15 Things We Learned From the ‘De Palma’ Documentary
The setup to De Palma, Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s engrossing new documentary about the life and career of controversial filmmaker Brian De Palma (opening in theaters on June 10th), couldn’t be simpler: The 75-year-old director dissects most of his films and shares analyses and behind-the-scenes anecdotes in between clips. Forget talking-head testimonials from collaborators, flashy visuals or dramatic reenactments. You just get the man himself, looking back and holding court in all his verbose, insightful glory.
And that is more than enough. Known primarily for his obsession with voyeurism, murder, and his controversial use of violence (especially when it involves women in peril), the man behind Dressed to Kill and Body Double is amiable, self-effacing and a endlessly compelling storyteller. De Palma works because De Palma works as a raconteur — and the man in the safari jacket has endless tales to tell about his film-brat peers, the New Hollywood era and the creation of some of the most memorable American movies of the past 40-plus years. Here are 15 things we learned from this essential new doc.
Orson Welles Didn’t Know His Lines in Get to Know Your Rabbit
De Palma’s early, absurdist 1972 comedy sees Tom Smothers leave the stress of his routine life to become a tap dancing magician under the tutelage of, yes, Orson Welles. But there was one problem: the man behind Citizen Kane could never remember his lines. “We had cue cards all over the place and I’d never seen this before,” the director says. “You just look at it and you say, ‘This isn’t right. This is sloppy.'” De Palma was forced to shoot Welles’ scenes repeatedly until the legendary actor-director nailed his part: “I’m in my 20s [and] I’m going ‘Holy Mackerel.’ I’m telling Orson Welles he’s gotta do this thing again.”
Bernard Herrmann Scared the Crap Out of Him
While editing Sisters, De Palma used the music of Psycho, composed by Hitchcock’s favorite composer Bernard Herrmann, as a temporary guideline for what he was looking for in his own film. “It worked so well, [my editor and I] said, ‘Where’s Bernard Herrmann now?'” De Palma brought him to New York to screen a cut for the “grouchy” legend, who shrieked when he heard his own music in De Palma’s editing room. “It was scary,” the director recalls. “You don’t sit there going through note by note with [Herrmann]. He sees the movie and goes home and writes the score.”
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