Hello and welcome to the unofficial Brian De Palma website.
Here is the latest news:

De Palma a la Mod

E-mail
Geoffsongs@aol.com

De Palma Discussion
Forum

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

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

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

Exclusive Passion
Interviews:

Brian De Palma
Karoline Herfurth
Leila Rozario

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

AV Club Review
of Dumas book

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

« June 2025 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30

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
Icarus
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
Mission To Mars
Mission: Impossible
Mod
Montreal World Film Fest
Morricone
Mr. Hughes
Murder a la Mod
Nancy Allen
Nazi Gold
Newton 1861
Noah Baumbach
NYFF
Obsession
Oliver Stone
Palmetto
Paranormal Activity 2
Parker
Parties & Premieres
Passion
Paul Hirsch
Paul Schrader
Pauline Kael
Peet Gelderblom
Phantom Of The Paradise
Pimento
Pino Donaggio
Predator
Prince Of The City
Print The Legend
Raggedy Ann
Raising Cain
Red Shoes, The
Redacted
Responsive Eye
Retribution
Rie Rasmussen
Robert De Niro
Rotwang muß weg!
Sakamoto
Scarface
Scorsese
Sean Penn
Sensuous Woman, The
Sisters
Snake Eyes
Sound Mixer
Spielberg
Star Wars
Stepford Wives
Stephen H Burum
Sweet Vengeance
Tabloid
Tarantino
Taxi Driver
Terry
The Tale
To Bridge This Gap
Toronto Film Fest
Toyer
Travolta
Treasure Sierra Madre
Tru Blu
Truth And Other Lies
TV Appearances
Untitled Ashton Kutcher
Untitled Hollywood Horror
Untitled Industry-Abuse M
Untouchables
Venice Beach
Vilmos Zsigmond
Wedding Party
William Finley
Wise Guys
Woton's Wake
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
RSS Feed
View Profile
You are not logged in. Log in
Sunday, May 25, 2025
SUPERB BOOK ABOUT 'CASUALTIES OF WAR' FROM STICKING PLACE
DEEPLY RESEARCHED BY NATHAN RERA, INCLUDING UNSEEN PHOTOS, NEW INTERVIEWS WITH LANG, DE PALMA, PENN, AND MANY MORE
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/bookcasualtiesnathan.jpg

Nathan Réra's book, Casualties of War: An Investigation, is a thoroughly researched examination of everything that led up to the making and release of Brian De Palma's film from 1989. In this respect, and considering the idea of "Brian De Palma's Split Screen," it seems a true and almost surreal contrast/companion to Julie Salamon's anatomy of the film De Palma made immediately after, The Bonfire Of The Vanities. The difference is that while Salamon was embedded within the production of that big-budget Hollywood production, Réra began his investigations years after the facts, and has dug deeper into the research than one might expect.

The book, originally written and published in French and now translated into English by Paul Cronin, is available from Sticking Place Books in hardback or paperback. (Keep in mind that while both have photos included, only the hardback edition includes full-color photos, while the paperback includes them in black-and-white.)

In the introductory chapter, Réra discusses his approach and lists the people he interviewed for the book:

I quickly realized that my project would make sense only if my research was as broad as possible. Without aiming for completeness - which is ultimately illusory - I decided I would embark on a quest to pull together the recollections of Casualties of War's crew, and, in doing so, assemble a new archive." In total, including the filmmaker, producer and screenwriter, I interviewed thirty-three people. I spoke with the production manager (Fred Caruso), the production coordinator (Sallie Beechinor), the director of photography (Stephen H. Burum), the Steadicam operator (Larry McConkey), the on-set photographer (Roland Neveu), the second unit director (Eric Schwab), two assistant directors (Brian W. Cook, Carl Goldstein), the production designer (Wolf Kroeger), the chief makeup artist (Paul Engelen), De Palma's personal assistant (Monica Goldstein), the props master (Mickey Pugh), a special effects technician (Yves De Bono), a historical advisor (Deborah Ricketts), two military advisors (Mike Stokey and Art Smith), a costume designer and Thai stand-in (Pasiree Panya), a Thai assistant (Charlie Sungkawess), seven actors (Sean Penn, Don Harvey, John C. Reilly, John Leguizamo, Thuy Thu Le, Erik King, Holt McCallany, Dale Dye), the San Francisco extras casting director (Nancy Hayes), the editor (Bill Pankow), the head of the sound department (Maurice Schell) and one of the sound designers (Marko A. Costanzo).

I opted for semi-structured interviews, most of which took place by phone, though videoconferencing applications were also employed. Whenever possible I met with my interviewees in person. In a few cases, only written correspondence was exchanged. Our discussions, which ranged from half an hour to over two and a half hours, often led to additional exchanges via email or phone so I could clarify details or ask new questions. I transcribed each conversation in its entirety and sent the result to the interviewee for review. I extracted the essence of these conversations, which are spread throughout the second half of this book. Contacting several of these individuals meant trading the methods of an art historian for those of a detective, and sometimes-as was the case with Sean Penn-great patience was needed.


The book moves from an examination of the military trial records, to Daniel Lang's research and focus in writing the original New Yorker article, moving on to unproduced screenplays and the films that were based around the story prior to De Palma's film, which is the focus of the second part of the book. Needless to say, the book is a must-read, must-have for any De Palma enthusiast. One other note: De Palma's personal assistant at the time of production on Casualties Of War, Monica Goldstein, provided several behind-the-scenes photos for the book.


Posted by Geoff at 6:04 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 25, 2025 6:11 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Saturday, March 22, 2025
CRITERION CHANNEL TO STREAM 'CASUALTIES OF WAR' IN APRIL
AS PART OF "VIETNAM ACROSS THE DIVIDES" PROGRAM, CURATED BY TONY BUI
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/criterionvietnam.jpg

The Criterion Channel is adding Brian De Palma's Casualties Of War in April, as part of the program, "Legacies of War: Vietnam Across the Divides." Here are the details:

Legacies of War: Vietnam Across the Divides

On the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, filmmaker and program curator Tony Bui presents a multiperspective look at the Vietnam War on film, moving beyond conventional narratives to include voices and viewpoints often overlooked in mainstream cinema. While the most famous Vietnam War films—like the cultural touchstones Platoon and Full Metal Jacket—focus on the experience of American soldiers, this selection paints a broader, more complex picture, exploring Vietnamese perspectives, the war’s impact on civilians, and postwar reckoning. Encompassing powerfully human Vietnamese dramas like The Little Girl of Hanoi and When the Tenth Month Comes, wrenching documentaries like Regret to Inform and Hearts and Minds, and Bui’s own poetic reflection on Vietnam past and present, Three Seasons, these stories of loss, resilience, trauma, and reconciliation offer new ways of understanding a conflict that shattered and shaped countless lives.

FEATURING: On the Same River (1959), Ms. Tư Hậu (1963), Hearts and Minds (1974), The Little Girl of Hanoi (1974), When the Tenth Month Comes (1984), Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Casualties of War (1989), In Country (1989), Regret to Inform (1998), Three Seasons (1999)*, The Fog of War (2003)*, Journey from the Fall (2006)



Posted by Geoff at 11:54 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post
Friday, January 3, 2025
BOOK - 'CASUALTIES OF WAR - AN INVESTIGATION' - OUT NOW
NATHAN RERA'S FRENCH BOOK HAS BEEN TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH, PUBLISHED BY STICKING PLACE BOOKS
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/bookcasualtiesnathan.jpg

Back in 2021, we posted regarding a nearly 600-page French book about Casualties Of War, written by Nathan Réra. Last week, Sticking Place Books published an English translation of Réra's book, titled, Casualties of War: An Investigation. Here's a description from the press release, with quotes from Julie Salamon and Adrian Martin:
Casualties of War, Brian De Palma's devastating and brilliant 1989 feature film starring Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox, tells the true story of the rape and murder of a young Vietnamese woman by a patrol of American soldiers. "When you leave the theatre," wrote Pauline Kael in her review, "you'll probably find that you're not ready to talk about it. You may also find it hard to talk lightly about anything." De Palma himself said: "It's a film I still have a hard time watching because it's so disturbing. It's one of the most horrific stories you can imagine."

Drawing on a wealth of rare material, including military archives, correspondence and unpublished screenplays, Nathan Réra revisits the 1969 book by Daniel Lang that documented the actual events, examines two films from the early 1970s inspired by Lang's work, and analyses a series of unproduced scripts written over a period of many years, before exploring in detail the making and reception of De Palma's film. More than just a production history, Réra's text delves into the aesthetic, ethical and political issues surrounding screen representations of the Vietnam War, and violence against women in the context of armed conflict.

This fascinating and unusual book uses Brian De Palma's unappreciated Vietnam masterpiece as a portal into the collision of history, journalism, politics and the moviemaking process. Nathan Réra brings academic rigor and a storytelling gift to this intriguing investigation into the long and painful transformation of a horrific incident into art.

- Julie Salamon, author of The Devil's Candy.

What began in admiration of Brian De Palma's remarkable film Casualties of War became an intrepid, rigorous investigation for Nathan Réra: a probe into the original, horrendous Vietnam War incident, the extraordinary, journalistic book it gave rise to, and the many attempts (realised or not) to bring this difficult, confronting material to the screen in all its complexity. Ending on a note of autobiographical revelation, this book delves deeply, emerging with an abundance of rich insights.

- Adrian Martin, author of Filmmakers Thinking.


Posted by Geoff at 10:01 PM CST
Updated: Tuesday, January 7, 2025 6:27 PM CST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Saturday, November 23, 2024
'AND A FEW NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES COME TO MIND RIGHT AWAY'
JOHN C. REILLY IS ASKED THE FIRST THIING THAT COMES TO MIND FOR CASUALTIES OF WAR


While promoting a new animated short streaming on Disney+, John C. Reilly was asked by ABC 7's Joelle Garguilo to say the first thing that comes to mind for several projects, starting with Brian De Palma's Casualties Of War:
Joelle Garguilo: I’m going to bring up a project, and just the first thing that comes to mind for you.

John C. Reilly: Okay.

Joelle Garguilo: Casualties Of War.

John C. Reilly: Casualties Of War was my first movie. That was my first time on an airplane, first time in front of a camera. Yeah, a lot of firsts. I met my wife on that movie. And a few near-death experiences come to mind right away, too. As Michael J. Fox said, never drive in a country that believes in reincarnation.


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Sunday, November 24, 2024 11:03 AM CST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Thursday, August 29, 2024
IN 2006, DE PALMA RESTORED HIS CUT OF 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
DE PALMA TO BRUCE WEBER IN 1989: "IN A MOVIE LIKE THIS, I'M NOT SURE TESTING HAS ANY RELEVANCE"
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/casextended1.jpg

In 2006, when Columbia released Brian De Palma's restored cut of Casualties Of War, it was billed as the "Extended Cut."

In May of 1989, three months prior to the theatrical release of Casualties Of War, the New York Times Magazine published an article about the film by Bruce Weber, which begins with a test screening of the film. Here's an excerpt, courtesy of the book Brian De Palma Interviews, edited by Laurence F. Knapp:

IN THE MINUTES BEFORE the first public test screening of Brian De Palma's new movie at a theater in Boston, a young man approaches Steven Spielberg, De Palma's friend and fellow director who is sitting in the audience with a baseball cap pulled down over his brow, and asks him if he is Steven Spielberg.

"No," Steven Spielberg says, though as the man begins to walk away, he changes his mind.

Ambivalence and nervousness are prevalent this evening. De Palma himself, who believes this movie, Casualties of War, unequivocally to be his best, is nonetheless aware that it is not a romping entertainment. "It's so intense people may get up and leave," he said earlier in the day. At the moment, he's in the front row, and will spend the evening with his back to the screen, watching the audience.

Farther back, seated with Spielberg, are the film's producer, Art Linson, and several Columbia Pictures executives, including Dawn Steel, who approved the project in November 1987, shortly after she became president of the beleaguered studio.

Casualties of War had been abandoned by Paramount, Steel's previous employer; she rescued it for Columbia, upped the budget to a reported $22.5 million and made it her first "green light." Columbia finished 1988 last among the nine major movie studios in domestic market share, and Steel, charged with effecting a resurgence, is now awaiting summer, when the first movies produced at the studio on her watch will be released. Though Casualties of War features Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, and is thus compatible with Steel's predilection for star packages, it isn't Ghostbusters II (which is due next month). As the lights go down, Steel is visibly on edge.

Based on the true story of an atrocity committed by a squad of American soldiers in Vietnam, Casualties of War is immediately recognizable as a Brian De Palma film. In its opening sequence, a nighttime battle in the jungle that is photographed in the glossy, hyperbolized mode De Palma has frequently favored in his depictions of threat and chaos, Daniel Eriksson, a "cherry" who is seeing his first action, falls through a hole in the jungle floor and finds himself wedged in the earth up to his armpits, his legs dangling into a tunnel dug by the Vietcong. Played by Fox, Eriksson is plainly terrified, but he is spared a bit of suspense that the audience, which sees that the tunnel occupied, is not. As Eriksson is yanked to safety by a comrade, an enemy guerrilla swipes at his legs with a knife-and misses.

It is a typical De Palma manipulation, a macabre joke played both for the audience and at its expense. It is the only one in the picture: Though the film is bursting with De Palma's inventions, the grim truth of the material is no laughing matter. When the squad members, sent on a scouting patrol, kidnap a young Vietnamese woman, rape her and kill her, Eriksson is unable to stop them and bears excruciating witness to the crime. For the remainder of the movie, he is at the mercy of his conscience.

In the middle of the screening, half a dozen people do pick up and leave. And when the lights finally come up the theater is silent. Not a rustle. Eventually, as opinion cards are distributed, Steven Spielberg leans across Dawn Steel, whose fists are not yet unclenched, and murmurs a judgment to a man sitting on her opposite side.

"You'll be thinking about this for a week," he says.

"Maybe the ending could be made simpler," De Palma says. It is the following morning, and he doesn't look well. A large man - his girth, like many of his movies, is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock - he is devilishly bearded, and can be imposingly stone-faced. But today he is pale with apparent sleeplessness. After the screening, he attended a focus group discussion, examined the audience opinion cards and went to bed. Dawn Steel and Art Linson have expressed a wary satisfaction at the results of the test, but sipping cappuccino in the lounge of his hotel and speaking in his oddly reedy voice, De Palma is more forthright. The focus group had been impatient during a key expository sequence, he says, and he now wears the aspect of a man who, at the end of a long and grueling effort, has just discovered there is more work to be done.

"We were disappointed," he says, acknowledging that the majority of the audience graded the picture in the good to very good range. "What you really want," he says, and then stops to distance himself from the studio executives. "What they want is to have it tipped way high in the excellent area." He points out that, unlike a comedy, in which you can actually gauge what the audience thinks is funny, Casualties of War is supposed to leave the audience stunned, disturbed, introspective - and silent.

"In a movie like this, I'm not sure testing has any relevance," he says. "Still, you have to consider the problems when you read the cards and listen to the focus groups. You have to consider what's bothering them. Why aren't they reacting more strongly? It unnerves you. Everyone is unnerved. No question about it."


And then the Weber article ends on a note about that test screening:
"We were in hell for five months," said Michael J. Fox. Speaking during the filming of the movie's final sequence in a San Francisco park last summer, Fox had, along with the rest of the crew, just returned from the jungles of Thailand, where the bulk of the movie was shot, and where temperatures had been routinely over 100 degrees.

"You're physically exhausted, and because of the material, you're emotionally in a bit of a state," Fox said. "It was really important to watch Brian getting out of his Volvo every day, and to know that he knew exactly what was going to happen. He inspires confidence."

Indeed, as technicians, setting up one last shot, built a track on the park grass for a camera to dolly on, De Palma, supervising, was an enormous, composed presence amid the commotion. De Palma would explain later that the scene had been storyboarded long ago; it was already in his head, and because there were no grave problems afforded by the location, the only problem left, really, was the technical one - matching his vision.

In the sequence being filmed, Eriksson, years after his discharge, confronts a young woman who reminds him of the woman he saw killed. And in the final shot, the young woman emerges from a bus, followed by Eriksson, who pursues her into the park and calls after her. As the cameras rolled, De Palma, seated in a director's chair and watching the scene through a viewfinder, hunched his shoulders, becoming aggressively more attentive, like a cat who'd heard a distant, unidentifiable sound. Fox approached the camera; the camera dollied toward Fox, so that, in the end, they were inches apart, his face in close-up, the actress Thuy Thu Le offscreen. The whole thing lasted less than a minute.

De Palma ran the actors through eight takes, consulting with Fox after each, and finally, the last couple of times, hustling just to the edge of the confrontation himself, so that he, Fox, Thuy Thu Le and the cameraman were all huddled together under the sound boom as if it were an umbrella.

It was the acting that hadn't satisfied him - Michael Fox's final expression.

It's a difficult scene to bring off," he said afterward. "You know, you run into a stranger and she looks at you and understands something about you that no one's ever understood. In a sense, she's the forgiving angel. And he's got to show that he's been forgiven. In the initial takes, it just wasn't there."

Eight months later, sitting in his Boston hotel, De Palma is asked if this is the scene that befuddled the screening audience. "No," he says, "they seemed to like that. They thought the movie was paced very well. And they were not disturbed by the violence, which in a movie of mine is remarkable."

The problem, he explains, was in the court martial scene, which the audience seemed to feel reiterated dilemmas that had already been resolved. "I think it's important to see the squad members on the stand," he says, see what they have to say, see them confronted with what they've done. But you are taking the risk of dragging the audience back through material they are familiar with, in order to get the true emotional thrust of the movie - which is that these are all casualties of war." He admits that he's thinking of dropping the trial scene, or at least editing it down.

It's an interesting moment, the film maker listening in his head to several different voices at once. He looks as if he wished they would all shut up.

How, he is asked, will the decision be made? "Everyone will give me an opinion," he says. "and then I'll do what I want."



Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Sunday, August 18, 2024
35 FRAMES FROM 'CASUALTIES OF WAR'
RELEASED IN THEATERS 35 YEARS AGO TODAY, IN 1989
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/cas35th39.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 9:35 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, August 18, 2024 9:45 PM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Thursday, August 8, 2024
THE HEADLINE - 'NIXON RESIGNING'
SOME FRAMES FROM THE OPENING SCENE OF BRIAN DE PALMA'S CASUALTIES OF WAR
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/casualtiesopening1.jpg


Posted by Geoff at 7:52 PM CDT
Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink | Share This Post
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
STEPHEN BALDWIN TELLS STORY OF GETTING FIRED BY DE PALMA
"YOU DON'T ASK WHAT SEAN IS GONNA DO!!!" - SET OF CASUALTIES OF WAR



Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Friday, May 31, 2024 1:34 AM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Saturday, December 16, 2023
'CASUALTIES' DIRECTOR'S CUT, SUNDAY MORNING IN PARIS
BLUMENFELD & VACHAUD WILL PRESENT THE SCREENING & SIGN COPIES OF THEIR DE PALMA BOOK
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/cowposter65.jpg

Samuel Blumenfeld and Laurent Vachaud will be at Le Max Linder Panorama cinema in Paris Sunday morning to present a "Caro Ennio" film club screening of Brian De Palma's Casualties Of War, with its score by Ennio Morricone. This will be the director's cut of the film. Blumenfeld and Vachaud will be on hand after the screening to sign copies of their De Palma interviews book, which will be available, as well.

Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post
Sunday, May 14, 2023
'THE MOST AMBITIOUS WORK OF HIS CAREER'
NEAL JUSTIN ON FOX IN 'CASUALTIES', GUGGENHEIM ON USE OF CLIPS IN 'STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE'
https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/still1255.jpg

A. Frame's Alex Welch talks to Davis Guggenheim about his Apple TV + documentary, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie:
"I found an incredible joy and levity in his books, and that surprised me," Guggenheim tells A.frame. "At first, I thought, 'Someone should direct a movie about Michael,' and then I realized, 'No, I should direct a movie about Michael.'"

That movie is Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, which features intensely personal interviews between Fox and Guggenheim about the former's life and legacy, as well as exploring the ways in which the actor has dealt with his diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson’s disease. According to Guggenheim, it was Fox's resilient spirit in the face of adversity that struck such a chord with him. "It made me think, 'If this guy can be so upbeat when he's got this chronic diagnosis and I'm more dark and pessimistic than him, what's really going on here?' I wanted to solve that riddle," he recalls.

"The best movies, for me, are the ones that you come at personally," says the filmmaker. "I just felt drawn to Michael as a person."

A.frame: Michael J. Fox is somebody who has been a constant fixture in a lot of peoples' lives for 40 years. Was the thought of exploring his career and pop cultural impact onscreen at all daunting, or just exciting?

It's always a little daunting, but mostly exciting. I wanted to break out of the sort of rut I was in. I mean, it was a good rut. I had made a lot of films that are about substantial things and topics that stimulated my intellect. But I wanted to break out of that, and there's something about Michael that was appealing to me. "Appealing" doesn’t even seem like the right word. There's something about him that I needed.

The film really captures his resiliency. There's a moment near the start of the film where he falls and this woman comes back to check on him and he just looks at her and quips, "You knocked me off my feet."

He's a saint. That could easily be a line from Alex P. Keaton or Marty McFly, and that moment says a lot. It was a total surprise, first of all. We almost cut just before that. We thought the take was over and he trips very deep in the frame. I've watched it so many times, though, and the thing is that he's being very deliberate with his steps while he's walking so that he doesn't fall, and then the thing that trips him up is the woman. They pass each other and she says, "Hello, Mr. Fox," and he can't help but turn to face her because he's that kind of guy. He doesn't want to be aloof. He wants to be kind, and it's that kindness that sends him tumbling. And then, of course, instead of doing what I would probably do — which is stay on the ground and call my family — he gets up and says, "You knocked me off my feet," and the woman laughs. It says everything about him. He insists that no one looks at him like he's a pathetic creature.

You use a blend of multiple different kinds of footage and media in the film. What was your thought process behind shooting some of the recreation footage used in the doc?

I knew we had to do recreations right away. Then we got Michael Harte to come on board as our editor, who's a genius. I think at Sundance I called him a "wizard genius," and I genuinely do believe that, because he's just the most gifted editor. My solution to depicting certain moments that we didn't have any archival footage for was to do recreations. His solution was always to try and find moments from Michael J. Fox's movies and re-craft them in new and inventive ways. I've seen that done before here and there. Ethan Hawke does it in his Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward documentary series, The Last Movie Stars, which is wonderful. But Michael does it very differently in Still.

You mean because he blends the recreations and movie scenes together?

Yes. For instance, it goes by too fast because it's at the very beginning of this movie, but there's a shot of this hotel in Florida. It's the first shot of the film. Then we cut to a hallway and then to a bed and then you see this figure in the bed and the figure turns and that's all recreation. But then when we cut to a close-up of him waking up, that's from The Secret of My Success. Then we cut back to the hotel room and we show him having a fistfight with Woody Harrelson in basically 10 different movies. In those scenes, the editor and I always battle a little about how to depict each moment, and we fought and fought and fought until the movie decided what was best, ultimately.

Michael is really the only person directly interviewed in the film. Did you ever consider including interviews with any of his peers or family members?

I almost didn't interview him, actually. The original plan was no interviews at all. I pitched the film to Apple that watching it would feel like watching an '80s movie. I wanted a big score. I wanted big music cues from Guns N' Roses and the Beastie Boys. I even got John Powell to score the film, and he'd never scored a documentary before. He's just done big Hollywood movies previously. I so wanted to switch directions from my previous films. I wanted to take people on a wild ride, and interviews tend to slow films down. Interviews are like the basic language of documentaries. But I'd been working on the film for a while already, and I was doing this commercial and this cinematographer showed me a shot where you can put the camera in a certain way that it looks like the interviewee is looking into the lens. It worked really well, but you have to sit really close to the camera in order to achieve that effect.

So, Michael and I were always only about four feet apart from each other. We were always looking right into each other's eyes, and I just thought, "This is amazing." It was so right, because he's right there. I didn't know for sure if it was going to work or if the audience would always be able to understand him — because sometimes his Parkinson's makes it difficult to understand what he’s saying — but he was so funny. He's funny exactly the way you see he is in the film, and he's so winning that it just worked. So, we did more interviews. We just kept going back. We did that kind of interview together about six different times.


Meanwhile, Neal Justin at Star Tribune writes, "Guggenheim's super-personal approach means there is little time to evaluate that ABC sitcom [Spin City] or much of Fox's other works. But you can do that on your own." Justin includes Casualties Of War as one of "five gems" to start with:
Fox does the most ambitious work of his career in Brian De Palma's take on the Vietnam War. He plays a private who dares to go against a gung-ho sergeant (Sean Penn) after the rape and murder of a civilian. The film never got the attention it deserved, in part because it premiered in the shadow of "Platoon." HBO Max


Posted by Geoff at 12:01 AM CDT
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Newer | Latest | Older