Production History (Carrie) Carrie

De Palma and George Lucas held joint auditions for Carrie and Star Wars

Brian De Palma (De Palma) and George Lucas were both looking for unknown actors in early 1976 and combined their casting searches into a single marathon process. De Palma was casting Carrie; Lucas was casting Star Wars. The open call ran for weeks, with hundreds of young actors reading for parts in both films.

"George Lucas and I were both looking for unknowns, and because we were looking at everybody, we opened up the casting to any kid that wanted to come and try out for the parts in 'Carrie' and 'Star Wars.'" — Brian De Palma, IndieWire (2024)

The process shuffled actors between films. Amy Irving originally read for Carrie White and was De Palma's first choice; after Sissy Spacek's screen test, Irving was reassigned to Sue Snell. Carrie Fisher, who would become Princess Leia, read at the same sessions.

Sissy Spacek put Vaseline in her hair and refused to wash her face

Spacek's husband Jack Fisk -- who served as the film's production designer -- persuaded De Palma to let her audition for the lead. De Palma had been steering Spacek toward the role of Chris Hargensen, the bully, and even told her to do a television commercial for Vanquish headache pills when it fell on the same day as the final screen tests.

Spacek ignored the suggestion. She re-read Stephen King's novel the night before, rubbed Vaseline into her hair, found an old sailor dress her mother had made and took the hem out of it, and refused to wash her face or brush her teeth.

"She played all the parts -- she played Sue Snell, Chris Hargenson, Carrie. She played everybody -- and played them all really well... when we finally had our screen tests Sissy tested for the part of Carrie, and made everyone else look silly." — Brian De Palma, Cinefantastique (1977)

Spacek was twenty-seven years old, playing sixteen. In real life, she had been her high school's homecoming queen -- the opposite of the character she was about to embody. She isolated herself from the rest of the cast during production, decorated her dressing room with religious iconography, and studied an illustrated Bible to inhabit Margaret White's world from Carrie's perspective. During the three-day prom sequence shoot, she slept in her blood-soaked costume to maintain continuity. (tribeca, indiewire)

Piper Laurie thought the script was a comedy

Piper Laurie had not appeared in a film since The Hustler (1961) -- a fifteen-year absence from the screen. When she read the Carrie script, she took it as satire.

"I re-read it and I saw it was a satire, so I took the train into New York City to meet Brian De Palma." — Piper Laurie, IndieWire (2024)

De Palma wanted Margaret White to be beautiful and sexual rather than the conventional image of a dried-up religious fanatic:

"I liked the idea of making Margaret White very beautiful and sexual, instead of the usual dried-up old crone at the top of the hill." — Brian De Palma, Cinefantastique (1977)

Laurie maintained her comic interpretation throughout production. She later said she "laughed so much during the whole making of this movie" at how "preposterous" she was. The performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress -- her first Oscar nomination since The Hustler -- and relaunched a career that had been dormant for a decade and a half. (npr, collider)

The cinematographer was replaced during production

De Palma began shooting with director of photography Isidore Mankofsky, but the two clashed and Mankofsky was replaced by Mario Tosi. Tosi brought a soft, sensuous visual style that complemented De Palma's use of split-field diopter lenses -- a technique that keeps both a close-up foreground and a distant background in simultaneous sharp focus. The picture was shot over fifty days, primarily on locations in and around Los Angeles, with stage work done at Culver Studios. (wikipedia, theasc)

Bernard Herrmann died before he could score the film

De Palma had intended Bernard Herrmann -- who scored Hitchcock's Psycho, Vertigo, and North by Northwest -- to compose the music for Carrie. Herrmann died on December 24, 1975, the night of the final recording session for his score for Taxi Driver. De Palma turned to Pino Donaggio (Donaggio), an Italian composer who had scored his previous film Obsession (1976). Donaggio took the score away from horror and toward tragedy and drama, treating Carrie's story as a romance that goes wrong rather than a monster movie. The school is named Bates High -- a nod to Psycho's Norman Bates -- and Herrmann's stabbing violin motif from Psycho is incorporated as a tribute. (mubi, tribeca)

The prom destruction required over 150 setups and was originally all split-screen

De Palma shot the prom's slow-motion suspense sequence as a deliberate gamble:

"I felt it was a very audacious step to try and shoot that kind of suspense in slow-motion... I really wanted to stretch the suspense scene out for as long I could." — Brian De Palma, Cinefantastique (1977)

The destruction was initially conceived entirely in split-screen, but the first assembly was too complicated:

"I felt the destruction had to be shown in split-screen, because how many times could you cut from Carrie to things moving around?... I put it all together and it lasted five minutes, and it was just too complicated. Also, you lost a lot of visceral punch from full-screen action." — Brian De Palma, SlashFilm (2016)

De Palma and editor Paul Hirsch pulled back, using split-screen selectively for maximum impact rather than throughout. The prom sequence required over two weeks of shooting, with more than 150 setups. The "pig blood" was Karo syrup and food coloring. (slashfilm, tribeca)

The hand from the grave was Spacek's idea and her actual hand

The final shot -- Sue dreaming of Carrie's hand shooting up from the rubble to seize her wrist -- was designed by De Palma and executed with Spacek buried in a coffin beneath the set, per her own request. The hand belongs to Spacek, not a double. Paul Hirsch tracked the cut against two pieces of music -- Tomaso Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor" and Bernard Herrmann's main title from Sisters -- using the opening anvil strike to trigger the jump scare. (tribeca, wikipedia)

The budget was $1.8 million and the film grossed $33.8 million

Carrie was produced by Paul Monash for Red Bank Films and distributed by United Artists. The budget was approximately $1.8 million -- a modest sum even by 1976 standards -- and the film grossed $33.8 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films of the year. The return of over eighteen times the investment gave De Palma the commercial leverage to make The Fury (1978) and eventually Dressed to Kill (1980). (wikipedia, imdb)

"The cast was just a dream. They were committed and devoted to trying everything." — Brian De Palma, IndieWire (2024)