I finally watched the new Brian De Palma biography last night, and
it’s great. What I hoped for was simple: Brian DePalma sitting in a chair
talking about all his films in chronological order, accompanied by excerpts of
his films. Luckily that’s exactly what I got. Here are just a few of the things
I learned (yes, these are spoilers)...
Robert De Niro had a surprising amount of baby fat in the early De Palma films. (Seriously he looks more Bruno Kirby than Travis Bickle.)
Cliff Robertson (who starred in 1976’s Obsession) was a real douche nozzle.
My beloved Larry Cohen wrote the script for Carrie.
De Palma sold the script for Dressed To Kill for a then-staggering one million dollars (almost
$3M today).
De Palma wrote an early draft of the script that would
become Cruising.
Scarface began
with writer David Rabe and not Oliver Stone—who only came on later to rewrite
the screenplay.
An injury to Al Pacino’s hand led to two weeks of De Palma
(and his visiting pal Steven Spielberg) filming nothing but armies of thugs excessively
shooting each other, which is why the final shootout in Scarface is so over the top.
De Palma made up The
Untouchables “staircase sequence” as he went along.
When The Untouchables
was released everyone at Paramount expected to be outperformed at the box
office by Harry and the Hendersons.
During the filming of Casualties
of War, before a take in which Michael J. Fox had to be angry, Sean Penn
whispered the words “television actor” in his ear.
Sean Penn surprised everyone on the set of Carlito’s Way when he showed up with his
Art Garfunkel hair.
There are many more juicy things I learned, but I’ll leave you to discover
them for yourself. This movie works because Brian De Palma shoots from the hip,
and isn’t afraid to name names or place blame. De Palma is as brutally honest
about his own failures as he is about his successes. This is a rich,
fascinating autobiographical film that makes a worthy companion piece to the stellar
Milius and Altman documentaries also currently streaming on Amazon Prime. It’s
time well spent for any video voyeur.
