Brian dePalma's Blow Out (minor spoilers)

If Enemy of the State is the unofficial sequel to The Conversation, Brian dePalma's Blow Out is the unofficial sequel to Antonioni's Blow Up with a bit of The Conversation thrown in. I watched it because I thought it would be a good model for our looking/investigating scenes and indeed it is.

When Blow Out was released I was an undergrad at UCLA. I remember one of the other art students saying, "I can't believe John Travolta made me cry." Back then, John Travolta was known for Saturday Night Fever and Grease and was trying hard to be taken seriously as an actor. He gave a good, natural performance I think, aided by cigarettes which are always good when you don't know what to do with your hands.

dePalma is obsessed with split screens in this film. Sometimes it looks like he's using the split-focus lens he used in Carrie---huge object in focus in the foreground / tiny things in focus in the background (thanks to David C. for this info). At other times, the screen is literally a split screen, sometimes distractingly so as in the TV scene. But for a dePalma film, it's very restrained. It's also interesting to see how the film plays now 25 years later. The music is SO made-for-TV with delusions of Lalo Schiffrin dancing in its head. Having John Lithgow, Dennis Franz and John Travolta also doesn't help dispel the "made for TV" vibe.

Blow Out is about sound man Jack Terry who inadvertently records the sound of an assassination on tape. One scene is phenomenologically interesting. We see Terry scrubbing the tape as he listens to a gunshot and a tire blow out which are almost instantaneous. He keeps scrubbing and then finally we hear the sound as Terry hears it--two discreet pops literally separated in time (25:33).

Also interesting and very analogous to our project is the piecing-together-the-evidence scene in which Terry syncs his audio with a reconstructed film of the incident (33:00). What makes the scene interesting is not necessarily the suspense, but the sheer pleasure of watching something being constructed. Something to think about for our effort. The analog tapes with labels are a good idea for close ups in the red room. Also, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, the clarity of the later continuation of the scene is enhanced by pointing--Terry literally points to the important part of the film over and over (51:00).

Like any good conspiracy film, this one features the crazy obsession room, in this case Terry's studio (above) which is a mess after he tries to find a presumably deleted audiotape (1:07). Another good addition to my list of Crazy People's lairs.