Hello! It's Jonathan (@tall4all) here from @ThePCCPodcast. This week on the podcast myself and co-host Fil (@dogz_i_metz) are joined by the The PCC Podcast's very first guest—all the way back from Episode 2 (The Warriors)—Front of House member Tamsin Cleary!⁠ ⁠

Tamsin is an incredibly knowledgeable student of film and aspiring film essayist. As a fan of cult cinema, Tamsin sat with us (via video chat) to discuss 1984's #BodyDouble and the psychosexual thrillers of Director #BrianDePalma. ⁠

Steeped in #Hitchcock influence, pals with New Hollywood legends #StevenSpielberg, #FrancisFordCoppola, #MartinScorsese and #GeorgeLucas, and a career that has seen more ups and downs than a rollercoaster; Brian De Palma may be one of the most underrated directors of his generation. This 88 min instalment takes a look at one of his most bonkers films; where 36 years on, we are still left wondering why it features a video for #FrankieGoesToHollywood's "Relax" smack-bang in the middle.

The Untouchables (1987)—“Ness’ wife”

AVC: Your movie debut was in The Untouchables as Kevin Costner’s wife. That seems like quite the get for a debut.

PC: It was my very first movie, yes. I went in and auditioned for the casting director, the great Lynn Stalmaster. Beautiful man. Gave me my biggest break of my life—the first big movie. And he said, “Come back and meet Brian De Palma. But don’t be glamorous. You know, remember this is a Midwestern girl.” I was like, “Okay.” And I came in with a sweet little dress on and no makeup, and there was Brian De Palma. And he read Eliot Ness with me.

And the next thing I knew, like, the next day, they said, “We’re going to fly you to Chicago to meet Kevin.” I said, “Well, I’m in the middle of a play.” I was doing House Of Blue Leaves on Broadway. And they flew me in the morning, like on a Friday morning or something, and then they flew me back to make the show. Thank god Chicago is a quick flight. And I met Kevin Costner, and they told me right then and there in the room that I had it.

And Kevin hugged me, and my agent didn’t believe me at the time. “No, no, no, Patty, they don’t tell you.” He said, “Don’t—don’t get too excited.” I was like, “No, no, no! He told me I got the part!” And it was so sweet and lovely, and I had such a beautiful time. I have such a love still, a soft spot, for Brian De Palma. He gave me the first break of my life. He was very kind to me and added me to the courtroom scene. I was broke, and he added me to the courtroom scene, which meant I had to be paid for a whole month. Which was like, “Oh, my god!” I was like, “Brian, I love you!”

And Kevin was a doll, and I’ve seen him since, of course, and we always hug. He was really involved in post-Katrina in my hometown of New Orleans. He’s beloved there, and he’s a beautiful man, and still beautiful. He was hot then, hot now. [Laughs.]

The Dead Pool (1988)—“Samantha Walker”

AVC: You followed that up with another movie with another icon: Clint Eastwood.

PC: I was in—that’s the last Dirty Harry movie. I kept thinking, “C’mon, Clint, you’ve had all these movies. Do one last Dirty Harry. And bring back the journalist you had a crush on.”

I mean, that was—what a job. My father was beside himself. He couldn’t hang up the phone fast enough to call every single friend of his to tell them that I was doing a movie with Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry—I was going to be in a Dirty Harry movie. Some of my more New York friends were like, “Really?” I was like, “Yes.”

And I was cast off-tape. Clint Eastwood doesn’t meet in person. I just did a tape, sent it in, went into a casting director, and was cast. Showed up in San Francisco. The first time I met him—oh, my god—was in a big restaurant by the Wharf, and the producer and the cinematographer were there, and I got there, and I was waiting, the three of us. And suddenly, I hear screaming. I mean screaming. We’re at the back of the restaurant, and I hear screaming. And I turn around, and there’s Clint Eastwood walking through the restaurant, and it was—you know, the king had arrived. It was crazy. And he sat down, and he was incredibly dry and cordial and lovely.

I had a beautiful time working with him. And he’s very quick. So some of what you see in that movie is one or two takes, I’m not kidding you. He’d be like, “Was that good for you?” And I’d be like, “Wait, it it it—yeah? I think it was good.” “Okay, okay. Moving on! Moving on.” I’d be like, [Exasperated sigh, laughs.] “Yeah.”

Sam Tyler, SFBook

There is a certain flavour that a good pulp noir novel should provide and Are Snakes Necessary does this from the very start by introducing us to Brock. This is a self-centred man who starts the book thinking about is aching privates after an operation. So far, so pulp. Rather than stick with just the one character, this is an ensemble piece that shares the limelight equally among three or four characters. Other smaller roles are given time to shine as well.

 

This means that the characters are more rounded than in almost any other noir that I have read. You learn the motivations for a senator, his wife, his intern, his fixer, the women he hired for a con and that women’s lover. It is a potent mix but does lead to this being a slow burner. I found the sense of place and characters enthralling enough that I enjoyed the sedate pace. It has the feel of a Robert Altman film as you just followed interesting people around.

 

The noir elements don’t come to fore until the end. The various threads can play out and only come together as the tension rises. A remake of Vertigo plays a part in the end and it is that film that the book takes its style from. There is an enigmatic quality to the book as you follow characters who do not all seem to have a direction. The conclusion shows that De Palma and Lehman did have a destination in mind – the Eiffel Tower.

If you are used to your pulp noir being naked bodies and guns, then Snakes is not quite for you. The book does have these, but it is more about characterisation and story development. It feels like Wag the Dog written by Carl Hiaasen on one of his more acerbic days. To get the most from this book you must enjoy the journey. The duo of authors fills the pages with nice quips and asides that you would expect from the genre. It certainly lacks a little pace in places and perhaps there were one or two too many characters, but there is no denying that this is an accomplished read that will have fans of character development in good cheer.

Whilst written within the Hard Case Crime kind of style, that 50’s – 70’s pulp detective novel, it is very much a modern story with iPhones, and vlogging, but it's also a timeless tale with its heart in the past books of the publisher. It's witty, it's tense, it's extraordinarily clever, and yet reads in short, snappy sentences, letting your imagination fill in any blanks. It's more of a film treatment or script overview than a traditional novel but having words on a page play out a De Palma cinematic gem in your minds eye is no bad thing. Some may not take to the succinct style and that’s fine, each to their own, but if you read Are Snakes Necessary? from cover to cover I guarantee your life will feel the richer for it.

So you can see where that’ll lead to too. Nick will ultimately end up in Paris working as a behind the scenes photographer on a remake of Vertigo, (which was based on the novel D’entre les morts by French crime duo Boileau-Narcejac). Paris is also where the novel will reach one of two climaxes – yes two!

So we have the fixer, the philanderer, the photographer, the ingenue and the woman scorned. Five well-fleshed out characters that intertwine more intensely as the novel goes on, although I was mostly interested in Elizabeth and, to a slightly lesser extent, Nick, than the others who were more stereotypical. I enjoyed the elements of political satire and the dark soap opera of the plot, done with tongue in cheek. De Palma and Lehman mainly let the characters drive the narrative for around two thirds of the book’s 240 pages before ramping things up in Paris, and then an extended coda. I enjoyed the more slowburn start and middle more than the latter stages of the book, especially the final chapters, which frankly, stretched the limits of plausibility a bit.

If you were expecting the more violent side of De Palma, this novel has its moments, but it’s not that kind of noir. There is moral ambiguity in abundance in the manipulation of and by key characters, and I sped through the pages. There was a cinematic feel to many of the scenes, but apart from the obvious Hitchcock homage and many possible influences at one key location which I shan’t reveal, I didn’t spot many other obvious references. (The title of the novel apparently comes from a book Henry Fonda is reading in the Preston Sturges film The Lady Eve.) In summary, this novel isn’t perfect, but it is definitely an engaging read. (7.5/10)

Bateman’s reflection and appearance are crucial to him in a pathological and modern way. Harron cleverly turns his lengthy morning routine into a cosmetics ad selling you an entire lifestyle. Bale’s descriptive voice-over speaks in velvety tones as a delicate piano (by John Cale) bathes the scene in luxurious serenity. Bateman’s sculpted body is presented in full as it is perfected through exercise and lotions. His outward appearance is the modern ideal, which he also confirms for himself by videotaping his straight sexual encounters, for which he carefully selects sex workers for their looks (one of them is asked to dance, and her moves are clearly inspired by Melanie Griffith’s in Brian De Palma’s 1984 erotic thriller Body Double, a film all about the illusory power of images). These moments, too, are athletic workouts: In the midst of acrobatic poses, Bateman winks at himself in the mirror, triumphant. He is the ultimate “boy next door,” as his fiancée Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon) calls him: the poster boy for individualistic upper-class America.

Scott Tobias, The Guardian
American Psycho at 20: a vicious satire that remains as sharp as ever

Adam Pliskin, Elite Daily
The One Line In American Psycho That Will Completely Change The Way You See The Film

Here's a bit more from the interview:

CR: The story and hardboiled themes of Are Snakes Necessary? seem to fit neatly in your diverse repertoire, but what made you decide to explore these themes in a book, instead of a film?

BD & SL: I have more ideas than I can ever make films from. It seemed like it would be fun to try this as a book—though the story would obviously make for a good movie too.

CR: Your films draw so much on rich cinematic lineages of Hitchcock, Godard, and Antonioni—how does your writing draw on your filmmaking inspirations?

BD & SL: I started as a writer, not a director. I wrote many screenplays before I directed any movies. So I tend to think in terms of structure and plot and dialogue. A book also requires description—of characters and locations—and cleverly constructed prose. A new challenge.

CR: What was the genesis of the novel? Was it inspired by anything in particular?

BD & SL: We wrote the book before Trump was elected. It was inspired by two political scandals, the John Edwards scandal and the Gary Condit scandal which involved a Congressman and an intern who mysteriously disappeared.

That tweet was the first of a thread of seven. All but the final tweet includes either a video or a motion gif from Carrie. Below are the texts of Pharaonoiah's entire Twitter thread. To read these with the accompanying video, visit Pharaonoiah on Twitter.

Watched Carrie (1976) for the first time last week and I feel like people focus too much on its horror elements.

The physical acting in this movie is top-notch. Look at the opening scene and Sissy Spacek's final defeated shrug after trying to keep a brave face. Heartbreaking

Another plus for the movie is how it portrays religious nuts like Margaret White. A lot of movies highlight their hypocrisy or their awareness that what they're doing is in fact wrong. But it's clear that Carrie's mom truly believes in what she's preaching and that's scarier

Tommy's surprised and delighted little laugh after Carrie endearingly says she won't talk to any other guys.

I know he's technically taken by Sue, but dammit the dance scene is the soul of the movie and makes everything that happens after that much sadder

You deserved a moment like this Carrie

Brian De Palma is a genius for having glasses girl execute the same movement of reaching to her friend behind her both in reality where she is shocked and in the scene where Carrie sees her as being part of the laughing crowd.

It serves to highlight Carrie's break from reality

Takes a bold director to call attention to the set design by having Carrie herself change the scenery to one matching her emotions. It also serves as a way of "setting the mood" for the final act. Sort of ironic to have Carrie control the film, but lose hold of reality. I'm high

This movie's a masterpiece and I haven't stopped thinking about it since last week, despite already knowing the plot and having seen the prom scene before. It should be known for more than the somewhat camp, somewhat dated 70s horror film that a lot of people now say it is.

Mendelson's article carries the headline, "(00)7 James Bond Imitators To Stream Instead Of No Time To Die." Later in the introduction, he explains, "The bad news is that 007 fans now have to wait another seven months for their fix, which is particularly vexing since Spectre opened way back in November of 2015. So, in the name of charity, here is a list of temporary substitutes while you wait. No, these aren’t James Bond movies, but they exist in the same sandbox, and in some cases are entirely inspired by the Ian Fleming-penned spy saga (and resultant EON-produced movies). So, without further ado, here are 007 alternatives while you wait to Die Another Day and patiently figure out Another Way to Die. All of these will leave you feeling [like] you’re on an All Time High. I’ll see myself out. Oh, and I’ve tried to spread these out a little, in terms of years and decades. I could make this list just from the various spy flicks that debuted in 2015."

Among the list of seven titles, which includes films as diverse as James Cameron's True Lies (1994), Jay Roach and Mike Myers' Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), and Susanna Fogel's The Spy Who Dumped Me, Mendelson includes Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible (1996).

While the stunt-filled and action-packed franchise today stands side by side with the 007 franchise (and the Fast & Furious films) as A-level action blockbuster franchises, this first (admitted mega-hit) was indeed a buttoned down and cynical look at the spy craft, with more in common with The Spy Who Came In From the Cold than GoldenEye. Although both Tom Cruise’s first Ethan Hunt flick and Pierce Brosnan’s first 007 movie are rooted in the cynicism and weariness of lifetime government operatives questioning their purpose at the end of the Cold War. The Brian DePalma film is very much a DePalma film, just as the first five Mission: Impossible films matched the persona of their director (Mission: Impossible II is so John Woo almost spoofing himself). The film earned plaudits in its day for its adult-skewing narrative, its emphasis on suspense over carnage, and its comparatively stripped down narrative. Today, it qualifies as a miracle of modern tentpole filmmaking.

On Monday night, as the new hardened measures for the current quarantine were being announced, I started feeling symptoms of claustrophobia for the first time. They’ve come up late, as I’ve been suffering from claustrophobia and agoraphobia for a while; I know they are opposite pathologies, but my body is paradoxical, it is one of its characteristics, it always has been.

That night, I knew I was going to try to go out the following day; I felt as if I was going to commit a premeditated crime. As if giving yourself to a forbidden pleasure and you cannot do anything to avoid it. It sounds like cheap pulp literature, and it is, but I blame it on the effects of confinement.

I planned it minimally; I’d go to buy food, a genuine shopping trip and a genuine need since I’m on my own. So that Tuesday morning I got dressed to go out and I felt like I was doing something exceptional: dressing! It’s been 17 days since I last did it, and I’ve always experienced getting dressed as something intimate and very special. I recalled various other occasions of getting dressed, very important moments for me I realize now, which have remained in my mind since. For instance, I recalled when in 1980 I was getting dressed in Lope de Rueda street, for the premiere of “Pepi, Luci, Bom” in the Peñalver cinema on Conde de Peñalver street. Even though it was a cinema where they played re-releases, for me it was as if it was premiering at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. It was the first time that a film of mine would be watched by an audience, the first time in a real cinema and as part of the commercial circuit, with its seats full of people, the audience watching images created by me with my friends, during the year and a half that it took to film. And those who didn’t leave the cinema laughed so much. I remember I wore a red satin bomber jacket that I bought in Portobello Market, in London.

It’s not always that one dresses as part of a plan, or at least you don’t always remember it so. I recall when two years after the premiere of “Pepi,” still in the midst of La Movida, I consciously dressed in a grey Mao collar suit to go to a bar in Malasaña run by a boy I had my eyes on. I have never been much for Mao collars; I prefer the Perkins because it covers up the double chin. I remember the Mao collar suit because the boy in question became part of my life for the next two, three years. And he left a mark.

I also remember the purple silk Shantung tuxedo by the designer Antonio Alvarado, and the studded ankle boots, like the ones now made by Louboutin, that I wore to my first-ever Oscar ceremony in 1989. We didn’t win, my relationship with Carmen Maura blew up into pieces, but I remember that trip to Los Angeles as being full of wonderful events.

Four or five days before the ceremony we had dinner at Jane Fonda’s home; she was obsessed with remaking “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” She’d invited very few people, Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson, her partner then, who mentioned to Bibiana Fernández he had spotted her watching the Lakers that very afternoon. Cher, with natural make-up to make her look as if she had no make-up on, more gorgeous, cuter and shorter than I imagined. And Morgan Fairchild. Yes! (I thought the next guest would have been someone like Susan Sontag.) I was truly surprised, because I thought Morgan Fairchild played in a lower league to the rest (although having worked on “Flamingo Road” and “Falcon Crest” is no small achievement). Jane Fonda must have noticed my surprise since afterwards she explained that she used to go on demonstrations with Morgan Fairchild, who was as feminist if not more so than herself.

We spent the soiree gobsmacked by the energy of the female guests and of Jack himself. We had many pictures taken with them and with the paintings hanging on those walls, whose author was Jane’s father, Henry Fonda.

The morning after the ceremony, I received a phone call at the hotel, a woman’s voice. She tells me, as if she were not conscious of its impact, but confident that her voice was going to have an impact on me: “Hello, it’s Madonna, I’m filming ‘Dick Tracy’ and I would love to show you the set. I’m not filming today and I can dedicate the day to you”.

It could be a false Madonna, or a psychopath who was thinking of cutting me into pieces on one of those waste grounds James Ellroy describes so well in his novels. If you read “The Black Dahlia” you’ll know what I’m talking about; Ellroy’s mother was dismembered on one of those wastelands. You can also watch the film by my beloved Brian De Palma based on the book, with Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank, but the truth is it didn’t turn out that well. It’s not bad for quarantine, but I would recommend you many others by De Palma before that one: “Sisters,” “Phantom of the Paradise,” “Carlito’s Way,” “Body Double” — with Melanie Griffith at the peak of her powers, skinny as a rake — and above all, “Scarface” with Al Pacino. Don’t bother with “The Black Dahlia” and organize yourselves a program with all of those films, you’ll thank me later. They are all gems, seriously accessible, and really enjoyable. I will make you a list of recommendations at the end.

Coming back to Madonna, it could always be someone who was playing a joke on me, but my self-esteem — despite not winning the Oscar — was high enough for me to have no doubt this was an authentic phone call. Madonna’s voice gave me the address for the studio where they were filming, and I turned up there, pleased as punch.

The truth is the whole team, from Warren Beatty to Vittorio Storaro, couldn’t have been kinder to me. They treated me as if I was George Cukor. Beatty forced me to sit on the chair with his name on, the director’s chair, so I could watch the sequence they were filming. I was about to confess that when I was a child I discovered my sexuality when I saw him in “Splendor in the Grass” (the builder in “Pain and Glory” never existed), but I stopped myself from doing so, of course. They were filming a sequence where an unrecognizable Al Pacino was yakking away non-stop. He was nominated for the Oscar the following year, and the film was awarded three statuettes.

Madonna took me around all of the sets and I met someone who I deeply admired, Milena Canonero, the costume designer who by then had already won three Oscars (she’d be nominated for “Dick Tracy” the following year): “Chariots of Fire,” “Barry Lyndon,” and “Cotton Club.” I recommend all three films to cope with the quarantine. My favourite is Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon.” Milena Canonero would go on to win a fourth Oscar, I don’t remember which film. Visiting her workshop was what probably left the strongest impression on me during that visit; it would have been the only reason why I would have liked to work in Hollywood: the obsession for detail.

"Lots of us have been bingeing pandemic movies, understandably," Sara Stewart states at the start of a New York Post article today. "It’s perversely comforting to see that things could be worse. But what else, I wondered, did film envision for us in 2020, specifically? I looked at five sci-fi movies set this year (and available for rent on Amazon, among other platforms) to see if things were better or worse than the real deal."

Stewart begins with Doug Liman's Edge Of Tomorrow, in which "tentacled aliens have taken over huge swaths of the globe and humanity seems to be permanently at war with them. (So: worse?)"

Then she moves on to Mission To Mars:

Next up: “Mission to Mars,” from 2000. Director Brian De Palma was clearly overly optimistic about our space exploration capabilities. Or was he? Three characters have died 20 minutes in, and there’s a giant face on the surface of the red planet. Yikes. Here’s a whisper of quarantine familiarity as a rescue mission finds that a scraggly Don Cheadle’s been tending a greenhouse alone on Mars for a year. Some of us may find a whisper of relatability here. This is a very cheesy movie, but it’s got a great scene of Tim Robbins and Connie Nielsen dancing in zero gravity. Also, we meet a Martian relative. On balance: better.

News that Garfield died due to complications from COVID-19 was posted by Garfield's Nashville co-star Ronee Blakley on Facebook last night. However, The Hollywood Reporter's Mike Barnes received confirmation of the actor's death from Garfield's sister Lois Goorwitz, and Barnes' obit only attributed the COVID-19 element to Blakley's post.

"Garfield suffered a stroke as he was set to appear in Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (1999)," Barnes states, "then suffered another one in 2004 that led him to reside at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills. A spokeswoman for the MPTF facility did not know if Garfield was there at the time of his death."

Garfield also appeared with Tommy Smothers in De Palma's first studio picture, Get To Know Your Rabbit (1972). That same year, he was cast in Michael Ritchie's The Candidate, which starred Robert Redford.

Between Greetings and Hi, Mom!, Garfield appeared in another influential counterculture satire, Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope, as well as Woody Allen's Bananas in 1971. In 1974, he appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (a key film, of course, in the realm of De Palma's cinema), and later, Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), William Friedkin's The Brink's Job (1978), Richard Rush's The Stunt Man (1980), Coppola's One From The Heart (1981) and The Cotton Club (1984), among many others.

Before he began working at a video store, Quentin Tarantino studied acting for six years, three of them with Garfield as his mentor.

Here's more from Barnes' obit at The Hollywood Reporter:

Born Allen Goorwitz on Nov. 22, 1939, in Newark, he went by his real name in several films, including The Brink's Job (1978) and One From the Heart (1981), midway through his career.

Garfield boxed as an amateur, worked as a sportswriter and studied with Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York. He appeared often onstage before making his film debut in Orgy Girls '69, followed by other big-screen appearances in 1971 in Woody Allen's Bananas and The Organization, starring Sidney Poitier.

Often playing jumpy types, he worked for Francis Ford Coppola in The Conversation (1974) and The Cotton Club (1984) and for Wim Wenders in A State of Things (1982) and Until the End of the World (1991).

He also portrayed Louis B. Mayer in Gable and Lombard (1976) and police chief Harold Lutz in Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), and his résumé also included roles in Teachers (1984), Desert Bloom (1986), Dick Tracy (1990), Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995) and The Majestic (2001).

"The reason I did [the 1988 movie] Chief Zabu is that Allen Garfield is from the Actors Studio, I'm from the Actors Studio, and we worked together there on stuff," actress Marianna Hill said in a 2016 interview with Shaun Chang for the Hill Place blog. "Allen Garfield happens to be a great actor. He's a really underrated actor. Allen was the hardest-working actor, but nobody realizes that about him because he seems to be a natural."