DE PALMA a la MOD More news:

Posted February 1 2005 PHAN PLANS PHANTOMPALOOZA WINNIPEG WOMAN IN CONTACT WITH PAUL WILLIAMS Gloria Dignazio of Winnipeg is planning a Phantom Of The Paradise convention, and she hopes to get Paul Williams, who wrote the songs for the film, to participate. "There's so much interest in it, and I've actually contacted Paul Williams," Dignazio told the Canadian Press (CP) NewsWire last week. "I spoke to his management last week and they said he sounded really interested and I gave them the date and I'm waiting to hear confirmation. If he can come, I'd like to have two screenings and then have him introduce the movies." Dignazio plans to call the convention "Phantompalooza." According to CP: The Phantom of the Paradise is a somewhat obscure 1974 rock musical satire directed by Brian De Palma and loosely inspired by the Phantom of the Opera. It starred Williams, a diminutive actor who is perhaps better known as the composer of such pop classics as the Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun and the Barbra Streisand hit Evergreen, for which he won an Oscar. The movie bombed just about everywhere in the world with the exception of Winnipeg, where for some unfathomable reason it was a smash success, playing for 62 weeks after debuting at the Garrick Cinemas on Dec. 26, 1974. Dignazio is a hardcore fan of the film who saw it about nine times when it was first released in 1974. "It was the first movie I ever saw, and I absolutely loved it and still do," she wrote in 2001 at Cinema Montreal. "I remember when I saw this movie in 1974, it was very popular, huge lineups, I saw it about 9 times when it first came out," she wrote. According to the CP, Winnipeg band the Chocolate Bunnies from Hell are willing to perform a couple of songs from the soundtrack at the convention, if Dignazio can get it off the ground. A very brief summary of the CP article can be found at Canada.Com. Thanks to Hugh for providing us with the CP info! Footnotes: In 1987, De Palma asked Williams to rewrite the score for a Broadway adaptation of Phantom Of The Paradise. Although twelve new songs were written and recorded, the show was put on the shelf. In August of 2003, Antonio Banderas, who had long wanted to play the Phantom in the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical Phantom Of The Opera, mentioned in an interview with La Rioja that he was working with De Palma to bring De Palma's adaptation to Broadway, but said that "this project will take much time to get it on its feet."

Posted January 30 2005 GUZMAN PIC FROM CARLITO SET WITH PLOT DESCRIPTION FROM INSOMNIAC MANIA Insomniac Mania has posted a couple of pictures from the New York set of Carlito's Way: The Beginning, including this one of Luis Guzman, who was also in the Brian De Palma-directed original. The web site also provides the following plot description of the film: The focus in this film is around the year 1969, when Carlito Brigante (Jay Hernandez) Rocco (Michael Kelly) and Earl (Mario Van Peebles) finish doing time at Elmira State Penn and decide that they are no longer going to do petty robberies. They are going to start making real money with the Heroin business. Carlito brings in his childhood friend Colorado (Casper Martinez) to help them set it up. They at one point get accused of kidnapping the head of the italian mob family's son, Artie Jr. (Domenick Lombardozzi), so Artie Sr. (Burt Young) puts a contract out on Carlito's life. How will he clear his name?

Posted January 26 2005 FERRETTI GETS OSCAR NEWS IN BULGARIA PULLS OVER TO SHOUT "THANK YOU" Art director Dante Ferretti and his wife, set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo, were each given Oscar nominations yesterday for their work on Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. According to today's Los Angeles Times, Ferretti heard the news "while driving in Bulgaria, where he is working on Brian De Palma's Black Dahlia. Although it is his eighth nomination, he had to pull over to say 'thank you' out loud." Ferretti told the newspaper, "I have worked with Martin Scorsese on nine films. He is a great director and this is a great film. For me to do a movie about Hollywood during the Golden Age was a dream come true."

Posted January 25 2005 SWANK BEAMS: "I GET TO PLAY A FEMME FATALE" The Hollywood Reporter today ran filmmakers' reactions to their Oscar nominations. Hilary Swank, who was nominated today for Best Actress for her role in Million Dollar Baby, said she woke up with "a bit of a jolt," but said she was just happy to be a working actor. The Reporter mentions that her next project will be Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia. "After playing two unvarnished characters who take a fair amount of onscreen licks," states the article, "Swank's enthusiasm for her next role beams straight through the phone: 'I get to play a femme fatale.'"

Posted January 22 2005 DE PALMA SPOTTED AT GLOBES BASH SCARLETT WAS THERE, TOO Journalist Christopher Reed was invited to HBO's Golden Globes after party last Sunday (January 16, 2005), and writes about it today at The Business Times. Calling it "one of the best" of the various Globe after parties, Reed spotted Brian De Palma there, as well as Scarlett Johansson, who will begin filming De Palma's The Black Dahlia this spring. Other stars in attendance, according to Reed, included Don Cheadle (who starred in De Palma's Mission To Mars), Clint Eastwood, Natalie Portman, Naomi Watts, John Cusack, and Liam Neeson. Another source noted that Mark Wahlberg was also at the party.

Posted January 20 2005 DAHLIA SET CONSTRUCTION UNDER WAY According to an article today at RPP Noticias, Dante Ferretti's sets for The Black Dahlia are currently under construction at Nu Image's studio in Bulgaria. The article quotes the film's producers as saying that recent Golden Globe-winner Hilary Swank will arrive there at the beginning of April to begin work on the film, which she will star in along with Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett.

Posted December 18 2004 SITTING PRETTY SWANK READY TO BE 'THE GIRL' AGAIN The picture to the left comes from the December 24 issue of Entertainment Weekly, which features an interview article about Hilary Swank. The interviewer (Scott Brown) caught Swank right after a photo shoot in which the actress was all made up, yet shrugged off her "movie star kisser" in favor of an animated discussion about boxing for her role in Million Dollar Baby. Regarding that film, Swank told the magazine, "I don't think it's fair to say that in this movie, I'm playing a tomboy or a girl who's masculine because I have muscles... I think I would like to mix it up now-- sometimes be 'the girl' and have things like this interspersed. Or maybe intersperse 'the girl' and have more roles like this." Brown then states, "Next she'll assay the title vixen in The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma's adaptation of the acclaimed James Ellroy novel." Brown's statement, combined with the Variety story from earlier this week, would seem to suggest that Swank will be playing two roles in the film: Elizabeth Short (the Dahlia herself), and Short's doppelganger Madeleine Sprague. Elsewhere in the magazine is an article about Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, which mentions that powerful directors, such as De Palma, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin, and Michael Mann, have all been circling projects about Howard Hughes since the early 1990s.

Posted December 14 2004 SWANK TO PLAY DAHLIA FEMME SHOOTING STARTS APRIL 4 IN BULGARIA According to Variety, Oscar winner Hilary Swank "will play a femme fatale in The Black Dahlia, the Brian De Palma-directed adaptation of the James Ellroy novel." Swank has been getting a lot of buzz for her role in Clint Eastwood's upcoming Million Dollar Baby, and was nominated for two Golden Globe awards yesterday (Dahlia co-star Scarlett Johansson was nominated for a Golden Globe, as well, after being nominated for two of them last year). Swank will play Madeleine Sprague, who the Variety article (by Michael Fleming) describes as "a dead ringer for the victim who became known as the Black Dahlia and proves a dangerous seductress to the cops." One of those cops, Bucky, will be played by Josh Hartnett, while Johansson will play Kay. Fleming writes, "While Swank came to prominence playing boyish roles in Boys Don't Cry and the upcoming Million Dollar Baby, De Palma wants her to lead with her looks this time." Producer Art Linson, who De Palma worked with on The Untouchables and Casualties Of War, was quoted as saying, "This has shaped up to be a strong young cast with material and themes that play to Brian's strengths." With a budget "north of $30 million," the film will begin shooting April 4 in Bulgaria. Linson, Moshe Diamant, Rudy Cohen and Avi Lerner are the producers. The film is being financed by Lerner's Millennium Films and Diamant's Signature Pictures International. (Thanks to Chuck and Kate for this great, great news!)

Posted November 22 2004 FIRTH LOOKS FORWARD TO TOYER 'IT'S ABOUT AS DARK AS IT GETS' The November 26th issue of Entertainment Weekly features an interview article with Colin Firth in which he talks about Toyer. The article appears to be the source of all those little-blurb articles that have been circulating over the past few days about how Firth would be interested in playing James Bond, and how he is attracted to darker roles, instead of the offers he's been getting for "lots of bumbling romantic-comedy figures." He finds his work on the Bridget Jones series forgetable, and says, "I'm attracted to dark stuff, and I'm in that mode right now." The EW article states that "The one project tempting him is Brian De Palma's thriller Toyer, about a womanizer who also happens to be a lobotomizer." Firth told the magazine, "It's about as dark as it gets. I met with [De Palma] and we both said, Let's do it when we are both ready."

Posted November 22 2004 This ad was published in one of the industry trades a couple of weeks ago by Millenium Films to promote The Black Dahlia. The scan makes things a bit difficult to read, but the tagline goes, "Hollywood's most infamous murder." Above the names of Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson, it reads, "A Brian De Palma Film." Somebody had the ad/image up for sale at Ebay, and I grabbed it. (Thanks to Bill and Kate!)

Posted November 12 2004 WALKER SEEKS DAHLIA ROLE SAYS 'DE PALMA'S MY FAVORITE' Paul Walker (The Fast and the Furious) tells Cinema Confidential that he is doing everything he can to take over the role that Mark Wahlberg left vacant when he dropped out of The Black Dahlia. "Brian De Palma’s got a movie he’s gonna do called The Black Dahlia," said Walker. "De Palma’s my favorite. And I heard that one of the cast members, someone that’s attached dropped out. I want to do that movie! De Palma’s the man." When asked if he has seen all of De Palma's films, Walker replied, "Every one. And Jeff Byrd is my agent at ICM. Jeff Byrd represents De Palma. So I’m like, 'yo, Byrd, make this happen.'"

Posted November 9 2004 DE PALMA VISITS BULGARIA BOMBARDED BY MEDIA UPON ARRIVAL Brian De Palma arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria Monday and was promptly "attacked" by the Bulgarian media, according to an article posted today at Novinite.Com. "I love Bulgaria because of these cameras and journalists," De Palma said as he arrived. He told the media that he would probably shoot The Black Dahlia in Bulgaria. He was there to begin inspecting possible shooting sites for the film. The photo up top was snapped by Agnes Metodieva, and appeared in the Bulgarian newspaper 24 Hours. It was sent in by a reader from Bulgaria. The photo at left comes from an article at Radio Bulgaria. (Thanks also to Space Ace!)

Posted November 6 2004 DAHLIA TO BE NEW LABEL's DEBUT AS SIGNATURE JOINS WITH MILLENNIUM According to Variety, Signature Pictures International head Moshe Diamant, who had originally taken on The Black Dahlia project a year ago by signing Brian De Palma to direct, is joining with Nu Image/Millennium head Avi Lerner to form a new label, Signature Millennium. The Black Dahlia will be the first picture from the new company, which is being formed to finance and produce films with budgets over $40 million. Diamont told Variety, "This is a way for us to join forces and get into mainstream Hollywood movies." Confirming much of what I speculated in the article below, the Variety article states that The Black Dahlia, "which stars Scarlett Johansson, will go into production in March. It shoots on location in Los Angeles as well as on soundstages in Bulgaria."

Posted November 4 2004 MILLENNIUM'S STUDIO IN BULGARIA LOOKS LIKE 'PRODUCTION APPARATUS' IN SOFIA WILL HOUSE DAHLIA After doing a little research, I found an article from the Hollywood Reporter, dated October 18, 2002, in which filmmaker Tim Blake Nelson discusses filming The Grey Zone at Nu Image/Millennium's studio complex in Sofia, Bulgaria. We know from recent stories (see below) that Nu Image/Millennium has taken on the production of The Black Dahlia, and that Brian De Palma will be visiting Sofia next week to inspect locations there. Add in the fact that lead Josh Hartnett already has a working relationship with Nu Image/Millennium head Avi Lerner, and the picture all seems to come together. So in speculation, it looks like much of the filming will take place on sets designed by Dante Ferretti in the studio's complex in Bulgaria. Ferretti told Cinecitta News this past September that interiors would be shot in studios, while exteriors would be shot in Los Angeles. The following is an excerpt from the Hollywood Reporter article, including what Nelson had to say about Lerner and the production studio in 2002: In addition to Killer Films, Nelson also brought in as a producer Avi Lerner, the co-chairman of Nu Image and Millennium Films, which gave the production the perfect place to shoot at its Bulgarian studio complex in Sofia. "Avi said something astonishing to us," Nelson recalled. "He said, 'We don't ever plan on making all our money back. We simply must be involved in the making of this film.' And so they financed it in full -- $4 million. They did have this production apparatus in Bulgaria. Pam Koffler and I went there in the spring and scouted it and determined that it would work. Pam and the production designer (Maria Djurkovic) and I moved to Bulgaria in the beginning of June of 2000 and went through an arduous three month pre-production period in which we built every set in the film but one, both interior and exterior. The munitions factory where the women worked (was the one set not built). It's this huge structure. We built other huge structures. We built 80% to scale crematoria, but we did not build the munitions factory. It would have been impossible (given the budget) and pointless. We found a period factory and used that. We ran out of money in the set budget, so I forfeited my writing fee and basically put that into building a second crematorium. And we were on our way."

Posted November 1 2004 DAHLIA STUDIO STEPS UP FILLING TENTPOLE THEATRICAL VOID LEFT BY MIRAMAX The 25th American Film Market is taking place this week and next at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, and Nu Image/Millennium is there pushing its current line of films. The company's slate is topped by Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, which is currently in preproduction at a budget of $50-$55 million. An article in Variety discusses the void being felt in international sales by Miramax, the company that is in a sort of limbo right now as it tries to figure out its fate apart from Disney, which has housed Miramax for years. Miramax has typically been the independent company buyers look to for bigger-budgeted theatrical films. But that studio's limbo is providing more space for other suppliers to fill the void as overseas independents look for tentpole theatrical films to release in 2005. "One company that's stepped into the bigger-budget fray," states the article, "is Nu Image/Millennium." Avi Lerner, head of Nu Image/Millennium and one of the executive producers on The Black Dahlia, told Variety, "Most of the independents don't want to take risks like we do. We are stepping up."

Posted October 28 2004 ADAMS: 1993 CARLITO A 'CLASSIC' BREGMAN: PACINO WILL BE AT PREQUEL'S PREMIERE New York Post gossip columnist Liz Adams opens her column today with the following: Go back to 1993. Director Brian De Palma and author Edwin Torres' gritty drama about a Puerto Rican drug dealer. Nice little cast. Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, John Leguizamo, Viggo Mortensen. It's a classic. Everytime I talk to producer Martin Bregman, he's polishing up another of his classics. Last year, he reprised his 20-year-old "Scarface." The guy only grinds out classics. Now it's "Carlito's Way." The prequel. Adams asked Michael Bregman, the writer/director of the prequel, if Sean Combs screen-tested for the film. "I saw him onstage," said Bregman. "Of course, we didn't test him. He's got it. He can do it. He plays 'Hollywood Nicky' the kingpin. Sean's not even nervous about it. He's just simply excited." Adams states that the film will shoot for six weeks beginning next week. She asked if Pacino would appear anywhere in the film, and was told, "He'll be at the film's premiere."

Posted October 28 2004 BULGARIA IT IS DE PALMA TO INSPECT LOCATIONS FOR BLACK DAHLIA IN NOV. Sofia News Agency reported yesterday that "Legendary U.S. director Brian De Palma" is set to visit Bulgaria to inspect the shooting sites for The Black Dahlia. The article states that "De Palma will arrive in Sofia around November 8 and filming should start in March or April next year, according to the Bulgarian News Agency BTA." Mentioned to star in the film are the usual suspects, including Mark Wahlberg, who we know is not actually planning on making the trip to Bulgaria to work on the film (see recent articles below). Also mentioned is that the project is worth $50 million U.S. dollars. (Thanks to Lianne of Mark Wahlberg in the News!)

Posted October 26 2004 HERNANDEZ' CARLITO CHALLENGE ENT. WEEKLY: DE PALMA & PACINO'S 'MASTERPIECE' "The Deal Report" column in this week's Entertainment Weekly talks to Jay Hernandez about channeling Al Pacino in the upcoming prequel, Carlito's Way: The Beginning. "Hey hip-hop fans," begins the column by Gregory Kirschling, "Scarface is good, granted, but the other Brian De Palma Latin gangster drama starring Al Pacino -- Carlito's Way -- is their unjustly overshadowed masterpiece." [The word 'masterpiece' actually appears in italics in the original column.] The column mentions Hernandez' current roles in Friday Night Lights and Ladder 49, and features some quotes from the actor, who watched the original film "on video with his buds back in high school." "He's gotta be the kind of bad guy you root for," Hernandez told Kirschling. "He will kill you, but you still gotta like him. That's the complexity." The column states that Hernandez is studying the New York Puerto Rican dialect, and meeting, in Hernandez' words, "old Puerto Rican gangsters from back in the day who did a lot of kerr-azy things." Sean "P. Diddy" Combs will play Hollywood Nicky, who Hernandez describes as "this ultrarich hustler who controlled all of black Harlem."

Posted October 25 2004 ELLROY ON THE DAHLIA FILM: "EHHHHH" James Ellroy, author of The Black Dahlia, talked to the Seattle Times about the upcoming film version of his novel. Here is what he had to say: Brian De Palma's directing. Wonderful design cast ... De Palma? Ehhhhh. And then the actors? Ehhhhh. Josh Hartnett as Bucky Bleichert. He's too pretty to live. And this stupid kid actress, Scarlett Johansson as Kay Lake — and she's about 20 years old. She's a little young, a little short in the tooth. She is the woman that comes between the two men that are the boxer cops. Ellroy told the Chicago Sun-Times a couple of weeks ago that "Even an indifferent adaptation of one of your books will sell books, so I just look at it as publicity." In the Seattle Times interview, Ellroy also called Quentin Tarantino "a bad writer and a bad film director," saying that "even Pulp Fiction was just bad, right-off-the-top-of-his-head writing with little cultural references. The only film of his I liked was Jackie Brown, which was very formalized and staid compared to his other films." According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ellroy's new collection of stories, Destination Morgue! L.A. Tales, will be adapted by the author for some kind of movie version (Stone Village Pictures has optioned the rights to the book). While the article, posted today, states that Ellroy is writing William Friedkin's The Man Who Kept Secrets, Ellroy himself told The Capital Times two weeks ago that he'd been fired from that project. After mentioning that to the reporter, Ellroy went off the record to rant about Friedkin, saying things we can only imagine...

Posted October 23 2004 MORE L'IL CARLITO DETAILS FROM OCTOBER CASTING CALL LISTING The actor's resource Back Stage ran a casting call listing for Carlito's Way: The Begining in its October 15th issue. The open call took place October 15th, but here are some of the details about the project culled from the listing. The film will shoot in New York City in November and December, and is set in 1968, with one scene requiring "a contemporary look." The production is "seeking interesting faces to play hustlers, criminals, dopers, etc.," and "especially seeking men with long hair." They have been looking for men and women to play African-American, Hispanic, and Italian "street types only," and "to recreate the 1960s look, they don't want overly big muscles, highlighted or crazy-colored hair, trendy haircuts or piercings. For women, no obvious tattoos, collagen lips, or breast implants. The look of most of the background for this movie is downscale, gritty and street, not pretty."

Posted October 20 2004 WAHLBERG: DAHLIA PRODUCERS WANTED TO SHOOT '40s LA IN BULGARIA Mark Wahlberg has mentioned a bit more about why he was not keen to continue to work on the Black Dahlia project. Wahlberg has discussed in several interviews of late about how his passion for making movies is dwindling, being replaced by concerns for his new daughter and family. Talking to The Hartford Courant, Wahlberg said that he dropped out of The Black Dahlia when the producers wanted to shoot 1940s Los Angeles in present-day Bulgaria. "No thanks," said Wahlberg. Recent reports, however, suggest that the production is looking to go back to its plan of shooting much of the film in Italy's Cinecitta and Roma studios, with acclaimed designer Dante Ferretti recreating the look of 1940s L.A. in his own meticulous fashion.

Posted October 18 2004 VAN PEEBLES IN TALKS FOR CARLITO ROLE GUZMAN WILL PLAY 'FLAMBOYANT CUBAN ASSASSIN NACHO' "One week after canceling American Gangster," writes Michael Fleming in today's Variety, "Universal has committed to distribute a film on the same subject that will cost only $6 million." Fleming is talking about Michael Bregman's prequel to Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way, which was based on the Edwin Torres novel After Hours. Bregman's Carlito's Way: The Beginning will be based on Torres' book of the same name (both novels were packaged together under the title Carlito's Way upon release of De Palma's film in 1993). According to Fleming, production will begin on the prequel November 3rd. As reported several weeks ago, Jay Hernandez, currently on screens in Ladder 49 and Friday Night Lights, will play Carlito. Fleming's article adds a few new names to the cast: Mario Van Peebles, Burt Young, and Jaclyn DeSantis are all said to be in negotiations, along with Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. Fleming writes that "Luis Guzman, who played Carlito's bodyguard in the first film, will return to play a new character, flamboyant Cuban assassin Nacho." Bregman has secured the $6 million budget through private financing, making it a very attractive, risk-free deal for Universal after the studio's losses on American Gangster (Denzel Washington and Benicio Del Toro each had play-or-pay deals on the latter). Fleming writes that Universal "dropped [American Gangster] director Antoine Fuqua over budget and creative conflicts, then cancelled the movie days later and is now settling those pay-or-play acting deals and absorbing costs that could reach $30 million." According to this week's Entertainment Weekly, Fuqua is considering a lawsuit against the studio for breach of contract and defamation of character (see sidebar for more details on that article). Fleming's article closes with the following: "Pic becomes the second De Palma-directed drama that will be prequelized, and in a strange coincidence, Fuqua is attached to direct the other one. David Levien and Brian Koppelman are writing The Untouchables: Capone Rising, an Art Linson-produced Paramount drama that traces the rise of Al Capone and his collision course with Jimmy Malone, the Irish cop played in the original by Sean Connery."

Posted October 14 2004 'P. DIDDY' JOINS L'IL CARLITO BREGMAN BOASTS: 'WILL BE BETTER THAN FIRST ONE' Roger Friedman at FOX News reports today that Sean "P. Diddy" Combs has joined the cast of Michael S. Bregman's Carlito's Way: The Beginning, a prequel to the Brian De Palma film that starred Al Pacino and Sean "Puffy" Penn. At a special showing of that film in New York earlier this year (according to JoBlo.Com), one of the questions on an audience survey distributed after the screening asked, "Which of these people would make you want to see the prequel?: Sean 'P Diddy' Combs, Fat Joe, Alec Baldwin, Jay Hernandez, Luis Guzman." Since then, Hernandez has been cast as Carlito, along with Guzman, who was in the original film, and now Combs. Set to film later this month in New York, Bregman, the son of producer Martin Bregman, told Friedman that he thinks "this one is going to be better than the first one." That will be a pretty tall order. The original De Palma film was voted as part of a three-way tie for best film of the 1990s by the French critics of Cahiers du Cinema.

Posted October 7 2004 DAHLIA SHOOT PLANNED FOR MARCH DE PALMA CONFIRMS WAHLBERG SCHEDULE CONFLICT In an e-mail correspondence, Brian De Palma said today that he is planning to begin shooting The Black Dahlia in March, 2005. The director confirmed that the revised schedule presents a conflict for Mark Wahlberg, who is planning to begin filming the sequel to The Italian Job that same month. "As of now," said De Palma, "he's not on board." (Wahlberg will be hitting the TV talk shows early next week to promote I Heart Huckabees.) I asked De Palma whether Universal had approached him this week about taking over the Tru Blu project, after director Antoine Fuqua left the film last week over "creative differences," and he said they had not. De Palma had considered signing on for Tru Blu about ten months ago, but said at the time that the actors he had wanted for the film would not be ready for another year. Instead, he went forward with The Black Dahlia, while also preparing Toyer. Another source states that Toyer is in line for a late 2005 shoot.

Posted October 5 2004 BUCK TALKS SISTERS REMAKE WILL SHOOT NEXT SPRING; WILL STAY TRUE TO ORIGINAL With the flurry of activity lately surrounding prequels to Brian De Palma films that he directed but did not write, it is nice to see a project planned that is based on an original De Palma screenplay. De Palma cowrote Sisters (1973) with Louisa Rose (based on De Palma's story), and now Doug Buck is ready to film a remake for the original film's producer, Ed Pressman. "After a series of delays, which were the result of some rights issues that popped up, we’re now moving forward on the second draft of the script," Buck tells Fangoria. "We’re looking to go into production on Sisters in the spring of next year in Montreal." While Buck's previous production with Pressman was shot on digital video, Buck insisted on shooting his feature debut (for which he is also writing the screenplay) on film. Buck told Fangoria about the direction he is taking with the remake. "The original version was a very special film, and there are a lot of different ways you can go with it, which I’m very exited about. I plan to be faithful to the original, while imbuing it with some of my own interests and concerns. Ed Pressman and ContentFilm, the producers, were very happy with the first draft, and the new draft will just involve a series of character revisions here and there."

Posted October 4 2004 NOTES ON THE BLACK DAHLIA MILLENNIUM BRINGS 'PRODUCT' TO MIPCOM IN CANNES Variety lists The Black Dahlia as the top product being offered by Nu Image-Millennium at this week's Mipcom TV trade show in Cannes. Film companies bring their films to the show to drive interest from cable and other television companies. Danny Dimbort (co-chairman) and Carole DeLosSantos (vice president, international) will attend on behalf of the company. The other films listed for Nu Image-Millenium are 88 Minutes and Edison. Avi Lerner was pushing the same three films for the company at last month's Toronto Film Festival. SCHEDULING NOTES: HARTNETT TO BEGIN SLEVIN DEC. 7th Variety also reports today that Josh Hartnett will begin filming Lucky Number Slevin December 7th. The paper had previously reported that filming would begin in November. Meanwhile, Dark Horizons mysteriously reported last week that The Black Dahlia was set to begin shooting on November 1st. This seems unlikely for several reasons, as Hartnett had previously mapped out three months to devote to the filming of Dahlia-- if he has to begin filming Slevin on December 7th, that leaves only a month to shoot Dahlia. Hartnett has previously stated that Dahlia would be the next film he shoots after Slevin. And according to The Hollywood Reporter, Scarlett Johansson will shoot Michael Bay's The Island, which begins filming October 25th, before she works on The Black Dahlia. But it is looking as though Dahlia may shoot partly in Rome as the filmmakers had hoped. A Screen Daily report dated September 29th about Cinecitta's plans for expansion mentioned that Cinecitta and Roma Studios (the latter of which, according to the report, is now owned by Cinecitta and headed by Tarak Ben Ammar) are "preparing to host Brian De Palma's upcoming movie, The Black Dahlia.

Posted September 28 2004 PARAMOUNT RAISES UNTOUCHABLES TO MYTHICAL GODFATHER-LIKE STATUS A new ad from Paramount Pictures appearing in print magazines such as Entertainment Weekly this week shows Al Pacino from The Godfather opposite Kevin Costner from The Untouchables, and juxtaposes images from the two films between an ad line that reads, "Movies that left a mark on the underworld." The ad is timed to promote Paramount's new DVD of The Untouchables, which the ad says is "available for the first time ever as a Special Collector's Edition" on October 5th. The studio is currently preparing a prequel to The Untouchables which will undoubtedly allow it to continue building on this sort of ad campaign every few years.

Posted September 27 2004 DE PALMA 'NO COMMENT' ON CBS ISSUE 60 MINUTES BOOK RELEASE PARTY AT SALAMON HOME Brian De Palma attended a recent party celebrating the release of David Blum's book, Tick...Tick...Tick...: The Long Life and Turbulent Times of 60 Minutes. De Palma was the invited guest of hostess Julie Salamon. Salamon wrote The Devil's Candy, the book about the making of De Palma's The Bonfire Of The Vanities in the early 1990s, and the two have been friends ever since. Lloyd Grove writes about the party in today's New York Daily News, saying that "the embattled folks at CBS" chose not to attend, despite Blum having invited everyone from the network. Grove writes about the anti-CBS snickering and chatter going on among partygoers, including folks from NBC and ABC. "An invitee who did show up was movie director Brian De Palma," writes Grove. "De Palma claimed he hasn't been following the brouhaha over Rather's report on President Bush's stint in the National Guard, which relied on apparently faked documents. Well, did he think it could make a good movie? 'No comment,' De Palma replied, hurrying away." In my interview with De Palma in February of 2002, he railed about the loss of objective reporting in America, saying that what "news" we see on television is really just something being sold to us. "And we’ve become very doubtful of our information sources," De Palma said at the time, "because they’re all controlled by these huge multilateral corporations. And of course, when we see something on television, it’s there because they want us to see it. They’re selling us something."

Posted September 24 2004 SAY HELLO TO LITTLE CARLITO BREGMAN TO WRITE/DIRECT PREQUEL; HERNANDEZ, GUZMAN TO STAR Production Weekly reports today that Michael Bregman, who co-produced Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way, will write and direct a prequel that will begin shooting next month in New York. According to the article, Carlito's Way: The Beginning will star Jay Hernandez as the "legendary" Puerto Rican gangster Charlie "Carlito" Brigante as he works his way through "Spanish Harlem's no exit world of gangs, drugs, pimping, and the Mob, from the 1940s to the early 1970s." Somehow, Luis Guzman will appear in the film, as will Burt Young, each actor having appeared in Bregman's directorial debut, Table One. For information on a test screening that took place a while back, in which audience members were quizzed on what types of elements they would like to see in a Carlito's Way prequel, see the story below dated August 22, 2004.

Posted September 24 2004 WAHLBERG DROPS OUT OF DAHLIA CITES SCHEDULING CONFLICTS Mark Wahlberg tells the USA Today that he has left the cast of Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia because of scheduling conflicts. The article, which caught the actor at the premiere of I Heart Huckabees, says that Wahlberg will instead work on the sequel to The Italian Job next March. Wahlberg, who was to play Leland Blanchard opposite Josh Hartnett in Dahlia, will be the subject of a cover story this Sunday in Parade, the Sunday magazine that is included in newspapers across the U.S. (Thanks to Lianne!)

Posted September 14 2004 PRODUCER BRINGS DAHLIA TO TORONTO AND MORE PICS FROM THX 1138 PREMIERE At left is another picture from last Thursday's premiere of George Lucas's THX 1138 (The Director's Cut). While Martin Scorsese hung around with the latest Jesus figure, Jim Caviezel, Brian De Palma was being interviewed on camera, for who we have no idea. We'll see if the interview pops up anywhere in the near future. More pictures from the bash are below, including one of De Palma talking with THX star Robert Duvall. Variety posted a story about the event yesterday, saying that "Thursday's Guggenheim soiree for the director's cut of THX 1138 was crawling with helmer heavies." When asked if this was the first time this group had gathered, Francis Ford Coppola (who executive-produced THX 1138) said, "No," and recalled "some photo shoot at George's ranch" from four years ago. Meanwhile, one wonders if De Palma is attending one of his favorite film festivals in Toronto this week, not only to watch films, but also to help sell The Black Dahlia with producer Avi Lerner. According to Variety, "With his biggest slate ever, [Millenium Films co-chair Avi Lerner] will have a strong show at Toronto with Edison, starring Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman and Justin Timberlake; Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, with Scarlett Johansson; and thriller 88 Minutes, starring Al Pacino." Lerner is an executive-producer of Josh Hartnett's labor of love Mozart and the Whale, which was also produced by Millenium Films. MORE PICS FROM THX PREMIERE

Posted September 11 2004 DE PALMA AT THX PREMIERE MOVIE BRATS CELEBRATE; NO SPIELBERG, BUT SCHRADER George Lucas premiered the director's cut of his first film, THX 1138, in New York City Thursday, September 9th. Several of the 1970s "movie brats" were pictured together at the cocktail party afterward, including Lucas, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, along with Paul Schrader, and also Milos Forman. Here are some of the pictures:

Posted September 7 2004 HARTNETT EXCITED ABOUT DAHLIA SAYS DE PALMA IS PERFECT FOR MATERIAL Josh Hartnett spilled even more interesting details about The Black Dahlia to Cindy Pearlman in today's Chicago Sun-Times. It sounds like Hartnett must have signed on while David Fincher was still the director. Here is what the actor said: "I signed for it about two years ago with a different director, but that didn't work out. Then Brian De Palma came on, and I got back into it. I'm really thrilled because I play Bucky, who is the man who investigated the death of James Ellroy's mother. ... It's going to be an exciting movie because De Palma is just perfect as the director. Ellroy is so gritty and so pessimistic, which lends itself to De Palma." Pearlman notes that Ellroy's book is based on the death of his own mother, and calls the screen version "much-awaited."

Posted September 2 2004 HARTNETT TALKS MORE DAHLIA WILL WEAR PROSTHETIC TEETH AS 'BUCKY' In interviews this week to promote Wicker Park, Josh Hartnett mentioned a couple more things about The Black Dahlia. At Romantic Movies, the actor who turned down Superman talks about several books that he has wanted to be involved in, including Perfume, which has now been taken on by Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. "Who knows where it’s going to go from here," Hartnett tells the interviewer, "but I’ve got other things that I gotta do. We’re doing Rum Diary, which is a Hunter Thompson book. That’s one that I really wanted to do and luckily got involved with it at the right time. And Black Dahlia. Same thing, another book I really wanted to be a part of. And we’re doing that, too. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t." When asked when he will start shooting on those two movies, Hartnett replied, "Probably next year. Black Dahlia’s going to come first, right after Lucky Slevin. And then Rum Diary is going to come after that, shooting in San Juan." According to the New York Daily News, Hartnett "will wear prosthetic teeth for the noirish The Black Dahlia, in which he plays an ex-boxer/cop opposite Mark Wahlberg and Scarlett Johansson." Hartnett plays a character nicknamed "Bucky" because of his buck teeth.

Posted September 1 2004 HARTNETT SAYS DAHLIA TO FILM AFTER SLEVIN INTERVIEW WITH WICKER PARK CAST AT COMINGSOON.NET In an interview with ComingSoon.Net, Josh Hartnett says that filming on Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia will begin after the actor films Lucky Slevin, which begins filming this October. After Dahlia, Hartnett will move on to film Rum Diaries.

Posted August 30 2004 MI3 CAST, SCRIPT UP TO ABRAMS CRUISE SAYS ONLY SURE THING IS HIMSELF The September 3 issue of Entertainment Weekly features an interview with Tom Cruise about his upcoming projects, and the actor/producer suggests that with a new director aboard, MI3 may end up with a new script and a new cast. Cruise talks about the Mission: Impossible series, saying that each film is essentially the product of its director. When asked if the third film is being completely reworked now that J. J. Abrams has signed on to direct, Cruise replied: "We don't know yet. We're just now talking about the story. But it's J. J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible that I'm interested in. The conceit for [the movies] was always that each one is different; it's the director's Mission: Impossible. You want the director to come in and own it. So when we have script meetings, one of the first questions is, What excites you? Where do you think the chracters are? What would you like to see?" When asked about the cast, which was supposed to include Scarlett Johansson, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Kenneth Branagh, Cruise says that for now, it is "just me. With the cast, it's like any film. I want to work with Carrie and Scarlett, and Kenneth is someone I've been wanting to work with for years, but you have to start with the director and see where he's going to take us." Cruise said Abrams was "the first guy I went through the movie with who absolutely clicked in terms of being able to discuss the intricacies of character and story and tone. He's had these conversations [in making Alias] that I've had for over a decade on Mission: Impossible. I just think he's enormously talented."

Posted August 28 2004 SHELTON: DE PALMA AN 'ARTISTIC GENIUS' EXCLUSIVE FAN SITE INTERVIEW Deborah Shelton Online has posted an exclusive interview with Body Double's Deborah Shelton. The questions were collected from fans in the months prior to the interview, and a couple of them are about Body Double. One question asks whether it was Shelton or Melanie Griffith in the bedroom routine scenes. "It was Melanie!" says Shelton. "I’m surprised that I’ve also been asked this question by people who should know better, who know what my body looks like. For example, I’m much higher-waisted than Melanie..." In his book American Mythologies, Marshall Blonsky claims that porn star Cara Lott was actually Griffith's body double in the film. "Yes," writes Blonsky, "Brian De Palma cheated, Melanie's body wasn't 'good' enough." So who really knows who it was? In any case, Shelton was also asked about working with De Palma: "He’s very artistic, very creative – an artistic genius, really. He has very definitive ideas about exactly how a scene should be played – he has a vision of all the tiniest details in his mind, how the final scene should look on the big screen."

Posted August 27 2004 DAHLIA TO START EARLY '05 HR CONFIRMS SCARLETT TO FILM DAHLIA BEFORE MI3 An article today in the Hollywood Reporter states that Scarlett Johansson will begin filming Mission: Impossible 3 in June of 2005. "Before that," the article continues, "she'll lens Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia." But the thrust of the article is that Johansson is in final negotiations to star opposite Ewen McGregor in Michael Bay's sci-fi thriller The Island, which is to begin filming October 25th. The article states that The Island is the next project Johansson will film. With Josh Hartnett beginning a new film in November, this would seem to confirm the Contact Music report from earlier this week, which stated that The Black Dahlia is being rescheduled to shoot in winter. Meanwhile, Scarlett appears on the cover of the new edition of the Swiss magazine, Annabelle (pictured here).

Posted August 25 2004 CAPONE RISING CAPONE & MALONE IN UNTOUCHABLES PREQUEL According to Variety, Paramount has hired David Levien and Brian Koppelman to write the screenplay for The Untouchables: Capone Rising, a prequel to the 1987 Brian De Palma. Art Linson, who produced the original film, is producing the new one, previously titled The Untouchables: Mother's Day. According to the Variety article, "The prequel will concern Capone and the early version of Irish cop Jimmy Malone, who is as crooked as every other Chicago cop until Capone becomes king of the underworld." Levien told the paper, "The film starts on the eve of Capone's arrival, and while Malone wasn't the most corrupt cop, he operated at a time when every cop was on the take. Once he crosses paths with Capone, he sees a level of violence and criminality that causes him to have a moral awakening." Koppelman added, "This period of Capone's life hasn't been done since the movies of the '40s and '50s. Sherry Lansing and Donald De Line said feel free to come up with the most compelling, dark, violent and complicated guy you've ever seen." JOSIAH'S CANON / NAZI GOLD The screenwriters have just finished rewriting Josiah's Canon, the long-in-the-works project that is very similar in theme to De Palma's unproduced project Nazi Gold. De Palma wrote Nazi Gold with Jay Cocks around 1997-1998. MGM was set to produce the film, but fell out due to arguments about the film's proposed budget. Both films concern a team of bank robbers who target a high-security bank in Switzerland that holds money thought to have been deposited by Jews before the Holocaust. Sean Connery (who played Malone in De Palma's Untouchables) will lead the team in Josiah's Canon, which will be directed by Brett Ratner.

Posted August 25 2004 DAHLIA STILL IN THE WORKS HARTNETT MENTIONS BOXER ROLE ON TRL It sounds like The Black Dahlia is definitely still in the works. Josh Hartnett visited MTV's TRL Tuesday (August 24th), and was asked how often he works out. "Not very often," replied Hartnett, "but for this movie that I'm doing, I'm playing a boxer, so I have to go into the gym a lot these days." The interviewer then asked Hartnett to "flex for the ladies," who began to scream, but Hartnett shyly declined, saying, "I'm not gonna flex." Hartnett is to play a boxer in The Black Dahlia. Set to star opposite Hartnett is Mark Wahlberg, who, according to the Hollywood Reporter, has dropped out of the Truman Capote biopic Every Word Is True, which was to begin shooting in January 2005. This would seem to free up Wahlberg for a possible winter shoot. Yesterday, Contact Music reported that The Black Dahlia would now begin filming this winter. (Thanks to Lianne!)

Posted August 24 2004 DAHLIA DELAYED TO WINTER? HARTNETT SIGNS ON FOR NEW FILM, MORE COMMENTS FROM FIRTH According to the sometimes reliable Contact Music, filming on The Black Dahlia has been delayed until this upcoming winter. The brief article states that the film was supposed to begin filming in August, "But because of changing policies in Britain, the project was suddenly out of funding, but is now back on track for shooting later this year." Meanwhile, an article by Michael Fleming in today's Variety states that Josh Hartnett has just signed on for a new film with his Wicker Park director that will begin filming in November. This would not leave much time between now and then to film Dahlia (and if it did film in between then, that would be filming in the fall), and the article by Fleming does not mention Dahlia at all. Hopefully Hartnett will provide us some clues about the film this week as he makes the talk show rounds to promote Wicker Park. Mark Wahlberg will attend the Toronto Film Festival September 10, for a screening of David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees, while Scarlett Johansson will be finishing up her jury duty at the Venice Film Festival one day later. Johansson's new film A Good Woman, premieres at the Toronto fest on September 15 (but no word that she will be in attendance). (Thanks to Kate!) Meanwhile, here's a bit more on the comments Colin Firth made Sunday night at London's National Film Theatre. Firth was there to screen his new film, Trauma, in which he plays a character named Ben. As reported yesterday, Firth was asked about Brian De Palma's Toyer during the Q&A following the screening (the Q&A also featured director Marc Evans). According to someone in attendance, Firth mentioned several times that he is sticking with the project and will see it through. He said that Toyer has been pushed back a bit because De Palma is having trouble with the film he is currently working on and which he is trying to get made. Firth said that his Toyer persona "makes Ben [his character in Trauma] look like Lassie." Interestingly, Firth and Evans showed a series of four clips tracing the horror genre, beginning with Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, the Venice-set film scored by Pino Donaggio that looks to be a sure-fire inspiration for De Palma's Toyer.

Posted August 23 2004 FIRTH CONFIRMS TOYER AND HARTNETT TAKES PUNCHES TO THE HEAD Colin Firth attended a premiere for his new film Trauma Sunday, August 22 2004, and was asked about Brian De Palma's Toyer. Firth said that the film will absolutely move ahead, but that De Palma is busy developing another film right now. Not only is this the first public acknowledgement Firth has made of Toyer (that we know of), but it suggests that The Black Dahlia is still in development. (Thanks to Bill!) Speaking of The Black Dahlia, Josh Hartnett is interviewed in the September issue of In Style. The article opens with the following: "Sorry if I seem dazed," says Josh Hartnett. "I just took some punches to the head." Barroom brawl? Woman on the warpath? Hardly. He's been prepping for an upcoming role as a boxer.

Posted August 22 2004 MORE PREQUEL NEWS AND THIS TIME IT'S... CARLITO'S WAY? A member of the discussion board at JoBlo.Com attended a screening of Carlito's Way in New York City "a few weeks back," and it turned out that the studio was soliciting ideas from the audience for a possible prequel to the film. Now the person who posted this information, "Bill the Butcher," seems a little confused about the DVD release of Carlito's Way. He claims that a special edition DVD (featuring a "Making of" docu, etc.) is yet to be released, when in fact, it was released last year. That said, he offered some interesting information about the kinds of things the studio asked on the feedback cards. He said that before the film started, "they announced a prequel to Carlito’s Way was in the works." After the film, they passed out surveys, which, according to Bill the Butcher, featured questions such as: "What did you like best about the film?" "What did you like least?" "Which aspects would make you want to see the prequel?—Gangster, Romance, Gunplay, Rap/Hip Hop Stars." "Which of these people would make you want to see the prequel?: Sean “P Diddy” Combs, Fat Joe, Alec Baldwin, Jay Hernandez, Luis Guzman." Bill the Butcher claims that Jay Hernandez "is most likely up for the role as the young Carlito Brigante," although he does not mention how he came by that bit of information. PRR5345, posting on the briandepalma.net forum, points out that the original Edwin Torres novel, Carlito's Way, actually details Carlito's early years. It was that novel's sequel, After Hours, that actually provided the bulk of the source material for the De Palma film. Both novels were released as one book called Carlito's Way in conjunction with the film's release in 1993. (Thanks to Kate!)

Posted August 17 2004 FRANZ ALMOST MISSED DE PALMA CALL BUT DE PALMA WAS INTRIGUED BY ACTOR Chicago Sun-Times TV critic Phil Rosenthal interviewed Dennis Franz, who spoke about what may be the final season of ABC's long-running NYPD Blue. Franz is ready to let the show, and his character, Andy Sipowicz, go. Looking back to his start in Brian De Palma's The Fury (1978), the article states that "Franz almost missed his callback because he was out seeing a pair of John Wayne movies when De Palma's people were trying to reach him. But De Palma was so intrigued, he stayed in town an extra day just so he could see Franz read again." Franz would go on to appear in three more De Palma films: Dressed To Kill (1980), Blow Out (1981) (pictured here), and Body Double (1984). He also worked on four films with Robert Altman around that same time period. Franz told Rosenthal, "I've got to tell you, I look at those things now and I really don't see what anybody saw in me. I was pretty bad. ... The work now is better than what was being done then. It's more mature work. It's more understated." Franz said he hopes to exit NYPD Blue on a high note. "I think I've made up my mind that I would prefer not to see Sipowicz die. I wouldn't like to see it end like that. ... [But] I'm in my mind ready for the show to end. I'm ready for Sipowicz to end."

Posted August 15 2004 SCARFACE/GTA COMPARISONS WITH SIDE-BY-SIDE SCREEN SHOTS There is an article at Game Chronicles that uses side-by-side screen shots to illustrate comparisons between Brian De Palma's Scarface and the games Grand Theft Auto and Vice City. Check it out.

Posted August 12 2004 MI:3 DELAYED ANOTHER YEAR ABRAMS TO REWRITE DARABOUNT SCRIPT, DIRECT FILM Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg have decided to rush into production on War Of The Worlds after each of their respective projects have been delayed. Over the past few months, Spielberg has been preparing his film about the Israeli Mossad agency in the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics, where members of an Israeli team were murdered by a group of Palestinian terrorists. That film has been delayed as Spielberg gets the screenplay together (not because of Spielberg's fears that one of the terrorists is still alive and may sabotage the film's shooting set, as the New York Post had reported). Meanwhile, as had been widely reported, Cruise's Mission: Impossible 3 was thrown into limbo when director Joe Carnahan quit the project. Now Variety and The Hollywood Reporter report that Cruise's top choice for a replacement director has been Alias creator J.J. Abrams, but Abrams had commitments at ABC that prevented him from jumping into Cruise's project during its scheduled shoot dates. Cruise and Spielberg had announced earlier this year that they would make a new adaptation of H. G. Wells' sci-fi Martian classic War Of The Worlds, with David Koepp rewriting a Josh Friedman draft of the screenplay. Now the pair have decided to rush the latter film into production, as it gives Paramount Pictures a replacement tentpole blockbuster for summer 2005, in place of MI:3, which will now be released in 2006, ten years after the Brian De Palma-directed original. The Variety article says that Brett Ratner and MI:2 director John Woo were each rumored as replacement directors on MI:3, but Cruise's number one choice was Abrams, who has never directed a feature film. Abrams will rewrite the script that Frank Darabount had turned in on time (according to Variety), and begin shooting in summer 2005.

Posted August 10 2004 SCARFACE INTERACTIVE IN 2005 AND OLIVER STONE TALKS ABOUT SCARFACE SCRIPT, CASTRO The illustration on the left is from the September 2004 issue of Premiere, which features a section asking actors which roles they would love to play. (Josh Hartnett wants to play Bob Dylan, Scarlett Johansson wants to play Scarlett O'Hara, and Mark Wahlberg would have liked to have been in Raging Bull.) Colin Farrell says he's probably not tough enough, or mad enough, but he would like to play Tony Montana in Scarface. Pretty soon, Farrell and legions of fans will be able to interact within the world of the 1983 Brian De Palma film, as Vivendi Universal Games announced today that it will release a third person action shooter based on Scarface in the fall of 2005. "The treacherous world of Scarface is a natural property to translate into a cinematic gameplay experience," VU Games Executive Vice President Michael Pole said in a press release. "The game will feature cutting-edge technology, a compelling storyline and the unprecedented experience of playing as one of Hollywood's most notorious gangsters, Tony Montana." Blow sxcreenwriter David McKenna "has written an original event-driven storyline for the interactive game that will lead the player through a sordid underworld. The Scarface video game will create a gameplay environment that authentically recreates the historical time period of the film, touching on politics, news items and events of the day. Players will travel through the steamy, often violent streets of Miami, the irie islands of the Florida Keys, the Bahamas and various other locales and will interact with a world full of seedy and dangerous characters to procure information, negotiate business deals, smuggle contraband and avoid rivals and DEA on a mission to rebuild their fallen empire." DID SOMEBODY MENTION POLITICS? Oliver Stone recently talked to Uncut (August 2004 issue) about several of his films, including Scarface, for which he wrote the screenplay. Stone talked about the irony of writing Scarface as an anti-Castro film, and then making what has been criticized as being a sypathetic documentary about Castro in 2003 (Comandante). Stone explains that he was raised in the '50s and '60s as a Republican who saw Castro as "the Bad Guy, as portrayed by the American media." Stone's feelings toward Castro changed in 1987 when he went to see Salvador screen at the Havana Film Festival and met the "charming, warm father-figure" in person: "the dictator as a man of heart," Stone says. He also calls Castro "a wonderful actor, a Marcello Mastroianni." Here is some of what Stone said about Scarface: In defending my writing before Salvador, I would say Scarface is a much trickier subject. It's an ambivalent movie: there's an immigrant, coming from Castro's country - which is ironic today, I'm criticizing Castro - very much in love with the American Dream. But the American Dream corrupts him completely. And the American Dream is compromised by politicos, special interest groups, drug lords that are protected or not protected by the government, assassination attempts made by narco-terrorist groups with American support. There's a lot of government criticism implicit in that movie. Tony [Al Pacino] is just a small, small fry on the top of the wedding cake. Beneath it, there's a much deeper system. It may have been lost in all the opera as filmed, but it's definitely in the script.

Updated August 10 2004 -Posted August 2 2004 FLAUNT IT WHILE YOU GOT IT ARTICLE SAYS DAHLIA TO SHOOT 3 MONTHS IN ROME We've been getting indications from various sources that The Black Dahlia project may be interrupted (for instance, Variety stated that the film was circling Prague as a location for filming, and in an interview a couple of weeks ago, Dante Ferretti seemed to confirm that the production was in some sort of limbo). The cover story on Josh Hartnett in the new issue of Flaunt provides a brief but clear detail about The Black Dahlia's shooting schedule which may allow us to piece some things together. According to the article, Hartnett is to spend three months in Rome working on the film. Since we know the film was to start shooting in Rome in August of 2004, it looks like they had planned on shooting until the end of October, or perhaps into the first week or two of November. In the aforementioned interview with Ferretti, the designer stated that the film would need to shoot exteriors in Los Angeles. These must have been scheduled for either before or after the Rome shoot, and must have been brief (maybe a week or two) at that, given Johansson and Wahlberg's schedules. UPDATED SEGMENT In any case, Hartnett has been getting ready for his role as a boxer in the film by adhering to a "strict training regime," according to the Flaunt article. Popping a few "required training vitamins" during the interview, Hartnett is supposed to be "refraining from sugar, cigarettes, and beer" in preparation for the role. Hartnett tells the magazine about how he likes to spend a lot of time preparing for his roles, because "subtext is everything," and feels bad that he did not have more personal time to delve into his role in the upcoming Wicker Park before that film began shooting. It sounds like he has already invested a lot of his time into The Black Dahlia role. As Hartnett was the first actor to sign on for the De Palma film, it sounds like it's one he is taking very seriously. The Flaunt article also states that Hartnett met Johansson through Sofia Coppola, who directed each of them in separate films. (Thanks to 'SexyJosh' at JoshHartnett.CC for the scan and article!)

Posted August 8 2004 WAHLBERG ASSIST. SAYS DAHLIA 'ON HOLD' DESPITE REPORT OF NEW START DATE & SCREENWRITER On Friday, August 6, 2004, Lisa Collins filed a report at Hollywood.Com stating that The Black Dahlia's beginning shoot date will be "late summer 09/01/2004." Collins' report also indicates that Eric Bergren, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of David Lynch's The Elephant Man, has had a hand in shaping Josh Friedman's draft of the adaptation (Friedman is listed first, then Bergren). In addition, Collins lists James Ellroy as a third screenwriter, as well as the author of the source novel. We know from recent Ellroy interviews that the author has consulted with the Black Dahlia production, so this does not seem out of the question. However, a member of Mark Wahlberg's "entourage," in replying to an inquiry on the message board at the actor's official Web site (MarkWahlberg.Com), said that "the film is on hold for now, and it will depend on our scheduling whether or not we do it."

Posted August 8 2004 ARGENTO: YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? CHALLENGES HITCH, WANTS CREDIT FROM TARANTINO, DE PALMA Italian filmmaker Dario Argento has long been bugged by elements of Brian De Palma's films which he claims have been lifted from his own. The most specific was a shot at the end of De Palma's Raising Cain that Argento claimed De Palma lifted from Argento's Tenebrae. It wasn't so much that the shot originated, in Argento's view, from Argento's cinema, but that he could not get De Palma to admit to it. When he would run into De Palma, Argento would try to get the director to admit that he got the shot from his film, but De Palma would consistently deny it. While a number of critics also noticed De Palma's "homage" to Tenebrae, it is important to note Raising Cain's nods to (and jokes upon) films such as Psycho, Peeping Tom and The Silence Of The Lambs, among others. This is standard fare for a De Palma film, as De Palma has never shied away from commenting upon or extending the work of his contemporaries and elders. De Palma used the "Tenebrae shot" again in Mission To Mars and Femme Fatale, utilizing a technique that is effective in startling an audience. Argento is currently working on a series of films for Italian television that explicitly reference the work of Alfred Hitchcock, in an effort to challenge the "myth" of "the master of the brivido." Titled You Like Hitchcock?, the series is a sort of answer to the classic Hitchcock Presents TV series. The eight Argento films will eventually be released on DVD with more explicit violence than the TV versions. Argento talked about the series to Corriere Della Sera (the article was only up for one day on August 6, as is customary for the site-- e-mail me if you wish to read the entire article). Argento said, "I copy Hitchcock but my series is more violent." Saying that it amuses him "to steal the formula of the great Hitch," Argento explained that for the first film, he is having Pino Donaggio (who has worked often with De Palma) provide music that mimics that of Bernard Herrmann, the composer who worked extensively with Hitchcock (and who also scored two De Palma films). SCARFACE: HALF ARGENTO/HALF PUCCINI? But Argento pauses here to stress to the interviewer that while he steals explicitly from Hitchcock, he is also investing the films with moments of "pure Argento." He criticizes Quentin Tarantino as a "neomannerist" who believes that there is nothing more to invent in cinema, that it has all been done before, and therefore there is nothing left to do but to copy. "If Tarantino in Kill Bill quotes from one of my films," said Argento, "but when asked, does not admit it, it bothers me. And Brian De Palma, another great mannerist, after having plundered all my films, finally recently confessed that Scarface is constructed one half from me and one half from Puccini." (De Palma has said elsewhere that he envisioned Scarface as a Wagnerian opera.) What makes Argento's stealing from Hitchcock different here, Argento claims, is that he is making the steals very explicit-- there will be no doubt in viewers' minds that the source of a scene is Hitchcock, apparently because Hitchcock's name is in the title. "Sure, Hitchcock will be cited openly in some moments," Argento told the newspaper. "In this first film as an example, elements of Strangers On A Train will interlace themselves (an exchange of favors/murders) with Rear Window (the actor Germano Helium spying on his neighbors while stuck on a chair) and Dial M For Murder (the game of the key). Explicit citations," stressed Argento. He then went on to say that once the suspense of the scenes has been exhausted, "the explicit violence of some scenes will be marks of pure Argento." However, it can be said that De Palma's "steals" are explicit, as well. When he references Hitchcock, you know he is referencing Hitchcock, and challenging "the master" in much the same way Argento will attempt to do in this new series, which will debut next spring.

Posted August 8 2004 DE PALMA FASCINATED BEART M:I MADE HER 'THE FLOWER OF THE MONTH' The September 2004 issue of Premiere features an interview with Emmanuelle Beart. In it, the interviewer states that Beart had an American agent for seven years, yet never went to a single audition. When the Mission: Impossible role came up, the agent said, "If you don't go this time, I'm quitting." Beart said, "That's right, and I went for her. I met Brian [De Palma], and then Brian called Tom, saying, 'I think we have the woman we've been looking for.' And I said, why not? Because it's seeing another point of view, a new landscape, a new culture, philosophy, plus it's Brian De Palma, right. I loved eating pasta with him. He fascinated me. And Cruise was very correct, very honest, never any problem with him. The funny thing was I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. Because I was a spy I would look very [hard] at people, and it gave the impression she was so concentrated. I was just lost." The interviewer then suggests that Mission: Impossible opened the door for more U.S. roles, and Beart replies, "I was like, how you say that, the flower of the month..." The interviewer corrects her, saying, "Flavor of the month." "Flower of the month is better," replies Beart. She goes on to say that scripts were offered that stressed the budgets of films, but nobody ever came to have a drink with her and talk about the role or the director, so she wasn't interested. She says it made her feel empty to go from party to party in Los Angeles, explaining that she was the French actress in Mission: Impossible. After three days, she went back to France. 'MISSION: DIFFICULT' OR MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Meanwhile, Tom Cruise gave an interview to ABC.es in which he talked a little bit about finding a new director for the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3. Cruise said that with the first two films, directed by De Palma and John Woo respectively, he specifically produced them to match the styles of the directors. Therefore the key to making the new one is to find a director first. He said right now, he is looking at the project and evaluating everything, joking that it's not 'Mission: Difficult," but "Mission: Impossible." Cruise shot the same line at David Letterman last week, but was very classy about giving props to director Joe Carnahan. When Letterman asked Cruise why Carnahan quit the project, Cruise repeated the "Mission: Difficult" joke, and gave a series of very short but straightforward answers that had the crowd laughing along with Cruise and Letterman. Cruise said that Carnahan is a great director, and very non-chalantly said that the movie will be worked out after he is done promoting Collateral.

Posted August 3 2004 GOOD REASON TO SEE CATWOMAN PRODUCTION NOTES MENTION TOYER Femme Fatale cinematographer Thierry Arbogast caught some cute kitties in his lens in this summer's Catwoman. The production notes for the film mention that "Arbogast’s next project is De Palma’s Toyer starring Juliette Binoche and Jeremy Northam." However, De Palma mentioned a while back that he was talking to Colin Firth about taking on the lead role in that film, instead of Northam. The production notes, listing several of Arbogast's past projects, also mention the cinematographer's work on "Gilles Memouni’s The Apartment, a direct tribute to Brian De Palma’s screen direction style, which he knows so well." In a bit of crazy rumor news, a posting on the Toyer page at the IMDB suggests that Macaulay Culkin may have a cameo in the film "as a disc jockey at some club for young people." Time will tell...

Posted July 29 2004 FERRETTI TALKS ABOUT DAHLIA DESIGNER HAS SPENT TEN WEEKS ON 'BEAUTIFUL PROJECT' In an interview last week with Kataweb Cinema's Federica Paris, set designer Dante Ferretti said that while he is currently working on John Irvin's Hidalla (Mine-Haha) near Prague (see Cinecitta News for details on that project), he hopes to resume work with Brian De Palma on The Black Dahlia. "I hope so," said Ferretti, "because I have designed for ten weeks for that film. It is a very beautiful project. I have spent much time in Los Angeles visiting the real places where James Ellroy's novel is carried out." Ferretti also said that the film's exteriors will need to be shot in Los Angeles, while the interiors are to be filmed in the studios of Rome. But it is interesting that Ferretti is now filming in Prague, where, according to Variety, The Black Dahlia has begun to circle as a potential location. Ferretti was asked to which project he is most attached, and he replied that it is always the next one. "No joke," he said, "every job is equally important."

Posted July 26 2004 FERRETTI GETS ISCHIA AWARD DESIGNER WILL PROVIDE NEW LOOK FOR VENICE FESTIVAL Dante Ferretti, the acclaimed Italian production designer who is currently working with Brian De Palma on The Black Dahlia, received a lifetime achievement award from the Ischia Film and Music Global Arts Festival a couple of weeks ago. According to Cinecitta News, Ferretti told Italian daily newspaper Il Giornale that he will again be working with Martin Scorsese early in 2005 on The Departed, which will star Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon in a story set in present day Boston. "No period costumes, no special reconstructions," Ferretti told the paper. Meanwhile, according to Variety, Ferretti will codesign a new look for the Palazzo del Cinema at this September's Venice Film Festival, where Black Dahlia star Scarlett Johansson is expected to sit on the jury. De Palma's love of film festivals is well documented. Perhaps the production team of The Black Dahlia is planning to take some time out from September 1 to 11?

Posted July 23 2004 ROMA CATCHES FIRE SCREEN DAILY SAYS DAHLIA STILL TO FILM IN ROME Screen Daily reported yesterday about a fire that destroyed a set at Roma Studios on Wednesday. "It took 12 fire engines five hours to extinguish the fire," wrote Screen Daily's Melanie Rodier, "which destroyed an area of 2,800 square metres. Damage is estimated to be in the region of 'tens of thousands of Euros,' according to national daily Il Messaggero, which reported that firemen also had to knock down all of the studio's electronically-operated doors." Rodier also states that Cinecitta studios "is currently in negotiations to buy Roma Studios, which is headed by Tarak Ben Ammar." The article concludes with this sentence: "Next month, Roma Studios and Cinecitta are both set to host Brian De Palma's upcoming movie, The Black Dahlia."

Posted July 18 2004 - Updated July 19 2004 "CREATIVE DIFFERENCES" MI3 SCHEDULED TO ROLL WITHOUT A DIRECTOR OR SCREENPLAY AS CARNAHAN DROPS OUT According to a Hollywood Reporter story, Joe Carnahan has dropped out of directing Mission: Impossible 3 over "creative differences" with producer/star Tom Cruise. A story in Variety states that Carnahan's exit had been rumored for weeks. Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner had produced Carnahan's Narc two years ago, and had announced early last year that Carnahan would direct the third installment of the M:I franchise. This was after David Fincher had danced around the project, with rumours of Sylvester Stallone to play the villain. Earlier this year, Cruise mentioned that he wanted Carnahan, because he wanted to go for a grittier film this time out. Cruise has basically put Carnahan's career on hold for two years as this film has been attempting to come together. It was scheduled to begin filming next month in Berlin, even though Frank Darabount had yet to deliver a draft of a screenplay. The Hollywood Reporter article states that the film remains scheduled to film next month as planned, and that Cruise is on an "urgent mission" to find a replacement director.

Posted July 18 2004 DAHLIA MAY FILM IN PRAGUE INSTEAD OF ROME AND BERLIN According to a story today in Variety, Brian De Palma may be filming The Black Dahlia in Prague. The article says that the Los Angeles-set picture was previously headed for Berlin and Rome.

Posted July 9 2004
SCARLETT READY FOR DE PALMA'S 'ROMP'
"FLAUNT IT WHILE YOU GOT IT," SAYS ACTRESS
Scarlett Johansson is the cover subject of the August issue of W magazine. In the interview inside (an edited version of which is available at the link above), the actress jokingly mentions that she thinks she'll have a little bit of time in between The Black Dahlia and Mission: Impossible 3 for personal things. But later on, she talks about getting ready for The Black Dahlia, saying that Brian De Palma describes Scarlett's character, Kay, as "a beautiful little package that you just want to unwrap." The author of the article says the film "will have the signature De Palma heat." Here is the paragraph about the film:

Though the two roles that made her famous are studies in sexual restraint, Johansson is getting ready to shed her inhibitions, if not her clothing. "I'm a very passionate person, a very sensual person, and I think it's wonderful to celebrate that...uh...you know...in your prime," she notes with a slightly embarrassed guffaw. "You gotta flaunt it while you got it, before things start moving around, you know?" Her character in Black Dahlia, a noir dame who toys with the affections of two detectives (played by Josh Hartnett and Mark Wahlberg), will have the signature De Palma heat. "As Brian says, she's a beautiful little package that you just want to unwrap," Johansson says. "There's some good stuff in this. There's a little romp. A little bit of romping around."

Posted July 6 2004 ESZTERHAS PROPOSED UNTOUCHABLES SEQUEL WANTED COSTNER FOR 'PATRIOTIC' NESS AT TWILIGHT Earlier this year, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas released a book called Hollywood Animal. In it, he explains how he used to watch The Untouchables TV show with his father when they lived in Cleveland. When he later found out that Eliot Ness worked in Cleveland after putting Al Capone away in Chicago, Eszterhas came up with an idea for a movie, which he proposed sometime in the late 1990s. Here is the excerpt from Hollywood Animal: My father and I didn't know as we watched the show... that Eliot Ness became the safety director of the city of Cleveland after he finished with Capone and Nitti and the other little Guinea homeboys in Chicago. We didn't know that Ness was forced to resign as safety director after, rip-roaring drunk, he was involved in a hit-and-run accident on Cleveland's Shoreway. We didn't know that Eliot Ness died shortly afterward, drunk and broke. Many years later, I enlightened a Hollywood studio executive about these things while proposing a movie called Ness At Twilight. The studio executive said, "What are you, perverse? Eliot Ness is a greater hero to the American public than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Spider-Man combined. And you want to do a movie about him as a drunk driver?" Not willing to see a several-million-dollar deal go down so fast, I regrouped quickly with that studio executive. "Listen," I said, "Ness did some truly heroic things in Cleveland, too, when he was the safety director. He fought Fritz Kuhn's American Nazi Bund tooth and nail. Cleveland had a lot of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers among its millions of immigrants and they staged massive parades and protests. Ness stayed on top of them and finally put them out of business. I heard that Costner wants to do something patriotic anyway." The studio exec thought about it. "Not bad," he finally said. "But how about we move the story to Chicago? Chicago's about to be taken over by the Nazis and Costner stops them. Cleveland's for losers: Chicago's got Michael Jordon. Kevin would like it in Chicago better than Cleveland, trust me. Maybe we can get Billy Friedkin to do it, he's from Chicago and he's old enough to know who the Nazis were." "That's great." I smiled. "Billy and I did Jade together." "Oh Christ, that's right, I forgot," the studio exec said. "Forget it. Billy won't want to work with you again." Billy and I are still... friends," I said. "Well sure you are," the studio exec said with a smile. "So what? But if Billy works with you again, he can't blame your script for bringing Jade down. If he works with you again, that means he's publicly saying he thinks you're a good screenwriter. And if he thinks you're a good writer, then it means he had something to do with Jade's failure. You think Billy Friedkin is career-suicidal?"

Posted July 2 2004 LINSON INVOLVED IN CAPONE PREQUEL WORKING TITLE-- THE UNTOUCHABLES: MOTHER'S DAY Variety reports that Art Linson, producer of Brian De Palma's adaptation of The Untouchables, is "mobilizing a spinoff" to the film with Paramount Studios. As reported a couple of days ago (see story immediately below), Antoine Fuqua is in talks to direct the film. Fuqua mentioned at a press junket that he hopes to get Sean Penn to play Al Capone, as the film would center on Capone before Eliot Ness and his team came into the picture. That casting idea seems even more likely now that we know Linson is aboard. Linson has worked with Penn several times since the actor's early days, producing Fast Times At Ridgemont High, De Palma's Casualties Of War, and We're No Angels, which is the film that paired Penn with Robert De Niro. The Variety article says the project is in preliminary stages, with the working title, The Untouchables: Mother's Day. John Linson will coproduce. Art Linson is currently working with De Palma on The Black Dahlia.

Posted June 30 2004 YES, IT'S TRU... FUQUA WANTS SEAN PENN FOR UNTOUCHABLES 'PREQUEL' One of the Hollywood projects Brian De Palma was considering taking on last fall was Tru Blu, the biopic of heroin smuggler Frank Lucas. But De Palma signed on for The Black Dahlia, and while he was working on that film, Antoine Fuqua, director of the upcoming King Arthur, signed on to direct Tru Blu. According to IESB.net, Fuqua mentioned at the King Arthur press junket that he will also be working on a prequel to The Untouchables. The prequel will focus on a young Al Capone, and Fuqua says his ideal choice of actor for the role would be Sean Penn. (Isn't Penn about the age right now that Robert De Niro was when he played Capone? The magic of movies.) Penn pal Benicio Del Toro will star opposite Denzel Washington in Fuqua's Tru Blu. But the intertextuality of Penn playing a younger version of De Niro after De Niro, early in his career, played a younger version of Marlon Brando in The Godfather: Part II is intriguing. Speaking of which, Fuqua also mentioned that he wants to direct a Godfather film. UNTOUCHABLES SPECIAL EDITION DVD IN OCTOBER While De Palma works again with The Untouchables-producer Art Linson on The Black Dahlia, Paramount Home Video is preparing a collector's edition DVD of The Untouchables, to be released October 5th. No word yet on any special features, although it might prove terrific foresight to feature a Sean Penn commentary.

Posted June 29 2004 SCARLETT RUNS WITH WOODY THEN WILL SEGUE IMMEDIATELY INTO DAHLIA Woody Allen was reported to be furious with Kate Winslet last week for dropping out of his new untitled film project at the last minute. The production was set to begin filming July 12 in London, but now Scarlett Johansson has agreed to replace Winslet on short notice. According to a report in today's Variety, the film will shoot in July and August in London, and then "Johansson will segue immediately to The Black Dahlia, an adaptation of the James Ellroy novel to be directed by Brian De Palma." On a side note, Vilmos Zsigmond, who shot Allen's previous film, Melinda And Melinda (not yet released), will be the cinematographer on The Black Dahlia.

Posted June 3 2004 - Updated June 18 2004 ECHOES OF BODY DOUBLE IN TERMINAL AND SPIELBERG HOMAGE TO HOME MOVIES? As I was watching Steven Spielberg's The Terminal, there was a scene in which the camera moved over to a pay phone as Catherine Zeta-Jones walked up to it to make a call. The movement of the camera, combined with the bright silver shades of the phone booth island, brought to mind the dance around the phone booths in the mall of Brian De Palma's Body Double. And sure enough, after Zeta-Jones (playing Amelia) gets on the phone, Tom Hanks (Viktor) sneaks up to the phone next to her to listen in to her conversation. The image is an exact echo of the one pictured here from Body Double. In each case, the female is in the foreground on the left, with the male sheepily spying on her from the phone on the right of the screen. Possible slight SPOILERS In De Palma's scene, Deborah Shelton plays Gloria, an unhappily married woman who is calling a lover to set up an afternoon rendezvous, while Craig Wasson (Jake), who has been following her, listens in. In Spielberg's scene, Zeta-Jones is a flight attendant who is calling a married man for what she hopes will be such a rendezvous. Spielberg's character is equally as unhappy in her relationship with a married man as De Palma's character is with her own husband. Each is desperately lonely, although Amelia has a sprightly bounce to her step that is a marked contrast to Gloria. In this particular Spielberg scene, Amelia's request is shot down by her married lover. In De Palma's scene, Gloria's phone call ends with her telling her lover that she'll "wear something special," although the lover ends up deciding not to meet her (she finds this out in a later phone call, one that Jake also listens in on, this time from above). While both Viktor and Jake pretend to actually be engaged in their own phone calls after Amelia/Gloria hangs up, Spielberg's scene becomes a light-hearted meet-cute after Viktor offers Amelia a handkerchief. Amelia chides Viktor for listening in on her conversation. In Body Double, it is only after Jake has finally worked up the nerve to speak to Gloria that we realize she has been aware of Jake's presence for quite a while. Even so, the De Palma scene is informed by an added sense of danger, as Jake is actually trying to protect Gloria from someone else who appears to be following her. AN EXTRA IN HIS OWN LIFE... Now that I have actually seen The Terminal, I have to adjust what I suggested about Spielberg's possible homage to De Palma's Home Movies. The promotional image from The Terminal is a slightly different version of an image from the actual film. In the actual film, near the beginning, Hanks is surrounded by an even more cluttered movement of people as he stands in the middle of the terminal wondering what to do. I had referred to Matt Zoller Seitz's article in the New York Press, in which Seitz describes the camera movement of this scene and compares it to a similar camera movement at the end of the film. I had speculated that because the De Palma image occurs near the beginning and near the end of Home Movies, the Spielberg image might have been inspired by the former. After viewing the film, I can see that this is not the case. However, the more cluttered field of people in the shot near the beginning of Spielberg's film makes the image even more similar to De Palma's image than the Spielberg promotional image is, although Spileberg's promotional image offers a more pointed depiction of loneliness that matches the De Palma image. In the beginning of Home Movies, De Palma uses the shot to convey that Keith Gordon's character is "an extra in his own life"-- the world moves on around him. In Spielberg's shot, Tom Hanks' character becomes a man with no place to go-- the world moves on around him. At the beginning of De Palma's film, we start with a wide shot of a crowd, with Dennis Gordon almost a speck somewhere in the middle. We get closer and closer to the character as Kirk Douglas shows slide after slide. In Spielberg's shot, we move from a close-up of Hanks to a wide shot, as we lose Hanks in the crowded terminal. On the left: a key image of Keith Gordon that appears near the beginning and near the end of Brian De Palma's Home Movies (released in 1980-- sorry for the poor image quality-- it was the best I could get). On the right: a promotional image of Tom Hanks from Steven Spielberg's The Terminal (which will be released June 18). The similarities between the two images are striking, as each one features a lone individual who appears to be stranded, looking up, static and directionless amidst the hustle and bustle all around him.

Posted June 19 2004 DE PALMA ALMOST DID STEPFORD WIVES BUT GOLDMAN THREATENED TO QUIT IF DE PALMA WAS HIRED According to screenwriter William Goldman, who speaks on the DVD release of the original version of The Stepford Wives, Brian De Palma was the original choice to direct the film, based on the merits of his then-recent thriller, Sisters. De Palma saw the film as his potential "ticket to the big time." However, Goldman threatened to walk off the picture if De Palma was hired. The thought of De Palma directing the film is interesting for several reasons. The source novel was written by Ira Levin, who had also written the novel Rosemary's Baby, the film of which De Palma had referenced in Sisters. Also, De Palma had already worked with Katherine Ross on his first Hollywood film, Get To Know Your Rabbit. Ross ended up with the lead role in The Stepford Wives. It also seems likely that had De Palma made the film, he would have found a role for Jennifer Salt to play. But the ultimate difference would have been in tone. While during this period, he was still putting comedy into films such as Sisters and Phantom Of The Paradise, De Palma would clearly have made The Stepford Wives more stylish, and also more creepy, than it ended up being. (Thanks to MichaelJ)

Posted June 15 2004 VARIETY CORRECTS BINOCHE STORY ACTRESS WILL NOT STAR IN LEVINSON FILM Variety yesterday posted a correction to its story of June 9, 2004. The original story had stated that Juliette Binoche would star in Barry Levinson's My Italian Story. The correction states that Binoche will not in fact be appearing in the Levinson film, which is to shoot in Italy this fall. (Thanks to Karen!)

Posted June 13 2004 - Updated June 15 2004 SCARLETT: DAHLIA SCRIPT IS 'AMAZING' AND SOME TOYER TALK Scarlett Johansson talked briefly about The Black Dahlia to a New York Times reporter last week. Johansson was at a Greenwich Village hotel promoting Calvin Klein's "Eternity Moment" perfume, and mentioned that she is doing The Black Dahlia this summer. She also said the film has an "amazing script." Meanwhile, Variety reported Wednesday that "Juliette Binoche will star in Barry Levinson's My Italian Story, which is due to start filming in Rome and Sicily this fall." A few days later, however, Variety corrected the story to say that Binoche will not in fact be appearing in Levinson's film. De Palma hopes to film Toyer with Binoche in Italy right after he finishes The Black Dahlia, which is also being filmed in Italy. A new update at the Internet Movie Database lists the start date for Toyer as November 2004, with Colin Firth in the title role. But while De Palma did mention a couple of months ago that he was in talks with Firth about taking on the role, the IMDB has proven to be a not-always-reliable source in such matters, as anyone visiting the site is essentially allowed to submit updates-- meaning that it could be true, or it might not be true, depending on the source.

Posted June 12 2004 BEART ON MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: 'AND DON'T FORGET IT'S BRIAN DE PALMA' Emmanuelle Beart talked to the Philadelphia Inquirer last week about taking on the female lead role in Mission: Impossible. She said part of the reason she took the role was to get high-profile national exposure, thus increasing the likelihood that her smaller French films would be more widely seen-- but also because it was Brian De Palma, "an incredible director." Here is what she had to say: "I was doing a film called A French Woman in Paris, and Brian De Palma was friends with the director, Régis Wargnier. And he said to him, 'You know, the woman who is in your movie, I'd like to see her, because I'm going to make a movie, which is called Mission: Impossible, and I'd love to meet her.' And then I went to the Ritz in Paris and I met Brian De Palma, and immediately he got on the phone and he said, 'I think I have the right person.' So someone came downstairs and it was Tom Cruise! And they said, 'Would you like to do this movie?' I was just, well, why not? . . . You know, the part wasn't the part of my life, but it doesn't matter. The experience was very particular, and don't forget it's Brian De Palma. For me, Brian De Palma is an incredible director. . . . And Cruise is someone I really appreciate. He's very straightforward... There are a lot of movies, French movies, that have been sold in different countries, because [audiences] had seen Mission: Impossible and then they would know me."

Posted June 11 2004 CHUCKY PAYS HOMAGE TO EARLY DE PALMA ACCENTUATED BY DONAGGIO SCORE Don Mancini, who has written all four of the previous films in the Child's Play series, is making his feature directorial debut with the upcoming fifth installment, Seed Of Chucky, which he also wrote. According to Fangoria magazine's January issue (the news of which you can read at Gorezone), Mancini has hired Pino Donaggio to compose the score for the film. "A lot of Seed is a takeoff on Brian De Palma's early movies," Mancini told Fangoria, "and I thought it would be a perfect touch to have his composer do the music for our film as well." Donaggio scored many of De Palma's classic thrillers, beginning with Carrie, and continuing with Dressed To Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, and Raising Cain. He also scored De Palma's comedy, Home Movies, and told an Italian newspaper in 2002 that he would be scoring De Palma's upcoming Toyer. Seed Of Chucky is released in October, and will also feature director John Waters as an "ill-fated papparazzo," according to Mancini. (Thanks to Space Ace!)

Posted June 9 2004 DAHLIA START IN EARLY AUGUST ACCORDING TO REPORT AT DARK HORIZONS According to a report today at Dark Horizons, the start of production for Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia has been pushed back from late May to early August. This goes along with previous international reports stating that the film would begin shooting in Italy this August. Reports have also indicated that Tom Cruise hopes to begin production on Mission: Impossible 3 in August. Each film includes Scarlett Johansson in the cast. One wonders how this will happen, although the respective productions have probably (hopefully) already figured each other out.

Posted May 26 2004 OVERLOOKED BIT OF DAHLIA NEWS: GYLLENHAAL CONSIDERED TITLE ROLE, ONLY A MONTH PRIOR TO ANNOUNCEMENT THAT DE PALMA WOULD DIRECT I recently stumbled upon an interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal from the November 2003 issue of Premiere. The article ends by saying that Gyllenhaal was "now considering" taking on the role of Beth Short in The Black Dahlia. This issue would have been published and on newsstands in October of 2003; less than a month later, on November 10, 2003, it was announced that De Palma had signed on to direct The Black Dahlia. While it seems that Gyllenhaal passed on the role, the article by Brooke Hauser suggests that she gave it much thought: Such total surrender is typical of the actress, who’s now considering a script about the Black Dahlia, the Hollywood murder victim who was born with underdeveloped genitals. "If I’m going to spend three months of my life thinking about a movie, I want it to force me to explore something in a way I haven’t before," Gyllenhaal says. In this case: "What does it mean to have a piece of you not fully formed? What does it mean to have your vagina not fully formed? Are you still completely a woman? And what does that mean?"

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