Brian de Palma

Buried for decades. Now, Brian De Palma's wildest vision comes to life. Written in the 1990s between Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, visionary filmmaker Brian De Palma's Ambrose Chapel is his most overtly comic thriller-a wild, unproduced "screwball noir" that spins through kidnapping, virtual reality, mind control, murder, terrorists, romance, dream sequences and dueling memories. Set in a vividly imagined Mexico City, the story centers on Christe Rivera, a woman entangled in a shadowy conspiracy and haunted by a memory-or is it a dream? a lie?-that may be the key to everything. Along the way, Christe is drawn into the orbit of a billionaire with presidential ambitions and a plan to wall off Mexico from the U. S., while a half-forgotten Hitchcock film may hold the answer-if she can survive long enough to remember what's real and who she is. A kinetic blend of playful intrigue, romantic chaos and signature De Palma paranoia, Ambrose Chapel is a revelatory window into one of cinema's most iconoclastic auteurs, offering a vision both prescient and laced with volatile invention, and a thrilling glimpse of the film De Palma never got to make.

Buried for decades. Now, Brian De Palma's wildest vision comes to life. Written in the 1990s between Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, visionary filmmaker Brian De Palma's Ambrose Chapel is his most overtly comic thriller-a wild, unproduced "screwball noir" that spins through kidnapping, virtual reality, mind control, murder, terrorists, romance, dream sequences and dueling memories. Set in a vividly imagined Mexico City, the story centers on Christe Rivera, a woman entangled in a shadowy conspiracy and haunted by a memory-or is it a dream? a lie?-that may be the key to everything. Along the way, Christe is drawn into the orbit of a billionaire with presidential ambitions and a plan to wall off Mexico from the U. S., while a half-forgotten Hitchcock film may hold the answer-if she can survive long enough to remember what's real and who she is. A kinetic blend of playful intrigue, romantic chaos and signature De Palma paranoia, Ambrose Chapel is a revelatory window into one of cinema's most iconoclastic auteurs, offering a vision both prescient and laced with volatile invention, and a thrilling glimpse of the film De Palma never got to make.

Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Mission: Impossible and Carlito's Way - Brian De Palma has directed some of the most potent and stylish movie dramas of the last 50 years. But his lack of diplomacy and constant challenging of conventions have forever condemned him to the margins of the American studio system: "I've always been Hollywood's ugly duckling." Judged in the USA as a shameless Hitchcock plagiarist, he is celebrated in France as a major artist who has pushed the medium of film to its limits. Now this absorbing volume explores his traumatic childhood, his Sixties counter-cultural education and every facet of a rollercoaster, 60-year career as writer and director: from experimental shorts and documentaries, early narrative feature collaborations with an unknown Robert De Niro, and on to the highs, lows and controversies of his ambitious (mis)adventures in crime thriller, horror, noir, science fiction and war film. In these deeply researched and expertly moderated conversations, De Palma recalls his collaborations with artists as distinct as Bernard Herrmann and Sissy Spacek, Nicolas Cage and Ennio Morricone - and undergoes challenging self-analysis. Always quick to give himself credit where he feels credit is (often belatedly) due, De Palma is as unsparing and outspoken about his own failings and failures as those of others, not least American film critics.

"It's like having a new Brian De Palma picture." - Martin Scorsese, Academy Award-winning director FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SCARFACE AND DRESSED TO KILL... A FEMALE REVENGE STORY When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should've known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator's fixer. He's already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman -- how hard could this new one turn out to be? Pursued from Washington D. C. to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn't realize is that her life might be as well...