Frosty: You’re someone who, I’ve admired your work for a very long time. I believe it goes back to Carlito’s Way. So, I want to definitely jump back in time… what do you remember about making that one? Because to me, every time it comes on HBO or whatever, I’m, like, hooked.

Ortiz: Yeah, that was my first movie. Ever. And what I remember was, a kid… a kid in a candy shop. I was working with Al Pacino. And Sean Penn. And Viggo Mortensen. And Brian De Palma. And I was just… whenever you saw me smile in that movie? That was real. [Laughs out loud.] I was like, [laughs and grins] This is great!

Frosty: I would imagine working with that level of talent has to rub off a little on just the way you present, the way you work in future gigs. Just learning from masters like that.

Ortiz: Yeah.

Frosty: Do you remember what you took away from that experience that you said, “I need to be like this in the future.”

Ortiz: Yeah, you know, the one big—I learned a lot. A lot of stuff. The one big thing that to this day I’ll never forget, is Al Pacino’s kindness towards me. Like he went out of his way to make sure I was taken care of. And he would run lines with me, he would ask me how I was doing, when things weren’t quite working out on set, he would make sure that I was aware of certain things, and that I was protected. And he didn’t have to do that, he was nominated for two Oscars that year. And he was Al Pacino.

And yeah, there was one incident where I was almost cut out of a scene, because I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. And they were blinking from too much caffeine. And it was messing up the shot. And so Brian was going to kind of just skim over me, onto him. And it was my death scene. It was my moment. And Pacino knew that. And I was up for 23 hours straight, so I was on espresso the whole time. So I was literally shaking. You know, I couldn’t stop it. And that’s what was causing my eyes to flicker. And De Palma said, “Okay, we’ll just go over,” [motions imaginary camera panning] and Al needed to take a flight to L.A., for the Academy Awards. And it was like, you know, an hour before his flight or something. And he (De Palma) was like, “No, I’ll just skim over and we’ll just get the shot.” And he (Pacino) cleared the room, kept me there, and he said, “I want everyone out.” And I was like, about to leave, and he was [come-back motions with his hands] “No, stay, stay, I’m just going to have an espresso. I just needed everyone out of the room.” And I’m like, [worried face, inner thoughts] “All right. What the hell am I doing here, then?” He’s like, “Do you want an espresso?” [Laughter with Frosty] And I was like, “Yeah! Yeah, sure.” I did not want an espresso, you know, but you’re never going to turn down Al Pacino’s espresso. So I had an espresso with him. I don’t know what we talked about, but it seemed like hours went by. And he called everyone back in, did the scene, and my eyes didn’t flicker. And he left. And yeah—that’s the lesson I take away from that movie.

Frosty: That’s an amazing story, and I say thank you for sharing. Seriously.

Ortiz: That’s the first time I’ve said this story on camera. I’ve told friends this story, but… it took me like ten years to tell that story to anyone, just because I held it so close to my heart.

In the film, Mary’s womanhood may not completely define her: yet one aspect is strikingly on display. We see the Scottish Queen get her period, staining her white shift; the ladies-in-waiting clean her, and the cloths they rinse swirl blood into a bowl of water. I’ve only ever recalled menstruation being referenced in Brian de Palma’s Carrie – not the most positive example, I offer. Ronan disagrees, and argues that the sense of shame that still surrounds this everyday aspect of women’s lives should be removed. ‘What’s genius about Carrie is that it shows what it feels like when you have your period for the first time,’ she says. ‘When I watched it as a teen with my mam, I’d already had my period for a few years, but if I hadn’t known what it was, I’d have thought I was dying. And that’s why it needs to be talked about.’

Mary, of course, is only one of the impressive roster of powerful women Ronan has embodied in her career. Her role as Briony in the film version of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement gained her an Oscar nomination when she was 13. Since then she has given one riveting performance after another: as Eilis in Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn; as the heroine of Lady Bird; in On Chesil Beach, another McEwan adaptation. And she made her Broadway debut in 2016 playing Abigail in Ivo van Hove’s acclaimed production of The Crucible.

‘From a purely selfish point of view, I’ve always wanted to play characters who are well-rounded and interesting and smart, or who are intelligently written,’ she says. ‘And because that’s what I’ve always wanted to get out of it, the films end up reflecting that. They’re the only roles I want to play. Even when I was a kid, I knew I didn’t just want to play “the sister”, or “the girlfriend”, or “the secretary”. That was always a priority for me, to play someone who –even if they were only in a few scenes – really had something to them.’

It’s clear she doesn’t have much time for the notion that films with women in them are ‘women’s movies’. In part, I think that’s because – blessedly – she is of a generation that’s moved past such regressive ideas, although she knows there’s still some ground to cover. ‘With Lady Bird,’ she says earnestly, ‘the amount of guys who would come up to me – and I had it with Brooklyn as well – and be like, “I’m not usually into films like that, but ah... I really liked that, and I even cried a little bit because I loved it so much”. And I’m like,“What kind of films do you mean?” Of course, they mean female-led movies. But the thing is, whether there’s a girl or a boy leading it, Lady Bird is about someone preparing to leave home. That’s it. And the more specific you can make it to one person's experience, the more universal it will be.'

The film has much to say about bodies: about the queens’ different calculations about marriage and producing an heir; about the violence done to women by men; about sexual pleasure; about physical closeness between women friends; about clothing as a projection of power and desirability. When I last saw Rourke, several months previously, she had been arguing with producers over the edit. She wanted to include scenes that showed Mary having her period, and another that showed her being given oral sex.

“I was fighting for a period in a period movie,” she says. “Those were instructive discussions about how honest we were being about women’s bodies and what they do, women’s pleasure and what that is, and a queen’s body as a political canvas. I felt that was something I hadn’t seen before, that I just really wanted to show. There are not many of us who know what it feels like to be a crowned head of Europe – but what we do know is what it’s like to fight for the rights of our bodies.”

She got her way in the end: the scenes are still there. “We need to show this stuff. It does need normalising. A journalist asked me how hard it was to shoot the scene where Mary has her period, and my answer was, ‘Not hard at all!’ There were six women in that room, and it was probably the thing that just most easily staged itself. But it does continue to freak some people out.”

As for the cunnilingus scene, Rourke did not employ an intimacy director – a safeguarding role increasingly being discussed in the performing arts. Rather, she worked with the choreographer Wayne McGregor, who was movement director for the film. “I don’t think I’ve ever done a sex scene without a movement director, without treating it as a piece of choreography,” she says. “I hope the sex scenes feel truthful and alive. To think in a language of movement helps remove embarrassment, discomfort or shame.”

In the picture above, taken in 1979, Bloom is posing second from left at the table, in between Marcia and George Lucas and in front of Paul Hirsch. Bloom's husband, Jay Cocks, is leaning on a chair next to Nancy Allen, who was then married to Brian De Palma, who is standing in the middle between Paul and Jane Hirsch.

In 1968, Cocks was covering film for TIME magazine when he screened and reviewed Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, which blended fiction and documentary by filming at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. "He found himself smitten with Verna Bloom, a New York actress who had given such a natural performance that he didn't realize she was one of the film's fictional elements," stated The Globe And Mail's Simon Houpt in a 2001 profile piece on Cocks. "Oh, I had the major hots from the screening," Cocks told Houpt with a chuckle. "I wasn't counting on meeting her and the review wasn't written to woo her. But she got a great review." Houpt continues:

A friend at Time introduced him to Bloom, who is now perhaps best known for her role as the dean's besotted wife Mrs. Wormer in the classic frat flick Animal House. (She also played at the other end of the spectrum, as Mary, mother of Jesus in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.) For their first date, the two went to a movie with Scorsese. "It was a Susan Sontag movie, Duet for Cannibals. Two out of three of us fell asleep during the picture. Guess who stayed awake? Marty!"

In 1971, Bloom was in a play with Robert De Niro, Kool Aid, which was actually an umbrella title for two one-act plays (Grail Green and Three Street Koans) written by Merle Molofsky. The play had a brief run at the Forum Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. Later that year, Verna Bloom and Jay Cocks (who married each other in July 1972) hosted their annual Christmas party where, on this occasion, De Niro met Martin Scorsese-- the two may or may not have been introduced to each other that night by De Palma, who was also there, but they soon realized that they had known each other casually as teenagers. They would soon make Mean Streets together.

Bloom would later appear as a sculptor in Scorsese's After Hours (1985), and she then portrayed Mary, Mother of Jesus in Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988). Cocks had collaborated with Scorsese on the latter film's screenplay, although his work for that one went uncredited. (Cocks has also worked on several unproduced screenplays for De Palma, and he is credited for making the documentary within De Palma's Sisters.)

Bloom also appeared in two of Clint Eastwood's films: High Plains Drifter (1973) and Honkytonk Man (1982). The Hollywood Reporter's Mike Barnes has included some nice career details and quotes in his Verna Bloom obituary:

Bloom made her big-screen debut in Wexler's documentary-style Medium Cool (1969) as a single mother from West Virginia who gets caught up in the violence surrounding the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention, which took place in Wexler's hometown of Chicago.

The writer-director-cinematographer inserted Bloom into the violence, and the image of her in a yellow dress searching for her lost son among the protestors, tear gas, tanks and armed soldiers became an indelible artifact of those divisive times.

"She was not only a wonderful actress, she was fearless," Wexler once said. "I was more frightened than she was."

In Animal House (1979), Bloom put in a great comedic turn as Marion Wormer, the wife of Faber College Dean Vernon Wormer (John Vernon). Her flirty character talks about cucumbers with ladies' man Eric "Otter" Stratton (Tim Matheson) in a grocery store before embarking on a fling with the college kid.

Born on Aug. 7, 1938, in Lynn, Massachusetts, Bloom graduated from Boston University in 1959. She moved to Denver and started a local theater, where she helped produce productions of Look Back in Anger and A Taste of Honey.

She came to New York and made her Broadway debut in 1967 in The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade. Wexler then cast her in Medium Cool on a recommendation from writer-historian Studs Terkel.

Her fellow Medium Cool actress Marianna Hill, in a 2016 interview with Shaun Chang for his Hill Place blog, said that Bloom was handcuffed and arrested during filming as Hill managed to flee. She said Terkel "wrote a wonderful story about two girls walking in the park and getting arrested for just being girls. It was a cause celebre and was in the headlines in the Chicago Sun-Times for about two weeks."

Bloom's big-screen résumé also included The Hired Hand (1971), directed by and starring Peter Fonda, and Howard W. Koch's Badge 373 (1973), also starring Robert Duvall.

On television, Bloom portrayed the mother of Linda Blair's character in the landmark 1975 NBC telefilm Sarah T. — Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic and was the wife of a cop (Frank Sinatra) in 1977's Contract on Cherry Street, another high-profile NBC movie.

“My mother gave birth to me when she was 18 and one of the things she hid from her father was her subscription to The New Yorker magazine,” Hawke said. “It’s a weird thing to combine white trash and The New Yorker, but that’s my family. When I was growing up, what she used to do was save The New Yorker and whatever Pauline Kael reviewed was the movie we would go see. After we saw it, we would read Pauline Kael’s review, which we often did disagree with. … Even after ‘Dead Poets Society’ came out I had to go home and sit at the dinner table and read Pauline Kael’s very negative review of that movie. ‘The whole thing is wrapped in a gold bow like a bunch of bullshit. If I have to see another movie that makes me glad I’m alive I’ll have to kill myself,” is what I think she said.”

Hawke’s ability to pivot from humorous anecdote to profound meditation remains unmatched. “In my life, I have witnessed big business absolutely devour an extremely young art form,” he said at the end of his speech. “We live in a culture that hero worships the accumulation of wealth and then acts surprised about who we elect as our officials. Film criticism establishes a different barometer of success and it teaches audiences what to look for, how to watch movies, how to listen to stories, and I’m so grateful to articulate why all these movies you are celebrating tonight matter, because they matter to me.”

See Also:

Mark Jacobson, Vulture
In Conversation: Paul Schrader

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.

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.

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.

"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.