If you’re a frequent reader of The Playlist, you probably are well versed in the filmography of Brian De Palma. We’re talking the filmmaker behind iconic movies such as “Scarface,” “Carrie,” and “The Phantom of the Paradise.” Okay, maybe that last one is just in my eyes (and Rian Johnson’s). Regardless, when you’re talking about someone with the pedigree of De Palma, you’d be hard-pressed to nail down the filmmaker’s peak. Well, according to a new interview with the AP, De Palma knows exactly when he reached the pinnacle of his career, and it might not be when you originally thought.
“In my mid-50s doing ‘Carlito’s Way’ and then ‘Mission: Impossible,’” explained De Palma when asked when his career reached its “pinnacle.” “It doesn’t get much better than that. You have all the power and tools at your disposal. When you have the Hollywood system working for you, you can do some remarkable things. But as your movies become less successful, it gets harder to hold on to the power and you have to start making compromises. I don’t know if you even realize you’re making them.”
He continued, “I tend to be very hard-nosed about this. If you have a couple of good decades, that’s good, that’s great.”
As tends to be the case with many filmmakers of his era, De Palma’s output has slowed down in recent years (not everyone is Spielberg and Scorsese). And the filmmaker doesn’t seem to be terribly upset by it. In fact, when he talks about modern films, he’s not much of a fan at all.
“The things that they’re doing now have nothing to do with what we were doing making movies in the ’70s, ‘80s and ’90s,” said the filmmaker. “The first thing that drives me crazy is the way they look. Because they’re shooting digitally they’re just lit terribly. I can’t stand the darkness, the bounced light. They all look the same.”
He added, “I believe in beauty in cinema. Susan and I were looking at ‘Gone With the Wind’ the other day and you’re just struck at how beautiful the whole movie is. The sets, how Vivien Leigh is lit, it’s just extraordinary. If you look at the stuff that’s streaming all the time, it’s all muck. Visual storytelling has gone out the window.”
Another issue that seems to bother De Palma is the fact that films and TV series are never-ending. Specifically, he dislikes how studios find success with a particular film or TV show and immediately begin to plan sequels and multiple seasons. De Palma experienced this first-hand after shooting the first “Mission: Impossible.”
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“Stories, they keep making them longer and longer only for economic reasons,” he explained. “After I made ‘Mission: Impossible,’ Tom [Cruise] asked me to start working on the next one. I said: ‘Are you kidding?’ One of these is enough. Why would anybody want to make another one? Of course, the reason they make another one is to make money. I was never a movie director to make money, which is the big problem of Hollywood. That’s the corruption of Hollywood.”
The full interview is well worth your time over at AP and is filled with great stories and insights, as you might expect from someone as influential as De Palma. The filmmaker also revealed that his Harvey Weinstein-inspired horror film, “Catch and Kill” will hopefully begin filming in August.