BRIAN DE PALMA

[Drenk]

Are Snakes Necessary? is an hilarious title. Thumbs up.

[WorldForgot]

Maybe an excerpt to a longer piece? Definitely a first draft to... something. Dunno.

I feel I could pick apart so many of his films for the way they intersect "technology" (in and out of cinema) and manipulation (of desire and identity most often). Wonder if I should expand onnit or if it's irrelevant to an A24 consumer base. I guess it doesn't matter.

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A charming, unremarkable Wedding Party, kicks off Brian De Palma and Robert De Niro’s careers.

Soon after, De Palma,  Sarah Lawrence MA '64, takes De Niro out again in Greetings, with Gerrit Graham and Jonathan Warden backing up the themes with a cast geared to the task. The Vietnam draft’s knocking on Village doors, and the kidz conjure a tight independent satire flick Enough to warrant Son of Greetings, erm, I mean, a NYC psycho iz born.

Romping through cheap pornography, Hi, Mom! pieces together that the best bang-for-ya-buck in media exploitation iz embedded within society. Akin to theater, our capitalist realism begs performance. Roles are easier to manage. Jon learns the routines, times his social seductions to a precision calculated toward a sort of oblivious, dangerous narcissism.

So, Jon moves swiftly from pornography to radical prop. It’s a gig, but he was weaponized in service… of, what? Our introduction to his potential apartments doesn’t place veterans as any asset to a capitalist economy. Just a body and a means to profit. Aptly, this opening sequence iz first hand footage from Jon’s camera. This machine will inform both his perspective and process.

Rote irony creates a comforting mirage.

In its most provocative sequence, Be Black Baby, a radical, interactive theater show places Middle Class, White Manhattanites in the shoes of marginalized ethnicities - supposedly. Be Black Baby’s theatre troupe delights in wielding the stereotype white media created, allowing art its reign apart from entertainment. An aggressive sequence, not without its own smirk. After assault and rape, the honkys go home glad to recommend such a visceral performance piece to their friends.

What follows iz a clear thematic thread of media obfuscation, surveillance plots, and violent identity displacement. Coated in as much candy gloss as his mobster-mania classic, Brian De Palma’s fixation on Hitchcock and the resulting ‘grammar’of cinema implicates our thrillz within self imposed social scripts, never favoring realism over melodrama. Accentuating stylized cinema as a personality trick of its own -- for all our conspiracy folklore and redacted government pages, a feedback loop between vice and the technology that must reflect it back at us.

[jenkins]

<3

great ending and the preference for melodrama delights me. it is emotional realism is what i say

[WorldForgot]

Good podcast on Performance and Theme but here specifically at 32:15
a highlight of how PTA alluded to Body Double in Boogie Nights (both films about male fantasy against eros/filmmaking/bygone mainstream porn productions) with not only composition + script, but edit as well.

[WorldForgot]

https://youtu.be/-MlAalQeWWA

made something silly ~