Directing music videos can be hard. Critics won't like a director's style from time to time. If the directors shoots a lot, folks will compare the most recent to the others and claim the director is repeating themself. Fun and stylized can certainly spill over into kitsch and camp.
DePalma's biggest MV credit is the famous 'Dancing in the Dark' video for Springsteen with a young Courtney Cox. That clip was about as straight ahead as could be, but it is in features where DePalma has worked for decades and often truly colors outside the lines.
A recent interview on Gawker to promote his new film Passion (see trailer above) gave DePalma a chance to opine on his lengthy career - which includes a hip-hop influencer of the highest order - Scarface. The 70-something director talks about how he may have lost his fastball and how he has dealt with criticism that his style is sometimes just too much:
I've been through this for so many years, it's hard for me to really pay much attention to it [criticism}. I have my followers and then I have my detractors. You know, because I have a kind of very distinctive style and a very, cinematic way of approaching things, some people like it and some people don't. And there is not much to convince one side to come over to the other. Sometimes I find that perceptions… we've heard them all before. It sounds like they’re quoting some boiler-plate Brian De Palma, just put you to sleep.
DePalma is open and articulate - always undeniably aware of who he is and what he likes to shoot. Check out the full interview, it is clear DePalma would have been a great full-time music video director if things had gone differently.
Somebody else said the history of movies is men photographing women, which is very true I think. [Laughing]
Doug Stern also writes music video treatments and often dresses up in Lithgow drag.
