In this episode of the show we continue our DEPALMARCH marathon also known as 4 DECADES OF DE PALMA by moving up a decade from the 70s to the 80s in order to talk about arguably one of Brian De Palma’s most controversial movies, Dressed to Kill. Over the course of our discussion you will hear us talk about how De Palma’s directorial prowess and a knack for crafting memorable set pieces elevate the movie, how much it owes to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, how it is at its core a deeply personal movie, how it functions as an overt giallo film and much, much more!

Tune in and enjoy!

Hosts: Jakub Flasz & Nicolò Grasso

Featuring: Randy Burrows

Early reviews of Season 3 hint that Atlanta will extend its queasy fascination with racial masquerade even further than the dark conceptual jokes in “Helen”—in which Earn is mistaken by a partygoer for a white man made up as a Moor—or “Teddy Perkins,” with its disturbing, dessicated spectacle of whiteface. One possible primer for the show’s gutsy satire is Brian De Palma’s 1970 comedy Hi, Mom!, whose immortal centerpiece sequence depicts a group of bougie New York theatergoers attending an experimental performance in which they’re roughed up, slathered in grease paint, and subjected to racist abuse by Black performers hiding behind artificially pale complexions. The title—and devastatingly double-edged thrust—of the show is “Be Black, Baby!” and like all of De Palma’s finest provocations, the scene is designed to push characters and audience alike outside of their comfort zones and into the line of fire. The brilliant punch line: After being hectored, harassed, and threatened with arrest by real-looking cops, the patrons express gratitude for their fleeting glimpse at how the other half lives … before heading back to their brownstones.

After that introduction, the first film Rothkopf chooses to highlight is Body Double:

Body Double (1984)

Brian De Palma could have invented the erotic thriller on his own, and come to think of it, pretty much did with this synthy Hitchcock-a-thon that struck the mold: a seductive female lure (Melanie Griffith's savvy pornstar, the role that later landed her Working Girl), a ridiculous kill or two, and a stellar use of a pop song (Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax"). Don't question how believable any of this is — you'll spoil the fun.

Advanced studies: Femme Fatale (2002), in which De Palma topped himself

See Also:
Den Of Geek - Deep Water: The Wildest Thriller Movies to Watch Next
HungerTV.com - ‘Deep Water’: 9 Erotic thrillers to watch next

I think that every director worth anything - I mean, a man that makes films, vs. a man that takes a job to make a film, you know, who directs - I don't think Marty is a director. He really is a person that generates the energy behind everything that is accomplished in a film. And I would think that a director of his stature only makes one film. So that Who's That Knocking, Mean Streets, and Taxi Driver, and Alice, are all part and parcel of one film, of the way one man feels. - John Cassavetes

Well, I think all of his films are very musical, all of them. Film is like operas. - Liza Minnelli, talking about Martin Scorsese

The very first full-length documentary on Scorsese offers an invaluable look at how he was perceived by his colleagues, and himself, in 1977. Catching Scorsese while while he was in post-production on New York, New York and editing The Last Waltz, British filmmaker Peter Hayden gets the manically hyper Scorsese to comment on his youth, his relation to his lead characters, and most importantly, his approach to direction. The doc doesn’t quite move at the pace of Scorsese’s revved-up speed-talking, but it does offer some real insight into his productivity in the 1970s, thanks to an impressive array of talking heads. Included are Scorsese’s collaborators Jay Cocks, Mardik Martin, Brian De Palma, Steven Prince (who co-produced this doc), and his mentor John Cassavetes. Also the performers, who discuss his working methods in detail — Jodie Foster, Liza Minnelli, and, of course, Robert De Niro.

Director: Peter Hayden.
Writers: Peter Hayden, Chris Ranger

“I don’t believe in genres really,” says the director. “But I do believe in them as playful guardrails or support wheels along the way. And yes, we did look at The Philadelphia Story by George Cukor. And I do love Notting Hill. And I do love the fact that even in these very light, romantic films, you can find some sort of existential pondering. And so I’m not against calling our film a romcom if that’s how one defines those films. But I do admit that we go somewhere slightly darker with this one after a while. Maybe dark is the wrong word, but perhaps more melancholic.”

When The Worst Person in the World premiered in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival last July, Trier was following in the footsteps of grandfather Erik Løchen, artistic director of Norsk Film from 1981 to 1983 and a filmmaker whose drama The Hunt was nominated for the Palme d’Or in 1959. His co-writer Vogt’s second feature as a director, The Innocents, premiered in the same line-up.

“My grandfather was in the Resistance during the second World War,” says the filmmaker. “And he was captured and barely survived. He was very traumatised. And he played jazz music, I think, to try to get it out of his mind and to live his life. And he started making movies around that notion, and reading experimental literature. And in 1959 they invited him to Cannes and said: Oh, this is New Wave. For him, it was a jazz movie. It was a great thing. And it mattered a lot to our family. And in a strange way, my grandfather helped make the support system that I’m now privileged enough to make movies through. So going to Cannes was a big deal for me.”

Trier has, accordingly, been around the film industry his entire life. His mother was a documentarian and his father was a sound technician; both, he notes, were anomalies in Norway, where the film industry was comparatively tiny. As a teenager, Trier became a skateboarding champion who shot and produced his own daredevil skateboarding videos. He was still surprised when he found himself enrolled in Denmark’s European Film College and then London’s National Film and Television School.

“It’s weird, because as a kid, you realise those kids who cannot shut up cannot be allowed on set,” recalls Trier. “So you learn this great respect for silence, especially around film, especially around my father, who was a sound recordist. My mom primarily did documentaries, but I was also on set sometimes with her and it was just like seeing grown-ups play.

“What’s even weirder is, when I was 18 I finally told my friends, you know what, I want to try and make a living as a film director. And I felt that it was like a coming out moment. And all my friends went, yeah, we knew that. Because I’d been filming all along, making weird super-eight movies. I guess I’m not as gifted as Julie. I didn’t have options. I had only one thing I could do.”

Trier cites the work of Robert Bresson, Alain Resnais, and Andrei Tarkovsky among his primary influences. Studying in London, however, proved equally impactful.

“The National Film and TV School was really, really important,” says Trier. “I was rebelling against it most of the time because I came from a formal background and I wanted to make films like Brian De Palma and Antonioni did. I wanted to have complete control and they wanted us to collaborate. I found that difficult. But we had such great teachers. Stephen Frears taught us and he’s brought so many great actors – like Daniel Day Lewis, and Uma Thurman and John Malkovich – to prominence. And he taught us that you can’t fake great casting. We had talks from Mike Leigh and from Robert Altman.”

He laughs: “And they must have all brainwashed me, because I forgot all about making formal and experimental films and became a humanist filmmaker who’s interested in observational drama and collaborating.”

"We had a blast shooting The Little Hours," Brie tells The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern. "It was especially fun for me to be there with my husband Dave [Franco], who’s in the movie, as well as Jeff [Baena] and Aubrey [Plaza]. And we have a lot of repeat offenders here, like Molly [Shannon] and Fred Armisen. But Jeff came up with the concept for this movie pretty much right after we finished The Little Hours, because he wanted to get back to Italy as soon as possible. There were some delays on that, and in the interim we made Horse Girl together. After that, Jeff brought it back around and said, “I’ve written a 10-page outline for this other Italy movie idea—do you want to write it with me?” The Little Hours and Horse Girl were unscripted—we worked off a 30-page outline—but for this movie, we fleshed it out into a 35-page outline and were gonna take it out like that, and then because of the pandemic and having so much time on our hands we ended up just writing the whole script. And then we had a fun time asking all our friends to be in it."

Plaza recently worked with Michael Caine on a movie called Best Sellers, and tells Collider's Perri Nemiroff that something Caine had told her carried over to the group dynamic in Italy for Spin Me Round:

Michael Caine put it into my head that when you’re shooting a movie, maybe that’s how it was in the old days, but he was like, ‘The way I do it is we shoot all day long and then every night we go to dinner. I put on my dinner jacket and we go to dinner and we have wine,' and we tried to adopt that kind of approach in Italy where, even though we were exhausted and all losing our minds, we just really kind of dove fully in and just tried to have that experience, and I think it’s the best version of filmmaking.

The film also surprises with its lush score by Pino Donaggio, the Italian composer best known for his collaborations with Brian De Palma on films including “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill” and “Body Double.” For a tax credit, it was necessary to have a key Italian crew member, and Baena was a huge fan of what he called the “classiness and sleaziness” of Donaggio’s work, so he figured it was worth asking. When it turned out Donaggio was interested, Baena, Brie and Plaza drove to Venice after they finished shooting to meet the composer. He gave them a whirlwind view of the city, including a long evening at the famed Harry’s Bar.

Baena called the collaboration “a once in a lifetime thing” and returned to Italy for the scoring sessions. “I went to Rome to meet him at the studio where all the Italian greats worked, it’s basically this one studio that the legends recorded at,” Baena said. “And it was like my dream to basically spend a week with Pino Donaggio and just hang out with him. And he is like this cute, amazing old guy who is so on the level and is so sharp and funny and so down.

“And his music is incredible,” added Baena. “It’s hard to basically say, ‘I wanna do something like your old work,’ but I didn’t really wanna push that. I want him to go to a new place. And I think he found this middle ground where it’s reminiscent of some of his older stuff, but it feels completely new and fresh. So it has a familiar, but also unique feeling, which is what I want the movie to feel like.”

Casting a wide casting net, Baena also folds in bit parts for name talent like Fred Armisen, Ego Nwodim and Lil Rel Howery. They’re responsible for most of the effective comedy, though in some cases with portrayals that border in “SNL”-style caricatures. While not always as funny as it wishes to be through the managerial team bickering dynamic, “Spin Me Round” is generally engaging thanks to the “what the hell is happening here?” doubt that Baena instills early.

An interesting comedic exercise, this is Baena’s least eccentric outing yet (considering there are no jealous zombies or foul-mouthed nuns), but it’s perhaps his most narratively ambitious, in terms of its genre playfulness and a clear objective of dismantling its protagonist’s false illusions. Both the score (by veteran composer Pino Donaggio) and Sean McElwee’s cinematography go along with variations in tone.

Just as the music goes from happy-go-lucky, jingle-like cheer to suspensefully ripe enough for a James Bond film, the lighting choices become more purposefully on the nose to reflect the terror Amber perceives all around her. There’s a thematic and practical synergy that’s far more impressive than some of the dry-humor gags that don’t amount to much.

Well, I was born in Tangier, which is a Mediterranean city in Africa. I was a photographer and I studied all the time the light in Tangier. In Tangier, that is something which appealed to me a lot. And with time, something that appears in all my movies. In the year, there is plenty of sun. Sunny, sunny days. So the sun is always inside of the house through the windows. I studied that, and I remember very well the change of the light in the apartment that we lived in. Because in my movies, the sun is always getting inside of the house, through the windows or through anything which can convey some sunlight.

There was a question that happens to me… the American director Brian De Palma, calls me for making a movie – I’ve done three with him. On the first movie, I say to him, “But why do you think that I am good for your movie? Because I am not so well known in America.” And he said, “Well, I have seen a lot of your movies, and I noticed that you are always doing – always – very well light. And that is very important for my movies. So that’s why you are here with me.” And I say, “Well, that’s a good reason.”

Here's the podcast page's description of the episode:

In this episode of the show we embark on our DEPALMARCH marathon also known as 4 DECADES OF DE PALMA where we will pick four films directed by Brian De Palma and give them a fair shake. We begin with a conversation about his 1974 absurdist horror rock opera Phantom of the Paradise. Over the course of our chat you will hear us talk about the multitude of references embedded in this film, both literary and cinematic, how it functions as a prescient commentary on the rotten culture of Hollywood, how it is above all an ode to storytellers and their artistic integrity, how it is a bona fide oddball in Brian De Palma’s filmography and much more!