The De Palma Decade

Book excerpt: 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.