The De Palma Decade: Redefining Cinema with Doubles, Voyeurs and Psychic Teens
Written by Laurent Bouzereau
Available from Running Press September 3, here

by Nikk Nelson, Staff Writer

No, I’m not sorry for the title. Okay, I’m a little sorry, but only because I think Laurent Bouzereau is a legitimate genius and a better critic and bigger film fan than I’ll ever be. My first experience with Brian De Palma was Mission Impossible in 1996. I was eleven or twelve years old and the movie theater in our small town of Anthony, Kansas played only one movie every weekend and one weekend, that was it. I remember thoroughly enjoying it. Every aspect of it—edge of my seat, and honestly, more literally that, than in the cliché, movie ad way. Attending high school on the westside of Wichita guaranteed a sea of Scarface t-shirts and the film was referenced in movies I watched, like Chris Tucker’s impression of Tony Montana in Friday and Money Talks. Luckily, I had an older brother, so later on in high school I got to actually see Scarface, The Untouchables, and Carlito’s Way. 

I loved all of those movies, but I had no real sense of Brian De Palma as a director. He seemed sort of lumped in with other ‘mob movie’ directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola and admittedly, I lumped him there in my mind too, until I was out of college, in a career, and desperately holding on to my passion for film in the face of <gestures vaguely at the last twenty years>. I have always wanted to be a storyteller, whether that be making films or writing fiction. It’s all I ever wanted (or want) to do. And I went on an intentional quest to fill myself with as much cinema-storytelling as I could in hopes that it would fuel my own creative endeavors. Sort of like what Patton Oswalt writes about in Silver Screen Fiend or what my friend and fellow Sojawner Rosalie Kicks calls ‘movie madness’. 

Around 2015, I saw the incredible Noah Baumbach-A24 documentary about Brian De Palma, De Palma and it reignited my curiosity about De Palma as a director. At the time, my steadfast compagnon cinema, Kyle and I were getting obsessed with ‘70’s films. Kyle was bringing over films like Electra Glide in Blue and Prime Cut. Poking around in Brian De Palma’s filmography, I saw several entries from the ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. Again, my experience with De Palma to that point had really only been ‘90’s and, as I would find out, that was a very different De Palma. The first title Kyle and I watched was Blow Out. 

I don’t use the term ‘perfect movie’ lightly. In fact, writing this, I am only able to think of three: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Conversation, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. And it’s so difficult for me to put into words what makes a perfect movie. The best I can do is to say, it is of itself and nothing else. Blow Out is a perfect movie. It, no pun intended, blew my fucking mind. I realized/decided, whatever the creative stew in my head is, was, or would ever be, Brian De Palma is, was, and was going to be part of the base. Whatever stories I managed (or manage) to tell, his fingerprints are/will be on them.  

I love Blow Out so much, I don’t often recommend it. I think it is absolutely a film that every film-lover should see, but I find myself not telling people about it sometimes. Because it’s mine. I have a very, almost infantile sense of ‘this toy is mine, and no, you can’t play with it’ when it comes to that movie. Like, ‘ape found shiny rock, ape keep secret’. And I really don’t know why. That’s just what it did to me. 

Fast forward a few years where, again, my fellow Sojawner, Rosalie Kicks, texted me and said, “Mink (not a typo, my nickname, inside joke), I think you should review this book,” and it was The De Palma Decade by Laurent Bouzereau. I didn’t know it, but I was about to discover Brian De Palma for a third time, all thanks to this author and this book. 

I didn’t know I knew who Laurent Bouzereau was. I watched his documentary, Five Came Back, when it was released on Netflix. Then, in the middle of reading this book, I watched his most recent documentary, Faye, about actor Faye Dunaway, on MAX, and didn’t realize Bouzereau directed it until the end. If you want to know what to expect from the book before reading it, I definitely recommend watching one of Laurent’s documentaries. I love film documentaries. Whether it’s something like Belushi or In Search of Darkness or Electric Boogaloo—they all make me happy, I have seen dozens of them, and I can say unequivocally, when it comes to biographical documentaries, I think Laurent stands in a class all of his own. 

The documentaries are organized, composed, and communicated in a way that is simultaneously logical and emotional—highlighting the humanity of the subject(s), their contributions to the art of film, and peppered everywhere else is what Laurent seems to personally admire about them—which becomes what you suddenly admire about him. They are infectious. They pull off this magnificent magic trick of making you want to live in that time and place and know these people and, upon exiting, realizing that’s exactly what you just experienced. Or, of course, as close to that as a documentary can possibly bring you. Like, a couple times, I got pissed off on behalf of Faye Dunaway. And I hold grudges. That’s the kind of power Laurent Bouzereau has and that very same magic and power is seamlessly transferred to The De Palma Decade.

In preparation for this book review, I wanted to see all of the referenced De Palma films I had yet to see. I was not ready. I was not ready for Phantom of the Paradise or Obsession or The Fury. By that I mean, I had a ‘90’s idea of Brian De Palma in my youth. Then, a more contemporary idea in adulthood. And then, I had to break my brain and squeeze in a third idea of who Brian De Palma was and, at that point, I was unmoored. I am convinced that Brian De Palma is a time-traveler, he’s from the future (and/or completely outside of time and space), and he specifically traveled to America in the 1970’s, to make films that were bound by the technology of the time, all because he wanted the goddamn challenge. Reading The De Palma Decade, I think there’s an element of truth in that unhinged theory.

The book covers the first ten years of Brian De Palma’s filmmaking career, separating the films thematically instead of chronologically: The Split—Sisters (1972) and Dressed to Kill (1980); The Power—Carrie (1976) and The Fury (1978); The Tragedies—Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Obsession (1976), and Blow Out (1981). Each section contains incredibly insightful analysis of De Palma’s filmmaking techniques, cast and crew interviews (including De Palma himself), and, what I particularly enjoyed, direct reflection from Laurent hiimself on how the films impacted their life. 

For anyone looking to be introduced to Brian De Palma, I would wholeheartedly recommend The De Palma Decade. I would watch the films in the order of the book and after watching each, read the corresponding chapter. Then, I would rewatch all of the films again in chronological order so you can see the evolution of this filmmaker in real time. If I were teaching a film studies class, I would devote an entire semester of study to this with The De Palma Decade as the assigned textbook. I am officially in awe of Laurent Bouzereau and sincerely cannot wait for his next project. In the meantime, he has plenty of documentaries I haven’t yet seen and plenty of books I haven’t yet read. I consider Laurent Bouzereau to be any film critic’s aspiration and inspiration.