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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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« December 2019 »
S M T W T F S
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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
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Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
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Murder a la Mod
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Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
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Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
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Passion
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Peet Gelderblom
Phantom Of The Paradise
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Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
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Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
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Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
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Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
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Spielberg
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The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
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Thursday, December 19, 2019
NY TIMES REVISITS 'THE BLACK PARADE', 'PHANTOM' LINK
LOOKS AT INFLUENCE BEFORE & AFTER 2006 ALBUM FROM MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/blackparadeeddie.jpg

With My Chemical Romance set to play its first show in seven years this week in Los Angeles, the New York Times' Christopher R. Weingarten, with the help of a Spotify playlist (the article is "produced by" Aliza Aufrichtig), looks at the influences that went into band's 2006 concept album The Black Parade, as well as how that album has inspired the artists who have come around since then. One of the influences on The Black Parade was Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise. Yesterday's New York Times article includes the Juicy Fruits' "Goodbye Eddie, Goodbye," which, of course, was written for Phantom by Paul Williams. Weingarten's paragraph about the song includes a quote from My Chemical Romance lead singer Gerard Way that comes from a 2014 New York Times article by Marc Spitz:
Two titans of ’70s film — the songwriter Paul Williams (“Rainbow Connection”) and the writer and director Brian De Palma (“Carrie”) — collaborated on “Phantom of the Paradise,” a horror-themed rock opera that was critically panned and financially disastrous. Its quiet cult following includes Gerard Way, who seems to have internalized this tune from it. “When I was doing ‘The Black Parade,’” Way told The New York Times, “I thought about the film all the time, about its message of sacrificing integrity in order to reach more people.”

Back in 2004, Alternative Press reported that My Chemical Romance was then working on an album that the band described as "loosely based on Brian De Palma’s Phantom Of The Paradise." Alternative Press' Jason Pettigrew stated in 2013, "That record would become their breakout, major-label debut, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge."

Posted by Geoff at 12:26 AM CST
Updated: Thursday, December 19, 2019 12:29 AM CST
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Sunday, December 15, 2019
WILLIAM SHEPHARD HAS PASSED AWAY
PENTHEUS IN 'DIONYSUS IN '69' - "ROCK FREAK" IN 'PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/splitshephard.jpg

William Shephard, the memorable "Rock Freak" in Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, passed away two weeks ago, on December 1st. His daughter, Amy Elizabeth Shephard, shared the news on Facebook that day:
My sweet Papa, Will Shephard, passed this morning. It was a long process and he is finally at peace. My Dad lived life to the fullest. He loved good food, good music, and time spent laughing merrily with those he loved best. So much of who he is inspired the actor and performer I am today. He also inspired my love of Film. He played King Kong in the 1970s version and he played the rock freak in my favorite cult movie of all time, Phantom of the Paradise. He play Pentheus in Richard Schechner's Dionysus in 69 and through that play was arrested for indecent exposure in Ann Arbor Michigan (which he always recalled with such amusement). I will love him always and will miss him. But I know he is with me, he lives through me and I intend to honor his legacy by following the advice he always gave me, "look for the light." Rest well papa, may your next adventure be as glorious as you were.

Working with William Finley in Dionysus In '69 as part of The Performance Group, Shephard introduced Finley to Susan Weiser, who had been a student of Shephard's when he taught at Immaculate Heart in California. Finley and Weiser fell in love and got married. Susan Finley can be seen running around and rocking out with Shephard throughout the climactic concert/wedding where everything comes apart (see images below-- it is Susan who takes Winslow's mask from him after he removes it). According to the Swan Archives' Principal Archivist, Shephard and others from The Performance Group "were recruited for Phantom to 'train' the extras to act like a true concert audience, and to rile them up and get them excited."

The Archivist mentions (in a December 2, 2019 post about Shephard's passing) that Shephard had published a memoir about working on King Kong, titled Inside King Kong: A Journal. Shephard had also published a book called The Dionysus Group. Google Books carries the following description of the latter:

The Dionysus Group is a story from tumultuous times in American history (1967-1970) told through the eyes of a young actor in New York's Off-Off Broadway production of Dionysus in 69 by The Performance Group, directed by Richard Schechner. William Shephard, a founding member of the Group, played a leading role as "Pentheus," the young King of Thebes, in the Group's adaptation of Euripides', The Bacchae, and he chronicles the extraordinary formation, development, and realization of the Group's ethos in Dionysus in 69. Shephard describes the formation of a Group Mind in which the interpersonal forces within the Group became mirrored in the production; where the casting and performance of roles in Dionysus in 69 reflected conflicts within the Group, itself, and conflicts in American society at large. Themes of passion, intoxication, violence, and bloodshed in Dionysus in 69, were indicative of the times, and The Performance Group's unique use of "audience participation" captured the attention of American and International theater audiences in startling ways.


Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CST
Updated: Monday, December 16, 2019 12:43 AM CST
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Saturday, December 14, 2019
KEITH UHLICH TOP 10 FOR SLANT INCLUDES 'DOMINO'
UHLICH LIST ALSO INCLUDES 'PAIN & GLORY', 'PETERLOO', 'IRISHMAN', 'UNDER THE SILVER LAKE'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/tabletext2.jpg

Yesterday, Slant posted its list of The 25 Best Films of 2019, as voted by the online magazine's staff. Included in a companion article is the staff's individual ballots. Of the 16 critics who voted, Brian De Palma's Domino was mentioned only once, by Keith Uhlich. Here's Uhlich's ballot list:
Keith Uhlich

1. Peterloo
2. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
3. La Flor
4. The Irishman
5. Pain & Glory
6. Domino
7. The Gospel of Eureka
8. Chained for Life
9. Under the Silver Lake
10. Atlantics

Honorable Mention: The Dead Don’t Die, The Farewell, Gemini Man, A Hidden Life, High Flying Bird, Knives Out, In Fabric, Our Time, Shadow, Transit


Incidentally, José Luis Alcaine was the cinematographer for the two films in the middle of Uhlich's top ten: Pedro Almodóvar's Pain And Glory and De Palma's Domino.

Posted by Geoff at 12:12 AM CST
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Friday, December 13, 2019
DOMINO ON THE BIG SCREEN IN PARIS FRIDAY DEC 20
CRITIC THOMAS GRIGNON TO PRESENT THE FILM AT LE GRAND ACTION CINEMA


Brian De Palma's Domino will screen at Le Grand Action in Paris a week from today, Friday December 20th. According to the Facebook event page, the "exceptional session" will be presented by Thomas Grignon, a critic who reviewed Domino in October for Critikat.com.

Posted by Geoff at 7:50 AM CST
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Wednesday, December 11, 2019
'SNAKE EYES' TO OPEN CAGE-A-RAMA JAN 3RD IN GLASGOW
3RD ANNUAL FILM FEST HOPES TO BRING CAGE HIMSELF TO SCOTLAND THIS YEAR
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/cagearama2020a.jpgYesterday, Matchbox Cineclub in Glasgow, Scotland, revealed in a Twitter post that "Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes is our Cage-a-rama 2020 opening film 😵" Snake Eyes will play on the fest's opening night, Friday January 3rd. Special guests for the fest, which runs Friday-Sunday (January 3-5), are still to be announced, and Matchbox Cineclub is "doing our very best" to bring Nicolas Cage himself to attend Cage-a-rama 2020.

Films that Cage made with Francis Ford Coppola (Peggy Sue Got Married) and Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out The Dead, which had a screenplay by Paul Schrader) will also be part of the lineup this year, as will Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas.

Posted by Geoff at 12:52 AM CST
Updated: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 12:53 AM CST
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Tuesday, December 10, 2019
UPDATE 3/11/2020 - SIGNING AT STRAND IS CANCELED
CO-AUTHORS WERE TO DISCUSS & SIGN COPIES OF 'ARE SNAKES NECESSARY?' NIGHT BEFORE PUBLISHING
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/briansusan.jpg

UPDATE 3/11/2020 - This event at Strand Book Store has been canceled. No reason was provided, but today, Strand posted the following on its Facebook page:
𝐖𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐝𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐃-𝟏𝟗, 𝐬𝐨 𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐮𝐬.

First and foremost, we're keeping our eyes on announcements from the CDC, WHO, and NYC Health to monitor how this all develops. We encourage everyone to follow those sources for the most up-to-date information.

Unless otherwise noted, scheduled events will proceed as planned. We won't be doing signing lines or photo ops to limit the amount of person-to-person interaction. At events, you'll receive a pre-signed copy of the book, so come prepared with lots of questions for the Q&A section so you can chat with your favorite author.

Reminder that in-store, the bathrooms are located on the second floor if you need to wash your hands. Store hours remain the same as always!

If you're staying home and happen to be reading through your TBR pile too quickly, fear not! You can order anything from the store online for delivery to your home from strandbooks.com.

We’ll continue to monitor the situation and keep you updated on how this all affects our programming.


ORIGINAL POST FROM DECEMBER 10, 2019
"The night before we publish Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman's Are Snakes Necessary? (March 16) we'll be holding a premiere with the authors at the Strand in NYC." So reads a Twitter post today from Hard Case Crime, which will publish the novel the following day. The event is scheduled from 7-8pm March 16. Strand's event page has the following description:
Doors open 30 minutes before the start of the event.

"It's like having a new Brian De Palma picture." - Martin Scorsese, Academy Award-winning director

When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should've known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator's fixer. He's already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman -- how hard could this new one turn out to be?

Pursued from Washington D.C. to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn't realize is that her life might be as well...

Join us in the Rare Book Room for the release of Are Snakes Necessary? with writers Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman.

Brian De Palma is the world-famous director of more than thirty films, including Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Blow Out, and the original Mission: Impossible. The subject of the 2015 documentary De Palma, he is considered one of the most accomplished filmmakers of the last fifty years, a peer to directors such as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese and an inspiration to next-generation directors such as Quentin Tarantino.

Susan Lehman is a former editor of the New York Times and author whose writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The New Yorker, and Spy magazine. An attorney by training, she also served as communications director at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Are Snakes Necessary? is their first novel.


Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CST
Updated: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 6:49 PM CDT
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Monday, December 9, 2019
'THAT'S BRIAN'S OBSERVATION' - BAUMBACH IN PEAK FORM
"DIRECTING IS VERY PHYSICAL - CONCENTRATION-WISE, IT'S EXHAUSTING"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/marriagestory1.jpg

Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story is getting raves and topping lists all over the place. Dazed's Nick Chen spoke with Baumbach last week, and, amidst discussion of the new film, asked him about a Brian De Palma quote from Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's De Palma documentary:
Baumbach is in the middle of a jet-setting tour. The previous day, he flew in from Paris and delivered a BAFTA Screenwriting Lecture. (“Greta Gerwig pointed out to me that my movies tend to tell you what they’re about at the very beginning,” he said at the event. “I wasn’t aware of this, but it’s embarrassing when you go back and look.”) Earlier in the week, in New York, Marriage Story won so many prizes at the Gotham Awards that Baumbach took to the podium four times, eventually deadpanning, “I hope you remember what I said in the last speech, because it’s still relevant.”

Compare it to early 2018, a few months after the release of The Meyerowitz Stories, when Baumbach was a regular at awards shows – but as a plus-one on the Lady Bird table. (InStyle ran an article titled “Who Is Greta Gerwig’s Boyfriend?”) However, several pundits are predicting that Marriage Story will be the first Netflix film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. So what about the rumours that Marriage Story was originally set up at Amazon?

“That wasn’t true,” Baumbach says. “We had talked to Amazon about it, but I already had a relationship with Netflix.” Was he impressed, then, with the creative freedom a streaming service offered on The Meyerowitz Stories? “Netflix is a movie company run by people who really love movies. A few years ago, there was a legitimate distinction between what Netflix is doing and what other companies are doing. But now the movie business is moving that direction. Netflix adjusted on their part, too. We had a month in the United States exclusively in theatres before it went on Netflix, and they’ll keep it in theatres for people who want to have that choice.

“I talked to Scorsese about it. The King of Comedy was pulled after two weeks in theatres. It’s a complex discussion and in flux. In two years, it’s going to be something else. To me, Netflix is just a great place to make movies.”

Unlike Baumbach’s earlier features where scripts were written then sent out to potential actors (Greenberg was nearly shot with Mark Ruffalo and Amy Adams, not Ben Stiller and Gerwig – a real Sliding Doors moment), Marriage Story was conceived specifically for the leads. “Adam’s an actor I’ve continued to work with since Frances Ha,” Baumbach says. “Knowing Scarlett and Laura was invaluable and helped me visualise the scenes. There are sequences written in the movie because I’m motivated by knowing that actor is playing that part. Laura’s monologue came from Laura. We talked about it while I was writing it.”

As Nora, Nicole’s lawyer, Dern delivers a fiery speech about how society accepts imperfect fathers but not imperfect mothers. Fathers are already expected to be absent, Nora explains, but mothers are chastised if they drink too much wine. “We were saying that Nora got into the business for moral reasons. Nora wanted to stand up for people, and women particularly, who she feels the system is rigged against, and she wants to be their crusader.”

Early on, the camera regularly hovers over the shoulder of Charlie or Nicole, depending on narrative momentum. The legal scenes, though, are blocked and framed as if the bickering pair are helpless children in the room. Occasionally, it’s like the lawyers are in cahoots. Dern and Liotta’s characters are arch enemies who socialise at charity dinners and drive up each other’s business. It’s an emotionally cold war: when Nicole hires Nora, Charlie reluctantly directs “two shitty plays” to afford an expensive equivalent. (Incidentally, Baumbach wrote Madagascar 3 and nearly directed Mr Popper’s Penguins around 2011.) In the courts, it’s like we’re witnessing a different film – or what Baumbach describes to me as “various genres that are hidden and that reveal themselves in the movie”.

One of those hidden genres is a musical. At rock bottom, Charlie belts out Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive”, a song that appeared for five seconds in Lady Bird. The sight of Driver’s gigantic face on a gigantic screen as he splutters Sondheim’s lyrics (“Make me confused, mock me with praise/Let me be used, vary my days/But alone is alone, not alive!”) is reason enough to catch Marriage Story in a theatre. That Driver is initially too tall for the microphone is the cue to laugh or cry.

“Charlie clearly knows the song very well,” Baumbach explains. “He’s doing all the other parts. We all have that experience where there’s a song we’ve heard a million times, and suddenly you hear it in a different way.” When performing Sondheim, Charlie is able to reveal his deepest, innermost emotions. Did Baumbach find something similar with Marriage Story – that screenwriting unlocks a certain kind of honesty and catharsis?

“It’s through art that Charlie can express himself in a way that he can’t, or hasn’t been able to, in life,” Baumbach says, slightly avoiding the question. “That was very moving to me. There’s something true of many artists, that they can be smarter and wiser and more profound in their work than perhaps in regular conversation.”

Through Robbie Ryan’s cinematography, the film depicts the visual contrast between New York, where Charlie directs his plays, and LA, where Nicole lands a role in a TV pilot. Often, Charlie is like Stiller in Greenberg: a New Yorker resentfully residing in the open spaces of LA. “We thought about that with the wardrobe,” Baumbach explains. “When Charlie’s in Los Angeles, he’s still wearing an overcoat and sweater. He’s dressed for the past.”

Does Baumbach, a New York resident, consider LA to be his Bergman Island? There are, after all, numerous references to Ingmar Bergman in Marriage Story – including a magazine profile titled “Scenes from a Marriage” and close-ups that pay homage to Persona. “I find LA so strange,” the director says. “Every time I go there, I need to adjust. The car culture and the light is so different from New York. The movie was an opportunity to have these radically different-looking environments: LA for her, New York for him. But it’s a stand-in for a more abstract idea of what home is, and identity.”

As for why there are so few divorce movies, Baumbach doesn’t have an answer. ABBA, I mention, sang about divorce, had two divorces within the band, yet the blockbuster celebrating their music revolved around a wedding. “There are a lot of breakup songs,” he says. “But many love songs are actually about breakups. There’s a movie genre, even, of the love that can’t be: Casablanca and Brief Encounter. I thought about this movie in that context as much as any ‘divorce movie’ context.”

Baumbach, it must be said, speaks carefully and considerately, often starting sentences again, as if punching up his own responses. But he does answer a few quick-fire questions, such as the status of the stalled Barbie movie he’s writing with Gerwig (“It’s happening, but we haven’t started it yet”), and if the “you should see the other dog” line that appears in both Meyerowitz Stories and Isle of Dogs is an in-joke between him and Wes Anderson (“Really? We’ve never discussed it – I’ll ask Wes”).

But the longer answers are, understandably, reserved for Marriage Story, which could have premiered at the 2018 film festivals, but the director opted to spend a few more months perfecting it in the editing room. All of which is to say, catch it in a theatre if you can. There’s a misnomer that talky dramas don’t require the cinema treatment. (A headline from The Onion: “You Haven’t Seen Frances Ha Until You’ve Seen It In IMAX.”) But it was shot on 35mm, the cinematography is thoughtful and elegant, and the collective discomfort can only be experienced with a crowd – unless you watch it at home with a resentful partner, that is.

Many critics have called it Baumbach’s best film. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it’s certainly up there. It’s definitely his most mature, in that it’s the only one in which a character would apologise for screaming, “Every day, I wake up and hope you’re dead!” The richness of the material – feeling like a criminal who hasn’t committed a crime; the irony that Charlie is a better husband in divorce; that loving someone generates a deeper potential for hatred; that Nicole thrives by dumping her controlling partner – wasn’t there in Baumbach’s first few movies. Which brings to mind a quote from Brian De Palma at the end of the 2015 documentary De Palma, co-directed by Baumbach. De Palma claims that filmmakers peak in their 30s, 40s and 50s – then go downhill. Does Baumbach, aged 50, have 10 years left at his peak?

“That’s Brian’s observation,” he says, chuckling. “But what Brian also says, which I think is very true, is that directing is very physical. Concentration-wise, it’s exhausting. It’s a challenge. I’m really impressed with directors like John Huston and Robert Altman who work to the end of their lives. It’s so tiring and gruelling, getting up and shooting nights, and under stress and parameters.”

So it’s fortunate Marriage Story turned out the way it did? “It’s a crazy art form when you think about it. I don’t know if there’s any other art form where you have to get it right this one time – and that’s it.”


Posted by Geoff at 11:59 PM CST
Updated: Tuesday, December 10, 2019 1:18 AM CST
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Wednesday, December 4, 2019
DE PALMA SOUGHT 'DEMOLISHED MAN' CIRCA 1998
IN MIDST OF 'M:I' & 'SNAKE EYES', TOLD LANSING HE WANTED TO DIRECT STEPHEN TOLKIN SCRIPT
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/demolishedmanbookcover.jpgStephen Tolkin, a writer and sometimes director who works mainly in television, wrote a screenplay adaptation of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man for CBS Films in 1985. About a decade later, according to Tolkin, Brian De Palma, having found box office success with Mission: Impossible, told Paramount that he wanted to direct Tolkin's version. De Palma, of course, had been wanting to make a film of The Demolished Man since the mid-1970s, and worked on a screenplay with author John Farris after adapting Farris' The Fury into a feature film.

Tue Nguyen chatted with Tolkin recently, and asked him about The Demolished Man. Tolkin told Nguyen:
It was 1985. I had just adapted A. E. Van Vogt's Slan for MGM and a producer named Sidney Beckerman and his son Barry. Our executive on the project moved to CBS Films, where Demolished Man was in development, with Barry Beckerman producing. Because we had all just had a good time working together they sent me the book, I read and loved it, then went in and pitched my ideas and got the job. A simpler path than most! Just when I finished the script CBS Films stopped functioning as an entity and for the next thirteen years the script was an effective writing sample for further work, but nothing more. Then, completely out of the blue, after the first Mission:Impossible movie came out and was a big hit, Sherry Lansing, then head of Paramount, asked Brian De Palma what he wanted to do next, and he said "I want to direct Stephen Tolkin's draft of Demolished Man." I was stunned when I heard this; I had never met De Palma and to this date have no idea why he would want to direct my version of the story rather than his own, or even how he ever came to read it. So Paramount hired me to rewrite the script but for some reason they chose not to do it under De Palma's supervision -- which would have been fun, I think -- and it never really came together; whatever the flaws are in my 1985 version, the 1998 version represented at best lateral, and most likely backward, movement.

In 2013, Chris Dumas interviewed Farris for the booklet in Arrow Video's edition of The Fury. Discussing The Demolished Man, Farris told Dumas:
The film rights belonged to a Hollywood wannabe who was in the hotel business. I don't recall his name. Brian was attached to write the screenplay and direct and the project was set up at Paramount. Mike Eisner thought Brian's script needed work, although he was thrilled with the project, etc. I was brought in at Brian's suggestion. Read his draft, which I thought was excellent. I did a 30-page treatment, adding new angles but not straying far from the novel. Brian okayed the treatment. I did the new screenplay. Next thing I knew [Frank] Yablans was involved, took the project away from Paramount and gave it to Fox. There were heavy-duty politics involved in this move. But Fox passed and Brian was irate. For more on that story, you would have to talk to Brian. He never mentioned The Demolished Man to me again."

Note: during that time in the mid-'90s, amidst the success of Mission: Impossible, De Palma had also been working to set up Ambrose Chapel, which never ended up being made. Tolkin's recollection that it was 1998 when The Demolished Man was being tossed around suggests a possibility that De Palma and Lansing were already preparing to make Snake Eyes while De Palma and Tolkin would work on The Demolished Man screenplay... unless perhaps it was very early in 1998, before Snake Eyes was fully-formed.

Posted by Geoff at 7:54 AM CST
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Tuesday, December 3, 2019
HIRSCH TO ATTEND DOUBLE DE PALMA FRIDAY IN L.A.
DISCUSSION BETWEEN 'SISTERS' & 'BLOW OUT' TO PROMOTE NEW BOOK
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/hirschegyptian.jpgPaul Hirsch will attend a De Palma double feature this Friday (December 6th) at Los Angeles' Egyptian Theatre. Before the first film, at 6:30pm, Hirsch will be signing copies of his new book in the lobby. Then at 7:30pm, Sisters will screen. Hirsch will take part in a discussion in between that film and Blow Out, the latter of which closes out the event.

Posted by Geoff at 7:49 AM CST
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Tuesday, November 26, 2019
'CHAOTIC JOY' OF 'DOMINO' - FILM STAGE'S 2019 BEST LIST
NICK NEWMAN: "NEARLY MALICIOUS, DEEPLY SERIOUS ABOUT THE WOUNDS OF CONTEMPORARY TERRORISM"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/dominobinoc2small.jpg

Yesterday, The Film Stage posted an article with the headline, "Where to Stream the Best Films of 2019." The article is meant to highlight notable films that may have slipped by readers. "This is far from a be-all, end-all year-end feature," Jordan Raup explains in the article's introduction, "but rather something that will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to seek out notable, perhaps underseen, titles from the year."

Included in the article is Brian De Palma's Domino, which is enthused about by The Film Stage's Nick Newman:

The latest from Brian De Palma hits film culture not unlike a moody son trudging to their graduation party at a parent’s behest, a master of big-screen compositions relegated to VOD for those who bother plunking down. That tussle between pedigree of talent and nature of distribution foretells the chaos within: at one moment lit like a Home Depot model living room–a fault I’m more willing to chalk up to incomplete post-production, less likely to blame on Pedro Almodóvar’s longtime DP José Luis Alcaine–the next photographed and cut as if an old pros’ sumptuous fuck-you to pre-vis-heavy and coverage-obsessed action-filmmaking climate, the next maybe just an assembly of whatever master shots the team could scrounge together during those 30 production days. To these eyes it’s a chaotic joy; nearly malicious, deeply serious about the wounds of contemporary terrorism, and smart enough to pull off a mocking of the circumstances around those fighting it.

Posted by Geoff at 12:47 AM CST
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