Hollywood attitude to violence ‘will change”

Press, 8 November 1984, Page 18

Hollywood attitude to violence ‘will change”

NZPA New York There will be a dramatic change in Hollywood’s attitude to violent and pornographic films with four years, according to the controversial director, Brian DePalma. His latest movie, “Body Double,” is already producing the expected shock waves of loathing and admiration. “Whoever is in the White Rouse has lots to do with the temper of the times, and these are very repressive times under the Reagan morality,” said the director of “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill” and “Scarface”.

Thanks to Reagan and the moral majority we are no longer in the era of slasher movies; explicit sex movies are no longer. Only Clint Eastwood and I are still making them, and we are hardly the vanguard. Like the hula hoop, it’s over. “But in the next four years, the market for home cassettes is going to explode, because there is a huge audience out there for video. In spite of the fuss the critics made about “Scarface',’ it sold SUSIO million (?20 million) in cassettss. “What do you think people buy or rent to watch at home? They get ‘Debbie Does Dallas,’ not ‘Chariots of Fire.’ Yet there are no Variety charts on how ‘Debbie’ is doing, because the whole theory of repression is doing it in the closet." In “Body Double,” Mr DePalma parodies that Xrated film with a snovie-within-a-movie called

“Holly Does Hollywood”. “Do you think Hollywood is not aware of this trend? In four years someone is going to break this market. Yet when I wanted to make ‘Body Double’ as an X-rated, film, I couldn’t get any funding for it.” he said. Does DePalma believe that the controversy over “Scarface” helped publicise the film which is a violent biography of a drug dealer? It made ?60 million to $7O million in world-wide bOxoffice sales? “I never look for an Xrating - it is a controversy no one wants, least of all the studio,” said Mr DePalma. He said the fuss over the chainsaw murder in “Scarface’ turned people off. “Wives didn’t want to

go. My own wife wouldn’t watch it. She waited until it came out on cassette. It’s word of mouth that kept ‘Scarface’ going. All my movies get good word of mouth except ‘Blow Out,’ which disappointed audience expectations.” ’ A movie Mr DePalma claims he might be interested in making would be a remake of “Bambi” - “it’s so violent” - but more seriously, he is working on a film about the rise of the coal miners’ union. Maybe I’ll do a skit for ‘Saturday Night Live’ - a feminist thriller,” he said. “I get most of my flak from the Establishment and politically active feminist groups. But no less a feminist than Susan Dworkin just

wrote a whole book about’ me, ‘Double DePalma,’ andyou should have seen all the) prominent women’s libbers' at the publication party.” Because Mr DePalma’s! films so obviously deriver from . the classic suspense) movies of the late Alfred Hitchcock, the director has : developed some highly elab< orate arguments about just how indebted he is to the’ acknowledged old master of the macabre. t “When people say Hitch-) cock would not have been as violent as I am, they have to be kidding. “The Birds?’ "Psycho”? Actually, the bulk of contemporary film audiences are more familiar with my movies than with Hitchcock’s, in spite of the recent re-releases