Director Brian De Palma: A Retrospective
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2021
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Legendary filmmaker Brian De Palma joins us this week! In celebrating the 40th anniversary of Blow Out, we discuss how the project came to be (4:17), the casting of John Travolta (7:49), a post-production mishap (8:48), and the film’s initial reception in 1981 (10:27). Growing up in '40s Philadelphia, De Palma reflects on his complex childhood (11:06), his Quaker education (12:54), the moment he knew he wanted to direct (15:42), and the chaos of his early documentary work (20:44). Then, before we go, we revisit his masterpiece, Carlito’s Way (27:44), the end of “the director-as-superstar” era (33:16), and the enduring power of a childhood favorite, The Red Shoes (37:09).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Sam Frico so welcome to the show. Today I am joined by director Brian De Palma. He's been making movies since the early 60s as a student at Columbia University. |
| 0:52.8 | There in New York, he said they wouldn't let undergraduates direct. |
| 0:57.6 | And I had all these ideas. |
| 0:59.6 | I knew how to take pictures. |
| 1:01.3 | I'd photograph computers I'd designed for science fairs growing up. |
| 1:05.9 | So I hocked my scientific equipment and bought a BolleX movie camera. |
| 1:11.0 | And the rest was history, some of which you've likely experienced. |
| 1:16.0 | Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, Body Double, The Untouchables, |
| 1:23.4 | Casualties of War, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible. |
| 1:27.4 | De Palma's singular career has often been examined and debated. |
| 1:31.8 | released in 1981, it stars John Travolta as a B movie sound man who |
| 1:37.4 | unwittingly records a murder on tape. At the wrong place, at the wrong time, the evidence and snares are protagonists in a dangerous |
| 1:46.4 | paranoid plot. Here's a clip from the trailer. |
| 1:50.0 | It began with a sound that no one was ever supposed to hear. He was supposed to hear. He's one in a odd? Yes, he says he pulled the girl out of the car. I would like you to forget about her. |
| 2:09.0 | Yeah, that's what I heard just before the tire blew out. You're right, it was a shot. |
| 2:17.0 | He recorded a murder. They say it never happened. Brian De Palma's blowout. Now you hear it. Now you don't. |
| 2:37.0 | As an aside, I really love when they used to do trailers like that, that deep, booming voice, narrating the whole thing. |
| 2:47.5 | I also love when they used to make films like Blowout. |
| 2:50.5 | Even while talking to DePalma, it's hard to not get lost in the nostalgia of him. |
| 2:56.4 | The golden era in which he came of age, the behind-the-scene stories from films like |
| 3:00.6 | Blowout, Carlito's Way, Get to Know Your Rabbit. |
| 3:04.4 | This is not an exhaustive overview of DePalma's career. |
... |
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