam Irvin posted the two pictures above to his Facebook page a couple of days ago, to celebrate Liv Ullmann's 80th birthday. In the post, he tells the story about Brian De Palma handing Irving a script to deliver to Ullmann, and then Nancy Allen adds a comment. Here's the scoop:

Imagine this: Liv Ullmann getting stabbed to death in the elevator in Brian De Palma’s DRESSED TO KILL. Huh?!

Little known factoid: Liv Ullmann, the brilliant muse of Ingmar Bergman in CRIES AND WHISPERS, PERSONA and FACE TO FACE, was Brian De Palma’s first choice to play the role of “Kate Miller” in DRESSED TO KILL — the role that ended up being played so iconically by Angie Dickinson.

The character gets shockingly stabbed to death in an elevator — an homage to Janet Leigh’s character “Marion Crane” getting stabbed to death in the shower in Hitchcock’s PSYCHO.

In both movies, it was essential to cast big-name stars in these parts to make it all the more shocking when they are unexpectedly bumped off early in their respective scenarios.

In the summer of 1979, when DRESSED TO KILL was in preproduction, I was working as Brian De Palma’s assistant. I was 23 — and a very big fan of Liv Ullmann — who had won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in THE EMIGRANTS (1971) and nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actress in THE EMIGRANTS and FACE TO FACE (1976). So, you can imagine my excitement when Brian handed me a copy of the DRESSED TO KILL script and said, “I want you to hand-deliver this to Liv Ullmann at the Majestic Theater. She is expecting you in her dressing room.”

Liv was currently starring on Broadway in Richard Rodgers newly-musicalized version of I REMEMBER MAMA. I would be going to drop off the script between a matinee and evening performance.

I arrived at the stage door with a large envelope in my hand. I knocked and after a few seconds, the door cautiously cracked open as though it were a speakeasy. A crusty old doorman peered out from the shadows and said, “Yeah?”

“I’m here to see Ms. Ullmann,” I explained in my best business-like voice.

The doorman gave me the once-over, spotted Ullmann’s name written on the envelope, concluded I was just a messenger boy, and sneered, “A delivery? I can take it to her.”

He creaked the door open a little further and held out his gnarly hand, expecting me to give him the package.

As if. I wasn’t going to give up the chance of meeting Liv Ullmann when I’d already come within breathing distance. I gulped and stood my ground. “I have been instructed to deliver this to Ms. Ullmann personally. She is expecting me. My name is Sam Irvin. From Brian De Palma’s office.”

Poker-faced, the doorman said nothing for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally, he withdrew his empty claw and shut the door in my face.

Had I been summarily rejected? Should I knock again and demand to speak to someone higher up the food chain? My job was on the line! With all sorts of desperate thoughts running around in my brain, the door suddenly popped back open.

“Ms. Ullmann will see you now,” the doorman grunted, annoyed that he’d been out-maneuvered.

I stepped inside and followed him to her dressing room. He knocked and walked away. The door swung open with a breeze of perfume to reveal the resplendent, welcoming smile of Liv Ullmann attached to her entire being. In person. Yep. I was starstruck.

She graciously greeted me. We exchanged small talk. I gave her the script and she said, “Tell Brian I am looking forward to reading it. Thank you for bringing it to me.”

I departed on Cloud 9 and floated back to Brian’s office. Mission: accomplished.

Sadly, for reasons I don’t recall, Liv eventually passed on the project.

Then Brian had me deliver a script to the wonderful Jill Clayburgh, hot off her Oscar nomination for AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (1978). A long-time friend of De Palma’s, Jill had made her movie debut in his early feature film THE WEDDING PARTY (1969) opposite the young Robert De Niro. My encounter was brief and similar — but equally cherished and memorable. Unfortunately, she also ended up passing due to scheduling conflicts.

Ultimately, Angie Dickinson ended up with the role and knocked it out of the park.

Nevertheless, it is intriguing to imagine what the movie would have been like with Liv Ullmann in the role.

Happy 80th Birthday to Liv Ullmann.

ADDENDUM from DRESSED TO KILL star Nancy Allen: “Liv was Brian’s first choice. He wanted it to be out of character for the actress who played the part to be having the sexual encounter with the stranger in the museum. Someone you might think of as sexually repressed. I suggested he send her flowers and take her to lunch. Ultimately she declined the role because she didn’t want her children to see her in that way.”

Thanks Nancy!

'GREETINGS' TURNS 50
OPENED ON THIS DAY IN 1968, AT 34TH STREET EAST THEATER IN NEW YORK
Brian De Palma and Charles Hirsch's Greetings opened at New York's 34th Street East Theater on December 15, 1968. It was the first movie to be rated X by the MPAA. As Glenn Kenny discusses during an audio commentary track included on Arrow Video's new Blu-ray of Greetings, Hirsch pitched the idea for the movie to De Palma as an American version of Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Féminin. They began shooting on 16mm film, but quickly realized that the format would limit the potential release to very few art houses, according to Laurent Bouzereau, in his book The De Palma Cut. Bouzereau adds that the film initially made three times what it cost (the cost was about $43,100). The film was panned in the New York Times by Howard Thompson, who stated that while De Palma and Hirsch "are determined and camera-minded," they should try next time "for something that matters instead of the tired, tawdry and tattered." A few weeks later, the paper ran three letters from readers in defense of the film, under the headline, "Was That Any Way To Greet 'Greetings'?" William Bayer's letter began, "When a good film is misunderstood and then characterized by Howard Thompson of The New York Times as 'tired, tawdry, and tattered,' it is time to come to the rescue." Kenny quotes more from these letters in his audio commentary.

Greetings follows three young men as they attempt to dodge the Vietnam draft (the film's title directly refers to the first word seen on the page when someone would open up a letter from the U.S. government telling them they've been drafted). Along the way, each of the men, played by Robert De Niro, Gerrit Graham, and Jonathan Warden, grapples with his own personal obsessions (respectively, voyeurism, the JFK assassination, and computer dating). In his commentary, Kenny links the buddies-hanging-out aspect of Greetings to Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni. Aside from a general Godardian influence throughout, there is also direct reference to another Godard film, Vivre sa vie, and, of course, overt references to Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, the latter of which Chris Dumas has explained (in his book, Un-American Psycho) "was recently in theaters when Greetings was in production; its specific presence here - like Une Femme Est Une Femme in Bertolucci's Before The Revolution* - signifies that the film's logic was, as they say, a topic of conversation."

At one point in the film, Lloyd (played by Graham) asks pop artist Richard Hamilton (playing himself) if he's seen Blow-Up. Shortly after that, Lloyd brings a photo of Dealey Plaza to Tina, a photo assistant played by Tina Hirsch (at the time of filming, her name was Bettina Kugel-- by the time Greetings was released later in the year, she had married Charles Hirsch and changed her name). While this scene makes overt visual reference to Blow-Up, it was Tina Hirsch who insisted on adding a verbal reference in this scene. As she told William Chamberlain a few years back, "Brian and Chuck [Charles Hirsch], the producer and co-writer, wrote the scene. As originally written, Gerrit Graham was, you know, he played a Kennedy assassination buff, and he wants me to blow up a picture taken on the grassy knoll to prove that officer Tippet is Oswald’s accomplice. And that he’s hiding behind a tree. I was supposed to answer that if he blew it up, all you’d see is the grain. I mean a funny side story is that that literally was a studio in which I was working as a photographer’s assistant, and I actually blew up those shots that are shown at the end. I told Brian that I couldn’t say that line, that the movie Blow-Up was all about that. I didn’t feel comfortable saying it without crediting the other movie. So my answer became something like, 'You’re not going to be able to see anything. I’ve seen Blow-Up, I know how this turns out. You’re not going to see anything but grain the size of golf balls.' Years later, Pauline Kael, the movie critic for the New Yorker, quoted the line as one of Brian’s great citations. [Laughing] But, in fact, I was the one who cited Blow-Up. That’s the way it goes."

*Incidentally, Dumas' essay about Greetings in the booklet of Arrow's new disc set is titled, "Before The Revolution."

ARROW BOX DELIVERS EARLY DE PALMA & DE NIRO
BRIEF FROM ONE OF THE BOOKLETS - CHRISTINA NEWLAND ON 'HI, MOM!'


Arrow's new limited edition box set, "De Niro & De Palma - The Early Films," is here, and, having only delved partway through so far, it is nonetheless very very cool. The final product does not have two of the originally expected extras: new interviews with Gerrit Graham and Peter Maloney are nowhere to be found. What is here, however, is terrific-- even with two of the films, The Wedding Party and Greetings, sharing the same disc (original marketing imagery for the collection suggested three independent discs and covers).

Appearing in the booklet for Hi, Mom!, Christina Newland's essay, "American Godard," is named for Brian De Palma's off-the-cuff remark to an interviewer in 1969 that "If I could be the American Godard, that would be great." Linking these early films to De Palma's later work, Newland states that De Palma's style "has always cheerfully drawn attention to itself." Focusing on Hi, Mom!, Newland writes that the film's narrative "speeds along with nervy ingenuity and a chaotic structure; you might say this is a film with a multiple personality disorder. Loosely divided into three jarring acts, each more wild than the last, De Palma follows a chameleonic young man, Jon Rubin, on the streets of New York City, attempting several different utterly insane ambitions."

Toward the end of her essay, Newland zeros in more precisely on De Niro's Jon Rubin as chameleon:

In the final portion of the film, Jon seemingly becomes entrenched in domestic terrorism and decides to disguise himself as a 'square' by marrying. The artificiality of Jon's faux-domestic set-up recalls a '50s sitcom, underpinned by a Weathermen Underground-style bombing that's thoroughly of the '70s. Though few might characterise the director of Carrie (1976) and Scarface as explicitly political, De Palma applies scalpel-like cynicism toward Jon's flirtation with underground social movements. Perhaps it's a young leftist's frustration with insincerity within the movement.

Still, little in Hi, Mom! is straightforward. In Greetings, De Niro's Jon was a draft-dodger; in Hi, Mom!, he's a veteran, seemingly displaced by his role in that war. Many comparisons have been made between this and De Niro's later role as a 'Nam vet in Taxi Driver (1976), but he's the real spiritual antecedent of another darkly comic role for Scorsese: Rupert Pupkin. Like the delusional wannabe of The King Of Comedy (1983), Jon is so phony he's almost earnest in his phoniness. This is evident in the final set-up, when Jon wrangles his way to the front of a television news broadcast about the explosion he himself devised. As with so much of De Palma's work, we are watching people who are watching other people; some of whom know they are being watched and act accordingly. The intended result is a sort of endless, empty hall of mirros; a media spectacle with no meaning.

Regarding Hi, Mom! now - either as a direct sequel to Greetings or simply as a madcap counterculture relic - it doesn't necessarily equate to coherent greatness. But it does hint at the ways in which De Palma, along with the best of his generation of filmmakers, could marry the arthouse and the commercial in their later work. When they applied teh radical stylings of their art film interests to make challenging mainstream cinema of the era, the New Hollywood flowered into being.

SOME 'SCARFACE' LINKS & PICS, FOR IT'S 35TH
RELEASED DECEMBER 9, 1983

I don't usually think in terms of 35th anniversaries, so I hadn't been planning to post anything about the 35th anniversary of Scarface-- after all, at the 35th anniversary Scarface screening and reunion this past April at Tribeca, with Robert De Niro hanging around (it's his festival), De Palma at one point said, "35 is such an odd number to celebrate an anniversary- why not 50? Greetings was created in 1968, we’re all still here." In any case, I felt like posting the two images above, so here it is-- and here are a couple of links from the past few days, followed by a repost of the People Magazine coverage of the Scarface screenings and parties in New York and Hollywood:

Variety: Inside Scarface's Sometimes Rocky Road to Becoming a Classic

Mental Floss: 15 Surprising Facts About Scarface

 

Scarface 1983 Premiere

In its December 19, 1983 issue, People Weekly covered the parties of the Scarface previews that took place within 24 hours of each other in New York and Hollywood. It is interesting to look back at the celebrities' reactions to the film upon its initial release. The article, written by Kristin McMurran, David Hutchings, and Pamela Lansden opened like this: Kurt Vonnegut walked out after 30 minutes, muttering, "It's too gory for me." Author John Irving followed. Cheryl Tiegs called it "the most violent film I've ever seen. It makes you never want to hear the word 'cocaine' again." The celebs were unnerved by Scarface, the scarifying update of the 1932 Paul Muni classic, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban immigrant drug lord who shoots his way to the top and snorts his way back down (see review, page 12). At the movie's tag-team previews in New York and Hollywood, the verdict was generally the same: pro-Pacino and anti-firepower. Actor James (The Onion Field) Woods, though, had a different view. "Personally," deadpanned Woods, "I'm all for any movie whose lead character keeps a grenade launcher in his living room."

Pacino himself missed the New York preview because he was performing in a Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo, although he appears to have made it to the afterparty. In the photo to the left, Pacino is leaving the New York party by limo with his then-current girlfriend Kathleen Quinlan. In the photo at the top of this page, he is shaking hands with co-stars Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Steven Bauer. The caption underneath the photo quotes Bauer: "I feared rejection until I met Al. It's hard to imagine yourself in the same league."

The article says that Lucille Ball was the favorite of fans watching from the sidewalk, until Eddie Murphy arrived to upstage her. Murphy is pictured at left with Diane Lane, who arrived late herself. Murphy said, "Al Pacino is my favorite actor. I know the dialogue to all his movies. When I met him, I groveled." The article says that the preview audience was more subdued after the screening, quoting Lucille Ball (whom the article consistently refers to as simply "Lucy") as saying, "We thought the performances were excellent, but we got awful sick of that word."

Martin Bregman hosted an after-preview party for 130 guests at Sardi's in New York, where Cher, who brought her 14-year-old daughter Chastity along, told People, "I really liked it. It was a great example of how the American dream can go to shit." Raquel Welch, who also brought along her daughter Tahnee, said, "A lot of people will enjoy the comic-strip violence that goes on ad nauseam." Welch is also quoted in a photo caption as saying that "the violence is just for effect."

Another mother-daughter pair of interest showed up at the Los Angeles premiere: Tippi Hedren and daughter Melanie Griffith. Griffith at the time was married to Steven Bauer, and would go on to star in Brian De Palma's very next film in 1984, Body Double. According to the September 16 2003 New York Post, Bauer was planning to check out Griffith's performance in Broadway's Chicago while he is in town for the September 17 re-release premiere. Hedren was quoted in the 1983 article as saying, "Scarface was too brutal." The article concludes in L.A. with one of the big stars of the day, Joan Collins: Joan Collins, who would gussy herself up for a smog alert, was one of the few who dressed elegantly, sparkling in black sequined leather. Typically, Joan had the final word about Scarface's nasty language. "I hear there are 183 'f---s' in the movie," sighed Collins, "which is more than most people get in a lifetime."