There is some back-and-forth about whether or not Raising Cain is meant as any kind of comedy or not-- the one guy of the three who likes the film the most is the one who sees more deliberate humor in the film. There is also discussion of the camera work, and the one-shot exposition scene down into the morgue, although they are confused at the "weird" way the camera tilts with the characters as they walk down the stairs.

In the final leg of the podcast, they call Greg Srisavasdi of the Cinemaddicts podcast, who is introduced as a major De Palma fan. Srisavasdi tells them the story of the Rasing Cain press junket: how a press screening had garnered bad buzz for the film, and so the morning after, the producers were trying to play up Raising Cain as a comedy to the media at the scheduled press junket. Then Srisavasdi drops a stunning bit of revelation: "One of the former press junketeers, press members, who was part of that roundtable, was Ryan Murphy."

Previously:

Ryan Murphy's Ratched amps up Hitch & De Palma
Ryan Murphy's Scream Queens opens with Carrie joke
Ryan Murphy talks American Horror Story: Freak Show
American Horror Story: Freak Show Tips Hat to De Palma
Murphy Says AHS Season Under the Influence of De Palma
Carrie Cues & Echoes of Sisters as American Horror Story Begins Its Second Season

Mr. De Palma first read the novel while in Thailand shooting the film "Casualties of War." He became saturated in it while driving cars and flying on airplanes, listening over and over to tapes of the book read by the actor John Lithgow. Hearing the scenes effectively acted out reinforced the director's sense of the story as "basically a flat-tire comedic farce."

"Everybody says all the time, 'Why is this movie so funny?' " Mr. De Palma said, almost exasperated. "I think the problem is that nobody reads these scenes out loud."

Bucky: "Well, it sure explains some things."

Kay: "No, it doesn't."

Salamon's concluding chapter finds De Palma beginning to work on what would become Raisng Cain:

De Palma felt completely lost. In the past he'd felt that he learned something from reviews. They made him think about whether the drill in "Body Double" had been excessive, for example. But he didn't know what to make of this kind of criticism -- Kael saying the opening Steadicam shot wasn't really funny because it was "too precise." The other reviews were variations on one theme, and he stated that theme, "'How could you trivialize this masterwork?' They act as though I've done the National Lampoon version of Hamlet."

He spent the days reading and working out the script for the thriller he'd been thinking about for months. It was the story of a man whose father had conducted psychological experiments on him as a boy, hoping to create the perfect child. The father's experiments continued, and now the son was helping him by kidnapping children to be subjects, killing a few mothers and nannies along the way. De Palma saw the pitfalls in actually directing this film, but it was a pleasurable diversion.

He still felt that his decision to make "Bonfire" had been the right one. "You always have to make an assessment of where you are," he said, "and then you wind up somewhere else. I get less and less joy out of making movies. The process you go through. You've got to find that joy again or you're going to stop making them.

"A lot of what takes the joy out of it are the tremendous economic pressures. There's so much on the line. The bigger the film, the more you come into conflict with the studio. There are more battles."

As he worked out the details for his thriller -- figuring out the killer's pyschological make-up, imagining how to stage the murders -- De Palma felt some of that old joy. "I wanted to make movies because I had strong visual ideas," he said. That's how I started making movies and that's where I'm going to try to return to." But he knew it was going to be difficult. He knew how quickly a career could be undone. Whatever happened next, he knew "Bonfire" had been a turning point for him. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he would never again feel the same about himself or his place in the business.

De Palma never quite understood why people hated "Bonfire" so much. He didn't understand why people behaved as though he'd sat in a room trying to make the worst movie imaginable when in fact he'd thought he was making a good movie. "While I was making 'Bonfire,' I saw what was there and it worked. I figured, It worked for me, it'll work for everybody else," he said. "But I think there was an alienation factor. I think after a while they thought, Why do I have to watch all this stuff. I'll just close my eyes and listen to what they have to say."

And then he started to cackle. "I guess this taught me one thing. I have a strange sense of humor," he said. "I guess most people don't share it."

In a podcast interview with Joel Tscherne at New Books Network, Isaacs explains that the basis of the argument he makes in the book is that Hitchcock "comes up with this notion of pure cinema, which he appropriates himself from the avant garde in Europe. De Palma appropriates that mode of pure cinema, but my argument is that he takes it further than Hitchcock, in more successfully intensified visual form. Visual form in De Palma, in my opinion, is more intricate than it is in Hitchcock, montage is more intricate, and I absolutely believe that if you look at the way that De Palma works with sound, there are very few filmmakers that are that attuned to the capacity of the score."

Regarding De Palma's cinematic relationship with Hitchcock, Isaacs stresses, "Of course it's a relationship, but we need to understand the relationship from a critical point of view, and not simply take the stand that so many critics have taken, which is, 'He's just replicating what has come before.' And that's been so unfortunate, I think, in the reception of De Palma."

In the podcast interview, Isaacs mentions that in the book, he examines the mall scene in Body Double. When the discussion turns to Mission: Impossible, Isaacs enthuses, "If I'd had space in the book, I would have done a very close examination simply of movement patterns in the Prague sequence of Mission: Impossible. Because it's just so masterful."

When asked why Femme Fatale is such a key film for his book, Isaacs tells Tscherne, "I actually think [De Palma]'s making a philosophical argument about pure cinema through Femme Fatale itself. So, motifs of photography, and visual form, underpin the entire story. The lead character is a photographer. And he's going to photograph several things that are going to explain the intersection of all the plot lines, all the character lines, and the way these worlds connect with each other in the story. But to be honest, why I think Femme Fatale is so important is it's simply the most elaborate, complex, and intricate of these pure cinema works."

It's a terrific hour-long discussion. Check it out.

Body Double is the film that kicked off "De Palma December" on the weekly podcast, Cinema Recall, two Fridays ago:

We begin the month of December by covering the films of director Brian DePalma. He has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock but many of his films are a lot more mature in content. Not only does he direct thrillers, but he has worked in horror, action, dramas, and musicals too.

On this episode, Ryan of Coolness Chronicles and Reels of Justice returns to discuss DePalma's homage to Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo with Body Double. Listen to him and The Vern go over moments of this intricate thriller.

The 1980s were good to me. My career and family flourished, yet, looking back, I feel some embarrassment. So many of today’s social ills took root in that decade. Not that I was oblivious, but I was wrapped up in my own concerns. I feel similarly mixed emotions when I think about The Bonfire of the Vanities.

In 1990 Brian De Palma agreed to give me full access to the movie he was making—an adaptation of Bonfire, the 1987 Tom Wolfe novel that had been embraced as a metaphor for everything that was wrong with 1980s New York.

In the book, Wolfe lampooned the city’s racial politics, corrupt judicial system, rampant gentrification, barracuda press corps, and ethnic hostilities. It was high-octane social commentary as entertainment, and Bonfire became an instant sensation.

Warner Bros. hired De Palma to make a film version. But studio executives quickly developed a case of buyer’s remorse. Step by step, the story and characters were homogenized as the budget ballooned. The reviews were savage. Variety called it “…a misfire of inanities.” Good Morning America’s Joel Siegel said, “You’ve got to be a genius to make a movie this bad.” Bonfire became the movie everyone loved to hate.

My book The Devil’s Candy, about the making of the film, was published less than a year after the movie’s ignominious demise. No doubt some of the book’s success was due to Bonfire’s failure. Newsweek put it succinctly: “De Palma’s misfortune is Salamon’s gain.” Ouch. Not nice repayment for De Palma’s generosity in opening his set to me.

Now, 30 years on, the movie deserves to be reconsidered, if not for its quality then for how timely it still feels. Sadly, Bonfire remains all too relevant; only the vocabulary and technology have changed. The “masters of the universe” are now the “one percent.” Twitter has replaced the tabloids. Black Lives Matter leads the charge against racial inequity. The movie may not hold up as a great film, but it was never as bad as its worst reviews. You can watch it now as campy fun, or as a worthy artifact, reminding us that the times have changed but New York’s complicated, messy, grand machinations haven’t.

If anything has changed, it’s Hollywood. In 1990 there were movies and there was network television, with the former being considered decidedly superior.

It wasn’t until The Sopranos came along, in 1999, that long-form series on TV became serious rivals to movies. Bonfire’s many layers would work far better as one of today’s limited series.

Back in 1990 Wolfe was anticipating the future, though he didn’t know it at the time. “It’s too bad movies don’t run nine or 10 hours,” he told me. “The way I constructed the book, almost every chapter was meant to be a vignette about New York as well as something that might advance the story, and to me one was as important as the other.” Amazon Studios bought the rights to make an eight-­episode adaptation of the book in 2016, but a series has yet to appear. Indulging its overindulgence, Bonfire has important things to say. Maybe we just didn’t listen closely enough last time.

The brilliant fan site The Swan Archives, curated by Ari Kahan, features a thorough history of the promotion of the film and shows the initial two styles of poster, one of which was designed by Anthony Goldschmidt and illustrated by the late John Alvin and also featured on the album cover. As Kahan notes:

‘The involvement of A&M records (which issued the soundtrack, and which more or less owned the exclusive rights to Paul Williams’ life at the time) in the co-marketing campaign with 20th Century Fox meant that the film was initially pitched towards what A&M and Fox believed to be the teens-through-college “rock music demographic.” John Alvin’s beautiful painted graphics on the posters and soundtrack album emphasised guitars, keyboards, microphones, patch cords, and other musical ephemera, and a photorealistic depiction of songwriter/star Paul Williams, signalling the studio’s intention to rely heavily on Williams’ existing fame in its promotion of the film.’

The rest of the ill-conceived initial campaign is detailed on the Swan Archives page linked to above. After a disastrous few months at the box office, the film’s producer Ed Pressman convinced the studio to allow him to reposition the film with a revised marketing campaign. Kahan explains:

‘Pressman went into action by launching a second campaign, in mid-1975, which tagged the film as “The Most Highly Acclaimed Horror Phantasy of Our Time,” pushing the horror angle and perennial plot line, and downplaying the music. De Palma, Finley, and Graham were made extremely available to give interviews to Castle of Frankenstein, Monster World, and every other horror magazine that would make time for them’

As part of this second campaign Pressman commissioned noted comic book artist Richard Corben to illustrate a new poster image and fellow comic book artist Neal Adams provided an initial concept sketch from which Corben worked (according to Kahan, ‘Adams drew the sketch for free, to aid Pressman in pitching a never-realised Phantom of the Paradise companion comic book, which he hoped might result in some paying work’) . The new painting emphasised the horror aspect and the Phantom’s mangled face and completely downplayed Williams’ presence – you can just spot him at the bottom of the marquee (see the close-up image). The new campaign proved to be more successful but as Kahan notes:

‘The film gradually took on life, bringing in decent (though never great) box office and some positive reviews. As De Palma put it, “When we revised the campaign in the U.S and made it seem more like The Phantom of the Opera than a horror/rock film, we got an entirely different response.”‘

For more on the film’s promotional travails, I again urge you to check out the excellent Swan Archives site. Corben also painted the style B one sheet for the Heavy Metal film, the magazine of which he’d been involved with for several years.

Fake outs. Doubles. Doppelgangers. Twists and surprises. Dreams, and dreams within a dream. Dutch angles and split diopters. Overhead angles and split screens. Bizarre sexual fantasies, and stalkers, peepers, and observers. It’s all part of the Brian De Palma mystique, and this week Jim and Teal launch the first of several episodes devoted to the film work of Brian De Palma.

Brian De Palma isn’t Jim or Teal’s favorite director. In fact, as far as movie-going experiences go, they both have a lot of issues with him. But, when The Criterion Channel added Dressed to Kill to their site in November, Jim’s curiosity to rewatch this movie after 30+ years led him down a rabbit hole that he dragged a willing Teal into. Several weeks and more than a dozen watches and rewatches later, our two podcast hosts are a little bit more than obsessed.

“Getting a chance to watch so many of De Palma’s films, back-to-back, allows me the opportunity to appreciate him in a whole new way,” Jim said. “There is so much continuity to his themes and camerawork that I didn’t necessarily pick up on when watching his work spread apart.”

And Jim and Teal won’t just be covering the favorites and well-known work of De Palma’s like Scarface, Mission: Impossible, Carrie, and The Untouchables. They both went deep into his filmography to watch little-known work like 1976’s Obsession, and 2018’s Domino. Throughout this assignment Jim added a good seven De Palma films to his watch list, and rewatched a bunch more.

These episodes are going to be a lot of fun. This first episode is just a taste of De Palma, and Jim and Teal have a lot more to bring you. A second (possibly spit into two) is on its way, and they want to watch a few more of his films to round out his filmography. They hope you enjoy these episodes, and they will get you to consider seeking out more De Palma films you may not have seen, or even known about.

It seemed an appropriate choice to accompany several Billy Corgan quotes from yesterday, in which the Smashing Pumpkins mastermind discussed the possibility of a Pumpkins movie, and mentioned "that one weird Paul Williams movie" along with Tommy and Pink Floyd The Wall as points of reference. Here's an excerpt from the Forbes article by Steve Baltin:

If Corgan has his way it would be bigger than an animated series, as he wants to turn the trilogy of albums, Melon Collie, Machina and the third album the band is working on now into a series of feature films in the vein of classic rock movies like the Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia and Pink Floyd's The Wall.

"My dream scenario is we'll not only play Melon Collie, Machina and the record we're working on now in mass theatrical stagings, but then I'll someday get to make a movie," he says. "And if those things ever get made into movies they would probably most likely have to be animation cause nobody's gonna write me that big a check," he adds laughing.

But he does have an idea on how the trilogy of Pumpkins' albums could make their way onto the big screen. "I have floated out here and there some kind of crowd-funding scenario and for whatever reason there seems to be a lot of energy there that fans would be interested in," he says. "So it's possible. Maybe it's one of those things if fans put up a million and I put up a million maybe we pull it off. I own all the music so that's the good part. But that's a lot of work."

When asked about reference points for what the Pumpkins films might be like he mentions the aforementioned Who and Pink Floyd films. "It helps if the album is classic," he says laughing. "There is that one weird Paul Williams movie where he's like a Phantom Of The Opera thing (Phantom Of The Paradise)."

Phantom Of The Paradise isn't the only unusual rock movie from the late '70s and early '80s, the same era that also saw the Village People's Can't Stop The Music, KISS Meets Phantom Of The Park and the much-maligned film adaptation of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club [Band] starring Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees and more.

What does Corgan see when he looks at that era of rock movies? "You just see cocaine, right?" he says laughing. "You look at some of these and you think, 'There's gotta be cocaine in there somewhere because this doesn't make any sense.'"

Alright, so if the Pumpkins albums ever get turned into film expect more Pink Floyd The Wall than Phantom Of The Paradise.

Brian De Palma’s Assistant Sam Irvin Reveals All About the Making of DRESSED TO KILL

Sam Irvin, director of ELVIRA’S HAUNTED HILLS, co-executive producer of GODS AND MONSTERS and former personal assistant to Brain De Palma, celebrates the 40th Anniversary of De Palma’s DRESSED TO KILL, with the publication of his personal experiences during the making of this classic horror-thriller, starring Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson and Nancy Allen.

Having been De Palma’s personal assistant during the late-70s and early-80s, Irvin definitely has a story or two to tell about Hollywood’s last golden age This special issue of BOOBS & BLOOD magazine is entirely devoted to Irvin’s definitive behind-the-scenes account of DRESSED TO KILL. In addition to this game-changing fan favorite, Irvin also writes of his time working on other De Palma features such as THE FURY, HOMES MOVIES, BLOW OUT, and several unmade De Palma projects. Packed with photos and artwork (many previously unpublished), the issue comes out just in time for the Holidays.

As Irvin says, “Working intimately with De Palma on DRESSED TO KILL allowed me to see his unique filmmaking process unfold before my very eyes in real-time. Despite my formal education in cinematic arts, my real film school was the time I spent with De Palma. Every riveting minute of it.”

B&B editor publisher Miles Flanagan states, “We’re so proud to have Sam donate his services for free as a writer for this very special issue. As someone who was De Palma’s personal assistant, Sam’s insightful account of the making of DRESSED TO KILL and De Palma’s work during this time is invaluable.”

Continued Flanagan, “We hope this will be our biggest seller to date and be a big fundraiser for the KEEP A BREAST FOUNDATION. That would definitely make my Christmas.”

All profits from BOOBS & BLOOD magazine are donated to the KEEP A BREAST FOUNDATION. So if you buy this, it truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

The DRESSED TO KILL Special Edition is available online:

https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1877350

www.boobsandblood.com