Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Hear's the thing,
Speaker 1: the Untouchables, casualties of war, the bonfire of the vanities,
Speaker 1: raising Cain Carlito's way, Mission impossible. Brian de Palma didn't
Speaker 1: just make all those movies. He made all those movies
Speaker 1: in a row. Nobody balances suspense, action and character better
Speaker 1: than he does. Each film is a master class in
Speaker 1: building tension with tracking shots, disconcerting angles, and split screens,
Speaker 1: and then he releases that tension with the blunt shock
Speaker 1: of violence. In any DiPalma film, the camera is ultimately
Speaker 1: the star. DePalma is the son of a surgeon, and
Speaker 1: he went to Columbia for physics, but he quickly discovered
Speaker 1: where his true passion lay. You know him as a
Speaker 1: virtuosic v director, but before that he was a fixture
Speaker 1: of the experimental Greenwich Village movie scene of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: That's where he cast a then unknown actor named Bobby
Speaker 1: de Niro. Fitting since DiPalma later became known for working
Speaker 1: with all the greatest actors. His very first Hollywood movie
Speaker 1: starred Orson Welles. Last summer, the Hampton's International Film Festival
Speaker 1: gave Brian de Palma the Lifetime Achievement Award. I was
Speaker 1: honored to speak with him in front of a live
Speaker 1: audience when he came to accept it. Please welcome, Brian
Speaker 1: de Palma. Um directing as an unbelievably difficult task. When
Speaker 1: did you know you could do that? This is a long,
Speaker 1: funny story. I was head of the Columbia Players, and uh,
Speaker 1: the Varsity Show is a very big thing at Columbia.
Speaker 1: So there were two shows up to be voted for,
Speaker 1: and I was just an apprentice that was going to
Speaker 1: take over the Columbia Players the following year. So in
Speaker 1: these situations, everybody's uh, you know, got their own sort
Speaker 1: of corrupt intent because if you do my play, I
Speaker 1: get to play the lead and you get to direct. Dadada.
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about this. There were two really good scripts,
Speaker 1: one by Steve Rawson, who was uh, one of my
Speaker 1: schoolmates at Columbia, and the other one by Terry McNally,
Speaker 1: a very funny comedy. And they fought for hours and
Speaker 1: they were deadlocked, you know, like six to six, and
Speaker 1: it was getting late and it was about midnight, and
Speaker 1: they said they looked over to me because I had
Speaker 1: read both scripts. And they said, well, well well, let's let
Speaker 1: the kid decide. So I said, all I think that
Speaker 1: Terry mcdally's script is funny. Let's do that one great.
Speaker 1: Everybody leaves. That night, I was shooting my first short,
Speaker 1: which consisted of pan coming out of the tunnel at
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixt Street. I was not the director.
Speaker 1: I was just author and cinematographer. I get to the
Speaker 1: location and my director arrived, Jean Marner I'll never forget
Speaker 1: his name, and he comes with his very Sicilian girl
Speaker 1: frame named Charlie, and she comes over to me and says,
Speaker 1: you fucking idiot. You didn't vote for the rows and play.
Speaker 1: Didn't you know that Gene was going to direct it?
Speaker 1: And I go huh? And then they walked off and
Speaker 1: they took the lead actor with them. So here I
Speaker 1: am at a hundred and sixteenth Street at three in
Speaker 1: the morning, staring into an empty tunnel, saying I'm going
Speaker 1: to direct this now and that's it, that's it. And
Speaker 1: you found some waitresses and all my dinner and said
Speaker 1: come with me, you're my lead do you didn't need
Speaker 1: any actors for the shot? No, I had to go
Speaker 1: out and find my own actors. And start all over again. Okay,
Speaker 1: al cruise Travolta, on and on and on. You work
Speaker 1: with stars, I mean big stars at the apex of
Speaker 1: their career. Do you feel you were lucky that you
Speaker 1: got people who weren't only stars, they could play the
Speaker 1: role and meet the demands you had of them. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it was very lucky with that, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: in Blowout, which I wrote after Dressed to Kill, which
Speaker 1: Dressed to Kill was a big hit. So now I
Speaker 1: was a genius and I could do anything. So I
Speaker 1: wrote this really small picture about the sound effects editor,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking it was really low budget and
Speaker 1: it's not huh. And then Travolta called me up and said,
Speaker 1: I want you to read the script. And I read
Speaker 1: it and I didn't wasn't interested. And then he said, well,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this film. It's you know, it's about a sound effects editor,
Speaker 1: and let me read it. So he read it and
Speaker 1: then he said, hey, I'd like to play that part.
Speaker 1: So now I have drawn Travolta, one of the hottest
Speaker 1: stars there is at that point. And uh, suddenly the
Speaker 1: budget went from like six million to sixteen million, and
Speaker 1: everything got bigger. Are their principles of filmmaking that that
Speaker 1: you hold fast too, regardless of the budget, regardless of
Speaker 1: the cast. Or did the way you make films change
Speaker 1: the more money that was at stake? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, making a you know, it's five
Speaker 1: million dollar movie or you know a hundred million dollar movie,
Speaker 1: it's sold more or less the same to me, obviously,
Speaker 1: more people around. And uh, and since I'd like to
Speaker 1: do these elaborate you know, set pieces, you need really
Speaker 1: those great technicians that we're in Hollywood. It's you know,
Speaker 1: the thing they always said about Orson Wells, he lost
Speaker 1: the ability to use all those great technicians and it
Speaker 1: showed in his work, And I think that's quite true. Um,
Speaker 1: when did you start writing on What Felt after Dressed
Speaker 1: to Kill? I mean I had this idea because, uh,
Speaker 1: when I was mixing Dressed to Kill, you know there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's like a scene right at a blowout
Speaker 1: in it. I talked to the sound editor and I noticed,
Speaker 1: you know, this wind effect. And I said to him,
Speaker 1: this wind I've heard this a thousand times. Can't you
Speaker 1: get anything new? And he looked at he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: so he goes out, you know, into the country and
Speaker 1: and and gets his mic up and tries to get
Speaker 1: me some new wind sound. So that so that started
Speaker 1: the idea of the sound effects editor who becomes the
Speaker 1: protagonist in the one of the new wind for Dress
Speaker 1: to Kill. Correct, because remember when the review of Dressed
Speaker 1: to Kill they mentioned that, I said, there's a new
Speaker 1: wind sound achieves a new high and winds sound anyway
Speaker 1: and do and when you write them and someone else
Speaker 1: writes them, which is harder to direct. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's very important to do both because you have your
Speaker 1: own ideas and your own idiosyncrasies and the set pieces
Speaker 1: I like to do. Uh, but I like working in
Speaker 1: other people's bullparks. And that's why I'm attracted to really
Speaker 1: great writers. And when I read a great script, I go, oh,
Speaker 1: this is something I haven't never done before, like starting
Speaker 1: with you know, the gangster pictures or adaptation of a book,
Speaker 1: something like that. And then it enlarges you because now
Speaker 1: you have to tell their story with the techniques you
Speaker 1: developed yourself. Um, you hit a run there where Burham,
Speaker 1: Steve Burham becomes your TP and what was the battery
Speaker 1: between you and him that endured for so long. Your
Speaker 1: first with him was what body Double? When I was
Speaker 1: doing Body Double, I was shooting a lot of tests,
Speaker 1: and I had some of the most beautiful women in
Speaker 1: the world auditioning, and uh. And then I was looking
Speaker 1: at these tests and I'm saying, God, these girls are gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Why do they not look so good on film? Then
Speaker 1: I said to myself, I think I'm going to start
Speaker 1: auditioning some cinematographers. I mean, they spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time putting on makeup. Why don't you like them correctly
Speaker 1: so you appreciate all the work that's been done. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Steve was the best of the auditioning cinematographers. And
Speaker 1: I went on and made many movies to him. And
Speaker 1: what I think is terrible now with all these streaming
Speaker 1: movies where they all shoot digitally and it's all with
Speaker 1: its bounced light and everybody looks like, excuse the expression shit, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very dispiriting. I did this TV series, Dirty Rock,
Speaker 1: and Tina Fey was was compelled by the NBC people
Speaker 1: to cut costs, and they would say to Tina every year,
Speaker 1: let's do camera tests with digital U and she rejected
Speaker 1: and she fought and she won and be shot on
Speaker 1: film for six and a half years, which I think
Speaker 1: they won't even allow you. You don't even have that discussion,
Speaker 1: and everything is digital. What I don't like is because
Speaker 1: they can make the movie faster, the velocity of it
Speaker 1: now doesn't allow you to think as much as you
Speaker 1: used to. You know, now you've basically got an editor
Speaker 1: is cut of them me by the time you had
Speaker 1: just done shooting, and it used to be a year
Speaker 1: later in the old days. Do you miss having more
Speaker 1: time to luxury and thinking about what the movie would be. Well,
Speaker 1: when you work with the same editors movie after movie,
Speaker 1: they more or less know what you want. So when
Speaker 1: you get to the end of your shoot, they have
Speaker 1: a pretty good assemblage of what you've done, and plus
Speaker 1: all the elaborate set pieces of all been story boarded,
Speaker 1: and they you know, and they work with me so
Speaker 1: long they know exactly where everything goes, so it's not
Speaker 1: much of a problem for me. Burham didn't do Scarface.
Speaker 1: John Alonso did. How did that happen? Well, he spoke
Speaker 1: Spanish and I'd work with John on Get to Know
Speaker 1: Your Rabbit, my Lost Warner masterpiece, literally Alonso because he
Speaker 1: spoke Spanish. No, he's also he's also a legendary cinematographer.
Speaker 1: It's really a good cinematographer. He's great. But but but
Speaker 1: Burt was it like Burrow wasn't available? Or you want
Speaker 1: to try something different? You thought John was better for
Speaker 1: this material. I don't know. I mean, there are many
Speaker 1: really good cinematographers and sometimes the one you want that
Speaker 1: you work with all the time is not available. And
Speaker 1: you know, I used vilmost a lot. I used John. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the great technicians are working all the time. Where
Speaker 1: did you find Liftgo? How did you come across? Well?
Speaker 1: When I was at Columbia, I was casting my first
Speaker 1: feature and I was looking for a replacement for the
Speaker 1: lead who I didn't think was going to be great.
Speaker 1: And I went to Princeton and Liftgow was in a
Speaker 1: a moli Air play with another actor friend of mine,
Speaker 1: William Finley, and I saw this guy. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: just as I think a senior at Harvard at that point,
Speaker 1: and I said, Wow, this guy is fantastic, and I
Speaker 1: recommended him to another director, Paul William, who put him
Speaker 1: in his first film, UH, based on a book by
Speaker 1: Michael Crichton, and then when I did blow Out, that
Speaker 1: was the first time we worked together. The thing about
Speaker 1: leth Cow, especially in this movie, that he reminds you of,
Speaker 1: is he has um such amazing vocal control that he
Speaker 1: will most often find in the theater. He is a
Speaker 1: great stage actor, and he's incredibly intelligent. He's very funny,
Speaker 1: he's great to work with. And uh, whenever I had
Speaker 1: a part for him, I immediately cast him. And in
Speaker 1: Raising Caine, I had him playing like five different personalities,
Speaker 1: including a very deadly woman. You made a couple of
Speaker 1: films with al and uh did you just sit there
Speaker 1: sometimes behind the money and sit there and go, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: what am I going to do with this scene? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like, he's so operatic and vivid.
Speaker 1: That never occurred to me. Just let albi al Well.
Speaker 1: I thought that I thought it was important to introduce him.
Speaker 1: I mean, al has a great face, so I was
Speaker 1: gonna introduce these scarface So I was going to introduce
Speaker 1: him with this close up, you know, talking to these
Speaker 1: people interrogating him, because alcan holds the screen, you know,
Speaker 1: with this incredible face and that voice, and you just
Speaker 1: sit there, riveted. Uh, but they'll talk about how operrettic
Speaker 1: it was. Didn't see him opoaretic. To me, you have
Speaker 1: obviously have a very high threshold for the operatic. As
Speaker 1: I told him, I said, my favorite story about Scarface
Speaker 1: because scar Face is obviously one of the most amazing
Speaker 1: movies ever made. It's just so insane what goes on there.
Speaker 1: You know, you know every line. I mean, how many
Speaker 1: times have you, you know, say hello to money, my
Speaker 1: little friend. You know you're going through the toll, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Or so someone's asking for your
Speaker 1: I D. When you show your credit card. You're like,
Speaker 1: say hello to my little friend, say hello over and
Speaker 1: over again. I mean everybody. But my favorite, as I
Speaker 1: told you, was apparently years ago I read where they
Speaker 1: busted these drug dealers in East l A. And they
Speaker 1: and they swooped in the l A. P D on
Speaker 1: a big drug dealing nest the house in some tough
Speaker 1: area of l A of East l A. And they
Speaker 1: went in and the drug dealers here, who had like
Speaker 1: mountains of drugs there and everything, had weapons and money.
Speaker 1: They also had Scarface on on a loop and it
Speaker 1: played all day and they just watched Scarface all day
Speaker 1: I think that's amazing, you know, I mean because like
Speaker 1: only only at a home with children do you loop
Speaker 1: the same thing, like you show home alone all day
Speaker 1: where you show powerpuff Girls all day and drug dealers
Speaker 1: show Scarface all day. Like kids, when you do say
Speaker 1: hello to my little friend, where you behind the monitor
Speaker 1: going oh yeah, baby, this is it. It's a great scene. Well,
Speaker 1: the reason there's so many people being shot and falling
Speaker 1: down steps and eighty thousand killers running up the steps
Speaker 1: is when we first went on to the set to
Speaker 1: start that sequence, first had burned down. The whole set
Speaker 1: burned down. Somebody said it on fire. That was that
Speaker 1: was number one. Number two. When Al was using that
Speaker 1: gun uh to shoot people, he grabbed the gun by
Speaker 1: the barrel and he burned himself severely because it's you know,
Speaker 1: white hot. So Al went to the hospital, I think
Speaker 1: for two weeks. So they said burn Al burn yea
Speaker 1: so here I had had a set, no Al, but
Speaker 1: I had a lot of Colombians to kill. You spent
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks killing Columbian dealers, a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks killing Colombians, and you're on the phone, You're like,
Speaker 1: how are you doing now? You still want a lot
Speaker 1: of pain huh, even a lot of pain killers. Okay,
Speaker 1: beat all right, line them out. We're gonna kill the
Speaker 1: rest of these guys. Get him in there. One star
Speaker 1: Brian de Palma has directed his Vigo Mortenson, who turned
Speaker 1: in an exquisite performance has the wheelchair bound informant Laleen
Speaker 1: in Carlito's Way. But Mortenson didn't always get such juicy rolls.
Speaker 1: As a child, he was an introvert who couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: going on stage. Um well, actually I did have one experience.
Speaker 1: I had a junior high A friend of mine was
Speaker 1: really into the idea of becoming an actor. And you
Speaker 1: loved musical and you knew everything about the theater in
Speaker 1: New York, and he said, you gotta try it for
Speaker 1: this play. It's great. It's called hellll Dolly. You gotta triumphant.
Speaker 1: And I said, what, No, I can't you imagine me
Speaker 1: trying out for Hella Valley. I went very unwillingly on
Speaker 1: this stage, and I read the first paragraph from David Copperfield,
Speaker 1: or tried to, and I finally just closed the book
Speaker 1: and ran off. And that was my only for a
Speaker 1: other than I think when I was like six, they
Speaker 1: put me in a play George and the Dragon, and
Speaker 1: that was the ass end of the dragon. It was
Speaker 1: just a gray suit. It sounds like my career. My
Speaker 1: full conversation with Vigo Mortenson is in our archives at
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. Throughout his career, Brian de
Speaker 1: Palma's films have been widely celebrated, but the violence in
Speaker 1: them has also brought him fierce criticism, including from members
Speaker 1: of the m p A. A ratings board and X
Speaker 1: rating could kill a film at the box office. Well,
Speaker 1: it all started with a dressed to kill the master
Speaker 1: aition scene in the shower and Heffner I used to battle.
Speaker 1: You know, you send the film over and you take
Speaker 1: out one of the shots of the breast, and you know,
Speaker 1: is that enough? No, no, no, you gotta take out
Speaker 1: that other. They don't say it exactly, but they say,
Speaker 1: maybe you should work on it a little more. Okay.
Speaker 1: Well this this went on from movie to movie until
Speaker 1: we got to Scarface. I finished Scarface and I sent
Speaker 1: it to the ratings board. They give me an X
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, well, maybe we'll cut a little here.
Speaker 1: Because I sent it back again version number two. They
Speaker 1: gave me another X, and then I said, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: try it again, and then I sent it. We cut
Speaker 1: a little more out of some of the violent scenes,
Speaker 1: and they gave me an EX and I said what
Speaker 1: and they said, well, the clown, when the clown gets shot,
Speaker 1: that's too much. I say, I am not cutting anything else.
Speaker 1: And then you have to go to the whole board
Speaker 1: and plead your case. So they said, well, what version
Speaker 1: do you want to use. I said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: use the original version in the head of the studio.
Speaker 1: So no, no, no, you have to use that third
Speaker 1: I said, no, they're all X. I'm taking the first
Speaker 1: version that I didn't cut anything out of. And then
Speaker 1: we went before the board and I vanquished Hefner. We
Speaker 1: won by they voted and they let us he was
Speaker 1: ahead of the ratings board. Was yeah. I thought. I thought,
Speaker 1: you're going into like a room and the guys in
Speaker 1: his pajamas. You gotta pipe And he's like, I'm sorry, Brian,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Brian, shooting the clown is too much. You
Speaker 1: could have all the boobs you want, but shooting the
Speaker 1: clown is too much. Um. I kept when you do
Speaker 1: a scene that you know is violent or not, uh,
Speaker 1: just powerful, you know. I mean, I mean when you
Speaker 1: see the music plays and cruise goes no, no no,
Speaker 1: and he lands like that, and mean a mission. Nobody
Speaker 1: there's guys that are up there with you. There's only
Speaker 1: the famous photograph of you and your alums, You and
Speaker 1: Lucas and Marty and Stephen. You're graduating class, and I
Speaker 1: think about that. I think the difference, and needless to say,
Speaker 1: Marty and Stephen are very skilled, uh at these kinds
Speaker 1: of sequences. I think the difference is that Stephen has
Speaker 1: always used the same composer, John Williams, great composer, but
Speaker 1: it's always the same composer, and Marty uses rock and
Speaker 1: roll basically. Uh. I've used some of the best film
Speaker 1: composers that we're writing music in my era, and it
Speaker 1: makes a difference. I mean, the the Marconi score for
Speaker 1: Casualties will tear your heart out, uh, and then the
Speaker 1: score for Carlito's Way. You know, when Alice dying, it's
Speaker 1: just you know, it's opera time, you know, it's Puccini time.
Speaker 1: You just tears your heart out, and that I think
Speaker 1: is the difference is I used a variety of the
Speaker 1: great composers that we're working and that may be why
Speaker 1: my sequences stick out so much. Well, let's go to
Speaker 1: Mission for a minute. What made you decide you wanted
Speaker 1: to make that as a film. I had made Carlito's Way,
Speaker 1: which I when I saw this picture in Berlin at
Speaker 1: the festival, I was literally behind the screen watching it
Speaker 1: and I said to myself, I can't make a better
Speaker 1: picture than this, and it wasn't a big success, and
Speaker 1: I just killed me and I said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go out and make a big success. Then I my
Speaker 1: agent of many years, sort of went crazy, and Mike
Speaker 1: Ovits wanted to represent me, and he had a problem.
Speaker 1: He had Sydney Pollock, who had been working on Mission
Speaker 1: Impossible with the two writers, and Sydney wanted to get
Speaker 1: off of it. You've been working on it for a
Speaker 1: year and it wasn't working out. So Sydney wanted to
Speaker 1: make Sabrina and suddenly OVI it's had to Palma and
Speaker 1: he came to me and he said, would you be
Speaker 1: interested in Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise? And I said,
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible, you bet you cynical bastard, and
Speaker 1: I made the biggest hit of my career. That was
Speaker 1: the biggest one. Yeah, did you guys like Mission Impossible?
Speaker 1: Number one? I love that movie, and I know and
Speaker 1: I love the other ones, and I'm glad. I was
Speaker 1: so excited to go work with him when I first
Speaker 1: saw that first one. It's like when I saw Jurassic
Speaker 1: you know, there's movies that were like seminal movies to
Speaker 1: me in terms of putting the piece together, not just
Speaker 1: the helicopter scene, but all that stuff, all that's shooting.
Speaker 1: That scene at the beginning where Christin Scott Thomas dies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was our first problem to me. Mission Impossible, the
Speaker 1: television series is about five characters with no personality that
Speaker 1: go and do things. Tom Wicks wants to make a
Speaker 1: movie about him, So what do I do with the
Speaker 1: other five characters? So my first idea is we killed
Speaker 1: them all in the first mission worked out rather well.
Speaker 1: If ever, you sent me a script and I'm the
Speaker 1: fourth lead in the movie, I'm gonna pass. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna come to the movie with you, I mean the
Speaker 1: lead or I'm not doing it, And so kept I wrote,
Speaker 1: David kept the great David kept who has written a
Speaker 1: countless great movies, and I can't even mention did you
Speaker 1: write it with you? Or did you just go right
Speaker 1: it and hand it to you? Well that's a that's
Speaker 1: say that story. Uh. It started with see once Sydney
Speaker 1: left and I had to I was I was dealing
Speaker 1: with two screenwriters that I knew, Tom didn't like what
Speaker 1: they were doing, and ultimately we had to find another screenwriter.
Speaker 1: And Zalien, the famous Steven's Alien, great screenwriter paramount owed
Speaker 1: him some money, so they said, well why don't you
Speaker 1: two get together and come up with something. So Zalien
Speaker 1: and I sat in his office in Santa Monica and
Speaker 1: ate a lot of peanuts and smoked a lot of cigarettes,
Speaker 1: as I remember, and it took us about six weeks
Speaker 1: to come up with the ten page treatment, which was
Speaker 1: the plot of Mission Impossible. And then Zalien said, I'm
Speaker 1: Addie here, I've had it. So then I ran into David,
Speaker 1: who was about to work on some remake of something.
Speaker 1: I said, Dave, come over and we'll do Mission Impossible.
Speaker 1: So Dave and I, working from the Xalien and my story,
Speaker 1: came up with the script for Mission Impossible. And I
Speaker 1: was having a hard time getting Tom to commit to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, Tom, I mean we're building sets.
Speaker 1: Got to commit to this movie now, Tom. But still
Speaker 1: there were things of the script that bothered him. But
Speaker 1: I finally got him to say okay. So then I
Speaker 1: got a call from the producer the next day and
Speaker 1: she says, the good news is your a girl. The
Speaker 1: bad news is fired David Cap because Tom wants to
Speaker 1: bring on another writer. And that was a very sad
Speaker 1: moment for me to call up David and say, well, Dave,
Speaker 1: we're making the movie, except we're bringing out a new writer.
Speaker 1: And then what ultimately happened was the new writer did
Speaker 1: not really turn out well, and I brought David back
Speaker 1: in uh, and he rewrote the script once again, and
Speaker 1: that became mission impossible. Who's the actor who you had
Speaker 1: the best communication with, somebody who there's that Well you
Speaker 1: talk about how much you what a great actor Al is,
Speaker 1: but he's also he moves so gracefully. And when I
Speaker 1: did that very complicated steadicam shot and uh, Carlito's way,
Speaker 1: I mean you have to you know your timing the
Speaker 1: steadicam operator with the way Al moves, and you know
Speaker 1: you're you know he's coming up the steps. He goes
Speaker 1: over to the edge and looks down in uh sperience
Speaker 1: Central Station comes back close ups. You watched the guys
Speaker 1: coming across incredibly complicated shot and I'll just you know,
Speaker 1: but there was a really funny story about that. Is
Speaker 1: when we're trying to get the shot from subway train
Speaker 1: to subway train, when the guys are chasing him through
Speaker 1: the subway, and I wanted to get a shot from
Speaker 1: one subway to the subway that he's in. So the
Speaker 1: guys have to chase Al through the subway and we're
Speaker 1: going parallel to them, and as you can imagine, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of obstruction of you know, pillars going by
Speaker 1: and are they in the shot? Are they blocked by
Speaker 1: the windows? So we spent all night trying to get
Speaker 1: this shot, and we shot Carlino's way. We started in
Speaker 1: the winter and we ended in the summer, and Al
Speaker 1: was in that black leather coat. So after about I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how, but he takes Suddenly I see
Speaker 1: the train going away and I talked to my assistant director.
Speaker 1: I say, what happened? Where's the trade going? And he said,
Speaker 1: Al's taking it home. I did this with the Miami
Speaker 1: Blues and Good Party not good. Who didn't like that?
Speaker 1: Well chopping fingers, Well I've didn't. I've done that. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact. How dare you look down on me?
Speaker 1: You say my films are too violent? Jesus Christ. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to just use the word violence but
Speaker 1: the drama, because the violence all has a purpose. The
Speaker 1: violence is all for storytelling. I've seen violent films, obviously,
Speaker 1: we all have their They're not really much of a
Speaker 1: story behind it. You've got great writing, great characters, and
Speaker 1: a necessary component of violence, But who's who's the performance?
Speaker 1: You watched me? Just oh my god, this is just
Speaker 1: mentioning how beautiful this is. Well, I mean, that dying
Speaker 1: scene in Carlto's Way is just unbelievable. I mean, and
Speaker 1: the way I did it was I had them on,
Speaker 1: you know, on the ground, and you know, Penelope is
Speaker 1: leaning over him, alves on his back. He's been shot,
Speaker 1: and I knew I was going to have to loop
Speaker 1: it old later anyway, So I played this incredible romantic
Speaker 1: Puccini music, so yeah, on set, probably labom and the
Speaker 1: music just got them going. I mean Penelope, I mean,
Speaker 1: she's tears are coming out of her eyes, and and
Speaker 1: then work quite well, which is used what they used
Speaker 1: to do in the silent days, when you had an
Speaker 1: orchestra on the set and they would play music for
Speaker 1: the actors could emote with. Where Brando would have books
Speaker 1: with photographs, not just music, but he had images that
Speaker 1: would kind of arrest him in a certain way, photography
Speaker 1: and paintings and things. I want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about two other things before we finish. What is about
Speaker 1: untouchables When you shoot a film like that. There was
Speaker 1: a suggestion I was once going to work with Eastwood
Speaker 1: on a film years ago, and they came to and
Speaker 1: they said, but you can't get clever with him about
Speaker 1: the schedule. You don't give him any scheduling edicts. Your
Speaker 1: his You belong to him. Don't get date crazy. When
Speaker 1: you did, you got Costner and he got de Niro
Speaker 1: and he got Sean Connery. When you do a movie
Speaker 1: like that, do you get the run of show or
Speaker 1: did you have to kind of do the mode right? Right? Okay,
Speaker 1: no way, No, I mean I think we we had
Speaker 1: Bobby for two weeks. While I was shooting the shootout
Speaker 1: in the train station. Bobby was getting in his makeup
Speaker 1: and learning his lines. And after that sequence we shot
Speaker 1: all the scenes. Did he gain all that weight for
Speaker 1: the movie or some of that presenting? You know, he
Speaker 1: gained a little weight, but he was wearing some sympathic
Speaker 1: adding to give him some bulk. But he did, you know,
Speaker 1: shade back its head and it's almost impossible to see
Speaker 1: the range of and we manipulate some stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting about de Niro, you know, And I started with
Speaker 1: de Niro. He was in my first three Underground movies.
Speaker 1: I met him in a loft in Greenwich Village when
Speaker 1: he was you know, nineteen Uh. When we got to
Speaker 1: do um the Untouchables, I kept on, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at the stuff he was doing, and I was sort of,
Speaker 1: you didn't seem to be doing much. And you know
Speaker 1: it's the thing when you say, well, when balby, but
Speaker 1: you want to do a little more with this scene.
Speaker 1: He said, you'll see it in Rushes. I said, I'll
Speaker 1: see it Rushes. Don't worry. And sure enough, because when
Speaker 1: you're watching through the camera or even next to the camera,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like I'm looking at this guy in
Speaker 1: the first row. Well that's that's what how much I
Speaker 1: can see, but when you see it on a huge screen,
Speaker 1: he's doing stuff that's so subtle that you really can't
Speaker 1: see while you're shooting it. Um what's entertainment for you? Now?
Speaker 1: You go to the movies match, or you stay home,
Speaker 1: you watch some Netflix, or you could you still go
Speaker 1: to the movie see some new movies. You do you
Speaker 1: still like movies watching? Yes, I still go to the movies.
Speaker 1: I like the Quentin Tarantino in a movie. You do
Speaker 1: you didn't like that? And then the Noel Bombeck movie
Speaker 1: Marriage Story. Right, we got some really good directors working fantastic. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: in honor of someone who is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: directors in the history of the American Center, would you
Speaker 1: please welcome his daughter, Piper DiPalma. Come on out here
Speaker 1: paper tell them what you have. I have this beautiful
Speaker 1: glass lifetime achievement, amore. This is our lifetime achievement honor
Speaker 1: for nineteen the legendary Brian DePalma. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to here's the thing. Oh