20 Questions: Brian De Palma

For 16 years, director Brian De Palma has paddled a very successful life raft in the midst of Hollywood's mainstream. His subjects have included menstruation and telekinetic wrath ("Carrie"), assassination, conspiracy and paranoia ("Blow Out"), a razor-flashing drag-queen shrink ("Dressed to Kill") and a demonic Cuban cocaine lord who has a mild case of fantasy incest ("Scarface"). His newest film, "Body Double," is a murder mystery involving a woman who works in porn films and a man who is compelled to watch her through a telescope while she masturbates. We sent Jim Jerome to De Palma's New York office. Jerome reports: "For all the frenzy, titillation and terror in his movies, De Palma is strikingly, almost meditatively serene. He makes tight but peaceful eye contact, barely fidgets, and his conversation is gracefully streamlined and precise. There is nothing wasteful or tentative about the man. Nor is he explosively chummy. In our initial meeting, he dispensed with introduction and handshake. 'In here,' he nodded toward an inner room. And so we began."

1.

[Q] Playboy: No De Palma movie, from Hi, Mom!, in 1970, to the present, would seem complete without a telescope. Are you into peeping, or would you care to advance some cinematic reason for that fact?

[A] De Palma: The most exciting, sensuous part of the grammar of film is the point-of-view shot--when the audience sees exactly what the character sees, unfiltered, uninterpreted. This is unique to film making. The moviemaking experience is that of being the watcher, and a P.O.V. shot through a scope turns the audience into the ultimate voyeur. Yeah, obviously, it has a negative connotation, but it's exciting, too. It's also part of the surrealism of movies, of dream imagery, of your unconscious desires.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Do you like to watch?

[A] De Palma: Anybody finds it arousing to watch others engaging in sex. Why are there love scenes in movies and pornography? It's part of our culture. It wouldn't be the truth if someone said he wasn't aroused. The whole point of porno flicks is to arouse. I like the way women look and enjoy photographing them. Any healthy man has an interest in attractive women, and working with them as a director is certainly a lot more interesting than working with animals or furniture or on a prison picture.

3.

[Q] Playboy: What research in pornography did you do for Body Double?

[A] De Palma: I wanted to find out who these people are who make fuck films, to bring some veracity to my movie. I spent a lot of time with Annette Haven, one of the models for the Holly Body character. She's been making porno films for ten years. It was my first experience in that subculture. It's totally isolated from normal film making. In fact, Annette was astonished that a normal actress had to study lines and read for a part. It was the most ludicrous idea she had ever heard of.

The film making isn't that much different, except they're just shooting people fucking. It's like surgery, very mechanical and unsexual. Most of these people have worked together over and over, like an ensemble. It's an astonishing way to make a living--and it's big business and becoming very middle class through cassette sales. But many people in porn are more bourgeois than decadent, with boyfriends, husbands; they go to work. Bottom line, they're actors creating an illusion, like someone who plays a drunk or an addict.

4.

[Q] Playboy: Somehow, kissing a girlfriend goodbye after breakfast before she goes off to do ten come shots seems different, don't you think?

[A] De Palma: I'd find that a little difficult myself. After getting to know these people and their motives, I lost my objectivity--like when a mass murderer says he was molested as a child. That creates a sympathetic point of view that blunts your initial impression, even if it's awful. He's still a killer. I stepped back and said, "How can anyone really justify his existence in this world?" In the end, it left me with a sense of sadness.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Why don't you do a slick, elegant De Palma fuck film, X-rated and all?

[A] De Palma: The X rating doesn't interest me. I don't think you can morally justify--publicly, anyhow--saying it's all right to be aroused. Our culture doesn't accept it. No politician can platform for voyeurism. In researching the cocaine industry for Scarface and porn film making for Body Double, I was amazed at how huge these businesses are. I mean, you ask, "Is anybody doing anything about this?" It's a serious problem, and people just step aside. There's too much money involved.

6.

[Q] Playboy: What did making Scarface teach you?

[A] De Palma: Everyone focused on the violence of Scarface and missed the point--which was the American dream gone awry. Violence is endemic to anyone who cuts corners and rides fast in the cocaine world. How is this multibillion-dollar industry allowed to go on in our society? But then you're addressing the tenets of capitalism, and who wants to be a pinko and come down on capitalist enterprise? Profit is its own justification in our society, and that's why I have a rather dark vision about it.

7.

[Q] Playboy: An oil-company board chairman can admit he's in it for the money, so why do "artistes" in Hollywood rarely say what a gas it is to get, say, $3,000,000 for a couple of months' work?

[A] De Palma: I have no problem saying I make movies in order to make money. Even before Carrie, I knew I was in showbiz. Whether it's art or not, it's part of the world I live in. We're dealing with huge amounts of money and we have to justify the way we spend it, which means getting enough people who want to see what I've done. I get very angry with the media. They say they're dealing with information, so they don't have to take responsibility for, or justify, anything they put out. They get away with anything. I, on the other hand, take full responsibility. I have a certain vision that I put forth, and I've been very fortunate, thank you. I am going now to do exactly what I want, because I've done films that pay for themselves. And I don't make any apologies for that.

8.

[Q] Playboy: What did we miss when Scarface and Dressed to Kill were cut to get an R?

[A] De Palma: In Dressed, a little more nudity, more blood from the murders, more slash, some language. In Scarface, I didn't take anything out, except for the arm that was chain-sawed off. (continued on page 158)Brian De Palma(continued from page 119) You don't really see it, just about 12 frames. I took it out, anyway. I sent the censors four versions and kept taking things out and finally said, "I'm not doing this anymore," and all four versions got an X for "cumulative violence," whatever that is. So I figured, Hey, if we're getting an X, let's go with our first version. So I put it all back and fought the appeal on the original cut. Why fight the fourth version? I didn't even like it. And we won. I had already taken out the arm on my own. I was amazed at the brouhaha.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Your murder weapons have ranged from gun to carving knife, carrot peeler, scissors, straight razor, telekinetic detonation, wrist-watch garrote, chain saw and, most recently, a huge electric drill in Body Double. What's wrong with a nice .357 Magnum?

[A] De Palma: The usual instruments get boring--aesthetically--after a while. A gun--someone grabs his chest and falls. That's that. You have to figure out what is the right instrument for the right killing. How will it be shot? How effective and scary is it? The chain saw wasn't my idea. It came from the Scarface screenwriter, Oliver Stone. It's an aesthetic problem, like shooting love scenes: Where is he touching her? How is she kissing him? You need an inventive solution, or it looks like everything else you've ever seen. Violence lends itself very well to cinematic form. It's one of the few artistic forms where you can deal with really violent kinetic imagery.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Your violent scenes have earned you plenty of rabid criticism--particularly from women. Care to respond?

[A] De Palma: Media people always ask how I can make movies like this. This is what's in my brain. I don't have to justify it to anyone. Studio heads are only interested if a movie makes money. And out of 15 movies I've made, I've justified my existence to them on at least ten of them. The problem isn't the Hollywood system but the people who force a moral justification on you in order for them to sell magazines or air time. They're in business, too. But they can't say that. When I go on a news show, I see more violence in 60 seconds of news footage than in 15 years of film making.

An artist basically creates something out of what's in his brain. I'm no documentarian trying to reflect what's going on in society. There is absolutely no correlation between movie violence and actual violence as far as I can see.

We see movies or boxing or football for their cathartic effect, as an outlet, to see these impulses acted out. There are a lot more outlets for sexual impulses in this society. You can't just go out and beat people up and get into fights, but you can certainly go out and get laid. But anyone in an artistic medium has a leg up in dealing with his obsessions, because he can express them. It's great. I don't dream much, because my dreams are all in my movies. I don't have nightmares, because I work them all out in artistic form.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Does your high tolerance for blood have anything to do with watching your father perform orthopedic surgery in Philadelphia?

[A] De Palma: When I was, like, 16, 17, I saw him do a lot of bone surgery, amputate legs, put in a steel femur. I saw some brain and eye surgery performed by his colleagues. You do see a lot of blood when people operate.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Have you submitted to analysis?

[A] De Palma: I've gone to therapists, not analysts, basically when I had problems and needed someone to talk to. And not for long. I didn't go to ruminate about my psychological obsessions. That doesn't interest me. Maybe it's because, again, I sort of act them out in my movies all the time. I'm attracted to material that emanates from subconscious need through bizarre dreams. If I understood exactly what that need was, I probably wouldn't be interested anymore. To explain, examine, justify, label all your motivations is for me a defecating process that has nothing to do with creating.

13.

[Q] Playboy: We know you don't have to be weird to make weird movies. But would it help?

[A] De Palma: It's a trap people always fall into. But I'm not paranoid. I don't own telescopes. I walk the city streets without feeling I'm being followed. Quite the contrary; after all the research I did in pornography, I couldn't have been more uninterested. I absorb all the information I need to make a movie; then I'm satiated with it. I've seen it and done it and worked it out and it's over.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Would it be out of line to believe the rumors that some of Al Pacino's coke in Scarface was the real thing?

[A] De Palma: Absolutely out of line. Pacino's very straight. The idea that you have to be drunk to play drunk went out at the turn of the century. Had the coke been real, the whole budget of that movie would have been on his table at the end. No, it was lactose, one of the popular cuts. It makes you sneeze a lot. Al didn't like it. It stuffed up his nose and he had to keep blowing it after scenes.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Since you can't give out an Oscar, who gets a Brian award?

[A] De Palma: The King of Comedy, about the best film made over the past few years. It's very difficult to surprise me, but Marty Scorsese found an ingenious way to depict uncommercial material. And Robert De Niro's portrayal of such a compellingly unlikable character is fabulously realized and integrated, a seamless work of art. For Marty, it was a cohesive, audacious effort.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Defend your critics.

[A] De Palma: It's always nice to have someone understand what I'm trying to do, and it's fascinating to see where people get thrown off: The rise of Scarface was interesting but the downfall dull--stuff like that. The best critics can make me aware of things in my work, but they've followed me for years and I know where they are coming from. I don't keep up with them socially, but I know many well enough to call on the phone and ask for support, like when I'm in trouble with the ratings board. For Scarface, I called Roger Ebert; I spoke with The New York Times; I would have called Pauline Kael, but she was sick and I didn't want to get her involved. I wouldn't say that I get perverse satisfaction from the hostility of the others. I've been hit so often that it just doesn't have much effect anymore. It did disturb me when critics attacked my ex-wife, Nancy Allen, for the mere fact that she was my wife and had appeared in several of my movies. We worked quite well together, but the downside was the talk about her being in the films because she was the director's wife. You just have to deal with it; it's unfair, but what else is new?

17.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most hostile attack you encounter from feminists?

[A] De Palma: That I'm a women hater, obsessed with violence and dirty sex, that type of thing. I tell them I make the movies I want to make, that I like working with women and that my movies have strong women protagonists. As for violence, it makes no difference if you take body counts whether you're killing men or women in movies. Since Scarface, my body count for women is minuscule compared with that for men. Basically, feminists don't use the word psychopath. Usually, they call me sick. I don't try to convince them that I'm not that bad a guy. I tell them, "It's a free world; don't buy a ticket."

18.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like most and least about film making?

[A] De Palma: I like the deal making--the capitalist system in perfect formation, wrestling around dollars. I like thinking things up, structuring characters, relationships, cinematic design. That I can wake up in the morning and still have ideas to put together in a movie is more than anyone can ask of the system. I like writing early--from six A.M.--in my office. Then I like to walk around, physically locating the movie in specific places. The worst parts are the actual making of the movie and when it's released. That's when you've got the most pressure. My favorite period is when I'm thinking about the movies I'm going to make and refining and editing the movie I've just made. That is paradise for this director. As a matter of fact, my editing office for Body Double was right across the street from the Pussycat Cinema on Broadway.

19.

[Q] Playboy: What are you serving up next?

[A] De Palma: I'm very interested in the media, TV in particular. There's a murder in the next movie, and it will definitely be a De Palma film. It's about someone who becomes a celebrity after the murder--and his motivation to become famous at any cost. It's a little like King of Comedy and like John Hinckley--writing those letters to Jodie Foster to tell her how important his love is.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Forgive us, we have to ask. Is it hard to assure a woman who's seen Dressed that it's safe to take a shower in your apartment?

[A] De Palma: I don't have too many problems in that area. The shower curtain's opaque and the sharpest object in the bathroom happens to be my toothbrush.

"On a news show, I see more violence in 60 seconds of news footage than in 15 years of film making."