BEFORE: Robert De Niro AND Rebecca Romijn carry over from "Godsend" via archive footage - both appeared in films directed by Brian De Palma. De Niro was in "The Untouchables" and others, while Romijn was in "Femme Fatale".
This might feel a bit like cheating, to drop in a documentary near the end of horror movie month, just to keep the chain alive AND to get a few more horror movies in before Halloween. OK, if you want to call it cheating, go ahead, but maybe YOU try watching almost 4,600 movies in 15 years and devoting a month every year to horror movies AND also trying to organize all of those movies by actor, and then once you've done that, come back and tell me how easy that all was.
I'm allowing this in because there is some precedent, two years ago I watched "Spielberg" in October, which connected two minor horror movie chains to make one big one, and now I'm doing that again. Both docs used so much archive footage from so many movies and therefore SO MANY actors that I could basically drop this doc anywhere and use it as a link. This fits in with the horror theme because De Palma directed the original "Carrie" film, and also slashers like "Dressed to Kill" and "Body Double".
Sure, I could have ENDED the horror chain with this, and from here linked, well, to almost anything. But I kept this handy in case I fell behind, if I didn't have room in October for three more movies, then sure, end on this or watch this on November 1 and that creates multiple "outs", I could get back to any other movie quite easily probably, or hook up with any planned chain that I knew could get me to Thanksgiving. But as it is, it's going to connect "Godsend" to another horror movie, and I'm still on Plan A to get to Turkey Day.
Still I had lots of choices, from here I could have linked to "Scream V" or the "Pet Sematary" remake or "I Frankenstein" or "The Relic" or "Dark Water" or "Life After Beth" or "What Lies Beneath" - but nope, it's going to be none of those.
THE PLOT: A documentary about writer and director Brian De Palma.
AFTER: For the sake of expediency tonight, I'm going to break down De Palma's career into three sections - 1) Films that are relevant to my Shocktober theme, 2) Films that are notable for other reasons, and are worth mentioning, and 3) Films that should not have even been included here. I'll start with the last category and work backwards.
3) Look, I get it, if you're a fan of De Palma you might be really into his early and later work, but it's just ill-advised to discuss them here. If you've only got two hours, you shouldn't spend even a MINUTE discussing an early film like "Greetings" or "Woton's Wake" or "Murder a la Mod" or even "The Wedding Party". These films SUCK, but it's OK, everybody's first few films suck, they just shouldn't be mentioned in the same review as "Scarface" or "Carlito's Way". Any time this doc focuses on "Get to Know Your Rabbit" or "Dionysus in '69" is time taken away from "The Untouchables" or "Casualties of War" - you know, movies that people might have seen.
They couldn't get the director to admit that his early films sucked though, which is a problem. Part of being an artist is admitting your mistakes, and that you are capable of making mistakes. Again, it's OK, as long as you learn from them, but I don't think that De Palma did, because he says things like "This film didn't make any money" or "The critics hated this one" or "This one didn't connect with the audience". Right, because they SUCKED. The sooner you can own that, the sooner you can move on. The directors here (Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow) are clearly fans, or else why wouldn't they just cut these films out for everyone's sake. Why didn't they also realize that the director is incapable of being his own critic? Does he really look at all of his films equally? No? Then for God's sake, don't give them equal time. Start with "Sisters" if you have to, and work forward from there.
2) De Palma films worth mentioning that are NOT in the Halloween or "thriller" category include: "Scarface", "The Untouchables", "Casualties of War", "The Bonfire of the Vanities", "Carlito's Way", "Snake Eyes", "Femme Fatale" and "The Black Dahlia". These all sort of belong to the same category, namely crime or war. (I lump the two together on my watchlist, it's just easier.). I've seen all of them, though I barely remember "Femme Fatale" and "The Black Dahlia". De Palma's comments on these two films don't help at all, because his words of wisdom include things like "Well, "The Black Dahlia" is the story of the Black Dahlia, you know." No, I don't, and your insight sure doesn't help me remember it at all, could you explain it a little better, please?
Again, the problem here is that the interviewers wanted to get to everything, so therefore they couldn't really focus on anything, and De Palma's comments don't end up shedding much light on anything. I remember "Snake Eyes", but all De Palma wanted to talk about was the ending, how originally there was supposed to be a giant tidal wave that washed over Atlantic City, thus the wrath of God wiped out the bad guys, but also the good guys. Deus Ex Machina and all that. So they filmed some of that, but scrapped it for budgetary reasons, and went with the other ending, which was, umm, what again? No, no, don't tell me, let me guess.
"The Bonfire of the Vanities" was supposed to be this big hit, based on a best-selling novel, but for some reason everybody hated the movie, including the people who loved the book. That couldn't POSSIBLY be De Palma's fault, now, could it? He blames Tom Hanks, if you can believe that, because his character was supposed to be the asshole villain of the story, but audiences LOVE Tom Hanks, so sure, it's his fault. It just couldn't be that the director put the focus on the wrong things - but if the wrong actor was cast, isn't that ALSO the director's fault? If the director forgot to tell Tom Hanks to be an asshole, same thing, that's the director's fault for not directing him right.
"Casualties of War" is a powerful film about Vietnam, and some U.S. soldiers who rape a local woman. (Rape is a common theme for De Palma, but I'll get to that in a bit.). De Palma claims it's the best film ever made about Vietnam, but did he forget about "Platoon"? He also claims to not really understand the culture in Vietnam, but isn't that also part of the director's job, to understand things and explain them to the audience? De Palma just wanted to talk about how Sean Penn acted horribly toward Michael J. Fox, but it was done to make Fox hate his character, so he could act better. Um, sure, that's why - or maybe Sean Penn is also an asshole.
"Scarface" and "Carlito's Way" I sort of think of together, not just because they both have Al Pacino in them, but because together they're the inspiration for most of the scenes in the video-game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", from the clubs and mansions to the drugs and the chainsaw scene. I paused this doc to show my wife Sean Penn's character in "Carlito's Way", and she said, "Yeah, that's the lawyer character from Vice City!" It sure is. De Palma's insights to "Scarface" included the story of how Pacino burned his hand on a prop gun, and was out for 2 weeks, so he had to shoot the other Pacino-less scenes in the film, which explains why you see the climactic gunfight from 1,800 different angles. And in "Carlito's Way" De Palma talks only about the subway scene (I recognized that MTA station in Park Slope) and how it took all night to film it - never forget how HARD it is for a director to get that shot....
That leaves "The Untouchables", which is darn near a perfect film. No notes. But I already knew that the whole train station shoot out was an homage to "Battleship Potemkin", duh. So the only real insight I got here was that Sean Connery did not appreciate filming his death scene, because he wasn't used to having to pretend to be shot in all of those James Bond films. Really? That's all? Man, I would watch a WHOLE documentary about the making of "The Untouchables" if I could. I had to suffer through three minutes on "Raising Cain" to get just this? Throw me a bone or something, here, not just a story about how De Palma was unsure about whether Kevin Costner could carry a picture. What a damn shame.
Oh, wait, I forgot about "Mission: Impossible", probably the most successful film he ever directed. But note that he either chose not to direct the sequels, or was not asked to - I bet there's a story there, too, but it's another one that we don't get to have told to us. Instead we learn there were two possible endings for the first film in the franchise, the one we got with helicopters chasing a train into a tunnel, then exploding and ALMOST slicing Ethan Hunt's neck, and the other one in which everybody pulls off their false faces and we learn that nobody was really who you thought they were, to the point of ridiculousness.
1) OK, now let's get to the thrillers and horror movies, because 'tis the season. "Carrie" - BOOM, the first movie made from a Stephen King story. Again, this is worthy of a full-length doc of its own. Points for taking a gamble on this unknown author, this Stephen King fella - did you have a feeling he was going to be huge, that 1,100 more movies would eventually be made from his books and short stories? That should have been the first question asked, but damn, it never came up. Instead De Palma wanted to talk about the shower scene (of course) and about what a great actress Nancy Allen was (agree to disagree but De Palma was in a relationship with her at the time) and then about how the blood seen at the end was too red, this was fake blood, and real blood tends to turn brown. DUH, like who doesn't KNOW that? Also, we learn where the inspiration for the hand coming up from the grave came from, but you know what? I've already forgotten that. "Carrie" is probably the only De Palma film with a central female character (except for "Femme Fatale") and sure, she gets bullied and pranked at prom, but then her psychic powers come into play and she kills everybody. This is probably the LEAST sexist of De Palma's films, because the female does have power and wins against her aggressors in the end, sort of. Most other female characters in De Palma's films weren't so lucky.
(The other big revelation here is that casting sessions for "Carrie" were held simultaneously with those for "Star Wars", which any "Star Wars" fan worth their salt already KNEW. The same actors - Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Sissy Spacek and William Katt auditioned for both films, and the contenders were split among the two films.)
Then there's "Dressed to Kill", in which women are followed, stalked, watched and then killed. Yeah, it's the start of a pattern for De Palma - his early films seemed to be about women being interviewed and then asked to take their clothes off, so there's a level of sexism that maybe hit its peak in "Dressed to Kill". Though he claims the film is really about how he followed his father around and found out he was having an affair, and that's what inspired these scenes - I'm not sure I buy it, but it does explain a lot about how De Palma feels about relationships. De Palma also claims that killing off the lead female character in the first 10 minutes of the film is something that Hitchcock would have done (as in "Psycho") but you know, Hitchcock didn't really give off a strong feminist vibe either. Sure, it was a different time, but if your pattern is to only treat women as murder victims or rape victims, what does that say about you? You could just tell different stories, that's all I'm saying, especially if the critics determine that you must hate women if these are the stories you want to tell.
"Blow Out" is another film in the same genre, it's a little more interesting how a sound editor solves an assassination by using filmmaking techniques, but still, there are several female shower scenes and female murder scenes. "Body Double", same pattern, women only seem to be used in nude scenes and murder scenes. De Palma got some criticism over the violent death by power drill in "Body Double", but tries to explain it away here by saying that the drill HAD to be that big, in order to go through the floor so the main character could see it. Umm, yeah, we're not buying that.
"Mission to Mars" I'm going to allow as a Shocktober film to discuss, too, because I covered evil aliens this month in "Dark Skies", it's a loose Halloween connection, but aliens are in some horror movies like "The Thing" and "The War of the Worlds" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still". But if I remember correctly, the aliens in this film turned out to be benevolent or human's ancestors or something, so really, it was all just a waste of time.
I think that just about covers things, unless you're a big fan of "Phantom of the Paradise", and I understand there may be some cultist fans of that film out there somewhere. The only thing left is De Palma's more recent films, but I'm led to believe that those suck too, so it seems like maybe he came full circle. He started out as part of that New Hollywood generation of directors, along with Spielberg and Lucas and Scorsese and what they all really had in common was that they were all film nerds who appreciated old Hollywood techniques, and wanted to make hit movies so they could finally get laid. (Note: the only reason for a young man to attend Sarah Lawrence College, shortly after it went co-ed, would be the high ratio of women to men, which would ensure getting involved in some kind of sexual activity, at least, that's the theory.)
And I think it worked for them, or most of them, anyway - but then De Palma sort of now feels like he belongs in that subset with Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. Like, why would De Palma leave the country, is it just because Hollywood doesn't think he can connect with audiences any more, or were there some casting couch / "me too" incidents in his past that never came to light, and he was just being proactive? To be fair, I don't think Woody Allen hates women in the same way, like I don't think he depicts rape and violence toward women in his films, I think he showed his hatred for women by getting into relationships with them and then choosing to act like a complete jerk. De Palma kind of gives off that same vibe, I get that he was together with Nancy Allen, and then married to Gale Anne Hurd, but then that didn't last either, and I'm sure there was a reason.
In defense of his repeated choice of depicting women being raped and killed, De Palma explains this by saying, "You have to create these characters that you care about, and then kill them." Umm, no you don't HAVE to do that, it's a choice. Other answers are possible. My biggest question about De Palma that remains after watching this documentary is not why he can't admit that he had failures, but why he seemed to not WANT to be successful. Why run away from the "Mission: Impossible" franchise if that was his biggest grossing film ever? Second question, if you discount the stuff he "borrowed" from Hitchcock, Eisenstein and Antonioni, then what, exactly is left? What makes a De Palma film a De Palma film, apart from the violence toward women? Finally, why allow a director to talk so much about his own films if he really doesn't have that much to say about each one, except for a couple of anecdotes from each shoot?
Starring Brian De Palma,
with archive footage of Nancy Allen (last seen in "Robocop 3"), John Astin (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - The Don Rickles Project"), Barbara Bain (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Harrison Ford (ditto), Steven Bauer (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Angela Bettis, Genevieve Bujold (last seen in "Dead Ringers"), Nicolas Cage (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Michael Caine (last seen in "A Shock to the System"), John Cassavetes (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Francis Ford Coppola (ditto), Kirk Douglas (ditto), Gene Hackman (ditto), Ryan O'Neal (ditto), Lon Chaney (last seen in "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925)), Don Cheadle (last seen in "White Noise"), Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Luis Guzman (ditto), Jill Clayburgh (last seen in "Starting Over"), Clarence Clemons (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Sean Connery (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Tony Curtis (ditto), Orson Welles (ditto), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Courteney Cox (last seen in "Scream 4"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Lolita Davidovich (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "When in Rome"), Angie Dickinson (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Billy Drago, Drake (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Charles Durning (last seen in "I.Q."), Aaron Eckhart (last seen in "Midway"), Emilio Estevez (last seen in "Freejack"), William Finley (last seen in "The Black Dahlia"), Michael J. Fox (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Dennis Franz (last seen in "City of Angels"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "True Memoirs of an International Assassin"), Vincent Gardenia (last seen in "Cold Turkey"), Keith Gordon (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Cary Grant (last seen in "The Half of It"), Melanie Griffith (last seen in "The High Note"), Mark Hamill (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), George Lucas (ditto), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Elvis"), Don Harvey (last seen in "Creepshow 2"), Annette Haven, David Hemmings (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Gregg Henry (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Gale Ann Hurd, Amy Irving (last seen in "Spielberg"), Jay-Z (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Holly Johnson (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), William Katt (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2"), Piper Laurie (ditto), Jason London (ditto), Sissy Spacek (ditto), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Grace Kelly (last seen in "Belfast"), James Stewart (ditto), Margot Kidder (last seen in "The Great Waldo Pepper"), Alan King (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Burt Lancaster (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Martin Landau (last seen in "City of Ember"), Janet Leigh (last seen in "The Fog"), John Lithgow (last seen in "The Bubble"), Robert Loggia (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Rachel McAdams (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Penelope Ann Miller (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "The Amityville Horror" (2005)), Greg Morris, Paul Muni (last seen in "Val"), Al Pacino (ditto), Kurt Russell (ditto), Oliver Stone (ditto), Nas, Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Steven Spielberg (ditto), Kim Novak (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Sean Penn (last seen in "Sheryl"), Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Joe Piscopo (last seen in "Gilbert"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Jean Reno (last seen in "The Promise"), Ving Rhames (last heard in "Wendell & Wild"), Cliff Robertson (last seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Eva Marie Saint (last seen in "The Sandpiper"), Jennifer Salt, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Stan Shaw (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Deborah Shelton, Gary Sinise (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Charles Martin Smith (last seen in "Lucky You"), Dick Smothers (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Tom Smothers (ditto), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Kristin Scott Thomas (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), John Travolta (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Jon Voight (last seen in "Holes"), Craig Wasson (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Paul Williams (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "The Queen of Versailles"),
RATING: 5 out of 10 tracking shots
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