7/22/2019 Brian De Palma interview

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BY FRANK LOVECE

finallyfrom Hitchcock, his lurid violence and hisapparent misogyny. As esteemed criticAndrew Sarris observed, "De Palmaseems most comfortable in that magicalrealm where the first nice girlan adoles-cent boy meets turns out to be a sweethooker who is not averse to getting downto her garter belt and beyond. " More acrack craftsman than a cinematic vision-ary, De Palma constructs films with thesame methodology that won him scienceproject awards as a teenager-bit by bit,using other people's materials in newways. Hitchcock's Vertigo became Obses-sion; Coppola's The Conuersation and An-tonioni's BIow-Uf became BIow Out. Heeven borrowed from Carrie to make TheFury.Lately he's gone high-class, redoingthe classic Odessa Steps sequence fromPotemkin for an Untouchablss shootout.At roughly $25 million, The Un-touchables-starring Robert De Niro andSean Connery-is De Palma's secondmost expensive film. (Scarface cost a few

million more.) Most of his prior work wasmore modestly budgeted, with corre-spondingly low to medium profits. Yet DePalma's name in a movie ad always rings abell-or sets off an alarm. "You createart, " De Palma says wearily, "because youhave certain ideas and images in your head,and the only way to get them out of yourconsciousness is to put them on paper orcanvas or fiIm. " If he hadn't become a di-rector would he have wound up a wacko?"Probably, " he replies with a darkchuckle. It's his only laugh in our entireconversation.De Palma is not what you would callgregarious. He is one of those commandingpresences who can raise his voice without

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