Comments on: Brian De Palma Explains Why “Television Is Not Cinematic” Plus 42-Minute Talk With Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow

By: Carlos Rodriguez

Carlos Rodriguez — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 15:52:00 +0000

Why does the Director need to have control for it to be cinematic? I think Breaking Bad was extremely creative in how they developed and told that story.

By: Peter Wong

Peter Wong — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 02:24:00 +0000

What he is trying to say is that of total creative control a director has. Being in TV, he believes it is primarily controlled by the writer and producer.

In cinema it is not. A writer came up with the script, that’s it. It now depends on the producer to source for the right director to envision the film. And once the director is on board, he controls everything.

TV is different. The latter is only there to do a specific task – get it directed and that’s it. Its a fixed template. It is creatively restrictive. How many times you watch a TV series and you realize how great was the direction? They all look the same. That is because they don’t have anything for them to “play”. So in many ways I think De Palma was right.

By: FrazySlew

FrazySlew — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 16:28:00 +0000

DePalma shouldn’t talk about this. Its bitter old man territory.
He’s saying, in part, that brilliant shows which are dropping on our heads daily, lack the artistic charge of BIG BUDGET releases. And thus can’t be great cinema. That’s antithetical to any logic about art. Much of the world’s greatest art was created on shoe-string budgets, or none at all. And with modern HD equipment, filmmakers and editors can do in 1/20th the time and budget, what DePalma could do with actual cutting rooms and expensive stock being wasted on retakes. He accuses tv shows of formulaic rigidity. Well, films have a script first, a producer second, and THEN bring in the Director. So how is that any different than what he’s described? He talks about tight time-tables. Ok Trumbo, for example, had to be finished in 3 weeks. Peaky Blinders took as long as they wanted. So did Sopranos. There is NOTHING as rigid as a film shooting schedule. Whereas some of the 10-parters often shoot over a year….til they get it right. I recall Sopranos taking longer than that one year.
Also, Peaky Blinders, Last Tango in Halifax, Wire, Sopranos, Mad Men, Bloodline, House of Cards, etc…they’re not cinema at all. They are indeed television. Of course they are soap operas….they are following the same stories with each episode. You could say, a vastly unedited film, and I’d be in agreement. A film is a short soap opera. It also follows the same storyline. Finally, a film where people just talk to each other, which he seems to loathe…, well those are called Woody Allen films. Woody Allen remains the only director for which superstars line up to take part and get paid SCALE. DePalma’s had a few too many glasses of DePalma. And the editor of this story….should know that “as per” is redundant. Sloppy writing, Sloppy analysis.

By: tristan eldritch

tristan eldritch — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:14:00 +0000

In reply to Daniel Thron.

I think there was some genuinely incredible, ground-breaking stuff a few years back – stuff like THE SOPRANOS, DEADWOOD, and THE WIRE – but for the most part the “Golden Age” is a big hype, an addictive middle-class opiate without half the substance that’s claimed for it.

By: Daniel Thron

Daniel Thron — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 16:43:00 +0000

Television’s so-called ‘Golden Age’ is just very high production value soap opera. As great as the page-to-page writing is, or as wonderful as the character actors you hire are, every episode of any of these major shows can be broken down to this: a random series of scenes where two people talk about what happened, then talk about what might happen. But only rarely does anything of substance ever really happen. This is by design; you don’t want any given Frito to be satisfying — you just want it to be salty and crunchy enough to eat the next one.