Some intriguing comments and mentions: Lehman at one point mentions that their American publisher had wanted them to change the opening sentences of the novel... can we look forward to an English-language version of Are Snakes Necessary? They also mention two more possible novels in the works. Here's a partial transcript of the discussion, limited by my speculations about the questions that were asked. Please note that De Palma often leaps into sarcasm in a single bound, so imagine a sarcasm font in several places (usually followed by laughter on stage or from the audience)...

[Where did you get the idea for Are Snakes Necessary?]

De Palma: Where did I get the idea? Well, let me see...from the Edwards campaign, where he had a young lady taking videos of him that were supposed to show the truth of a campaign... of a campaigner on the campaign trail. And when I saw the video-- they were called webisodes-- and she was posting them on the web, and you could see by the way he was addressing the camera, i.e. her, he was, uhh, talking about the campaign, talking about himself, and looking at her in a very...snake-like way. And of course, a relationship developed, and the campaign manager's going, "We gotta get rid of this girl!" Which essentially, that's where, in the Edwards campaign, he not only had an affair with her, he knocked her up. And then, can you believe, he said his married assistant did it! You cannot make this stuff up.

[The Chandra Levy murder is brought up...]

De Palma: Oh yeah, that's another case that fascinated me. Again, another politician having an affair with one of his attractive young assistants, and one day, she disappears. And they go to the, I think it was a Congressman: "Do you know where she might be?" And he says, "No, she's only an assistant, I know nothing..." But of course, it all came out, he was having an affair with her, and then everybody thought he had something to do with getting rid of her. We have so many great political stories in America.

[Shift to talking about current administration...]

De Palma: There's so much material out there. How about paying off a porn star?

Lehman: The best-running serial TV in America right now, and arguably, the best comedy show, is the news. We sit down in front of the news every night. You can tell me whether you think it's comedy or not, but it's very engaging. I think the answer to your question is, Trump has no humor whatsoever, and yet, he has all the power. So, we need humor to survive, clearly, but... And this administration, of course, has been a great gift to late night comedy and humorists.

De Palma: Don't say too much against him. He is going to tweet against you. And what's he going to call you?

Lehman: A snake! [De Palma laughs]

De Palma: Well, he hasn't gotten us into any bad wars yet. And I grew up in an era where we were in crazy places for reasons one could never figure out. You know, it's sort of like Brexit. What is it? And why must we get out of it? [De Palma laughs] So, yeah, I went and made many movies about how terrible I thought our invasions of these other countries were. Because all the reasons they gave made no sense whatsoever. And of course, after Vietnam, we invade Iraq. There's a good idea, don't you think? What a great job we did there. But Trump is basically an isolationist. And he just wants to stay there and make all the money, and just, don't get into too much trouble. Except for all those Mexicans coming across the border!

[A question about how the pair worked together in writing the book...]

Lehman: We did not share the roles. We really did it together. Part of the fun was writing to each other. And in a way, that speaks to the parentheses that you mentioned, because I would be writing almost as if a letter, and he would write back...

[Then, a followup comment having something to do, perhaps, with the humor in the book resembling the authors' own back-and-forth banter?]

Lehman: Yeah, I think that's fair. We were trying to crack each other up.

[The moderator, noting something about a punchline and the way De Palma tells stories, reads the first part of the novel: "Barton Brock is having a bad day. A very bad day. Contrary to what his doctor had promised him, vasectomy is not a painless operation."] [laughter in the audience]

De Palma: That was based on a friend. [more laughter]

Lehman: Please tell the audience thank you for laughing, because our American publisher wanted to change the first sentence.

De Palma talks about how a career in film has valleys, and that in one of those periods in which the phone is not ringing because your last picture played "for fifteen seconds," they decided to write a book.

But then Lehman says, "Trust the tale not the teller? That's completely false. The book started because the phone was ringing constantly. And it was a producer who had notes on something Brian was working on. And I saw his jaw getting more and more clenched every day. And it seemed like a very good thing to do would be to stop taking those phone calls and begin something new."

[Male/female point-of-view question?...]

Lehman: Well, that was one thing that really interested me about this book. Brian has a very muscular sensibility, I think. And as you say, there are a lot of references that a man probably wouldn't make. So I think one way you could read the book, if you felt like it, is, what happens to a very masculine imagination when it comes into contact with the more feminine element.

De Palma: I have no idea what she's talking about. [laughter]

Lehman: There's a lot in this book that you would not have written yourself if left to your own devices. I think our readers would agree.

De Palma: I just saw two people walk out. [laughter]

Lehman: It's because of what you said.

[A question about differences between writing for film and writing for a novel...?]

De Palma: Well, in a book you can have even more kind of complicated twists of the plot, and this book has many surprises in the way the story is told. In a movie, like a couple I can remember from my distant past... Raising Cain comes to mind... in which their twists are so... twisted, you can lose the audience, because you're looking at it, and it's going by, badap badap badap badap. In a book, you can say, well, wait a minute, did she put that over there, or did she come and... oh, I'll go back a few pages and... And what's interesting about Raising Cain, when I initially made the movie, I felt it was so complicated that I reversed the telling of the stories. Because I thought it would be an easier way to follow the story. And some filmmaker saw the movie and said, wait a minute. He looked at the original script and said, wait a minute, this is completely reversed in the script. So he put it back the way it was initially written. And it really worked! And I said, that's a very good idea that I had originally. I thought it was too confusing, but, it works better the way you put it back originally. And when you leave the auditorium today, we're selling the revised version of Raising Cain.

Lehman: Okay, that's very interesting, but it didn't speak to the question at all. [laughter]

De Palma: Maybe you would like to answer it.

Lehman: All right. Obsessions have their own life, and they haunt the imagination. So Brian as a filmmaker, and Brian as a writer, is haunted by the same thing. So it's not the case that he or we are saying, Vertigo, where do we put that into the plot. As you know if you're the parent of more than one children, people are who they are from the very beginning, and you will see in our second and our third book, additional obsessions, perhaps stemming from me, avenging women, who knows?

De Palma: What? Second and third book?!? [laughter]

[Host says to Brian that he has a brother named Barton.]

De Palma: That's correct.

[She asks if there is a connection to the character in the novel.]

De Palma: It has nothing to do with my brother, he's a lovely person. And don't you try to say anything negative about him.

[After some discussion about the autobiographical aspects of De Palma's films...]

Lehman: I would like to add, on the autobiographical front: I put a lot of the things my ex-boyfriend said in the mouths of the creepiest characters in the novel. And I really recommend that.

Thierry Frémaux, who has been with the Lumière Institute for decades, and is also Artistic Director and General Delegate for the Cannes Film Festival, opened with a tribute to Agnès Varda, who died earlier today. Frémaux was then joined by Tavernier to welcome De Palma to the stage. (Recall that last June, De Palma expressed his anger to Les Inrockuptibles' Jacky Goldberg about an unfinished version of Domino having been screened for consideration for Cannes 2018. "I'm furious," De Palma exclaimed at the time, "and you can print that! The film was screened without post-synchronization, non-mixed, non-graded, and without my consent, to Thierry Frémaux, who must have asked himself 'What the heck is this?' The producers eventually found the money and we finished it last week. I presume it'll soon be shown in some festival. But seriously, what a pain!")

One final note before the rest of the pictures below: at some point of the day in between these two events, De Palma and Lehman were interviewed by TV channel France 3 Rhône-Alpes. A large picture from the latter is at the end of this post. But first, pics of Brian De Palma on stage with Bertrand Tavernier and Thierry Frémaux...

"I also like how Brian DePalma reverses certain codes: normally, a rebound would have revealed that a certain character was actually fictional, a hallucination of the main protagonist; here, the twist is to prove the existence of this character...#Raising Cain is a very personal film for DePalma, which directly evokes elements of his own journey (the adultery of a parent experienced as traumatic life event, his father doctor ...)."

The restored film had its North American premiere at the San Diego Asian Film Festival this past November-- Brian Hu wrote about the film:

In 1985, Japan’s National Space Development Agency selected the first group of Japanese astronauts to assist NASA missions in space. By zero coincidence of course, that same year, THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS descended to earth from the brains of director Macoto Tezuka, then a 22-year-old film student, and musician and TV star Haruo Chicada, who had just made a legit awesome concept album about a fake band called the Stardust Brothers. Together, they would join brainwaves to produce a Phantom of the Paradise-inspired feature-length comedy set to the album. The result didn’t register Rocky Horror-level cultural tides. But that was 1985. Now it’s 2018 and it’s time to rediscover this demented gem.

In it, two rival bandleaders – the punk Kan and the new wave Shingo – are fused into a synth-pop duo by a shady record promoter with the stare of a Bond villain and the grease of a casino manager. The odd couple climb the charts alongside their fan club manager, a former groupie with star aspirations of her own. Together they soar into the stratosphere, dodging laser-beams and robots like they’re in a futuristic Hard Day’s Night, cozying up with white girls and snorting coke from kiddie pools like a Rolling Stone. But the higher the climb, the steeper the fall, especially as the film starts ripping the record industry for its soul-sucking exploitation, its conversion of joy into briefcases of cash, and its susceptibility to government interference.

Oh but the glory! Tezuka (son of Osamu Tezuka of Astro Boy fame) throws in the kitchen sink and the piping to go along with it, never refusing a chance for upside-down cinematography, quacky sound inserts, animation asides, or hallucinations that involve mutants and zombies. The practical effects and reflective costumes transport MTV hijinks onto a Japanese game show set, while the cast of then-superstar rockers exude traditional manzai comedy with prime intergalactic jokester warfare. Prefiguring the bozo funk of Katsuhito Ishii and Takashi Miike that would revolutionize Japanese pop cinema in the early 2000s, THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS was decades ahead of its time but now finally ready for its close-up.

Starring real-life musicians Shingo Kubota and Kan Takagi, the movie tells the story of a pair of rivals from the Tokyo band scene who are turned into pop sensations by a shadowy Svengali (played by singer Kiyohiko Ozaki). But after a fleeting taste of success, they soon discover that, in the words of one song: “Once you reach No. 1, you just go down.” This isn’t really the kind of film that you watch for the plot, mind you. It has some killer songs, for starters, courtesy of idiosyncratic musician Haruo Chikada, which range from punk and new-wave to retro kayōkyoku (Showa Era Japanese pop) and rock ‘n’ roll.

Many of the tracks originated on the eponymous album that Chikada released in 1980, an “imaginary soundtrack” inspired by The Who’s “Tommy.”

“Nowadays, idols often keep going for a decade or so after making their debut,” Chikada says, discussing the overarching theme. “Back then, people would be popular one minute and then they’d vanish.”

The title came from a wisecrack by actor Shingo Yamashiro, who liked to joke that he wasn’t a “star,” he was just “stardust.” Besides, “Stardust Brothers” had a nice ring to it.

The task of translating Chikada’s album to the big screen fell to a film school prodigy with a familiar surname. Tezka (born Makoto Tezuka) is the son of Japan’s most famous manga artist, “Astro Boy” creator Osamu Tezuka, but rather than follow his father into the animation industry, he’d plunged into the world of 8mm filmmaking.

He made his first short film when he was 17 years old and picked up a prize in a contest judged by renowned director Nagisa Oshima, who became an early champion. His next two shorts were both accepted into the precursor of today’s Pia Film Festival, gaining him wider recognition within the industry and extensive media coverage.

Chikada first encountered Tezka’s work when it was featured on the TV show he presented. When he later talked with a producer friend about making a “Stardust Brothers” movie, the young filmmaker was the first — and only — name that came to mind.

“We didn’t know anyone in the movie industry,” he says. “So we were totally reckless — we asked the one person we knew who had a foot in that world, which was Macoto Tezka.”

Despite only being 23 at the time, the 8mm whizz was impressively well-connected. “I’d come in contact with a lot of people, but more from the worlds of music, fashion and design than movies,” Tezka says. “When we got together, I’d talk about this film I was making, and everyone would offer to help out.”

This explains the movie’s eclectic cast, which includes comedians, novelists, musicians and manga artists, though only a smattering of professional actors. Kyoko Togawa, one of the few seasoned performers, is a standout, and there’s a scene-stealing turn by future visual- kei star Issay. Watch closely and you may also spot cameos by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, manga artist Kazuhiko “Monkey Punch” Kato and professional wrestler Akira Maeda, among many others.

Tezka and Chikada shared an appreciation for “Phantom of the Paradise,” Brian De Palma’s camp 1974 rock musical, and “The Legend of the Stardust Brothers” ends with a dedication to it’s protagonist, Winslow Leach. As Tezka notes, De Palma cast his former college roommate, William Finley, in the role — reaffirming his belief that personality counted for just as much as professional bona fides.

On a more practical level, his exploits in 8mm film had taught him how to splice his way around his performers’ shortcomings.

“My style at the time made a lot of use of editing and montages, so I didn’t really need people to give sustained performances,” he says. “Even if they couldn’t act, as long as they could express themselves in a unique way, and there was a sense of rhythm or tempo, I knew I could put something together in the cutting room afterward.”

Tezka also managed to create some impressive set-pieces using limited resources, most memorably in a chase sequence full of Looney Tunes-style sight gags. Yet while modern audiences are likely to warm to the film’s spirited DIY aesthetic, critics at the time were less generous.

Even now, Tezka sounds hurt by the backlash — saying it “made me want to stop making films like this” — and it would be over a decade before he released another theatrical feature. As multiple projects failed to get off the ground, he started calling himself a “visualist” and looking beyond the movie industry: to music videos, TV commercials, even video games.

The belated acclaim for “Stardust Brothers” is cause for celebration, but also a bit of ruefulness.

“People are watching it with fresh eyes now, and I’ve had lots of positive comments,” he says. “But I wonder about how I could have taken those ideas further, and all the films I might have made, if people had responded like that at the time.”

Chikada, on the other hand, seems to have been unfazed by the film’s frosty reception. “I’d seen the same thing happen again and again with my music,” he says. “Even though I had a lot of confidence in what I was doing, other people didn’t seem to get it. I figured it was the same case here, so I just waited: I knew they’d come round eventually.”

It is interesting to note that the release date follows just six days after the closing ceremonies of this year's Cannes Film Festival-- the full line-up of which has not yet been revealed. May 31 is also 12 days after the series finale of Game Of Thrones will air on HBO-- providing a smooth transition and ample time for Coster-Waldau and Carice van Houten to shift promotional gears.

We’re not exactly sure what version of "Domino" will be released. Is this the film that De Palma worked on and finished, thus his de facto director’s cut? Or is this the version that the filmmaker washed his hands of, handed to producers, and doesn’t recognize as something he is proud of?

While it is true that De Palma has previously said, "Domino is not my project, I did not write the script," all De Palma means by that is that Domino falls into the same category in his filmography as Scarface, The Untouchables, and The Black Dahlia, among several others-- movies in which he is interpreting someone else's voice on the page with his visual acumen. The quotes Barfield uses are from interviews De Palma did with press in France last June. Last June, I posted about several interviews from France, which clear up the whole non-question about the cut of the film:

June 2, 2018 - Brian De Palma has been asked about Domino several times over the past few days in Paris, and usually ends with some variation of "I have no idea when this movie will be released," such as, "I'll find out when I read it in the papers like everybody else," which is kind of a way of saying it's out of his hands now. In more than one interview, including the one with AFP, he mentioned that filming on Domino was completed just last week:

Europe1

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".

In the interview with Le Parisien's Catherine Balle, De Palma said that while the making of Domino was an awful experience, the film itself is good. "It was a horrible experience," De Palma said. "The film was underfunded, it was far behind, the producer did not stop lying to us and did not pay some of my crew. I don't know at all if this feature will be released." Yet when asked if he likes the movie, De Palma replies, "Yes, it is good." Susan Lehman then adds, "It's very good."

Speaking of which, De Palma and Lehman were at the Fnac des Ternes bookstore yesterday, and you can watch the interview from that on YouTube. At one point, 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."

"For the first time in Italy," states the article, "the entire world of the film industry is united in a compact way to team up and relaunch cinema as a form of cultural entertainment throughout the year. Distribution companies will guarantee the programming of spectacular and quality cinema from January to December, without interruption, with theaters open twelve months a year. The institutions will make a contribution to supporting the initiative."

While Moviement began this past Christmas season (2018) and will run all through the year, the summer season offers a great marketing opportunity for the project. "The distributors, from the majors to the independents, all the exhibitors, from the art rooms to the multiplexes, the producers, the institutions and the talents, move together for the first time and are coordinated," the article states. "The first objective is to create the summer market starting in 2019 with a three-year plan that aligns Italy with the rest of the world with a cinema active 12 months a year."

While the article adds that the list of summer films included will be enhanced once the entire upcoming Cannes line-up is announced, it seems there may still be an opportunity for Domino to have its world premiere at Cannes, either in or out of competition... sounds crazy, perhaps, after all the speculation a year ago, but it remains, for the moment, a film unseen.