"The feature’s protagonists finally turn out to be Rob Brown, in his thirties, and Kevin Fineday, who’ll be 18 when the film ends. They are, respectively, a criminal with (as per the press notes) ties to the Native Gangster Disciples gang and his young and unofficial protégé of sorts, with the initially scrawny Kevin looking up to the hulking Brown, who’s been to prison already five times. Kevin, called a liar and worse by several others around him, admits on camera he’s torn between the idea of becoming a big drug dealer and 'doing something somewhat the right way,' though for the moment, he described himself as a 'middle man, for weed, pills, meth, whatever,' and says that’s pretty much his 'job until further notice'. In one of the film’s strongest scenes, which would have deserved a bit more prominence, Brown tells Kevin that he already spent 12 years in jail and Kevin’s only 15 years old. 'Don’t be like me and get used to it,' he says, though at that very moment, Kevin’s just told Rob he hopes he’ll get his first plea bargain.

"Brown, meanwhile, has impregnated his girlfriend of three months before he’s off to jail for another 57 month stint and Kevin has even followed his example in this respect, knocking up a girl who then lost the baby a couple of weeks into her pregnancy. She blames herself, saying she 'messed up' (not quite the term she uses) birth control and has since broken up with Kevin over the fact he 'messed' -- more f-words used here -- with several drugs deals for her, each time adding salt to the meth he’s selling so as to increase the weight. Clearly, any idea of a connection or some kind of affection between these two human beings seems far-fetched; Brown, despite the fact he’s about to miss out on the first two-and-a-half years of his daughter’s life, seems a little -- but just a little -- luckier in that respect.

"What thus emerges, initially in fits and starts but then more forcefully as the film builds and the relationships crystallize, is a picture of life in the reservation community of Pine Point (or 'P-Town') as a place where lying and cheating, scoring and selling drugs and a host of other criminal activities are the order of the day and something as normal as love and human warmth are in short supply, with even the rapport between Kevin and his father feeling distant. Drug use is filmed with an unflinching eye (though some of this footage is not as high-definition as the rest) while posters on the walls in the background attest to an unoriginal and unhealthy obsession with the Brian De Palma version of Scarface, which seems to have made being a gangster super cool, suggesting exactly none of the people of an entire generation watched the film al the way through until it’s bloody, tragic and supremely ironic ending."

The Rubin Museum's website includes an excerpt from Richard Schickel 1976 review of the film for TIME: "...Exquisite entertainment...The film also throws into high melodramatic relief certain recognizable human truths: the shock of sudden loss, the panic of the effort to recoup, the mourning and guilt that blind the protagonist to a multitude of suspicious signs as he seeks expiation and a chance to relive his life. In a sense, the movie offers viewers the opportunity to do the same thing—by going back to a more romantic era of the cinema and the simple, touching pleasures denied the audience by the current anti-romantic spirit of the movies."

According to the bio on the ACE press release, Greenberg "began his career in his native New York in 1960 where he learned how to edit music and began familiarizing himself with the Moviola, splicers, synchronizers and recorders. He was ready for his big break and he got it when he was offered an apprenticing job for the legendary Dede Allen on Elia Kazan’s America America. By 1967, Greenberg and Allen were working closely together and on Bonnie and Clyde, Greenberg was given the task of editing a couple of the shootout scenes and worked closely with Allen and director Arthur Penn on them. Not soon after, his career was off and running. He cut his first solo feature Bye Bye Braverman for director Sidney Lumet in 1971 and won the Oscar® and BAFTA for editing William Friedkin’s The French Connection a year later. The infamous car chase from that film has been dissected and taught at film schools ever since."

At about the same time, Austin posted the pic on his Worthy Enemies Instagram page, with the message, "1980's Dressed To Kill. @retoband and myself worked on this thrasher earlier this month for the Creator of Pushing Up Daisies, Dead Like Me and the awesome Hannibal the series, #BryanFuller . It was a blast and if you would be interested in getting one, check out www.retroband.com. They are very very limited. Once their gone. POOF! Their gone!"

Back in May 2014, several people tweeted that the latest episode of Hannibal had reminded them of De Palma.

(Thanks to Phillip!)

In 2002, four years after Snake Eyes played in theaters, I was in attendance as De Palma told an audience at his retrospective at the Pompidou in Paris that the original idea was that a divine hand of judgement was delivering its wrath down on "Sin City." De Palma told the French audience, "They don't believe in that in America," referring to all the flack he got from test screenings and studio heads that the ending "just didn't work." De Palma finally decided to change Snake Eyes' ending of his own accord (he reportedly did not want the alternate ending included on the DVD because he did not want people to think that he was forced to change it), and he has claimed that he likes the new ending better. The tidal wave still exists in the final film, but does not play as big a part in the climactic happenings as De Palma had originally planned.

Click here to read Carla Gugino's recollections of the original ending, as well as a report from someone who has actually seen a version of the original ending, but with no sound effects or music soundtrack.

Back to the new Koepp interview-- Jones follows up his question by asking Koepp how he reacts to having to make changes such as that to his scripts. "When I write for someone else…," replies Koepp, "I think the [script] reaches it’s best state around the third draft. And I think after the third draft you kind of need to say goodbye, because it’s going to become something else. You can fight for things you believe in, but the number of fights screenwriters have won over everyone else can be counted on one hand. I always try to look at it like a writing experience; I get the script to the state where I’m really happy with it. And then I say bye, and it’s going to go off and make the presence it makes in life like a child! It’ll make mistakes and it’ll be a different thing, it won’t be yours."

Earlier in the interview, Jones asks Koepp about making Jim Phelps a traitor in De Palma's Mission: Impossible, as well as creating the character Ethan Hunt for Tom Cruise to play. "Tom was involved first," Koepp tells Jones. "He was interested in doing it, and he was producing it. And then Brian [De Palma] called me and said why don’t you take a crack at it. You have to consider who’s in it, and then make it work.

"The essential problem was Tom Cruise was the biggest star on the planet, and [the original TV show] was an ensemble that tilts towards no-one. I’d never viewed the TV show as sacrosanct. We had to acknowledge who our cast was. So I can’t remember whose idea it was, either De Palma or Steve Zaillian said let’s start by killing the team, lets just get rid of them. Because you had to work out how you get this ensemble piece into a star vehicle. So we killed everybody, and we were feeling very cheeky, and decided we’re going to do want we want, we’ll kill people, we’ll make the good guy the bad guy, and added in the new recruits. And I think it worked out well."