Dennis Franz (Body Double) Body Double
Dennis Franz (born October 28, 1944, Maywood, Illinois) played Rubin, the blunt, profane film director in Body Double (1984).
De Palma discovered Franz performing with a Chicago theater company
De Palma found Franz at the Organic Theater Company in Chicago and cast him in The Fury (1978) as a hapless police officer. This launched a four-film run: The Fury, Dressed to Kill (1980) as Detective Marino, Blow Out (1981), and Body Double. The trajectory — from a Chicago storefront stage to recurring De Palma player — ran parallel to Franz's work with Robert Altman during the same period (A Wedding, 1978; A Perfect Couple, 1979; Popeye, 1980). De Palma and Altman were essentially sharing Franz as a character actor in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (televisionacademy)
Rubin is a De Palma self-portrait in two different industries
Franz plays Rubin as a single character across two contexts: directing Jake in the low-budget vampire film at the start, and directing the porn film Jake auditions for later. The casting is De Palma's thesis in miniature — the same man with the same authority, just with different production budgets and different levels of respectability. Franz makes Rubin equally convincing in both worlds, which is the point.
The self-portrait dimension is deliberate: Rubin wears a jacket and sports a beard that echo De Palma's own look on set. A demanding horror-film director played by an actor De Palma had already cast in three prior films — it's meta-commentary wrapped inside a character role.
Franz understood his role in De Palma's world
Franz appeared in four De Palma films in total and was self-aware about his function within them:
"There's a comic element to the most serious of his characters." — Dennis Franz, Body Double: The Seduction (2002)
NYPD Blue was nine years away but the persona was already formed
Franz would become a household name as Detective Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue (1993–2005), winning four Emmy Awards for the role. But the blue-collar toughness and the impatience with pretension are already in Rubin. Body Double is a clear early sketch of the persona that would define his career.
Before Body Double, Franz had been building the persona through television: he appeared as various characters on Hill Street Blues (1983–1987), most notably as Lieutenant Norman Buntz in the final two seasons. He also appeared in Scarface (1983) — another De Palma film — in a small role.
Franz built the Sipowicz persona through De Palma and Hill Street Blues
| Year | Film/Show | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | A Wedding | — | Robert Altman ensemble |
| 1980 | Dressed to Kill | Detective Marino | First De Palma collaboration |
| 1983 | Scarface | Ernie | Second De Palma |
| 1983–87 | Hill Street Blues | Lt. Norman Buntz | Recurring/regular |
| 1984 | Body Double | Rubin | Third De Palma |
| 1987 | Beverly Hills Buntz | Lt. Norman Buntz | Spin-off series |
| 1993–2005 | NYPD Blue | Det. Andy Sipowicz | 4× Emmy winner |