-FLASHBACK-

Thursday, January 17, 2019

DEL TORO DONATES 35MM 'PHANTOM' PRINT TO NEW BEV
RIAN JOHNSON & EDGAR WRIGHT POST RESPONSES TO GUILLERMO'S TWEET


Earlier today, Guillermo del Toro tweeted the image above with the following message:

I love this film (Phantom of the Paradise) so much that I bought a great 35mm print. I then donated it to the @newbeverly cinema. Hopefully they'll program it soon!

Rian Johnson then responded, "I have never seen this movie and am waiting until I can see it on the big screen. Soooooo....."

And then Edgar Wright jumped in: "But how many times have I gone on about?"

Rian Johnson: "I blame you for all of this."

Edgar Wright: "My first ever programming at the @newbeverly was a double bill of Bugsy Malone & Phantom Of The Paradise with a @IMPaulWilliams Q&A (and a secret midnight of Ishtar). I'm not sure I ever topped it."

New Bevery Cinema to Rian Johnson: "This is very exciting to hear! I can’t imagine a better way to see it for the first time."

(The New Beverly, of course, is owned by Quentin Tarantino, but I don't know who tweets on the New Bev's behalf.)

Aaron Stewart-Ahn, co-screenwriter of last year's Mandy, responded to del Toro's initial tweet, writing, "The Academy archival print is so effin gorgeous and such a highlight of how prints even of films from that era and stocks can hold saturation and inky blacks." Stewart-Ahn also retweeted del Toro's tweet, adding, "One of the most underrated movies ever."

From the responses that followed, it appears that McWeeny had been reading David Koenig's new book, Shooting Columbo. When Kip Stiles tweeted a response about Steven Spielberg having directed an episode, McWeeny responded, "Yeah. He's the one who recommended DePalma to the producers. DePalma was between jobs and liked the show, and he and Jay Cocks had a pitch: what if Truman Capote killed Johnny Carson on live TV?" Which of course brings to mind De Palma's idea, just two or three years earlier, to have Tommy Smothers appear to saw a rabbit in half live on the Johnny Carson show at the end of Get To Know Your Rabbit. (De Palma was fired from that project before he could film such an ending.) The idea resurfaced in 1980, for a potential "comedy" -- Dene at The Story Of Euston Films found the following extract in a Milwaukee Journal profile of De Palma, written by Helen Dudar, and dated April 20, 1980, "a few months before Dressed to Kill was released" --

Previously:
Brian De Palma & Jay Cocks' unproduced 1973 Columbo script discovered

Leguizamo and McFarlane reconnected three years ago at New York Comic Con and started talking about collaborating. Leguizamo was already an Eisner-nominated writer at that point for his graphic novel Ghetto Klown, but McFarlane gave him some tough love on how challenging it is to make a successful comic.

“Just because you are a celebrity does not mean this is just automatically going to work,” McFarlane recalls saying. “You need to deliver a story that people are going to want to read.”

Leguizamo recalls feeling pressure to deliver something McFarlane would approve of.

“It was very sobering talking to Todd. He wasn’t trying to discourage me, he was trying to make me sharper,” says the writer-actor.

As an actor, Leguizamo has worked with acclaimed directors such as Brian De Palma, Spike Lee and Baz Luhrmann and has studied storytelling from them. Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge was a formative experience, with the actor recalling the script was originally a whopping 300 pages. (A two-hour movie generally has a script that runs about 120 pages.)

“We’d read it every Friday, and he kept reducing it until it got to 150. That process became a part of me. I got to write one of the scenes in the movie, which was an incredible opportunity,” recalls Leguizamo. “Brian De Palma, when I did Carlito’s Way, he let me improvise like crazy. There are so many possibilities in a moment. A moment could go anywhere and still be part of the plot and move the plot forward.”

The career-spanning Baumbach/Paltrow doc is terrific, of course, but if you really want to go in-depth with De Palma discussing his career, the Blumenfeld/Vachaud book is the go-to source. As we know, there are several great books about De Palma and his work -- this one fits in with something like Hitchcock/Truffaut, or Matt Zoller Seitz's comprehensive conversation books with Wes Anderson and Oliver Stone. There really should be an English-language translation -- hopefully someone will look into that and make it happen.

Brian De Palma’s Carrie is considered one of the greats of the horror film genre. However, for Salem Horror Fest director Kay Lynch, catching it on late TV one night it was more than great, it was life-changing. “It was one of the first films I can remember ever feeling validated by,” she recalls. “The body horror in the shower, the insecurity, and rage. I felt so connected to her... I’ll never forget the palpitation in my chest. It was an emotional catharsis. That’s when I realized that horror could be a healthy way to face my darkness.” And for Lynch, the film festival, which is celebrating its fifth year this October, offers audiences an opportunity for that same kind of emotional outlet.

The festival, which screens a mix of repertory and independent premieres, first began as a response to the 2016 election. “I was angry, hurt, and scared. Knowing that there were millions of others who felt the same way, I wanted to devote myself to something that would foster community, creativity, and critical thinking,” Lynch, who saw it as an opportunity to fulfill the need for a specific kind of catharsis, said.. “[It’s] for anyone who reads the news and needs to scream bloody murder in a safe environment.”

In fact, this will be the first of several "very special screenings" of Phantom Of The Paradise that Ari Kahan will be presenting in the next few days. More details of each screening are available at the aforementioned news page, but the Principal Archivist has also provided a handy little schedule via Twitter:

9/30 Providence RI
10/1 Brookline MA
10/2 Brattleboro VT
10/3 Salem MA
10/6 Philadelphia

Watching this fever dream of a movie, it feels like Brian De Palma learned that he had six weeks left to live and decided to put all of his cinematic ideas in this film, whether or not they fit the story. It’s about an out-of-work actor who is housesitting at the Chemosphere and how he becomes more and more intrigued by a porn star he watches through a telescope. But following the plot is a fool’s errand – it’s the kind of film where you simply need to let the vibe wash over you in order to enjoy the onslaught of baffling maximalist creative decisions. From the sudden switch to rear projection mid-scene, to the abrupt musical number that happens toward the film’s climax; it’s crazy to think this is the blank check movie De Palma wanted to cash after the massive success of Scarface.

Body Double also contains one of my favorite set pieces in all of De Palma’s filmography. In a moment of pure visual storytelling, we follow the main character tailing his object of desire, while a stalker is simultaneously tailing her at the same time. It’s the kind of sequence that can only exist in a movie; it would be so challenging to read in a novel and could never work in audio form. The way De Palma carefully lays out the geography and visual design of how his three chess pieces move across the board is remarkable.

I also just love that the killer’s weapon — a giant drill — is a direct homage to Slumber Party Massacre, one of the smartest horror movies ever made, and directed by a woman.

At once a searing supernatural shocker and a sensitive portrait of high-school loneliness, Brian De Palma’s Carrie shows that for a film to be truly terrifying, it helps if we actually care about its characters. And it’s impossible not to connect emotionally to burgeoning telekinetic Carrie White (a brilliantly affecting Sissy Spacek), a shy, repressed girl bullied by her classmates at school and abused by her religious-fanatic mother (Piper Laurie) at home. Faithfully adapted from Stephen King’s novel, the film focuses less on Carrie’s emerging supernatural powers than on her painfully awkward desire to fit in. Less visually extravagant than many De Palma films, Carrie is still stylish without being obtrusive. When the film finally explodes in climactic violence, the effect is both cathartic and horrifying, a teenage tragedy worthy of Greek myth.