IN 50 years as a film director, Brian De Palma has created an impressive range of Hollywood hits, including Carrie, Scarface, The Untou-chables and Mission: Impossible. His more recent movies, including The Black Dahlia and Redacted, prove that he still knows how to direct. But at 72, he isn't proving it quite so often.
"This is a young man's profession, especially in America," De Palma says. "They're looking for the next hot kid, rather than the guys in their late 60s and 70s."
Excepting directors such as Clint Eastwood, who has been prolific since turning 70 more than a decade ago, and Martin Scorsese, who is about to reach that venerable age, it seems to have always been the case.
Director Robert Redford. Photo: Getty Images
As they approach their 70s, most auteurs from the "golden age" of the 1970s are having trouble getting the backing for new movies, regardless of the classics they have directed.Advertisement
De Palma was once a hot young director, back when Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston were still directing in their senior years.
"I've seen and done everything," he says. "Of course, that doesn't mean much, but I can deal with anything. I've made independent films for nothing and big science fiction epics. But they don't really cast directors like that. It's like, 'Who has the [latest] big box-office hit?'."
Greek director Costa-Gavras, 79, says filmmakers much older than him keep making movies. "Manoel de Oliveira, for example, is 103," he says. (De Oliveira walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, 79 years after his first film. He is now working on his latest project.)
For Costa-Gavras, it's 43 years since Z, which won an Oscar for best foreign language film.
He sees another problem with older filmmakers: retaining the passion. "I think the only idea for a director now, speaking personally, is to keep having a passion, to like cinema, to keep being a viewer, to see it with the freshness that a viewer has. I like to go to the movies a lot, and I like to be surprised."
这两天试一试翻译一下。。。眼睛都花了。。。
