By Abiel Bruhn
As a pubescent film geek, I took myself very seriously. I wanted to learn about the masters of cinema and develop expertise in something, so my shelves were packed with filmographies of Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Truffaut, and so on. My parents beamed as I rambled endlessly about cinematography, theme, character, dialogue…. They were both academics, and they could see the academic value of what I was taking from these films. Then came the rebellious teenage years, and with them, a subconscious desire to terrorize my parents with my film taste after years of eagerly impressing them. Splatter-filled horror comedies, notorious video nasties, “giallo” head-trips… the compulsive violence, lunatic plotting, and gleefully bad taste somehow became like comfort food to me. My parents have since told me they often privately discussed fears that there was something genuinely wrong with me when I would explain how my latest DVD acquisition had been banned in the U.K. until 1997. In other words, my rebellion worked exactly as planned.
I don’t remember when I first saw “Body Double” — probably my freshman year at Chapman University, somewhere in the row of dorm rooms in North Morlan Hall that held fellow film geeks armed with DVD players, ready to blow some minds with their latest discovery. “Body Double” hit me like a freight train, and it’s easy to see why: I’d argue that there’s never been another film that combines true formal mastery with quintessentially ’80s midnight movie sleaze. I couldn’t help but feel a personal communion with De Palma, given our shared interest in depicting the ugliest things imaginable in the most beautiful way possible. The film is a beautifully unreal diorama of De Palma’s impeccably photographed vision of Los Angeles, only it’s populated with unlikable characters, wildly overstylized murders, literal pornography, a plot that makes no sense, and a deadpan comic tone that may or may not be intentional. What I felt then is what I feel now: I’m 100% sure this is pure cinema, and anyone who disagrees is probably right.
Many years and God knows how many viewings later, “Body Double” still has a hold over me that is almost self-parodic amongst my close friends. I want to be as close as possible to the feeling this film gives me. I own the Blu-Ray, I’ve got the soundtrack on vinyl, I’ve got the incredible out-of-print making-of book “Double De Palma,” and I even have a T-shirt. When someone asks me what my favorite movie is, I typically answer “Body Double” in honor of the desert island corollary; there are obviously better films (most critics wouldn’t even call it the best 1980s De Palma film that directly rips off a Hitchcock classic), but if I were heading to a desert island with one film, the choice would be easy.
At this point, I’m deep enough into adulthood that I can safely say I’ve dedicated my entire life to filmmaking and cinematic storytelling. I like to think of myself as a professional, maybe even the expert I once dreamed of being at age 12, someone who’s put in their 10,000 hours and has a fine-tuned appreciation for the art form at its most pure. But I’m also still the same wide-eyed, slack-jawed 17-year-old who just wanted to see something unexpected and depraved to keep him awake during an all-night movie marathon. When I watch “Body Double,” both the professional and the geek are catered to in equal measure — and that’s probably why it inspires me so much. Whenever I’m working on a new project, I’m always searching for that same effortless equilibrium: one side aspiring towards undeniable greatness, the other unashamedly letting the freak flag fly. As a director, I’ve experienced no better feeling than sitting behind the camera during a take, stifling ecstatic giggles because you can’t believe what you’re getting away with. Two decades after discovering it, I can still feel myself giggling next to De Palma every time I watch this film.
