The De Palma Decade: Redefining Cinema with Doubles, Voyeurs, and Psychic Teens
About this audiobook
Among a crop of fresh filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola revolutionizing Hollywood in the ’70s, Brian De Palma—a director from Philadelphia with a few social satires under his belt—charted a cinematic path unlike any of his peers. At times he was unfairly dismissed as a Hitchcock copycat; other times he was misunderstood for his peculiar mix of sexuality, humor, music, and violence. But, over the course of ten years, he created a new cinematic language, melding his signature themes with specific filmmaking techniques that are now synonymous with his name.
Acclaimed filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau explores the seven films that came to define the De Palma decade—Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Obsession, Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out. Combining film analysis, detailed production histories, and new interviews with De Palma himself, his casts, and collaborators, Bouzereau presents the definitive record on this unrivaled period of cinematic creativity and the emergence of an auteur who would continue to influence filmmaking in the decades that followed.
About the author
Laurent Bouzereau is an award-winning filmmaker and best-selling author. His credits include the feature documentary Faye about legendary actress Faye Dunaway for HBO/Amblin, the event documentary on John Williams, produced by Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, the Disney+/Lucasfilm documentary Timeless Heroes on Harrison Ford, the HBO feature documentaries Mama’s Boy, based on the best-selling memoir by Dustin Lance Black, and Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, as well as the acclaimed Netflix series Five Came Back (with an Emmy winning narration by Meryl Streep), executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Bouzereau has produced and directed hundreds of benchmark behind-the-scenes documentaries, including Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. He is the author of several books on cinema, including Spielberg: The First Ten Years (2023), TheDe Palma Decade (2024). Laurent Bouzereau and his husband Markus Keith run Nedland Media, a production company based in Los Angeles, developing scripted as well as non-scripted projects. Nedland is also a leader in film and brand marketing, working on campaigns for all the major studios.
