Brian De Palma Quotes

The camera lies all the time; lies 24 times/second.

(On why he would not add rap songs to the soundtrack to "Scarface") "They said it would help promotion, presenting the film in a different way, but Giorgio`s music was true to the period, I argued -- and no one changes the scores on movies by Marty Scorsese, John Ford, David Lean. If this is the `masterpiece` you say, leave it alone. I fought them tooth and nail and was the odd man out, not an unusual place for me. I have final cut, so that stopped them dead."

"I`m astounded there aren`t more American political films. I`m amazed, when you can make movies for nothing, there are not people out there making these incredibly angry anti-war movies. How come?" (September 2006)

My films deal with a stylized, expressionistic world that has a kind of grotesque beauty about it.

I like stylization. I try to get away with as much as possible until people start laughing at it.

I have a reputation as an action director because I know how to kill, how to shoot people, how to spill blood.

(on Alfred Hitchcock) He is the one who distilled the essence of film. He`s like Webster. It`s all there. I`ve used a lot of his grammar.

(on Sissy Spacek) Sissy`s a phantom. She has this mysterious way of slipping into a part, letting it take over her. She`s got a wider range than any young actress I know.

Women are more sympathetic creatures in jeopardy, plus they`re more interesting to photograph. I`d rather photograph a woman walking around with a candelabra than a guy. It`s as simple as that. Somebody once said that the history of cinema was made photographing women, and I think one could truthfully say that.

(1987 comment on Robert De Niro) He`s very low-key and concentrated when he`s working. The thing that gets in the way of his work is people staring at him. So what you have to do on the set when he`s working is to get people who are just going to gawk out of his eyeline. With the other actors he`s very tuned, very responsive.

I was thinking of doing something - I`m always sort of fascinated, you know, I have a fascination with watching these kids on MTV videos.

I hadn`t done just a straight-out comedy in a long time, just letting an ensemble do really good character acting, having them carry the movie as in my earlier pictures.

The real trouble with film school is that the people teaching are so far out of the industry that they don`t give the students an idea of what`s happening.

I`ve never been accepted as that conventional artist. Whatever you say about David Lynch or Martin Scorsese, they are considered major film artists and nobody can argue with that. I`ve never had that. I`ve had people say it about me. And I`ve had people say that I`m a complete hack and you know, derivative and all those catchphrases that people use for me. So I`ve always been controversial. People hate me or love me.

Well, I just think through your career you go through different phases, and I just got sort of uninspired by the whole studio process of making and releasing films.

It`s hard to make movies where you put women in peril any more. You can`t really stalk women around anymore. It`s very difficult. It`s sort of unsettling to field a lot of hostile questions about why you keep doing this and why you dislike women so much. You say, "It`s a murder mystery, I`m running out of victims." It`s all right to kill men, but women are out. No one complained when I killed a man in "Sisters."

You know, when people want to get any information, research information, it will all exist on these Web sites.

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it`s one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

I`ve been sort of traveling around the country for ten years talking about independent features.

You know it`s always amazed me - I think the most startling thing that`s happened in the last couple of decades is that there is no sort of objective reporting anymore.

And we`ve become very doubtful of our information sources, because they`re all controlled by these huge multilateral corporations.

I guess what`s most surprised me in most of the reviews is that they don`t seem to get the noir story in the dream sequence, so they analyze it like a straight noir movie.

You really are as hot as your last movie. And it goes away really quickly.

Well, like any time you`re shooting documentary stuff, you`ve got to be in the moment, and you`ve got to be able to be in control enough to capture what`s happening.

If anyone`s been around some very long cocaine evenings, there`s nothing that`s in SCARFACE that we all haven`t seen before.

I`ve dropped myself into straightforward character pieces in order to explore that form and reap its values. But you are sort of restricted visually when your first requirement is to tell a fairly straightforward story.

However, ironically, I was baptized Presbyterian, and went to a Quaker school for twelve years.

I do like directing other people`s material.

I mean, I don`t mind promoting a movie, or talking to the press if it`s going to be used in some way.

The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting.

But, number one, I think traditional noir doesn`t work in contemporary storytelling because we don`t live in that world anymore.

When you make a movie outside the system and it`s successful critically or a moderate financial success, you usually have to go back into the system and make a big hit.

Yeah, I had an idea to make a very scary movie, based on a kind of serial murderer that preys on tourists.

Godard is incredibly brilliant, the things he says. Apparently here in France, the most interesting thing when a new film of his is going to come out are his press conferences, because he`s so brilliant.

It`s always great when you discover someone.

And that`s what`s so inspirational about something like DIONYSUS. It actually records the moment that it happened. Kind of like a document of the period.

And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They`re a lot of fun, they`re sexy, they`re manipulative, they`re dangerous.

It`s always great to discover a new star of tomorrow.

That`s what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream, with very strong archetypes operating. You know, the guilty girl being pursued, falling, all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time.

I`m always looking for a kind of new musical entity to sort of move into a motion picture venue.

You know, I listen to contemporary music all the time.

However, I spent most of my time in a Quaker school.

I`ve been obsessed with this kind of visual storytelling for quite a while, and I try to create material that allows me to explore it.

I don`t see scarey films. I certainly wouldn`t go see my films.

So much of shooting sex scenes in movies you a see are naked people sort of humping each other on a bed, shot in the most unflattering way just because they happen to be naked and mimicking making love. They don`t really dramatize their particular sexual attraction to each other. And it`s very difficult. You have to find a way, a visual way to approach scenes like that.