Nachdem sein letzter Film “Domino” ein kommerzieller Flop war, dessen endlose Produktionshölle viel verbrannte Erde hinterließ, zog sich US-Kultregisseur Brian de Palma vorerst zurück: Er schrieb mit seiner Partnerin Susan Lehman ein Buch namens “Are Snakes Necessary?”, sein erstes literarisches Werk, das kürzlich erschien. Sein Freund Martin Scorsese meinte darüber: “It’s like having a new Brian De Palma picture.”
In einem Interview mit APNews sprach der 79-Jährige über das Buch, aber auch über ein neues Filmprojekt, das sich am Weinstein-Skandal orientieren soll.
Sein Buch handelt von einem Senator, der eine Affäre mit einer jungen Angestellten beginnt, und ist vom Fall John Edwards inspiriert. De Palma meint dazu im Interview: “With my partner, Susan, we just basically did it because we had fun doing it. We had never written a novel before, neither of us. I had an idea for a script I had never developed based on the Edwards campaign and the girl (Rielle Hunter, the woman he had an affair with) making webisodes, those little intimate things she shot. As I was watching this happen, being a director, you can see someone flirting with the camera. We started with that.”
Gefragt nach seinem nächsten Filmprojekt, das vor einiger Zeit unter dem Titel “The Predator” angekündigt worden war, und in dem es offenbar um einen Weinstein-ähnlichen Fall gehen soll, meinte De Palma: “Yes, but I had an original title I went back to. When I heard about the whole “catch and kill” thing with the Trump scandals, I immediately said that’s a great title — long before Ronan (Farrow) got a hold of it. Fortunately, I copywrited it. So it’s “Catch and Kill” now. It’s basically a horror movie based on real things that have happened in the news.”
Über die Verbindung zum Fall Weinstein und (Macht-)Missbrauch in Hollywood äußert sich der Regisseur wie folgt: “Harvey Weinstein is part of it but being in Hollywood in the ’70s, there were some abusive actions going on that irritated me quite a lot. When I was casting “Carrie,” George Lucas and I were seeing every young actor in Hollywood. There was one director-actor who was also casting a movie and he was trying to (expletive) these girls while he casting — which got me extremely annoyed. As a director, it offends me because the actor is just trying to get the job. To take advantage of that it, it’s like a doctor doing something against the code of ethics. There was a particular actor-producer that was doing this and that’s the sort of centerpiece of “Catch and Kill.” The Harvey Weinstein character wanders into this. It’s scary and it’s fun.”
Der Dreh soll laut De Palma im August beginnen, wenn alles gut geht. (ck)
