De Palma's Brutal Take on Fellow Directors Sparks Industry Outrage
The Scarface director didn't hold back when discussing his contemporaries' intellectual shortcomings, creating waves throughout Hollywood with his unfiltered assessment of the industry's creative minds.
Creative theft versus borrowing has always sparked debate in filmmaking circles. Each new generation of directors builds on previous work, creating an endless chain of artistic influence. Brian De Palma found his primary inspiration in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces, then became a major influence himself.
The New Hollywood movement found few directors as bold as De Palma. His films pushed boundaries further than most peers dared. Sexual content, graphic violence, controversial themes. He maximized the creative freedom that emerged in the 1970s after censorship restrictions loosened. His remake of the 1930s Howard Hawks gangster film Scarface proved this approach perfectly.
Cross-Pollination Among Masters
Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Sidney Lumet frequently influenced each other's projects. De Palma's 1981 thriller Blow Out, starring John Travolta, built directly on Coppola's 1974 masterpiece The Conversation. Coppola himself had drawn inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 landmark Blow Up, about a photographer accidentally capturing murder on film.
Blow Out stands as De Palma's most innovative work. The film works best when experienced through headphones, mimicking Travolta's sound engineer character as he records a presidential assassination while gathering ambient noise. De Palma employed sophisticated audio techniques alongside stunning visual composition. The result was a stylish conspiracy thriller that doubled as a slasher film, featuring early performances by John Lithgow and Nancy Allen.
The Controversial Statement
Hitchcock's influence remained obvious throughout De Palma's career. But the director considered himself more educated than his contemporaries. He immersed himself in cinema history, studying not just Hitchcock but Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, French director Jean Luc Godard, and Italian masters like Antonioni.
His assessment of fellow directors proved harsh. "It's a terrible thing to say, but the problem with most film directors is that the process of becoming a film director does not necessarily make you particularly sophisticated. I'm not saying I know more than anybody else, but you're not dealing with a lot of heavyweights in this business. They are not well-read, everything is a property, and they really don't have many outside interests. So, when they give their statement about philosophy, life, politics, or whatever, it's kind of, I guess, shallow and dumb for the most part."
Proving His Point Through Cinema
Those comments caused significant controversy when published in the early 1980s. De Palma had already built his reputation on guns, sex, and gore. But his 1976 Stephen King adaptation Carrie demonstrated his ability to create genuinely historic imagery despite the blood-soaked content.
Over two decades, De Palma produced several landmark films. The Untouchables featured Robert De Niro in a memorable performance. Genre films like Casualties of War and Al Pacino's Carlito's Way showcased his range beyond pure shock value.
His output declined dramatically after 2000, with only three films released over the next twenty years. Recent reports suggest he's writing and directing a new project called Sweet Vengeance.