If the New Hollywood of the 1970s was a high school, Steven Spielberg would be the sensitive one, Martin Scorsese the cool guy, George Lucas the dork, Francis Ford Coppola the leader, and Brian De Palma the deviant. The man behind some of the best (and sleaziest) Hollywood thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s—and some excellent action and horror flicks as well—is the subject of a new documentary directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, simply titled De Palma. And The A.V. Club has an exclusive look for all you voyeurs out there. We know you like to watch:
In the clip, De Palma discusses the “Warner Bros. youth group” that included himself and the aforementioned bearded filmmakers. The ’70s marked the first time that former film students who who studied the French New Wave but grew up on monster movies really started taking over the Hollywood system, as opposed to studio employees and critics. The gang, according to De Palma, was very supportive of each other, “passing scripts back and forth.” From the clip, it’s implied that audiences may have gotten Brian De Palma’s Taxi Driver rather than Scorsese’s if the Carrie director hadn’t passed the script along to Marty. (Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader and De Palma would work together on the Vertigo-inspired Obsession in 1976.)
“What we did in our generation will never be duplicated,” De Palma muses. “We were able to get into the studio system and use all that stuff in order to make some pretty incredible movies, before the business men took over again.”
De Palma is currently in a limited release and will be expanding this Friday.