Synopsis
Being a director is being a watcher
An intimate conversation between filmmakers, chronicling De Palma’s 55-year career, his life, and his filmmaking process, with revealing anecdotes and, of course, a wealth of film clips.
2015 Directed by Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow
An intimate conversation between filmmakers, chronicling De Palma’s 55-year career, his life, and his filmmaking process, with revealing anecdotes and, of course, a wealth of film clips.
Де Палма, Brian De Palma, 드 팔마, 德·帕尔玛
hard to overstate just how rich, candid & layered this thing is. i feared a dvd extra, i got a cinematic portrait for the ages. and i say that as a De Palma agnostic.
78/100
This cocaine-infused, blood-splattered rush of a cinematic portrait is cohesive beyond belief. As the title card shouts (D E P A L M A) in bright red coloring, you realize this is going to be different. Each topic is tackled in precise bullet point fashion, with seamless editing and organization carrying the frenzied tempo along, but the conclusion feels mournful, even romantic in a certain sense. We all love the movies, but De Palma just happened to form a filmography as his altar for worship.
More rewarding for neophytes and casual fans than it is for the titular director’s hardcore devotees, Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s “De Palma” is nevertheless essential viewing for everyone. Part autobiography and part filmmaking master class, this chronological documentary tour through the life and work of Brian De Palma (“Carrie,” “Blow Out,” “Body Double,” etc.) might initially appear to be nothing more than a glorified DVD bonus feature — it basically consists of a comprehensive interview that’s interspersed with a clips from his movies and a smattering of choice archival footage — but it isn’t long before it begins to pick up speed and snowball into something special.
De Palma worships Hitchcock and it seems that this was his Hitchcock/Truffaut. It’s his chance to work through his filmography, be self critical, air grievances, and explain his thought processes in both his successes and failures. In that sense, it works quite well.
As a movie, this is solidly good. As a commercial for movies, and specifically for De Palma movies, this is maybe unparalleled.
“What’s great about Carrie is they made so many versions of it now and they’ve made so many mistakes that it’s wonderful to see what happens when somebody takes a piece of material and makes all the mistakes you avoided”
Ahahahahhahahahahahahaa that’s so funny. But yeah I want a documentary like this with every director
"My true wife is my movie, not you."
I wish I had watched more of De Palma's films before watching this, cause now I'm fucking hooked. What a wonderful asshole. I can't wait to watch his work.
We need a Crown-esque look at the Hollywood system from the late 60’s to the early 80’s. Could you imagine all the great storylines that could be mined from the New Hollywood crew? De Palma and the boys have some serious tales to tell. The SCARFACE episode with De Palma, Spielberg and Oliver Stone (coked off his t#ts no doubt) would be next level stuff.
DE PALMA is such a good doc for something that’s so simple in its construction: just a great artist talking about his work with snippets of the work interspersed.
Hook it to my moth€rfu€k’n veins!