Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website.
Here is the latest news:

De Palma a la Mod

E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com

De Palma Discussion
Forum

-------------

Recent Headlines
a la Mod:

Domino is
a "disarmingly
straight-forward"
work that "pushes
us to reexamine our
relationship to images
and their consumption,
not only ethically
but metaphysically"
-Collin Brinkman

De Palma on Domino
"It was not recut.
I was not involved
in the ADR, the
musical recording
sessions, the final
mix or the color
timing of the
final print."

Listen to
Donaggio's full score
for Domino online

De Palma/Lehman
rapport at work
in Snakes

De Palma/Lehman
next novel is Terry

De Palma developing
Catch And Kill,
"a horror movie
based on real things
that have happened
in the news"

Supercut video
of De Palma's films
edited by Carl Rodrigue

Washington Post
review of Keesey book

-------------

Exclusive Passion
Interviews:

Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario

------------

AV Club Review
of Dumas book

------------

« August 2024 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Interviews...

De Palma interviewed
in Paris 2002

De Palma discusses
The Black Dahlia 2006


Enthusiasms...

De Palma Community

The Virtuoso
of the 7th Art

The De Palma Touch

The Swan Archives

Carrie...A Fan's Site

Phantompalooza

No Harm In Charm

Paul Schrader

Alfred Hitchcock
The Master Of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock Films

Snake Eyes
a la Mod

Mission To Mars
a la Mod

Sergio Leone
and the Infield
Fly Rule

Movie Mags

Directorama

The Filmmaker Who
Came In From The Cold

Jim Emerson on
Greetings & Hi, Mom!

Scarface: Make Way
For The Bad Guy

The Big Dive
(Blow Out)

Carrie: The Movie

Deborah Shelton
Official Web Site

The Phantom Project

Welcome to the
Offices of Death Records

The Carlito's Way
Fan Page

The House Next Door

Kubrick on the
Guillotine

FilmLand Empire

Astigmia Cinema

LOLA

Cultural Weekly

A Lonely Place

The Film Doctor

italkyoubored

Icebox Movies

Medfly Quarantine

Not Just Movies

Hope Lies at
24 Frames Per Second

Motion Pictures Comics

Diary of a
Country Cinephile

So Why This Movie?

Obsessive Movie Nerd

Nothing Is Written

Ferdy on Films

Cashiers De Cinema

This Recording

Mike's Movie Guide

Every '70s Movie

Dangerous Minds

EatSleepLiveFilm

No Time For
Love, Dr. Jones!

The former
De Palma a la Mod
site

Entries by Topic
A note about topics: Some blog posts have more than one topic, in which case only one main topic can be chosen to represent that post. This means that some topics may have been discussed in posts labeled otherwise. For instance, a post that discusses both The Boston Stranglers and The Demolished Man may only be labeled one or the other. Please keep this in mind as you navigate this list.
All topics  «
Ambrose Chapel
Are Snakes Necessary?
BAMcinématek
Bart De Palma
Beaune Thriller Fest
Becoming Visionary
Betty Buckley
Bill Pankow
Black Dahlia
Blow Out
Blue Afternoon
Body Double
Bonfire Of The Vanities
Books
Boston Stranglers
Bruce Springsteen
Cannes
Capone Rising
Carlito's Way
Carrie
Casualties Of War
Catch And Kill
Cinema Studies
Clarksville 1861
Columbia University
Columbo - Shooting Script
Congo
Conversation, The
Cop-Out
Cruising
Daft Punk
Dancing In The Dark
David Koepp
De Niro
De Palma & Donaggio
De Palma (doc)
De Palma Blog-A-Thon
De Palma Discussion
Demolished Man
Dick Vorisek
Dionysus In '69
Domino
Dressed To Kill
Edward R. Pressman
Eric Schwab
Fatal Attraction
Femme Fatale
Film Series
Fire
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Fury, The
Genius of Love
George Litto
Get To Know Your Rabbit
Ghost & The Darkness
Greetings
Happy Valley
Havana Film Fest
Heat
Hi, Mom!
Hitchcock
Home Movies
Inspired by De Palma
Iraq, etc.
Jack Fisk
Jared Martin
Jerry Greenberg
Keith Gordon
Key Man, The
Laurent Bouzereau
Lights Out
Lithgow
Magic Hour
Magnificent Seven
Mission To Mars
Mission: Impossible
Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
Nancy Allen
Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
Noah Baumbach
NYFF
Obsession
Oliver Stone
Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
Parties & Premieres
Passion
Paul Hirsch
Paul Schrader
Pauline Kael
Peet Gelderblom
Phantom Of The Paradise
Pimento
Pino Donaggio
Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
Raggedy Ann
Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
Robert De Niro
Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
Scorsese
Sean Penn
Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
Snake Eyes
Sound Mixer
Spielberg
Star Wars
Stepford Wives
Stephen H Burum
Sweet Vengeance
Tabloid
Tarantino
Taxi Driver
Terry
The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
Toronto Film Fest
Toyer
Travolta
Treasure Sierra Madre
Tru Blu
Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
Untitled Ashton Kutcher
Untitled Hollywood Horror
Untitled Industry-Abuse M
Untouchables
Venice Beach
Vilmos Zsigmond
Wedding Party
William Finley
Wise Guys
Woton's Wake
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
RSS Feed
View Profile
You are not logged in. Log in
Thursday, August 29, 2024
IN 2006, DE PALMA RESTORED HIS CUT OF 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
DE PALMA TO BRUCE WEBER IN 1989: "IN A MOVIE LIKE THIS, I'M NOT SURE TESTING HAS ANY RELEVANCE"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/casextended1.jpg

In 2006, when Columbia released Brian De Palma's restored cut of Casualties Of War, it was billed as the "Extended Cut."

In May of 1989, three months prior to the theatrical release of Casualties Of War, the New York Times Magazine published an article about the film by Bruce Weber, which begins with a test screening of the film. Here's an excerpt, courtesy of the book Brian De Palma Interviews, edited by Laurence F. Knapp:

IN THE MINUTES BEFORE the first public test screening of Brian De Palma's new movie at a theater in Boston, a young man approaches Steven Spielberg, De Palma's friend and fellow director who is sitting in the audience with a baseball cap pulled down over his brow, and asks him if he is Steven Spielberg.

"No," Steven Spielberg says, though as the man begins to walk away, he changes his mind.

Ambivalence and nervousness are prevalent this evening. De Palma himself, who believes this movie, Casualties of War, unequivocally to be his best, is nonetheless aware that it is not a romping entertainment. "It's so intense people may get up and leave," he said earlier in the day. At the moment, he's in the front row, and will spend the evening with his back to the screen, watching the audience.

Farther back, seated with Spielberg, are the film's producer, Art Linson, and several Columbia Pictures executives, including Dawn Steel, who approved the project in November 1987, shortly after she became president of the beleaguered studio.

Casualties of War had been abandoned by Paramount, Steel's previous employer; she rescued it for Columbia, upped the budget to a reported $22.5 million and made it her first "green light." Columbia finished 1988 last among the nine major movie studios in domestic market share, and Steel, charged with effecting a resurgence, is now awaiting summer, when the first movies produced at the studio on her watch will be released. Though Casualties of War features Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, and is thus compatible with Steel's predilection for star packages, it isn't Ghostbusters II (which is due next month). As the lights go down, Steel is visibly on edge.

Based on the true story of an atrocity committed by a squad of American soldiers in Vietnam, Casualties of War is immediately recognizable as a Brian De Palma film. In its opening sequence, a nighttime battle in the jungle that is photographed in the glossy, hyperbolized mode De Palma has frequently favored in his depictions of threat and chaos, Daniel Eriksson, a "cherry" who is seeing his first action, falls through a hole in the jungle floor and finds himself wedged in the earth up to his armpits, his legs dangling into a tunnel dug by the Vietcong. Played by Fox, Eriksson is plainly terrified, but he is spared a bit of suspense that the audience, which sees that the tunnel occupied, is not. As Eriksson is yanked to safety by a comrade, an enemy guerrilla swipes at his legs with a knife-and misses.

It is a typical De Palma manipulation, a macabre joke played both for the audience and at its expense. It is the only one in the picture: Though the film is bursting with De Palma's inventions, the grim truth of the material is no laughing matter. When the squad members, sent on a scouting patrol, kidnap a young Vietnamese woman, rape her and kill her, Eriksson is unable to stop them and bears excruciating witness to the crime. For the remainder of the movie, he is at the mercy of his conscience.

In the middle of the screening, half a dozen people do pick up and leave. And when the lights finally come up the theater is silent. Not a rustle. Eventually, as opinion cards are distributed, Steven Spielberg leans across Dawn Steel, whose fists are not yet unclenched, and murmurs a judgment to a man sitting on her opposite side.

"You'll be thinking about this for a week," he says.

"Maybe the ending could be made simpler," De Palma says. It is the following morning, and he doesn't look well. A large man - his girth, like many of his movies, is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock - he is devilishly bearded, and can be imposingly stone-faced. But today he is pale with apparent sleeplessness. After the screening, he attended a focus group discussion, examined the audience opinion cards and went to bed. Dawn Steel and Art Linson have expressed a wary satisfaction at the results of the test, but sipping cappuccino in the lounge of his hotel and speaking in his oddly reedy voice, De Palma is more forthright. The focus group had been impatient during a key expository sequence, he says, and he now wears the aspect of a man who, at the end of a long and grueling effort, has just discovered there is more work to be done.

"We were disappointed," he says, acknowledging that the majority of the audience graded the picture in the good to very good range. "What you really want," he says, and then stops to distance himself from the studio executives. "What they want is to have it tipped way high in the excellent area." He points out that, unlike a comedy, in which you can actually gauge what the audience thinks is funny, Casualties of War is supposed to leave the audience stunned, disturbed, introspective - and silent.

"In a movie like this, I'm not sure testing has any relevance," he says. "Still, you have to consider the problems when you read the cards and listen to the focus groups. You have to consider what's bothering them. Why aren't they reacting more strongly? It unnerves you. Everyone is unnerved. No question about it."


And then the Weber article ends on a note about that test screening:
"We were in hell for five months," said Michael J. Fox. Speaking during the filming of the movie's final sequence in a San Francisco park last summer, Fox had, along with the rest of the crew, just returned from the jungles of Thailand, where the bulk of the movie was shot, and where temperatures had been routinely over 100 degrees.

"You're physically exhausted, and because of the material, you're emotionally in a bit of a state," Fox said. "It was really important to watch Brian getting out of his Volvo every day, and to know that he knew exactly what was going to happen. He inspires confidence."

Indeed, as technicians, setting up one last shot, built a track on the park grass for a camera to dolly on, De Palma, supervising, was an enormous, composed presence amid the commotion. De Palma would explain later that the scene had been storyboarded long ago; it was already in his head, and because there were no grave problems afforded by the location, the only problem left, really, was the technical one - matching his vision.

In the sequence being filmed, Eriksson, years after his discharge, confronts a young woman who reminds him of the woman he saw killed. And in the final shot, the young woman emerges from a bus, followed by Eriksson, who pursues her into the park and calls after her. As the cameras rolled, De Palma, seated in a director's chair and watching the scene through a viewfinder, hunched his shoulders, becoming aggressively more attentive, like a cat who'd heard a distant, unidentifiable sound. Fox approached the camera; the camera dollied toward Fox, so that, in the end, they were inches apart, his face in close-up, the actress Thuy Thu Le offscreen. The whole thing lasted less than a minute.

De Palma ran the actors through eight takes, consulting with Fox after each, and finally, the last couple of times, hustling just to the edge of the confrontation himself, so that he, Fox, Thuy Thu Le and the cameraman were all huddled together under the sound boom as if it were an umbrella.

It was the acting that hadn't satisfied him - Michael Fox's final expression.

It's a difficult scene to bring off," he said afterward. "You know, you run into a stranger and she looks at you and understands something about you that no one's ever understood. In a sense, she's the forgiving angel. And he's got to show that he's been forgiven. In the initial takes, it just wasn't there."

Eight months later, sitting in his Boston hotel, De Palma is asked if this is the scene that befuddled the screening audience. "No," he says, "they seemed to like that. They thought the movie was paced very well. And they were not disturbed by the violence, which in a movie of mine is remarkable."

The problem, he explains, was in the court martial scene, which the audience seemed to feel reiterated dilemmas that had already been resolved. "I think it's important to see the squad members on the stand," he says, see what they have to say, see them confronted with what they've done. But you are taking the risk of dragging the audience back through material they are familiar with, in order to get the true emotional thrust of the movie - which is that these are all casualties of war." He admits that he's thinking of dropping the trial scene, or at least editing it down.

It's an interesting moment, the film maker listening in his head to several different voices at once. He looks as if he wished they would all shut up.

How, he is asked, will the decision be made? "Everyone will give me an opinion," he says. "and then I'll do what I want."



Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Monday, August 26, 2024
ARI KAHAN TO PRESENT 'PHANTOM' 50TH IN DENVER, SEPT 21
A VERY SPECIAL SCREENING AT THE SIE FILM CENTER
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/denver50thphantom.jpg

Posted by Geoff at 11:44 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
'ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS' IS 'A KNOCKOUT', WRITES CRITIC
FINANCIAL TIMES REVIEW MENTIONS DE PALMA
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/onlytheriverflows2.jpg

At Financial Times, Danny Leigh reviews Wei Shujun’s "eerie" Only The River Flows:
Fittingly, as pure cinema, Only The River Flows is a knockout: eerie and dreamlike. An overture of kids at play is a marvel. Another scene is a dead ringer for gaudy maestro Brian De Palma. And, oh: it never stops raining.

But Wei also tethers his film to everyday realities. China’s former one-child policy takes a key supporting role. If the movie is a philosophy lesson in unknowable truth, it also has cynical police chiefs who just want someone locked up fast.

Released in China last year, the film became a domestic box-office smash: no minor feat for an art-house movie shot on 16mm film that opens with a quote from Albert Camus. In the west, it might be tempting to see crowds flocking subversively to a portrait of flawed authority. But those flaws are safely three decades in the past. Anyway, a simpler pleasure may well have been more influential. Having seen the movie, Chinese audiences then thronged social media to debate the plot, a modern forum for an age-old question. No, but seriously, whodunnit?


Posted by Geoff at 11:06 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Monday, August 19, 2024
WATCHING PHIL DONAHUE IN SPLIT-SCREEN
DRESSED TO KILL (1980)
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/phil1.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 9:42 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Sunday, August 18, 2024
35 FRAMES FROM 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
RELEASED IN THEATERS 35 YEARS AGO TODAY, IN 1989
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/cas35th39.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 9:35 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, August 18, 2024 9:45 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Saturday, August 17, 2024
MOVIEMAKER MAG INTERVIEWS PAUL WILLIAMS & ARI KAHAN
AND MATT ZOLLER SEITZ REWATCHES PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE - "WHAT AN MFer OF A MOVIE!"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/mmswanintv.jpg

The print edition of MovieMaker magazine's Summer 2024 issue, which hit the stands a few weeks ago, includes an article titled "Phantom At 50", in which the magazine's Joshua Encinias interviews Paul Williams and the Swan Archives' Ari Kahan. This week, the article was also posted to the MovieMaker website, where it can be read in full.

In a separate bit of intriguing news, Kahan will be at the 50th anniversary screening of Phantom Of The Paradise, for which Paul Williams is an already-announced guest, at the theater where Brian De Palma's movie was filmed: The Majestic Theater in Dallas, on Saturday, October 26th. In fact, with Kahan on hand, this promises to "a very special" screening of Phantom Of The Paradise.

Meanwhile, Matt Zoller Seitz re-watched the film last night:


Posted by Geoff at 6:00 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Thursday, August 15, 2024
NEW POSTER CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF CARLOTTA
WITH MIGHTY DE PALMA FRONT AND CENTER


Here's the info from the Carlotta Films Boutique:

The 25 YEARS Carlotta Films collector’s poster

To celebrate our 25 YEARS, we have created a collection of limited and exclusive collector's memorabilia . Here is the collector's poster with the anniversary visual created especially for the occasion by the illustrator Thomas Walker aka Tommypocket .

  • Poster 40x60 cm
  • Delivered folded

Limited to 200 copies

Find the entire collection of exclusive Memorabilia 25 years here .


Posted by Geoff at 5:39 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
WEDNESDAY TWEET - THE FALSE MIRROR / SNAKE EYES
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/falsemirror1.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 11:24 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
PODCAST FOCUSES ON ONE DE PALMA SHOT OR SEQUENCE AT A TIME
CRAIG COHEN INVITES A GUEST FOR EACH EPISODE, DISCUSSING A KEY PART OF A DE PALMA FILM


This past May, Craig Cohen started The G.O.A.T. - A Brian De Palma Fan Podcast with an episode about De Palma's 1998 film Snake Eyes. For each episode, Cohen brings on a guest to discuss a key scene or sequence from a De Palma movie. Other films discussed on episodes so far include Carrie, Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way, and Scarface.

Posted by Geoff at 11:37 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Monday, August 12, 2024
ÁNGEL SALAZAR HAS DIED AT 68
ACTOR WAS CHI CHI IN SCARFACE, WALBERTO IN CARLITO'S WAY
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carlitoangel055.jpg

Ángel Salazar, who portrayed Chi Chi in Brian De Palma's Scarface, and then also appeared in the De Palma/Pacino collaboration Carlito's Way ten years later, passed away in his sleep over the weekend, according to Deadline. He was 68.

From an obituary by the New York Times' Amanda Holpuch:

Ángel Salazar, a stand-up comedian known for his wacky routines and an actor best known for playing Chi Chi in the 1983 cult classic “Scarface,” died on Sunday at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn. He was 68.

His death was confirmed by a representative, Roger Paul, who said Mr. Salazar had an enlarged heart and was found unresponsive.

He was an established comedian and actor who built his career in New York City comedy clubs after fleeing Cuba when he was young.

He acted in stage plays, television shows and films, including “Carlito’s Way” in 1993, but none of these roles would surpass the renown of his part in “Scarface,” in which he played Chi Chi, a henchman of the drug lord Tony “Scarface” Montana (Al Pacino). In the 1983 film, Chi Chi backs Montana, a fellow Cuban refugee, on his violent campaign to reach the top of Miami’s cocaine trade.

In 2017, more than 30 years later, after the film had secured generations of fans, Mr. Salazar told The Record of Bergen County, N.J., that he still answered to “Chi Chi” and didn’t mind when people brought DVD copies of “Scarface” to his comedy shows to be signed.

Ángel Salazar was born on March 2, 1956, in Cuba. He acted in theaters there before fleeing the country in the early 1970s, swimming across Guantánamo Bay to reach the U.S. naval base there, as he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1996. From there, he was flown to Miami and then moved to New York, where he was placed in a foster home in the Bronx.

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

In New York, he had trouble finding acting jobs, but he could make people laugh and at age 18 decided to test how far that could get him by performing at a comedy club’s open mic night.

“I had 10 minutes,” Mr. Salazar told The Inquirer. “And I think I had one joke. The rest of the time I said, ‘Check it out,’ over and over again.”

Eventually, he was a comedy club regular, and “Check it out” was a staple of his wacky comedy routines, which included costumes, props and impersonations of celebrities such as Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner.


Deadline's Denise Petski adds that "at the time of his death, [Salazar] was reprising his role as Chi Chi in The Brooklyn Premiere from Brooklyn born director Eric Spade Rivas, where he reunited with Steven Bauer (Manolo) from Scarface."


Posted by Geoff at 10:18 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Newer | Latest | Older