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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

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Exclusive Passion
Interviews:

Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario

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AV Club Review
of Dumas book

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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.
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Wednesday, November 5, 2014
DE PALMA & PACINO LOOKING AT 'RETRIBUTION'
REMAKE OF BELGIAN THRILLER 'THE MEMORY OF A KILLER' (AKA 'THE ALZHEIMER'S CASE')



Screen Daily's Jeremy Kay posted from the first day of the American Film Market today, with some news that includes talk of another new project that would team Brian De Palma and Al Pacino. According to Kay, buyers at the film market are "buzzing" about Retribution, a remake of Erik Van Looy's 2003 Belgian thriller De Zaak Alzheimer, which was released in the U.S. in 2005 with the title, The Memory Of A Killer. "Relativity International is understood to be in early talks with acquisitions executives on the story of a hitman and a cop who will go to any length to stop a Philadelphia child prostitution ring," Kay writes. The hitman, who would likely be portrayed by Pacino, appears to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's, according to Roger Ebert's review of the original film. Ebert quotes from Manohla Dargis' New York Times review of the film: "Here is a thriller that asks, Are men essentially good or do they just sometimes forget to be bad?" Both Ebert and Dargis mention Christopher Nolan's Memento in their reviews.

A remake has been in the works since late 2004. According to Screen Daily's Patrick Frater, when the film was still known as The Alzheimer Case, Focus Features bought the rights to an English-language remake. Later on, Philip Martin was listed as director of the project, with Matthew Michaud assigned to adapt the original film's screenplay (which had been written by Van Looy and Carl Joos, from a novel by Jef Geeraerts). Eventually, author Joshua Ferris was listed as a screenwriter on the remake, as well. No screenwriter is mentioned in Kay's article from today, and Kay also states that Relativity International could not be reached to confirm the project as part of its slate.

In writing about the original film almost a decade ago, Ebert mentions a list of actors whose names had been bandied about for the remake:

"Watch Jan Decleir's performance. He never goes for the easy effect, never pushes too hard, is a rock-solid occupant of his character. Everything he has to say about Angelo is embodied, not expressed. By the end, we care so much for him that the real suspense involves not the solution of the crimes but simply his well-being. Talks are already under way for a Hollywood remake of The Memory of a Killer, and the names of many actors have been proposed; the Hollywood Reporter lists De Niro, Caan, Hopper, Hopkins. But this performance will not be easily equaled. Gene Hackman, maybe. Morgan Freeman. Robert Mitchum, if he were alive. Decleir is the real thing."

VAN LOOY'S 'THE LOFT' SAID TO HAVE DE PALMA ELEMENTS
In early 2009, I posted about two reviews of Van Looy's Loft: Variety's Boyd Van Hoeij wrote that the film features "a nod to Brian De Palma in a standout sequence at a casino." FilmFreak's Alex De Rouck mentions that Van Looy and De Pauw emphatically wink to De Palma "in his Hitchcock period (especially in the long scenes in Dusseldorf and in the casino)."

Van Looy then shot an American remake of that film, starring Karl Urban and James Marsden, in New Orleans in 2011. The film's release was delayed when Joel Silver's Dark Castle production company moved from Warner Bros. to Universal. About a year ago, NOLA.com's Mike Scott quoted Marsden from 2011, talking about the remake: "It's just a great, classic thriller, with shades of Fatal Attraction and the Brian De Palma movies. It's got a little noir to it as well." The Loft is currently scheduled to be released January 23, 2015, three and a half years after it completed shooting.

A NOTE OR TWO ON 'HAPPY VALLEY'
You may have noticed, in the last day or so, articles popping up on the web with headlines announcing that "HBO has postponed Paterno pic," or items of that nature regarding the other current project between De Palma and Pacino. The source of these headlines is not new-- it simply stems back to Deadline's article from this past September announcing that HBO had suspended pre-production on Happy Valley to work out budget issues and rework the script. So why did all these articles suddenly pop up all over again? Because Page Six's Ian Mohr wanted to report a "source at a MoMA screening" of Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary, which is also called Happy Valley, stating that "Al and De Palma are watching the film to do research on the characters." However, the headline used for the brief post ("Penn State sex scandal movie put on hold by HBO") was picked up and parroted all over the place again.

In fact, it was already known that Pacino had seen and been moved by the Bar-Lev documentary. Shortly before Deadline's HBO announcement, Pacino spoke about the film to two interviewers. Speaking with The Daily Beast's Alex Suskind, Pacino called the documentary a "Stunning movie. And I kept thinking, it’s not the story of Paterno—that’s part of it, but it’s about Happy Valley. And it’s about all of us. It’s the way it’s sort of depicted and the intensity and the thought and how it makes you think. You go feeling one way and you leave and you sort of don’t know what to do."

Pacino also spoke to Vulture's Jada Yuan about it: "Well, for instance, Joe Paterno is a major subject. I really love that documentary they did [Happy Valley]. I found it really powerful. It wasn’t about Paterno, it was about us, our world. And I was responsive to it. So this movie about Paterno, and Brian De Palma is my friend and I love him as a director, I’ve made movies with him. But yeah, we need to find a way to tell this story in a way that has the power and the tragedy that it deserves. So in order to do that, one has to come up with the text. And that’s what we’ve been working toward."

One might be inclined to interpret Pacino's words above to suggest that the documentary may have led to a desire to tweak David McKenna's script a bit more, which may (or may not) be part of the reason for the postponing of pre-production.

A couple of weeks ago, Edward Pressman, who is producing Happy Valley, received the Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2014 career achievement award. That week at the festival, he spoke with The National's Stacie Overton Johnson, who wrote (without using any direct quotes from Pressman) that the film is currently in preproduction and due out next year.


Posted by Geoff at 6:52 PM CST
Updated: Thursday, November 6, 2014 4:25 PM CST
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Sunday, November 2, 2014
NEW BOOK ON DE PALMA SCHEDULED FOR 2015
AUTHOR DOUGLAS KEESEY TO TAKE BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH TO DE PALMA'S CINEMA
Amazon has a new book about Brian De Palma listed for publication on June 1, 2015, from University Press of Mississippi. The book, Brian De Palma's Split-Screen: A Life in Film, is by Douglas Keesey, who has previously written books about several filmmakers and actors, including Taschen books on Paul Verhoeven, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, and the Marx Bros., as well as books covering the films of Peter Greenaway and Catherine Breillat. He has also written two books about erotic cinema, and one about Neo-Noir, which focuses on directors such as the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan, Steven Soderbergh, and Quentin Tarantino.

Here is the description of the book from the Amazon listing:
Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities) in Hollywood history. De Palma helped launch the careers of such prominent actors as Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and Sissy Spacek (who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress in Carrie). Indeed Quentin Tarantino named Blow Out as one of his top three favorite films, praising De Palma as the best living American director. Picketed by feminists protesting its depictions of violence against women, Dressed to Kill helped to create the erotic thriller genre. Scarface, with its over-the-top performance by Al Pacino, remains a cult favorite. In the twenty-first century, De Palma has continued to experiment, incorporating elements from videogames (Femme Fatale), tabloid journalism (The Black Dahlia), YouTube, and Skype (Redacted and Passion) into his latest works. What makes De Palma such a maverick even when he is making Hollywood genre films? Why do his movies often feature megalomaniacs and failed heroes? Is he merely a misogynist and an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock? To answer these questions, author Douglas Keesey takes a biographical approach to De Palma's cinema, showing how De Palma reworks events from his own life into his films. Written in an accessible style, and including a chapter on every one of his films to date, this book is for anyone who wants to know more about De Palma's controversial films or who wants to better understand the man who made them.

Posted by Geoff at 10:13 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, November 2, 2014 10:17 PM CDT
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Saturday, November 1, 2014
ELECTRIC YOUTH PLAYLIST
INCLUDES A COUPLE OF TRACKS FROM DE PALMA FILMS
Last month, I posted a link to Austin Garrick's top 10 Criterion releases, which included Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Earlier this week, Entertainment Weekly posted a playlist created by Electric Youth, the Toronto duo made up of Garrick and Bronwyn Griffin. Their collaboration with College, "A Real Hero," was used prominently in Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive. They couldn't help but cap off their playlist with that track, but they also included a couple of tracks from De Palma films-- here are those two choices, with the duo's comments:

Debbie Harry – “Rush Rush” (from Scarface)
[Number 2 on their list was Giorgio Moroder's "Chase Theme" from Alan Parker's Midnight Express] "Credit on this one as well to Moroder, who produced the entire soundtrack for De Palma’s Scarface. Debbie Harry and Moroder collaborated on the amazing American Gigolo OST/Blondie classic “Call Me” as well, but this one is our fave from the two."

Pino Donaggio – “Telescope” (from Body Double)
"Another great song from another great Brian De Palma movie, this one from our favorite, Body Double."


Posted by Geoff at 5:25 PM CDT
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Friday, October 31, 2014
PAUL WILLIAMS, JESSICA HARPER TALK 'PHANTOM'
ESQUIRE WRITER ALSO TALKED TO WILLIAM FINLEY IN 2012
Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise was released in theaters 40 years ago today. Esquire's Peter Gerstenzang posted an article today to celebrate "THE MOVIE NO ONE SAW BUT EVERYONE LOVES," featuring fresh interviews with Paul Williams and Jessica Harper, along with fresh quotes from William Finley, who spoke to Gerstenzang shortly before Finley's death in 2012.

"I often wonder why movies like ours develop cults," Harper tells Gerstenzang. "I think, in part, it's because we're like the rescue dog that nobody wants. The film comes out, it gets rejected by people, and it's up for grabs. And it's something that you can call your own, if you want. It's yours. People like to form communities around things. So why not a movie?"

Williams tells Gerstenzang, "It's always been intriguing to me that Brian came to me to play Swan in this kind of a movie, considering the kind of work I was known for at the time. It's amazing he would pick the guy who co-wrote 'We've Only Just Begun' to pen songs for a film that was supposed to be depicting the future of rock. But Brian saw something in my music that made him think I could span the various kinds of genres in the film. Plus, the great treat for me was that I was able to satirize the kinds of music I love, like the Beach Boys and '50s stuff."

Williams also discusses how De Palma at first wanted him to play Winslow Leach, and how perfectly Finley embodied that role. "Throughout the movie," Williams tells Gerstenzang, "the Phantom plays his songs wearing a mask that shows only one eye. There's only one actor who could let you see just an eye and make you cry as a result. And that was Bill Finley." Williams adds, "When I was up in Winnipeg for the movie's premiere, some awestruck kid asked me, 'Hey man, a guy selling his soul to the devil, did you make that up?' And I said, 'Well, no, there was this guy named Goethe who did that.' Still, I think that it's so mythologically powerful, the Faustian idea of a guy selling his soul, combined with the Dorian Gray element. And Larry Pizer's gorgeous cinematography is essential, too. That draws you in. But mostly it's our audience, who keeps finding the movie on their own, on cable or through friends. When you love something that the world ignores? You become impassioned!"

FINLEY: DE PALMA USED TO HANG OUT AT THE FILLMORE A LOT AND TAKE PICTURES
Gerstenzang also quotes Finley from 2012: "Brian wrote the script originally in 1969. He used to hang out at the Fillmore a lot and take pictures. And he noticed, as the '60s were ending, that we were starting to see a lot more preening self-regard by the frontmen of bands. And the kids having an unhealthy attraction to it. I actually think that Robert Plant was the original model for Beef, but the character kept evolving. Still, I think Brian was very prescient about the coming of glam rock and the narcissism that came with it. He always had a good read on rock culture."


Posted by Geoff at 9:55 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, October 31, 2014 9:59 PM CDT
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Posted by Geoff at 6:35 AM CDT
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Thursday, October 30, 2014
WILLIAM KATT TALKS 'CARRIE' DEATH & MORE
"BRIAN WAS YELLING FOR THE CAMERA DEPARTMENT TO KEEP ROLLING"
A day after I posted about Vulture's interviews with Piper Laurie and Betty Buckley, Yahoo!'s Gwynne Watkins posted an "MVPs of Horror" interview with William Katt, in which he talks about making Carrie. "I remember mostly that it was just a ball having everybody there," Katt says of filming the prom scenes in the film, "because the shots would take so long to set up. And there we were, all young twenties guys and girls, and we just had a great time."

Talking to Watkins about the first few moments Carrie and Tommy spend getting close to one another, Katt laughs and says, "If they had had those cameras today that they have, the GoPros that you can hold a foot from your face and wear around, I think we would have been using those." Recalling the couple's first dance, Katt explains to Watkins, "Sissy and I danced one way, and the camera was going the other way, and we ended up going faster and faster. At the end of it, Sissy and I are laughing out loud, and the reason we’re laughing is because I’m literally spinning her so fast she’s up off of the floor, and we are so dizzy."

Here's the end of Watkins' article:

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The earlier, romantic section of the prom scene is punctuated by a jaw-dropping moment of foreshadowing: in one continuous shot, the camera moves across the gym to the foot of the stage. There, the audience sees a rope that winds across the floor, to the gym ceiling, where the camera looks down on the rigged bucket waiting to fall. The camera then moves back to Carrie and Tommy looking into each other’s eyes, unaware of what’s in store. “I remember it taking almost a day and a half to set that shot up,” says Katt, “because there was so many camera moves, and it was so difficult for the guy that was driving the crane, and the camera assistant who was pulling focus, and the DP, and the actors — it was extraordinarily difficult.”

In the film, [Chris'] bloody prank sends Carrie into a rage, and she begins telekinetically destroying everything and everyone in the gym. Famously, actress P.J. Soles was hurt during a scene where her character is attacked by a fire hose. “When the water was going off, I remember being there. And she got very injured; I think she blew out her eardrum in that sequence,” Katt recalls. He also remembers another little wrinkle in filming: When Carrie sets the gym on fire, De Palma’s set actually caught on fire. “I remember being on set when they lit off the fire, because we were doing stuff out of sequence, right? I was already supposed to be lying on the ground, dead. So they lit the stage on fire, and the actual soundstage itself caught fire. And the AD was screaming for everybody to get out, and Brian was yelling for the camera department to keep rolling,” Katt says, chuckling at the memory. “I thought that that was pretty funny. All the decorations, everything, caught fire, and I don’t believe that that was intentional.” (Thankfully, the blaze was quickly extinguished and no one was seriously in danger.)

At least Tommy’s bucket scene was quick and painless. “When that bucket fell, it was actually a guy on a big ladder behind me, and he threw that bucket down,” says Katt. “It was kind of a Kentucky Fried Chicken, papier-maché bucket that was painted to look real — and we did that shot once. I was ready to do it again, and Brian said, ‘No, we got it.’”

Katt is still a little sad that he didn’t survive the carnage — “even with my saying to Brian afterwards, ‘No, you can’t kill the character, he’s gotta come back!’” the actor jokes. “What about Carrie 2? What about the franchise, Brian?”

"It was just wild," he sighs. "It was everything you could imagine."

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Posted by Geoff at 1:49 AM CDT
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REVIEWS: DAN GILROY'S 'NIGHTCRAWLER'
Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice
"As sociopathic self-starter Louis Bloom, Gyllenhaal has refashioned himself as a version of the Tony Perkins of Psycho, an Adam's apple with a sick, brilliant mind attached. Gyllenhaal is the polestar of Nightcrawler — just as he's fixated on the grisly crimes and accidents of his city, we can't look away from him. That seems to be part of writer-director Gilroy's design. He's infused Nightcrawler with a number of ideas, free-floating through the movie like fireflies: Gilroy takes on the news media's lust for increasingly prurient stories and graphic news footage, the way crimes against white people take precedence over anything that happens to a person of color, and the downside of citizen journalism in a world where everyone wants to be a star. But on the strength of Gyllenhaal's performance, Nightcrawler works best as a character study. It's chilling, but also wickedly funny and strange, like a good, dark Brian De Palma joke — in short, it's everything the stolid and humorless Gone Girl should have been."

Katherine McLaughlin, The Arts Desk
"First-time director Dan Gilroy sets his grisly and blackly funny satire of modern media practices and the American dream on a seedy night-time LA canvas which oozes style, and recalls the aesthetic of Brian De Palma's Body Double and more recently Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. Jake Gyllenhaal turns in an incredibly convincing performance as a sociopath – repellent enough to sit alongside Travis Bickle and Patrick Bateman – who is grasping ruthlessly for success in the vilest of ways. Gyllenhaal's character is a petty thief turned self-taught freelance cameraman who makes his money from trawling the streets at night, searching for the most gruesome accidents to sell to the local news channels. His sunken eyes and pale complexion add to his unnerving presence, and while Gilroy's film may not say anything particularly original, Gyllenhaal's committed turn ensures a skin-crawling experience."

Brian Formo, Crave Online
"And while an 'it bleeds it leads' tv news critique has been done numerous times, Gilroy has his sights set on a film that’s more Brian De Palma than Network."

Simon Reynolds, Digital Spy: "5 movie antiheroes to watch before experiencing Nightcrawler's Lou Bloom"
Rupert Pupkin, Tony Montana, Suzanne Stone, Tom Ripley, Patrick Bateman.


Posted by Geoff at 1:27 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, October 30, 2014 10:44 PM CDT
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
PIPER LAURIE & BETTY BUCKLEY TALK 'CARRIE' DEATHS
ALSO: 'CARRIE' AT HALLOWEEN ALL NIGHTER IN LONDON; PODCAST DISCUSSES 'CARRIE' & FEAR
It's Halloween season, which means it's time for Carrie discussions and screenings all over the place. At Vulture last week, nine actors spoke to Jennifer Vineyard about their big death scenes in famous horror movies. Two of those actors were Piper Laurie and Betty Buckley, who kicked off the article by talking about their deaths in Carrie:
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Betty Buckley:

We all gathered to watch each other’s death scenes, and we’d go out and party afterwards to celebrate that a character had been bumped off. But in the days before that, the whole prom construction took quite a while. This contraption they built for Ms. Collins’s death scene was a basketball backboard that was on a pendulum. There was a foot of balsam wood that would take the hit against the body. They planned it so that we shot four takes with the pendulum falling and then stopping it right before it hit me. That was very scary. So what you’re seeing on film is not acting at all. I’m absolutely terrified because they had not tested out the machine. So they didn’t know [if] they calculated the balsam properly in terms of the amount and, you know, [if they] could stop it on a dime right before it hit me. Thankfully, it worked. We were all absolutely terrified.

My stunt lady was dressed like me with a wig and everything. They put her in the shot and she took the hit. But it didn’t hurt her, and thankfully, Brian [De Palma] told me to watch the movements she made and to duplicate those. They removed her from the contraption, inserted me again, and I then imitated all her behavior when she took the hit, and they shot the close-up of my dying. I had [fake] blood in my mouth that I was supposed to vomit out. They just give you a swig, then you spit it out and they bring you water.

In the several takes of my death scene, Brian’s direction to me was: Squirm like a bug on a pin. So I squirmed like a bug on a pin, and then I was supposed to vomit out the blood. He wanted different sounds as I was dying. So, one scene, my scream ended up sounding like a musical note. It was really quite silly. We were all laughing about that.

[Re: Buckley's scream that ended up sounding like a musical note-- do you suppose that might have been where De Palma got the idea for the "Coed Frenzy" girl's scream in the shower, which sounds like a musical note and cuts to John Travolta laughing at it?]

Piper Laurie, speaking to Vulture's Jennifer Vineyard:

They built a steel vest that I wore under the gown, and on that vest were several small blocks of wood. Wires attached to the wood that went through small holes in my gown. The wires were, like, 15 feet long and stretched across to where the prop man was, or the special-effects man was. This was done in slow motion, you know, the can opener or the knife or whatever coming at me. There was no way they would injure me, moving at such a slow pace. It was hard not to laugh, watching this instrument bobbing along at me like that, slowly. It just looked ridiculous. But, of course, it had quite a different look than it did at the end. Just before we were to start shooting [the death scene], I met Brian outside, we were both on our way to the restrooms, and I said, “Brian, I have an idea. Instead of having just a death scene, just doing it straight, I’d like this to be a really joyous experience for Margaret White.” He said, "Great.” So that’s what I did.

I did not actually do the scene, the dialogue part, before the actual instrument attack. But the moment just before I kill Carrie, I didn’t rehearse that. I wanted the moment to be as raw as possible. I think it was an underlying element of how I thought of Margaret, her religion, her attitude about her daughter, and the fact that she considered her daughter menstruating horrible. And the fact that I sounded like I was having a very long orgasm ... I never spelled that out to Brian, I just did it. Part of that I actually played, but I suspect that in editing they extended that vocally longer than I actually did it. But I had such a good time shooting that scene.

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HALLOWEEN ALL NIGHTER IN LONDON
Four horror classics make up the Halloween All Nighter that begins at 11:45pm Friday night (Halloween night, October 31st) at London's Electric Cinema. The program begins with Carrie, followed by The Shining. After an early-morning breakfast break, the program concludes with Rosemary's Baby, followed by The Wicker Man.

"CARRIE'S REAL DREAD LIES WITH HOW NERVOUS THE CHARACTERS SEEM TO BE ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND THEM"
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Block Bluster podcast at Mind Of The Geek featured a discussion of "Carrie and Fear." The host of the podcast, Tobias Ellis, wrote the following as an introduction:

"Everybody is afraid in Carrie. Even with all the now-iconic shots of a blood-drenched Carrie White destroying her senior prom, Carrie’s real dread lies with how nervous the characters seem to be about the world around them (a true testament to puberty if there ever was one). Carrie – realized perfectly by Sissy Spacek – begins terrified by her own body, then briefly by her own mind until finally embracing her supernatural gifts. Her physical transformation from 'girl' to 'woman' worries the few males around her, and causes Betty Buckley’s Miss Collins to wonder aloud how such a thing should bother anybody, until that makes her nervous at just how different Carrie White might be. Amy Irving’s Sue Snell is afraid of the repercussions her treatment of Carrie might cause, and of becoming the shrill, cruel Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), and does her best – in fumbling, teenage fashion – to make amends. Carrie’s mother, played to Oscar nomination by Piper Laurie, is afraid of her daughter growing up and living in these godless times. And the adults are afraid of her, and whether she might be right.

"Despite all the fear, several characters – including Tommy Ross (William Katt), Sue, and Miss Collins – have the best of intentions for Carrie White, treating her with kindness and sensitivity. Yet, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Carrie – and all its lurid, color-washed agitation – begins with blood, and ends with blood.

"This week, just in time for Halloween, Block Bluster! revisits Brian De Palma’s horror classic to discuss what it means to be afraid, and what Carrie says not so much about scaring the audience, but building an atmosphere of dread reflective of everyday fears. How terrified of the odd kid in school should we be? How terrified of each other should we be? And to help us discuss Carrie and Fear, we welcome back – from the podcasts Film Fodder and Behind the Desk – our good friend Antonio Jones!"


Posted by Geoff at 12:29 AM CDT
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Sunday, October 26, 2014
'CROSS-CUT' VIDEO ESSAY BY DREW MORTON
BEAUTIFULLY EXPLORES CONNECTIONS BETWEEN 'BLOW-UP', 'THE CONVERSATION', 'BLOW OUT'

CROSS-CUT from Drew Morton on Vimeo.


Posted by Geoff at 6:49 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, October 26, 2014 6:52 PM CDT
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Wednesday, October 22, 2014
L.M. KIT CARSON, 1941-2014
'DAVID HOLZMAN' ACTOR, SCREENWRITER, USA FILM FEST FOUNDER
L.M. Kit Carson, who portrayed the title character in Jim McBride's David Holzman's Diary so realistically that people thought they were watching an actual documentary, died Monday night at the age of 73, after a long illness, according to Dallas Morning News' Robert Wilonsky. David Holzman's Diary was a huge influence on the early work of Brian De Palma (particularly Greetings and Hi, Mom!). De Palma, McBride, and producer Charles Hirsch had all been friends prior to its completion, and Carson, who McBride credits with much of the language and ideas in the film, fell in with them, as well. From McBride's sessions with Carson, De Palma borrowed the technique of tape recording his actors as they developed their characters and created dialogue. In a passage that works as a nice tribute to Carson, McBride described the process of creating David Holzman to Joseph Gelmis in the latter's book, The Film Director As Superstar:
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The second time around I wrote ten pages, breaking it down into scenes in which I described what happens. Sometimes I wrote some of the monologues. But it was never intended to be spoken. It was intended to be a direction the language would take.

The way it actually happened was that Kit became very absorbed in the idea and really understood it very well. So we became collaborators. I didn't know it at the time, but he had been an actor and had abandoned it.

He and I spent a week together before the shooting. We sat down in a room with a tape recorder-- and I think this is the way Brian (De Palma) got the idea to do Greetings. I would say, "This is what happens in this scene. This is what I want you to say." As you know, most of the film's dialogue is in direct confrontation with the camera.

So I would tell him what I wanted and he would do it. He'd put it in his own words and throw in new things of his own. Then we'd listen to the tape together and I'd tell him: "I don't like this. You missed this. I've got an idea; put this in." He would do it again and together we refined each scene. We didn't transcribe it. We just listened to it, again and again, until we both had a fairly clear idea of what was going to happen when we were actually pointing the camera at him.

It never got down to a word by word situation. And when we started shooting it was always better than it had been in the taping sessions. He always threw in a little zinger for me that he hadn't told me about. Kit's great. We only did, at the most, two takes of any scene. As far as the camerawork is concerned, I had an absolutely clear and vivid idea of exactly what I wanted.

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

Carson went on to co-write McBride's 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984, which co-starred Carson's son, Hunter), and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). (The latter film starred Dennis Hopper, who was the subject of a 1971 documentary that Carson co-directed with Lawrence Schiller-- Matt Zoller Seitz goes into loving detail about the film in his obituary of Carson at RogerEbert.com.) In 2003, Carson co-wrote the Melanie Griffith-starrer Tempo. The co-writers were Jeremy Lipp and Jennifer Salt.

In 1970, Carson founded, with Bill Jones, what would become the USA Film Festival in Dallas, screening films such as Woodstock and Robert Altman's M*A*S*H. Speaking with Wilonsky in a 1999 article for the Dallas Observer, Carson said, "Back in 1971, the organism started in Dallas with people who were kind of interested in movies but didn't know much about movies. There were no film fests in this country devoted to the American independent film. I said, 'There's no film festival for Marty Scorsese or Brian De Palma, so let's start one, because this stuff is happening and no one is saying this is happening.'"

An article by Gregory Curtis from the June 1973 issue of Texas Monthly (from which the photo of Carson above is taken) catches the last-minute hustle of the first (and what seems to have been the last) United States Festival, for which Carson, having been ousted as director of the USA fest, served as a "special consultant." As the fest disappoints with low attendance (despite the weeklong presence of Vincente Minelli, and other special guests such as De Palma, Salt, and Margot Kidder), Curtis portrays Carson as perpetually enthusiastic and driven to present films that might not otherwise be seen. De Palma, Salt, and Kidder were there to discuss Sisters, following an afternoon screening of the film. Carson moderated that discussion.

Curtis, who found De Palma's film "finally, too repellent to watch," writes, "Kit Carson began the discussion after the film by saying that the Hollywood system was still the most pervasive force in American filmmaking. De Palma, a man with flushed cheeks and snapping black eyes, took up this theme immediately. He didn't want to work in Hollywood. Directors like Francis Copolla (The Godfather) and Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) thought they could maintain their integrity while working there. 'But I don't think you can get in bed with the devil,' De Palma said, 'without having some of it rub off.'"

On his Facebook page yesterday, Paul Schrader wrote, "Kit was among the first 'film' people I knew after coming to LA in 68. We gravitated toward each other. In Feb 1971 (right after the San Fernando Valley earthquake) he invited me to be on the jury (I was critic for LA Free Press at the time) of the first USA film festival in Dallas. Other jury members included Andy Sarris, Manny Farber, Dwight McDonlald, P Adams Sitney, [Rex] Reed, Jay Cocks, Roger Ebert and others I can't remember at the moment. In that week it felt a mission and sense of belonging like never before. Happy Trails, old Pard."

In an article Carson wrote for Film Comment about being asked by Hooper to work on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Carson writes about trying to make it through the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "I first squirmed through it back in 1975 in a tiny, dumpy screening room just below Sunset Boulevard. I was newly exiled from Texas and had known Tobe Hooper as a good documentary filmmaker (Peter, Paul, and Mary in Concert, 71) in Austin but had no way to be prepared for the bite of The Saw. I flat couldn’t take it—neither could Paul Schrader, a curious friend who’d come along to the screening; about midway through the movie we buzzed the projectionist to skip a couple of reels and just show us the end. Whu: this sucker could really hurt you. Post-screening, blinking in the daylight leaning on our cars, Schrader and I tried to figure out what we’d run into."

Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, who were mentored by Carson early in their careers, have written a tribute to Carson at RogerEbert.com. Jeffrey Wells has also posted some remembrances at Hollywood Elsewhere.


Posted by Geoff at 1:24 AM CDT
Updated: Sunday, October 26, 2014 6:59 PM CDT
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