Journey with award-winning filmmaker and author Laurent Bouzereau through acclaimed director Brian De Palma’s renowned—and controversial—horror and thriller films that redefined cinema in the 1970s and early 80s with interviews conducted over three decades and fresh takes. Among a crop of fresh filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola revolutionizing Hollywood in the ’70s, Brian De Palma—a director from Philadelphia with a few social satires under his belt—charted a cinematic path unlike any of his peers. At times he was unfairly dismissed as a Hitchcock copycat; other times he was misunderstood for his peculiar mix of sexuality, humor, and violence. But, over the course of ten years, he created a new cinematic language, melding his signature themes with specific filmmaking techniques that are now synonymous with his name. Acclaimed filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau explores the seven films that came to define the De Palma decade: Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Obsession, Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out. Combining film analysis, detailed production histories, and interviews with De Palma himself, his casts, and collaborators, Bouzereau presents the definitive record on this unrivaled period of cinematic creativity and the emergence of an auteur who would continue to influence filmmaking in the decades that followed.

Bouzereau follows De Palma's career, from his initial association with the exuberant independent filmmaking wave in New York in the early '70s, through his combative affiliation with the studios as he developed his seminal themes--voyeurism, guilt as a motivator, and the double.

Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables; Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities) in Hollywood history. De Palma helped launch the careers of such prominent actors as Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and Sissy Spacek (who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress in Carrie). Indeed, Quentin Tarantino named Blow Out as one of his top three favorite films, praising De Palma as the best living American director. Picketed by feminists protesting its depictions of violence against women, Dressed to Kill helped to create the erotic thriller genre. Scarface, with its over-the-top performance by Al Pacino, remains a cult favorite. In the twenty-first century, De Palma has continued to experiment, incorporating elements from videogames (Femme Fatale), tabloid journalism (The Black Dahlia), YouTube, and Skype (Redacted and Passion) into his latest works. What makes De Palma such a maverick even when he is making Hollywood genre films? Why do his movies often feature megalomaniacs and failed heroes? Is he merely a misogynist and an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock? To answer these questions, author Douglas Keesey takes a biographical approach to De Palma's cinema, showing how De Palma reworks events from his own life into his films. Written in an accessible style and including a chapter on every one of his films to date, this book is for anyone who wants to know more about De Palma's controversial films or who wants to better understand the man who made them.

Profiles and q & a interviews which follow De Palma's fortunes as he makes the transition from underground filmmaker to celebrity auteur

"It's like having a new Brian De Palma picture." - Martin Scorsese, Academy Award-winning director FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SCARFACE AND DRESSED TO KILL -- A FEMALE REVENGE STORY When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should've known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator's fixer. He's already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman -- how hard could this new one turn out to be? Pursued from Washington D.C. to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn't realize is that her life might be as well...

Provides an analysis of Hollywood from a fresh viewpoint that shows the careers of Robert Altman, Francis Coppola, William Friedkin, and others in the 1980s as far from conforming to a monolithic pattern of decline, but rather as diverse and complex responses to political and industrial changes. The 1980s are routinely seen as the era of the blockbuster and of 'Reaganite entertainment,' whereas the dominant view of late 1960s and early 1970s American film history is that of a 'Hollywood Renaissance', a relatively brief window of artistry based around a select group of directors. Yet key directors associated with the Renaissance period remained active throughout the 1980s and their work has been obscured or dismissed by a narrow, singular model of American film history. This book deals with industrial contexts that conditioned these directors' ability to work creatively, but it is also very much about the analysis of individual films, bringing to light a range of unheralded work, from the visual experimentation of One from the Heart (Coppola, 1981) to the experimental production contexts of Secret Honor (Altman, 1984) and the stylistic élan of To Live and Die in L.A. (Friedkin, 1985). Behind the homogenous picture of the decline of the auteur in 1980s American cinema are films and careers that merit greater attention, and this book offers a new way to perceive individual films, American film history, and the viability of sustained authorial creativity within post-studio era Hollywood.

Frank Tashlin (1913–1972) was a supremely gifted satirist and visual stylist who made an indelible mark on 1950s Hollywood and American popular culture—first as a talented animator working on Looney Tunes cartoons, then as muse to film stars Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Jayne Mansfield. Yet his name is not especially well known today. Long regarded as an anomaly or curiosity, Tashlin is finally given his due in this career-spanning survey. Tashlinesque considers the director’s films in the contexts of Hollywood censorship, animation history, and the development of the genre of comedy in American film, with particular emphasis on the sex, satire, and visual flair that comprised Tashlin’s distinctive artistic and comedic style. Through close readings and pointed analyses of Tashlin’s large and fascinating body of work, Ethan de Seife offers fresh insights into such classic films as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, The Girl Can’t Help It, Artists and Models, The Disorderly Orderly, and Son of Paleface, as well as numerous Warner Bros. cartoons starring Porky Pig, among others. This is an important rediscovery of a highly unusual and truly hilarious American artist. Includes a complete filmography.