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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Brian De Palma comes clean on his tawdry new film, the old "Scarface" controversy and the reason "Bonfire of the Vanities" flopped.
Nov 6, 2002 | Genius or hack? Innovator or rip-off artist? Master craftsman or manipulative shockmeister? Since making his feature debut three decades ago with the madcap comedy "The Wedding Party," Brian De Palma has been a constant source of contention. His movies, often rife with over-the-top violence, gratuitous nudity and flamboyant visual pyrotechnics, polarize audiences and critics alike.
His latest film, "Femme Fatale," starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as a jewel thief and Antonio Banderas as the freelance photographer who busts her cover, is already splitting critics down the middle. On one side are those who say the film is trashy, kinky fun. On the other are those who say it's just sleazy. De Palma is used to as much.
The Sarah Lawrence-educated auteur made a modest name for himself in the late '60s and early '70s with a couple of zany, subversively risqué satires ("Greetings" and "Hi, Mom!") featuring a young Robert De Niro. Following the marginal success, De Palma did a creative 180 and tackled a genre that would eventually become his stock in trade: the psychological thriller. "Sisters" (1973) is a creepy, blood-drenched chiller starring Margot Kidder. While many deemed the film a worthy homage to Alfred Hitchcock, others dismissed it as rank plagiarism -- right down to the claustrophobic close-ups and the piercing Bernard Herrmann score. From here on out, every other article about De Palma would call him a "Hitchcock wannabe."
In 1974, he made "Phantom of the Paradise," his inimitably baroque take on "Phantom of the Opera." The Faustian satire was a resounding flop but it has since amassed a deserved cult following. Two years later, De Palma revisited Hitchcock with "Obsession," an elegant and skillfully rendered variation on "Vertigo," and then finally cracked Hollywood's A list in 1976 with the adaptation of Stephen King's "Carrie." Setting a pattern, he squandered his momentum with two duds, "The Fury" and "Home Movies."
De Palma rebounded in 1980 with his masterwork, "Dressed to Kill." The psychosexual thriller is a nerve-fraying exercise in suspense, crafted by a director at the peak of his macabre talents. The split screens, extended tracking shots and dreamily lush scores from that film still show up in films like M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" and on TV shows like "24." Next, De Palma unapologetically lifted the premise of Michelangelo Antonioni's mod classic "Blowup" for "Blow Out," a voyeuristic nail-biter about political corruption starring John Travolta.
Now a bankable commodity, De Palma turned to Howard Hawks' 1932 "Scarface." With a meaty, tirelessly quotable script by Oliver Stone and Al Pacino's bombastic performance as a Cuban drug lord, the film was as popular as it was controversial. The following year, De Palma gave his critics more ammunition with the fetishistic sleaze-fest "Body Double."
In 1987, De Palma made his first real foray into the big-budget studio picture. "The Untouchables," a classy and rousingly entertaining gangster saga set in Al Capone's Chicago, proved that De Palma could deliver a crowd-pleasing popcorn picture without losing his distinctive visual touches, like the breathless, "Potemkin"-inspired baby carriage sequence. The searing (if uneven) morality tale "Casualties of War" followed, but De Palma had lost his audience.
His commercial drought continued into the '90s with the notoriously ill-fated adaptation of "Bonfire of the Vanities." Marred by obscene budget overruns, incurable script problems and profound casting blunders, it became the subject of journalist Julie Salamon's "The Devil's Candy," a bestselling account of the making of the film and a cautionary tale about Hollywood excess. The "Bonfire" debacle rendered De Palma a near pariah; in what looked like an effort to regain respectability he returned to familiar terrain with hodgepodge "Raising Cain."
In 1993, the director bounced back with "Carlito's Way," a crackerjack gangster tale based on the real-life exploits of Carlito Brigante, a reformed Puerto Rican street hood who just can't shake his criminal past (portrayed with swaggering nobility by Al Pacino). Rife with bravura camerawork, an expertly used disco soundtrack and richly memorable performances (particularly Sean Penn as a sleazy, coke-sniffing shyster), the film remains one of De Palma's most unjustly overlooked achievements.
On the strength of "Carlito's Way," Tom Cruise tapped De Palma to helm the big-screen version of "Mission: Impossible." Although the $80 million actioner was lambasted for its impenetrable plot, it went on to become the third-highest-grossing movie of 1996. In typical De Palma fashion, however, he parlayed the biggest hit of his entire career into a series of trifling misfires, the obtrusively gimmicky "Snake Eyes" and the inert space odyssey "Mission to Mars."
In his latest film, "Femme Fatale," De Palma returns to the tawdry playfulness of his '70s masterworks. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos stars as a seductively conniving jewel thief who ditches her partners and adopts a new identity. While on the lam, she happens to catch the leering eye of a paparazzo (Antonio Banderas), who gradually gets sucked into her treacherous vortex. Voyeurism, lesbianism, sexual depravity, pitch-black humor, leggy doppelgängers -- all De Palma's favorites are on proud display. It's a formula guaranteed to alienate (or indoctrinate) a whole new generation of moviegoers. And he wouldn't have it any other way.
A lot of people are calling "Femme Fatale" a return to your earlier works like "Dressed to Kill" and "Sisters." Do you agree?
Yes, in the fact that it's written and directed by me like those pictures were. It's very much a movie that's driven by visual ideas, as opposed to character-driven or story-driven. This is kind of a meditation on film noir. I don't think I've ever done anything quite like that before that.
What was your initial inspiration?
I always wanted to make a movie with a film noir protagonist because I think these women are so much fun -- they're dark, they're sexy, they're manipulative. I tried to find a venue to make that work in and then I got this idea of putting this noir story into this dream sequence, because I don't think you can do noir straight in a kind of realistic setting.
I like to do different things and go to different genres and have different moviemaking experiences. I'm 62, I've made a lot movies in the system and outside the system, so to me it's like taking an interesting excursion up the Nile. I mean, if the terrain is interesting and you can make a movie there then I'm ready to go.
How do you feel about being a director-for-hire on films like "Mission: Impossible" as opposed to writing and directing films you develop from the outset?
Well, that is not really a correct perception. With "Mission: Impossible" I developed the story and the screenplay. They were working on it for quite a while and I came in and started from scratch. So, "director for hire" isn't exactly the right thing. When you read a script, it's either developed for the studio, or they want you to start from scratch on it -- they basically let you do what you want. And if they don't like what you do, you wind up not making the movie. This concept of "director for hire," which I read a lot about, I don't quite understand what that means in the present way film business is conducted.
