The Director's Chair Network

Hello, and I am very excited for this episode.
I am sitting down with my friend Scott to talk about Brian De Palma's 1998 movie Snake Eyes.
Scott, I'm so excited to talk this one.
I'm very happy to be a part of this.
I was very excited when you posted about it.
I was like, you know what?
As also a Cage fan, you had the little list.
I was like, you know what?
Snake Eyes.
We're doing freaking Snake Eyes.
Yeah, so this is De Palma's 23rd film.
He did it after Mission Impossible, so he was on kind of a commercial role here.
Now, was your initial interest in this film based on Nicolas Cage, or were you coming at
it from, oh my God, this is another sort of Brian De Palma political thriller?
When I watched it, it was probably because of Nicolas Cage.
I liked De Palma, but I think it was because, I mean, Nicolas Cage is in that wheelhouse, right?
Like, he just, he had his birth as, you know, I mean, he's a great actor prior, but he had
that, those summers, the two summers back to back where he's putting out Face Off, he's putting
out The Rock, and he's putting out Con Air.
And then, you know, he falls into this.
So, I mean, this really does feel like a kindred spirit to those films, but unfortunately, I
think this movie came out on the same weekend that Saving Private Ryan did.
So, you know, I think his, his, his ascent was kind of doomed because, I mean, he's taking
out the juggernaut that is Saving Private Ryan at that time.
Yeah, and I also think that, you know, it's an R-rated film, but it's not a popcorn flick
per se.
It's kind of dressed up like a popcorn flick, and that's one of the things I really love
about De Palma is he's able to make these films that appear like one thing and they're
really another.
Like, if I was, like, sort of lumping his movies together, and one of the reasons I wanted
to do a podcast devoted to De Palma was the fact that the dude has mastered many genres.
A lot of filmmakers can't do that.
And I've said this, I might have said this on Facebook, or I might have said it on a podcast
I recorded with Ryan and Doug recently, but, like, Brian De Palma, like, he made Carrie,
and then he made Blowout, you know what I mean?
Like, you know, not right after each other, but, like, a lot of filmmakers, they make Carrie,
and that's it.
They're, they're the horror guy for the rest of their career.
And for whatever reason, that didn't happen with De Palma.
And I know we're probably going to make a lot of comparisons.
between this and Blowout, because I think they are sort of, like, sister films, if you will.
One is sort of, you know, I think De Palma really at the height of his powers with Blowout,
and then, you know, Snake Eyes is probably his second to last good film.
That's fair.
That's fair.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think this is a perfect film to talk about, because we're going to talk about,
I think, the scene everybody.
The scene.
Yeah.
You know, it talks about when they talk about this movie, which is that 13, 13 or, you know,
13 and a half.
It's about 13, yep.
Opening shot.
That's a single take.
Now, De Palma has been open and honest about the fact that it's really three different shots,
but it flows like a single shot.
And it basically sets up the whole movie.
And the other cool thing I like about it, Scott, is they call back to it the rest of the movie,
and you sort of get this, like, Roshamon effect, where, like, you start seeing the sequence
from everybody else's point of view.
I'm going to point out one thing that I really like about this scene.
And I think this is a perfect movie for people to watch if they've never watched De Palma before.
Because this opening sequence puts in a lot of his techniques.
It does.
But the one thing I really like about this is that first 13 minutes or so, it's not a traditional movie.
There's no score.
We don't get any of that beautiful score.
It's one of my favorite De Palma scores ever.
But you don't get any score, and you don't get any traditional, you know,
filmmaking techniques aside from the way De Palma decides to move his camera.
And then when the assassination happens, that's when it becomes a movie.
And that's the really, really cool aspect of that scene.
That kind of also sells the idea of why it's a single take.
You know, it wasn't just like, oh, I want to jerk off here and show off what a skilled planner I am.
Because the amount of planning that went into that.
Unbelievable.
Is, yeah, it's, I mean, I can't even imagine the amount of hours of planning that went into it, rehearsing.
And then Cage is, you know, all the stuff that was expected of Cage there.
Yeah.
But do you have any overall general feelings about the sequence?
The sequence is, at first viewing, a chaotic mess.
But after the first viewing, and more viewings after, it is a cinematic masterpiece of 13 minutes.
And it's a combination of Brian De Palma and Cage, but also Gary Sinise.
Like, the two of them are such a great film between the, you know, moments between the two of them.
But especially, obviously, it's led by Cage.
And I rewatched it before doing this with you.
And I watched it a couple weeks ago.
I watched the whole thing through.
And what I finally was able to really kind of come to grasp with, you know, the fun thing about these podcasts, you get to sit down and you have to, you know, you rewatch them for this, for these moments, right?
So you look into them.
And I've done that on my podcast.
You look at a scene and you break it down.
And that's what film lovers like us, film geeks like us, love to do.
When you watch this, and if you're not a fan of Nicolas Cage, you'll think, oh, here we go.
We're getting another Cage, right?
He is the only person who can play this role.
And it's because that he is supposed to be the Cagest he's ever been at the moment.
He's a hustler.
Oh, my God.
He embodies Rick Santora, right?
He embodies him.
He needs to be a frenetic ball of chaos because he's chaotic.
What's going on behind him is chaotic.
Everything is chaotic.
And yet there's a fight that we want to watch, and the camera never turns to it, which forces us as the viewers to be like, what are we missing?
The things we're missing is what's happening right in front of our eyes.
And you need the mastery of De Palma in the scene.
You need the mastery of Cage as an actor because it is a constant, like, it's almost like the game, like the shuffle, the out front way.
Where's the quarter?
Where's the nut underneath?
Which cups are under?
And they just keep moving, and you don't know what's going on.
But you need this.
And just watching Cage, I mean, who comes in?
I'm Rickhead.
Like, he comes in on fire.
You know what I mean?
He comes in on fucking fire, and it just keeps rolling.
And it's just, it's so exciting.
Because, you know, I remember watching it the very first time in theaters.
I remember thinking, God, Nicholas Cage, what an overacting.
Like, it would be a normal reaction for a first-time person to watch it, to watch it and think, he's hamming it up.
He's, you know, this is, he's garbage in this.
But it's not until you understand the layers that are thrown in there and the need for him to be this guy.
If Gary Sinise was the lead, we'd be bored out of our minds.
We need Gary Sinise because we also need to be thinking that Gary's the good guy.
Yeah.
Like, you know, like, Rick's gonna, Rick's arc is to help his buddy.
Yeah.
So we know Rick's the sleazeball.
We know that within minutes of the fucking movie.
And then we think, oh, he's gonna help his buddy out here.
Obviously, as the movie goes on, we find out different things happen.
So if Gary was the lead and Nick is the, you know, the side character, it doesn't work.
The whole thing doesn't work because we would forget about Gary.
We'd be watching too much of Nick Cage, like, on cocaine, lose his mind, and we'd miss things.
So the combination of the perfect actor for the perfect moment.
And I think why people may not enjoy the film as it goes through is because it's hard to live up to that first 13 frenetic minutes.
Like, it's a lot.
Like, it does take a couple of viewings to go back and watch and go, oh, my God, yeah.
Even though when they bring it back to you, you know, later on in the film, you figure out, oh, that's right, that was happening.
And then I even tried to watch it tonight and just tried to not pay attention to Nick and watch the background.
And it's hard because it's chaos.
It really is a sea of chaos.
Like, you could almost have a contest with people and pick out one thing and ask them if they found, remember what the guy who yells, here comes the paint coat was wearing.
Like, I couldn't tell you, and I just watched it 15 minutes ago.
You know what I mean?
Because there's so much happening.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
A lot of good points there.
And I did want to talk about Gary Sinise a little bit in this scene who plays Kevin Dunn.
Not to be confused with the actor Kevin Dunn, who is also in this movie.
I went right here.
It did confuse them on set.
Because he's, you know, they, I think a little inside thing was Kevin Dunn himself was giving Gary Sinise's penthouse suite the first night they were there.
And then had to get, when he had to be asked to leave it because it was for Gary Sinise because somehow there was a mix-up with the name.
And he ended up staying at some, like, roadside motel down the way.
But, yeah, that's a little fun inside note on the Snake Eyes movie.
Yeah.
So, Kevin Dunn, Gary Sinise's character, he arrives kind of late in this sequence.
But he's a pivotal part of it.
And we get a lot of exposition there.
You know, we sort of get the whole, you know, the whole plot is sort of dumped.
You know, the Secretary of Defense is there.
They're just getting back from some place, from some missile test.
Yeah.
It's all laid out, but we don't care.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
No, it's all information.
Yeah, you're like, why am I hearing this?
But the thing I like about their performance, especially when you watch it back, is especially when they're sitting there and Gary's, you know, Kevin's kind of giving Rick a hard time about not being faithful to his wife and, you know, kind of living the life that he's living.
He tells that joke about his wife likes to talk during sex.
She calls me.
But then you also see in his head, he's running another script.
And he's trying to remember the script he's got to run that leads up to the assassination.
And that's when he notices the redhead and points it out to Nick Cage.
And he's pretty much setting up his reason for leaving his post and being where he ends up being when he kills the assassin.
And it's a performance you can't really appreciate.
Again, it's funny because you pointed out, Scott, that a lot of this movie you can't really appreciate until you've watched it a second time because you're not going to think back to that moment where they're sitting there talking before the bell rings.
But on a second watch, you see that.
And like I said, you see sort of the screws turning in Gary, Kevin's head where he's like, okay, this is what I need to do.
You know, this chess piece needs to move here.
And I just I think it's a it's an underrated aspect of that scene.
And, you know, I didn't do enough research to see how many takes of each of the three shots they did.
But I mean, for for for everyone to hit their marks when they're supposed to and I know sound design plays into a lot of this, especially when Rick jumps up and says, I am the king and the whole crowd sort of goes nuts at the same time.
I mean, a lot of that was probably done in post with sound, but it all works.
And I'm continually amazed by the fact that Cage was able to hit every mark he was supposed to hit, nail every line he was supposed to nail and just keep up that intensity.
It really is.
An incredible achievement.
Oh, and again, I don't really think it's a it's a gimmick because I do think that it's sort of essential to tell the story of that movie the way it is, because like you said,
we don't see the fight.
So if you're filming that like a traditional filmmaker, how do you not show the fight but still cover it like a traditional filmmaker?
So it's pretty wild.
We do get introduced to some other characters there.
We get introduced to Tyler, who is the old high school.
Well, I guess he's a high school alumni.
Alumnus.
Yep.
Yeah.
He's the he's the heavyweight champ at the time.
Yeah.
And then three minutes.
We also get the his broadcaster friend.
Yep.
Played by Kevin Dunn.
Kevin Dunn.
We also get the bookie who he's laying a bet down with.
And then we also see Luis Guzman, who's another sort of a callback from Carlito's way.
And he's a drug dealer.
Yeah.
That he shakes down.
Mm hmm.
And the thing I like about the sequence, and I watched this three times, three complete times before sitting down to watch this.
And after the first viewing, I probably hadn't watched it in over 10 years.
I had to dig the DVD out, the non-anamorphic DVD.
Nice.
By the way, it is streaming now on Paramount.
Paramount Plus.
Yeah.
Prime.
Yep.
Yeah.
And Paramount.
I watched it on Paramount Plus.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's also as of this recording.
So it's easy to stream for people that haven't seen it and want to see it.
But after that first watch, I was like, I didn't buy the redemption at the end.
But when you watch the movie again and you watch that opening sequence, the Luis Guzman scene is really the entire reason or the catalyst for sort of him not making the wrong decision at the end of the movie.
And it's that bloody bill.
And it's the bloody bill he takes out of Guzman's hand.
And at the end of the movie, you know, we get that in a lot of other filmmakers' hands, it would be considered really ham-fisted or too on the nose.
But he looks down and he sees the blood money and he realizes that if he gives up the woman, he'd lose his soul.
And I think, so like, again, every beat in that opening sequence is important.
While we wind down that scene, I did want to also mention Carla Gugino.
Yes.
Who, again, she pops up towards the end of the scene.
She's a very important part of the movie.
Yep.
Did you have any takeaway from her performance and that little interaction she has with Cage before the assassination?
He's as sleazy as can be.
I mean, he is in full pimp outfit.
Like, if he could be a pimp, you know, he's got the hair slicked back and he's got the special gold flip phone for all you Gen Xers out there.
He had the gold-plated flip phone, this special phone for all his ladies to get a hold of.
And, like, when she sits down, which was the opening, like, so when Kevin moves, that's the opening so the shot is clear.
She sits down and she's got a blonde wig on, which we realize later.
And he's like, you know, that seat's taken.
But then he's, like, pointing us at, but this is open.
And she goes, I'll only be here in a minute.
He goes, it'll only take me a minute or something.
He's being so sleazy.
And then it's intentional.
Obviously, at that point, we start to realize, and I think he starts to realize something's going on.
So it's like, like you said, it works.
Other people, it feels like it's, you know, heavy-handed, but it's intentional at that moment that us, we're seeing this movie through Rick Santora.
We are Rick Santora.
We are, I'm Rick.
We are him.
We are full in.
He's got us enamored.
We don't know what's going on.
We don't care because we're watching Nick Cage do a Nick Cage thing.
And then when she sits down and he does a little sleazeball thing, it's when she leans in and he says, you know, there's a small interaction.
And then, of course, the fight starts to get thrown and there's all the chaos going on.
It's when she says something about, like, you'll be in trouble.
You'll be the one who's sorry, yeah.
We're supposed to kind of think, like, oh, maybe she's trying to assassinate him.
And that's when Rick hears it.
So that's when all of a sudden us as the viewer and Rick start to go, wait a minute.
He gets pulled away from the fight because he's mad that the guy just fell down.
But there's something like all of a sudden he's like, and it's moments later that that's when he gets shot.
The blood gets on Rick.
She gets hit in the arm.
He tackles her.
And then that's when all of a sudden, like you said, it goes into a movie.
Now all of a sudden we're in.
Now Rick himself, from that moment on, Nick Cage, his performance dials way back.
Because all of a sudden he realizes it's not Ricky Santora fight night.
It's, oh, fuck, what am I involved in?
Now I've got to save my friend's ass.
But then everything starts to unravel.
So she is a catalyst.
And again, if you want to go with these fun things, the girl in the red, that's the red herring.
She's the girl in white.
She's actually the knight, the white, the knight with the white and the shining armor kind of thing.
She's the good person.
Everything is there for us.
But we don't see any of it.
We don't see any of the breadcrumbs because the fantastic performance.
And just, I mean, the second AD who's in charge of the background people.
Or the first AD, I think it was the first AD.
What an amazing job they did.
Because that is almost seamless.
And again, a lot of it helps is that you're able to whip paint.
And it's a fight night.
So people can be out of, technically, they don't have to be continuity correct, right?
Even in their seats, like we wouldn't even be paying attention to it because it's whipping.
And I guess someone could sit there and go, oh, well, well, collars, you know what I mean?
Collars back in the shirt or something like that.
But so much is happening so fast that the background is just as important as the foreground.
And as a viewer, when you try to watch one over the other, you can't focus.
It really does feel like you're in like this ADHD fever dream, right?
Like there's nothing to focus on except for our sleazeball, Rick.
And then these little women pop in and you see them.
And they're intentionally colored the way they are.
I mean, that girl couldn't wear brighter red.
You know what I mean?
And what's their name?
Couldn't be in brighter white.
So you're just like, holy shit, that's a stark contrast.
And our eyes are meant to be pulled to them and look at them.
And it's just such great filmmaking.
But if, like I said earlier, you might think it's a shit film because you're not, you don't know what's happening, right?
Like you have to watch it one time through.
And then once you know and you watch it again, you start to go, oh.
You peel the layers back yourself.
You go, oh.
You start to really see how he put this film together in such an amazing way.
And unfortunately, I think it's a bad rap towards the end because of how amazing this opening is.
You know what I mean?
He almost shoots himself in the foot because how do you keep up with the pacing after we just saw what we saw?
But in the same aspect, how is us as a viewer, how could we have maintained the kinetic, frenetic energy of Cage for an hour and a half?
Because it's only a 90-minute movie.
Absolutely.
And again, I think you pointed out the symbolism and the colors of the two women.
And again, that's another thing I like about or I love about De Palma as a filmmaker is he can do these really obvious things.
But it's done in such an artistic way that you don't realize that you're being sort of delivered this information the way that you are.
And I think that De Palma's got this incredible ability to sort of make highbrow films for gutter viewers, if that makes any sense.
Yes, yes.
You know, like it's a real arthouse aesthetic, but he never sort of lost his love of just, you know, sort of, for lack of a better word, like grindhouse filmmaking.
That's why I wanted to do this podcast again, because I think he's such a varied filmmaker.
He's mastered many genres.
And I think if you've never watched De Palma, again, I think that Snake Eyes isn't a bad introduction to De Palma as a filmmaker.
Because again, you're going to get a lot of his techniques that he uses.
It's going to be in a more modern environment.
And it'll sort of set you up for what to expect when you go back through his filmography.
Yeah.
He's got such an eclectic filmography, and I just can't wait to talk about it some more.
So, Scott, that was an awesome sort of tour through that opening uninterrupted shot in Snake Eyes.
Before we go, I do want to say that you are a fellow podcaster.
That's how you make your friends.
Yes, I am.
That is.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about all your projects and where people can find them?
Sure.
My main, and the reason we met is my main bread and butter, is the Church of Tarantino, where I have been going through for the last three years everything Tarantino.
And right now in season three, we are dissecting Pulp Fiction until we can dissect it no more.
I also do a podcast with my good friend Steve Smith.
We do two of them.
One is called The Cheeky Bastards, Men of Action, where we take a look at two action movies and pit them against each other in a very fun head-to-head matchup to see which one comes out on top based on completely bullshit criteria just for fun.
Just to try to re-watch some of these ones that we saw back when we were kids and enjoyed to see if they still stand up for the test of time.
And then we have been doing a daunting excursion going through the 40 films of Bruce Willis' straight-to-video filmography called Dropping a Bruce.
And that's been a great journey, too.
But we're in a stage right now where the aphasia is starting to peak.
Yeah.
And obviously, those who watched it back in the day would never have known this was going on, but you're starting to not see it.
And it is kind of sad.
It is a sad, sad but nostalgic look back at a lot of films that most people would not watch of his because they went straight to VOD.
And you can find me mostly at the Church of Tarantino on Facebook and Instagram and at Church of QT Pod on Twitter and Letterboxd.
And from there, you can also find my stuff for The Cheeky Bastards and Dropping a Bruce.
Awesome.
Well, once again, Scott.
And you've been on two or three times on the Cheeky Bastards.
Church of Tarantino.
Church of Tarantino.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some of my favorite podcasting experiences.
Well, I appreciate this, Scott.
Thank you so much.
I'm sure we'll be back at some point to maybe talk a different scene from Snake Eyes or maybe even a different De Palma movie.
One thing about this podcast is it makes it possible to do the same movie.
I know I already have two different people lined up for Untouchables.
So, yeah.
Anytime, like I said, if you want to come and talk.
I might reach out for some more.
Yeah, yeah.
Like I said, I would love to cover more of Snake Eyes or any other De Palma film you want to talk.
But you are one of the people that has an open invitation on my show.
Thank you.
And again, thank you and thank you for listening.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Fate turns on a dime.
The only thing I will do.