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Hey peoples, this looks like a comfy place. I'm a 24 year old screenwriter and filmmaker from the Netherlands. When i get the chance i will schowcase my latest short.

Anyhoo, what do you all think of Paul Schrader as a writer/director. Personally i think THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS may be his best directorial duty, as for screenwriting, of course TAXI DRIVER.

Hello.  Thanks for starting this thread.  I think Paul's the best of the best, especially when it comes to screenwriting.  But anyhoo, I don't know how familiar you are with some of his other work, but if you haven't seen them, check out American Gigolo and his recent Affliction.  Great shit.

Auto Focus. Great fucking movie.

Schrader is one of my heroes of all time. My favorite writer for sure.

But don't see Touch, it was a goof he made right around Affliction. I try to pretend it never happened.

I hope everyone here has seen Blue Collar, though. Brilliant.
I wanna see Hardcore (his 2nd film), but it's not avalable anywhere. Mac -- I'll bet you know if it's coming to dvd or not...

I haven't seen a single Shrader directed movie yet. I've seen the Scorsese movies he's written like Taxi Driver, Bringing Out The Dead, etc. and I've actually taped American Gigilo off TV uncut but right before I was about to watch it, the VCR ate it up! I really, really want to see Auto focus though.

Quote from: SoNowThenI wanna see Hardcore (his 2nd film), but it's not avalable anywhere. Mac -- I'll bet you know if it's coming to dvd or not...

Great movie. I'm waiting for that one too. But haven't found any info about it making it's way to DVD.

Schrader is the greatest screenwriter of all time.  In a mere four years (1976 to 1980), he wrote Taxi Driver, Obsession, Rolling Thunder, Blue Collar, Old Boyfriends, Hardcore, American Gigolo and Raging Bull.  He also directed Blue Collar, Hardcore and American Gigolo.  His record has been spotty post-Raging Bull.  Affliction is a return to his 70's form, and Auto Focus was solid.

There is a book called Schrader on Schrader, from Faber Books, which I believe is out of print, but if you can get a copy of it, read it.  Any interview with Schrader is worth reading.  He's a highly intelligent, articulate guy who is never dull.  Usually, highly creative people are not articulate about the creative process, but Schrader certainly is.

The stuff he did in the 70's was built to last.  Watching Blue Collar recently, I was struck by how well it captured what was going on in the late 70's, with manufacturing jobs going offshore, unions becoming increasingly corrupt, and workers becoming disillusioned.  A year after Blue Collar came out, Norma Rae tackled union issues in 1979.  However, Blue Collar holds up better.  Its unflattering portrait of unions is much more realistic than the simplistic melodrama of Norma Rae.

One thing I love about Schrader is how he tackles very serious issues, but doesn't resort to overheated melodrama like Oliver Stone or Spike Lee.

Schrader, perhaps better than anyone else working in the 70's, understood how the ideals of the 60's counter-culture came crashing down.  Hardcore and American Gigolo, for all their surface allure, show the emptiness of the sexual revolution.

There is a vein of Calvinist sexual repression running through his work -- especially in Taxi Driver, Hardcore and Raging Bull -- that is rather singular in American films.  Like Scorsese, Schrader had a very strict religious upbringing, and it continues to effect his work.

Yeah, I've read Schrader On Schrader. It's by far the best __ on  ___ book I've seen.

It's out of print???

Anyone seen Forever Mine?

Nope.

Anybody seen the one he did with Michael J Fox? That's another one on my list of must-sees...

Yeah, Light of Day.  I saw it a long time ago when I was younger and I didn't like it much then.  Light Sleeper is another good one.  Auto Foucs is great, so is Affliction.  "I'm gettin to feel like a whipped dog.  Some day I'm gonna bite back."  Great stuff!

I think I could pick up Light Sleeper for cheap on dvd. Worth a blind buy?

If you like schrader's stuff, yes.  But I'd feel bad if you bought it and didn't like it.

I'd feel bad as well. Money is tight nowadays.


plus i can't stand susan s, but for schrader i will give her a chance...

Quote from: SoNowThenI'd feel bad as well. Money is tight nowadays.

I hear that.  enjoy!

Raging Bull is his best work imo. He's definitely a gifted writer and storyteller, no questions. I'm not into his directing as much as his writing. After seeing Auto Focus, I haven't really been going out of my way to see his other stuff. I didn't like it that much. I thought it was a big disappointment really, cause it looked fucking gorgeous from the poster to the trailer...I couldn't wait to see it. But, ultimately, it was just a letdown...Willem Dafoe (also gifted of course) ended being the whole movie, he was the only good thing about it. Greg Kinnear is a great actor, don't get me wrong but I think he could have been a lot better. A lot could have been a lot better in that movie imo.

Anyway, I look forward to him collaborating with Scorsese again...that I would love to see. I really wanna see The Last Temptation of Christ in the meanwhile too, I think he wrote that, right?

he did a draft, yes.


run out and buy the criterion disc! you will not be sorry!!!

i have only seen one of the films he directed......affliction.and thought is was great.....



the tooth makes me cringe

would have been interesting to see how close encounters would have turned out had they stayed with his drafts...........

Light Sleeper is one of Schrader's weaker films.  No loss if you don't see it.  Light of Day with Michael J. Fox is also weak, almost a self-parody.  Cat People sucked.  Mishima was forgettable.  For his directorial efforts, focus on Blue Collar, Hardcore, American Gigolo and Affliction.

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To his wife and fans, "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane was so convincing an actor that he seemed like the rare celebrity uncorrupted by showbiz. But off-camera, Crane led a very different double life. He was both a sex addict and an early adopter of home-movie technology, a combination that suggests that even when American audiences weren't tuned in to his show, Crane was never really "off-camera." The actor painstakingly documented his sexual exploits, literally cataloging his conquests for posterity. In a provocative twist, Crane now serves as the specimen before the lens in Paul Schrader's new film, Auto Focus.

Schrader is no stranger to biopics (he co-wrote the Raging Bull screenplay) or hardcore (in fact, that's the name of the second film he directed, about a Calvinist father who sets out to rescue his runaway daughter from the L.A. porn industry). But the man who wrote Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ was a little surprised by how difficult it was to get Auto Focus past the MPAA. "I've been watching too much 'Sex in the City,'" he explains. "I thought I was dealing with an 'R.' I wasn't aware that what HBO was doing would not have gotten an 'R.' I decided to blur the offending portions, just so the audience would know that it wasn't cheesecake, that it was hardcore, but we can't show it to them." In the past, Schrader's raw subject matter has forced us to question the pleasures we get by watching movies. In Auto Focus, he expands that theme, asking us to consider why we make them as well.

Here, in his own words, Schrader recommends five films that help him to answer that question.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Conformist
(1970, dir: Bernardo Bertolucci, starring: Jean Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli)
There are certain movies I tend to re-screen when I'm getting ready to direct, which is what I'm doing now. The first one is The Conformist, which is a film that is very liberating in terms of how it uses the camera. That whole kind of fascist mentality and that mixture of talents -- [production designer] Nando Scarfiotti, [cinematographer] Vittorio Storaro and Bernardo Bertolucci -- was as perfect a visual troika as you can have. [Rather than simply borrowing the film's style, Schrader asked Storaro to shoot his next project, a prequel to The Exorcist.] It's called Exorcist: The Beginning. This takes place 25 years before the Friedkin movie. Stellan Skarsgard plays the young Lancaster Merrin during World War II when he first meets the devil. The sequels suffered from having to deal with all that baggage that's left over, but I'm in front of it, so maybe I can get away. I just have to stay clear of a lot of that stuff The Exorcist is famous for because you can't beat that film on its own turf.

Performance
(1970, dir: Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg, starring: James Fox, Mick Jagger)
Performance, the Nic Roeg/Donald Cammell film, is also visually very, very alive. It's absolutely fascinating. It mixes two genres; it's sort of the hippie film with the gangster film. It's about a gangster, James Fox, who's on the run and ends up living in this house -- actually it's Keith Richards's house -- with Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg, and a loss of sexual identity and everything like that. It's a tremendous film, and I saw it again recently. It holds up very well. I've never had the guts to quite go there, although there is a shot in Mishima that is taken from Performance. I just mention it because it is a film that you cannot watch without being invigorated visually. It sets you thinking.  

Natural Born Killers
(1994, dir: Oliver Stone, starring: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis)
The same is true of Natural Born Killers. You can't watch that movie without thinking visually; it's so full of ideas. When you're preparing a film, that's what you want to see. You can watch it with the sound off, just have it playing in the background and every once in a while glance over, and all of a sudden, you'll see something. It's just outrageous, you know, that whole section where they portray child abuse as a sitcom. I mean, my God, just the audacity and the originality of it all. I don't care much for movies that demand that you think a certain way or feel a certain way at the end. I like it to stay a little bit open, give room for the viewer to participate in the process, rattle around inside the text of the film and come up with his or her own conclusions, which may or may not be the conclusions of the filmmaker.  

Pickpocket
(1959, dir: Robert Bresson, starring: Martin LaSalle, Marika Green)
I think the primary inspiration to me as a writer was the Bresson film Pickpocket. It made it so clear to me that you could do these kind of character studies of lesser people, people defined by their situation in life or their occupation, and sort of go from place to place and watch them. You can trace the activity of a person and gradually their interior life will be revealed. Of course, Bresson did not believe in psychological realism, and I do, so that's a huge, huge difference, but without Pickpocket, there couldn't have been Taxi Driver. There is a kind of character I keep circling around [in Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Light Sleeper]. I want to take him into his fifties. That's the film I want to do with Kevin Kline. I've written the script. It's called The Walker; it's about a society walker, a homosexual, a fellow who squires rich ladies to the opera whose skills are more social than sexual.

Prick Up Your Ears
(1987, dir: Stephen Frears, starring: Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina)
I think with a biopic, what you're trying to do is make a film that has the power of fiction. Prick Up Your Ears, the Stephen Frears film, has a relationship at the center of it that is similar, you know, these two men, only that was Joe Orton. So with Crane and Carpenter, I was trying to do an American, middle-aged, heterosexual, TV-star version of the Joe Orton/Kenneth [Halliwell] relationship, so that was useful to see on Auto Focus. I do something that's a bit of a cheat. I sit down and I retype the whole script, rewrite all the descriptions and rewrite all the dialogue in my own words. Sometimes I don't change much at all, but I retype it, and I put in my own punctuation, so by the time I get out there to direct it, I'm looking at it and thinking, "Oh, yeah, I remember writing this."

Fuck, and I thought the Egoyan list was good.

Amazing!!!

Schrader is da man!


EDIT: can someone please give me an explanation of "psychological realism"?

All excellent choices (with the very notable exception of Natural Born Killers... yeesh, Paul!).

It's interesting that this is the only overlap in these lists (so far): He and Todd Haynes both chose Roeg's (and Cammell's) Performance.

Mac, thanks for posting these Top 5 Lists.

See, stuff like this, this is what movies are all about. All these directors are talking about the film they're making now, through the prism of those that came before and influenced it. This is the point of cinema. No bullshit gossip over who has final cut, or who was doing what drug on set, or whatever, just good film talk. These are the kind of interviews I hope I get to do one day...

The devil you'll never know
By Nick Nunziata
CNN Headline News
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Posted: 11:28 AM EST (1628 GMT)


(CNN) -- Sometimes it's hard to decide which is truly more horrific: The world of horror or the world of the film business.

With horror you have staples to rely on. You know that the victim is going to open a closet and get startled by a cat while the real villain lurks behind them. You know that the scary voice on the phone will be revealed to be coming from upstairs in the house. You know that the little girl isn't vomiting pea soup across the room because it's fun, though I must admit that it is a hobby of mine.

The familiarity of horror is what makes the genre eternal. After a long week, sometimes we need a little shock or a little mayhem in our escapism. The horror of reality is present every time we unfold a newspaper or change the channel, so we'll take a guy in a hockey mask on film over a guy in a ski mask in real life any chance we can get.

That makes sense. The film business does us no such favors. It's a serpentine beast, impossible to predict and often one whose motives and logic seem veiled in the mire.

A perfect example would be how the upcoming "Exorcist: The Beginning" prequel has been handled through its unique and controversial existence.

For those who aren't aware, the fourth film in the successful horror series was shot last year in Italy and Morocco with respected filmmaker Paul Schrader behind the lens and the always solid Stellan Skarsgärd playing the younger incarnation of the priest that Max von Sydow played in the 1973 original.

That's a rather solid one-two punch, especially in a business where most franchises have lost all their creative steam by their second installment. This was to be a very smart and very classical horror film.

Remember, "The Exorcist" was nominated for 10 Academy Awards back in the day. This isn't a series raised upon cheap scares but rather deeply psychological terrors, things that shake people to their very core.

Most horror aficionados would be chomping at the bit to see an "Exorcist" movie from the writer of "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull," but because of Hollywood's penchant for all things illogical, we'll never see the film.

Even though the movie was finished and assembled, a new director and a mostly new cast has been brought on board to shoot the film anew. Who is this director brought in to make Schrader's thought-provoking cerebral horror film into a fast-paced and flashy thriller geared toward today's audience? Renny Harlin, the man behind "Cutthroat Island" and "Cliffhanger."

It makes you wonder if the powers that be felt we as an audience weren't able to appreciate a film geared more toward the motives of fear and the concept of faith. Schrader's film may have been truly special, but we may never know.

Instead, we'll see a weird amalgam of a movie, one whose behind the scenes turmoil will probably eclipse whatever terror appears on the screen.

Now, that is horror.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

So while the rest of us are signing the petition to get this released, can someone please make a bootleg copy of this available?

Where's the petition, I wanna sign it.


And yes, a boot copy would be killer.

Btw, how the fuck does a guy like Renny Harlin prosper in Hollywood?

Quote from: SoNowThenWhere's the petition, I wanna sign it.


And yes, a boot copy would be killer.

Btw, how the fuck does a guy like Renny Harlin prosper in Hollywood?

Bottom-line Darwinism and the lax standards of the filmgoing public.

I hate this whole Exorcist thing, because I know that there's an interesting Paul Schrader film out there that I'll probably never get to see. The Harlin thing is just insult to injury.

Yeah, but don't a lot of Harlin movies LOSE money? Like Cutthroat Island was a bomb. Doesn't that cash out his chips? Like, you were a lucky horse for a while Renny, but now if you're not a guaranteed money-maker, why are we employing your hack ass? I doubt producers work with him for the artistic pleasure...

Quote from: SoNowThenYeah, but don't a lot of Harlin movies LOSE money? Like Cutthroat Island was a bomb. Doesn't that cash out his chips? Like, you were a lucky horse for a while Renny, but now if you're not a guaranteed money-maker, why are we employing your hack ass? I doubt producers work with him for the artistic pleasure...

That's true... but I think if once upon a time you made them lots of money, they'll give you chance after chance.

Whereas if once upon a time you made masterpieces for them but not a whole lot of money, you have to struggle your entire career.

Quote from: godardian

Quote from: SoNowThenYeah, but don't a lot of Harlin movies LOSE money? Like Cutthroat Island was a bomb. Doesn't that cash out his chips? Like, you were a lucky horse for a while Renny, but now if you're not a guaranteed money-maker, why are we employing your hack ass? I doubt producers work with him for the artistic pleasure...

That's true... but I think if once upon a time you made them lots of money, they'll give you chance after chance.

Whereas if once upon a time you made masterpieces for them but not a whole lot of money, you have to struggle your entire career.

If you were a producer who wanted to make a movie that the (du)m(b)asses were going to flock to see, who would you pick to direct it, the guy who did Auto Focus or the guy who did Deep Blue Sea?   :?

I only hope that Renny Harlin's version makes SO much money that they decide to release Schrader's version on the DVD as an "alternate version."  They've got a finished film.  Why not make some money off of it and satisfy the curiosity of people who actually appreciate the work of good directors in the process?

If the infamous 4+ hour version of Apocalypse Now can float around for years before Redux came out, someone can get this out to the people.  There has to be one gofer at Warner Bros that knows where the Schrader print is and can get a copy of it on the internet to get people buzzing about it.

Yeah, but the Schrader cut probably isn't properly mixed or color corrected yet...

We may see Schrader's version after all...

http://www.empireonline.co.uk/site/news/newsstory.asp?news_id=15702

Damn, it's a good day.  First no more Valenti and now we get Schrader's Exorcist back.  What did we do to deserve this?

Quote from: hacksparrowDamn, it's a good day.  First no more Valenti and now we get Schrader's Exorcist back.  What did we do to deserve this?

To top it all off, there are those excellent anti-Mel Gibson Schrader quotes in The Guardian today, which you can read in the Passion thread... (MacG posted 'em)

I wouldn't go so far as to paint them "anti", he was citing differences...



Anyway, to get his cut would be... man oh man.... this is a good thing. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Best case scenario is that everyone can see how much better his cut would've been, than the shit the studio will eventually throw out there (yes, I can see into the future).

Quote from: SoNowThenI wouldn't go so far as to paint them "anti", he was citing differences...



Anyway, to get his cut would be... man oh man.... this is a good thing. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Best case scenario is that everyone can see how much better his cut would've been, than the shit the studio will eventually throw out there (yes, I can see into the future).

I don't think it's going too far to say that Schrader (politely) trashed Gibson's conception of the crucifixion... Sorry, a Paul Schrader (dignity, intelligence, passion, cinema-as-art) on one hand vs. Mel Gibson (crassness, backwardness, cinema-as-bombastic-effusion) is too irresistible a dichotomy for me to pass up.

I'm a huge Schrader fan, but I don't care about the Exorcist prequel.  The first Exorcist was great, but doing a prequel is not a good idea (example:  Phantom Menace).  Schrader's last excursion into horror, Cat People, was my least favorite of his films.  He's at his best dealing with fallible human beings wrestling with moral issues -- Affliction, Auto Focus, American Gigolo, Hardcore, Blue Collar.  I am definitely not a fan of horror films, so I think Schrader should go back to making films like Affliction.

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Even though Paul Schrader came up in the 70’s with filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and many more, due to his not being allowed to see a film until he was well into his teens, he is not considered one of their generation of “movie brats.” That outsider status has allowed him to create his own niche in directing with such films as Light Sleeper, Affliction and American Gigolo.

Over the years Schrader has flirted with the mainstream mostly with screenplays such as Raging Bull and The Mosquito Coast. After the critical success of Auto Focus, Schrader decided to again work within the studio system and direct the Exorcist prequel, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

After finishing his movie Morgan Creek, the production company, decided to not release it and make the movie again with [The Adventures of Ford Fairlane director] Renny Harlin. After that movie tanked both Morgan Creek and Schrader saw the chance to get his version out there.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist is a wild film that tackles many of Schrader’s prominent themes such as religion, violence and death. It stars Stellan Skarsgård as Father Lankester Merrin and his first encounter with the devil in Africa.

Daniel Robert Epstein: The situation that happened with the release of the Exorcist prequel is unique.

Paul Schrader: Yeah but it would be a much better story if it happened to someone else.

DRE: [laughs] Are you a magnet for this sort of thing?

PS: Well I don’t know. Every film has its horror tales. Some are just more unique than others and this really was unique. It was the first one.

DRE: How do you feel about it finally getting out?

PS: The dominant feeling is really just one of relief. Once you’ve made a film that has been discarded you cannot convince anyone that it was any good. You spend the rest of your life trying to explain what you had done. I just dreaded doing that. So more than anything else it feels like a millstone has been removed from my neck.

DRE: Is this any kind of admission of guilt from a Hollywood studio?

PS: No I don’t think so. This would not happen at a studio per say. This was from a one man company, Jim Robinson at Morgan Creek International. When you have a studio you have a system of checks and balances and a board of executives. So if one person says, let’s remake a whole thing, another person would say, if you do that I’ll be here to take your job when you’re finished.

Whereas with a one man company, he’ll just reach into his other pocket and pull out another $40 million to make it again. I think that Jim feels that he made the right decision once he was stuck there. I think that he feels we should have never gotten into this whole situation in the first place three or four years ago.

So the decision to release my film is not an admission of having made a mistake but it is simply a way to make money.

DRE: It’s always that way.

PS: I would have been foolish to appeal to anyone’s altruism or artistic sensibilities. My goal last year to try to create an environment where there was a financial incentive to release the film and the DVD.

DRE: When you do studio work it’s usually in terms of a screenplay or a contribution to a screenplay.

PS: It was really for Morgan Creek who has a deal with Warner Bros. They do higher budget films but Warner Bros has no say in the films they do. Warner Bros doesn’t pay one penny at any point in the process, they just take a distribution fee.

DRE: I could not think of a more polar opposite of a filmmaker to you than Renny Harlin. Have you ever seen a Renny Harlin film?

PS: Oh yeah, I’ve met Renny and in fact we almost did something together a few years ago. But Mario Kassar’s company Carolco went under and it never got done.

DRE: Did you see Renny Harlin’s version of the Exorcist prequel?

PS: Yes. It was interesting because I went down to Bethesda and saw it with William Blatty [writer of the original Exorcist novel and screenplay]. We watched it together on opening day. He had directed The Exorcist III which was taken from him, another ending was added and his original version was lost. He still had a lot of sore feelings about. As Renny’s film progressed he was getting more and more upset because it was all coming back to him. Whereas I was sitting next to him feeling better and better because as I watched Renny’s film I realized how bad it was. I figured if it got any worse there might be curiosity about the film that I made. When the Linda Blair makeup showed up it did get worse and so I figured there was a way to bring my film back from the dead.

DRE: You started your film career during a time when William Friedkin was huge so you must have met him.

PS: My goal when I came to this film was to stay as far away from Friedkin and Friedkin’s Exorcist as possible. I didn’t think you could compete with it because it is such a classic and icon in film history so if you try to compete with it you will lose. I tried to make a film that looked different, felt different and works different. The fact that it was set in the 40’s enabled me to create a film that felt more old fashioned.

DRE: That’s interesting because you aren’t known for doing that. Were you trying to do a noir?

PS: No I was trying to do a western. I had that landscape, the military outpost and the natives. I had Shane there who had given up the cloth then the bad guy comes into town and Shane has to put his guns back on [laughs].

DRE: As someone who was once a film critic, how do you feel the Exorcist prequel fits in with your other work?

PS: I guess one of the reasons I wanted it to come out was to let history judge that.

DRE: Has this sent you back to wanting to do films independently again?

PS: Basically I do films anyway I can. I was presented with the Exorcist script when they were already in preproduction. From the time I read the script until the time I started shooting was only three months. So one of the great attractions of it was that it was a go picture, it was classy and it had done right then. I did not conceive of the idea for this script, I don’t think it’s the kind of idea I could have come up with. Maybe in retrospect if it hadn’t been so tempting and so immediate I might not have done it. It was just an irresistible temptation.

DRE: I got to speak to Willem Dafoe in the past year and since he starred in the film you wrote, The Last Temptation of Christ so he always gets asked if he has seen The Passion of the Christ. Have you seen it?

PS: Yeah, in fact Mel [Gibson] was shooting that right across from us In Cinecitta when we were shooting the Exorcist prequel. Occasionally our devil and their Jesus would cross paths.

DRE: What did you think of that film?

PS: I thought it was medieval. It was quite extraordinary for what it is but I don’t particularly care for that notion of Christianity. That medieval notion of blood. Mel says he doesn’t like Sebastian 2 but I think he has a problem with the enlightenment. It is a kind of 14th century movie.

DRE: I read that next you are working again with [City Hall director] Harold Becker on Torch.

PS: I did that script and that was supposed to be for Pacino. But it’s already gone away.

DRE: What are you working on then?

PS: I’m working on something but I’m going to keep it to myself.

DRE: The term Auto Focus has become some synonymous with a sex party. On Curb Your Enthusiasm Larry David used it as a term when he and friend were going to look for women. He called it an Auto Focus party.

PS: [laughs] I like that film a lot and I’m very happy with it.

DRE: Do you think you would do another biopic in the future?

PS: I don’t think I would come up with one. But then on the other hand if someone offered it to me I would consider it.

DRE: You’ve had so many great collaborations with Martin Scorsese and recently he’s been working with screenwriters half your age.

PS: That’s the way it is in this business. You eat your young.

DRE: Have you and he talked about doing something else?

PS: I don’t think so. I think that collaboration has run its course.

DRE: Did the collaboration run its course naturally?

PS: I felt it ran its course after The Last Temptation of Christ then Marty asked me to write Bringing out the Dead. That didn’t do that well commercially so I would be surprised if we worked together again.

DRE: What do you do when you’re not making films? What’s a Paul Schrader day like?

PS: As I’ve gotten older I’ve been watching less and less television and reading a lot more.

DRE: What are you reading?

PS: I just finished the new Ian McEwan [Saturday] and now I’m reading the novel Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr.

DRE: When you are reading does it come into your mind that you might want to make the book into a movie?

PS: I just read for curiosity.

DRE: Is it tough to be curious when you reach a certain age?

PS: That’s a great blessing to be eternally curious about how things work and why people do things, including yourself.

DRE: Do you have any tattoos?

PS: No I don’t.

DRE: If you ever got a tattoo, what would it be?

PS: I don’t think I would ever get one. Unless I tattooed on my forehead in reverse “Go back to bed.” I could get up in the morning, look in the mirror and have a reason to turn around [laughs].

Schrader has a unique take on things.  I can't think of any other major filmmaker who studied theology before getting into film.

Quote from: MacGuffinPS: Oh yeah, I've met Renny and in fact we almost did something together a few years ago. But Mario Kassar's company Carolco went under and it never got done.

yeah, cuz renny harlin's 'cutthroat island' bankrupt that studio. dirty mutha fucka, tryin' to shut down little companies.

Quote from: soixanteI can't think of any other major filmmaker who studied theology before getting into film.

malick. studied and taught.

What'd anyone think of 'hardcore'...i think it's underrated in terms of craft. it's pretty thoughtful and fresh, i thought...

Quote from: ThebirdinsectmanWhat'd anyone think of 'hardcore'...i think it's underrated in terms of craft. it's pretty thoughtful and fresh, i thought...

Loved it.

Bleiberg taps Schrader for 'Adam' helm

Ehud Bleiberg has signed on Paul Schrader to direct "Adam Resurrected," the first film for Bleiberg's new production and sales company that was announced last month. The film, based on a novel by Yoram Kaniuk, was one of the titles Bleiberg took with him when he split from Dream Entertainment, the company he co-founded with Yitzhak Ginsberg. "I have long admired Paul's work and am thrilled that he has agreed to direct this film," Bleiberg said. "We have a complex script that is compassionate, tragic and inspiring at the same time, and we are pleased that Paul will bring his immense artistic abilities to our film."

So I blind bought Dominion and finally cracked it open the other day.

I'm a BIG fan of Paul Schrader, and a major defender of almost all of his work, even the obviously shitty stuff. I find it's better to have a guy like Schrader making bad movies than not making them at all.

However... this was easily -- mark that ABSOLUTELY SURELY -- the FUCKING WORST movie I have ever seen. Not just a low for Schrader, but a low for movies, period. I actually don't think it's possible that the Harlin version could be any worse than this. Possibly just as bad, but not worse. The acting in this movie makes my short films look like Cassavetes. I'm pretty sure that Storaro didn't shoot this either, I think it was his Mexican equivalent. Funny thing is, I looked at some of the deleted scenes, and at low resolution, before they were cleaned up, it looked pretty good. So maybe whoever made the dvd just boosted and flattened whatever my favorite DP actually lit. Who knows. All I can say is that all involved better distance themselves as much as possible from this damnable piece of garbage. Can't believe Paul fought for this one to see the light... the studio tried to do him a favor...

Quote from: SoNowThen on November 16, 2005, 02:22:25 AM
I'm pretty sure that Storaro didn't shoot this either, I think it was his Mexican equivalent.

rodrigo prieto?
emmanuel lubezki?

just saying.

-SNT, did you get your Dominion in the "4 for $20" pre-viewed movies at Hollywood? I got mine that way, sight unseen, 'cos it's basically free as the fourth one. I didn't hate it as much as you did, but I will say that it has got to be Schrader's worst film, and I include Light of Day in that assessment. It wasn't entirely devoid of interesting moments, I didn't think, but that CGI was horrific (as per usual--so rarely does anyone use it properly). Free was definitely the right price.

-Anyone watch Schrader's intro to Pickpocket? That alone makes up for Dominion, and then some. He truly loves movies, even if he's disappointingly capable of making a bad one.

-Has anyone here seen Schrader's Patty Hearst? I'm kind of obsessed with the whole SLA/kidnapping-an-heiress episode--I've read Joan Didion's essay on it, "Girl of the Golden West," dozens of times--and I'd love to see Schrader's take on it.

-Schrader's top 10 of 2005, from Film Comment:

1. Saraband

2. Palindromes

3. Brokeback Mountain

4. The Aristocrats

5. Syriana

6. Thumbsucker

7. 2046

8. Pride and Prejudice

9. Me and You and Everyone We Know

10. The Upside of Anger

I haven't seen Patty Hearst, but I know some people who saw it when it came out and liked it.  Even though I'm a Schrader fan, I skipped Patty Hearst when it came out because it was his first film since Light of Day, a film I didn't care for.  Now I want to see it, but I can't find it in any video stores.

Quote from: godardian on February 05, 2006, 02:00:30 AM
-SNT, did you get your Dominion in the "4 for $20" pre-viewed movies at Hollywood? I got mine that way, sight unseen, 'cos it's basically free as the fourth one. I didn't hate it as much as you did, but I will say that it has got to be Schrader's worst film, and I include Light of Day in that assessment. It wasn't entirely devoid of interesting moments, I didn't think, but that CGI was horrific (as per usual--so rarely does anyone use it properly). Free was definitely the right price.

-Anyone watch Schrader's intro to Pickpocket? That alone makes up for Dominion, and then some. He truly loves movies, even if he's disappointingly capable of making a bad one.

-Has anyone here seen Schrader's Patty Hearst? I'm kind of obsessed with the whole SLA/kidnapping-an-heiress episode--I've read Joan Didion's essay on it, "Girl of the Golden West," dozens of times--and I'd love to see Schrader's take on it.

Haven't seen PH. I'd like to see Light Of Day, just to see MJ Fox directed by Schrader.
Anyway, I paid full price for my ripoff Prequel dvd. suck suck suck. The CGI I don't blame them, because that was a patchwork just to release the dvd... I don't care how bad that looks. It's just that the movie was terrible. The opening was terrible. The repeated characters were so stupid and cliched and trite. So un-Schrader.

Yeah, his Pickpocket intro was great. I double bought the Pickpocket dvd JUST for that intro. Why didn't they get him to do a commentary on this and Diary...., would have been top.

Godardian, what did you think of Light Sleeper? There are moments of brilliance, but the jury's out...

Woody Harrelson will play the title role in "The Walker," a film Paul Schrader wrote and will direct in the U.K.
Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Ned Beatty, Moritz Bleibtreu, Willem Dafoe and Lily Tomlin round out the cast, and shooting begins next week.

Pic is produced by Deepak Nayar ("Bend It Like Beckham"), whose Kintop Pictures is partnered with Ingenious Media, Isle of Man, Parseghian Planco and Willi Baer. Pathe Pictures Intl. is selling overseas territories, and John SlossJohn Sloss is brokering the domestic deal.

Harrelson will play an escort of society ladies in D.C. Schrader said the character is his vision of what his "American Gigolo" protag would have become when he hit 50.

"His gifts are now more social than sexual. He's this society walker who has his lady friends, and a boyfriend on the side," Schrader said.

While Harrelson seems a surprise to play the gay lothario, Schrader said he had elements that made him ideal.

"His wittiness is the initial point of entry for the viewer into a story which takes a dark turn. This will be quite a transformation for him, from the hairpiece and his manner to the clothes he wears," Schrader said.

Harrelson is in London completing his stage run in "The Night of the Iguana

Goldblum gets "Resurrected" for Bleiberg

Jeff Goldblum has signed on for the title role in "Adam Resurrected," a World War II Holocaust drama that Paul Schrader is directing.

"Resurrected" is based on the acclaimed 2000 book by Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk.

It centers on Adam Stein, a former circus clown who was spared the gas chamber so that he might entertain thousands of Jews as they marched to their deaths. He becomes the ringleader at an asylum in the Negeve desert populated solely by Holocaust survivors and struggles to makes sense of the world. The novel has been translated into 20 languages.

Production company Bleiberg Entertainment is eyeing a spring 2007 production start date for the film, which will be shot in Germany, Romania and Israel.

Goldblum, whose screen credits include "The Fly" "The Big Chill" "Jurassic Park" and "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," is starring in "Raines," an upcoming NBC series, and next appears on the big screen in Barry Levinson's comedy "Man of the Year."

Schrader's directorial credits include "American Gigolo," "The Comfort of Strangers" "Affliction" and "Auto Focus."

Odd... that's the exact same plot as the infamous Jerry Lewis project that will never see the light of day, 'The Day the Clown Cried' (I think that's the title).

yeah I remember someone writing to ebert way back in the days asking him what's the difference between the day the clown cried and life is beautiful, ebert said, the day the clown cried is leading children to the chamber, while life is beautiful is trying to save the boy.
or something like that.  this sounds different though, this sounds like it's focusing on the asylum rather than the camp.  most holocaust movies all sound pretty similar, they only have a few angles, but I'm sure this story can be very different from the jerry lewis one.

jerry lewis must be rolling in his bed.

Quote from: Weak2ndAct on July 11, 2006, 11:17:34 PM
Odd... that's the exact same plot as the infamous Jerry Lewis project that will never see the light of day, 'The Day the Clown Cried' (I think that's the title).

Quote from: pete on July 12, 2006, 04:07:29 AM
yeah I remember someone writing to ebert way back in the days asking him what's the difference between the day the clown cried and life is beautiful, ebert said, the day the clown cried is leading children to the chamber, while life is beautiful is trying to save the boy.
or something like that.  this sounds different though, this sounds like it's focusing on the asylum rather than the camp.  most holocaust movies all sound pretty similar, they only have a few angles, but I'm sure this story can be very different from the jerry lewis one.

Source: Hollywood Elsewhere --

"We've had Life is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar," a Guardian item reads, "and now the list of movies mixing clowning with the Holocaust is to grow with Adam Resurrected, a Paul Schrader film that will adapt a book by Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk." The item says "the story [is about] on a Jewish circus clown" -- to be played by Jeff Goldblum -- "who is kept alive by the Nazis to entertain his fellow Jews as they march to the gas chambers."

"Obviously-no-shit-Sherlock, this calls to mind that early '70s Jerry Lewis fiasco called The Day the Clown Cried, an unseen, never-distributed film that Lewis starred in and directed. The dark drama is described by a Jerry Lewis website as being "about a German clown who was arrested by the Gestapo, interred in a concentration camp, and used to march Jewish children into the ovens."

But maybe they're not quite so similar. An Amazon.com description of the Kaniuk book says it's about "a former circus clown named Adam Stein who was spared the gas chamber so that he might entertain thousands of other Jews as they marched to their deaths," but it takes place after World War II and is about how Stein "is now the ringleader at an asylum in the Negev desert populated solely by Holocaust survivors...alternately more brilliant than the doctors and more insane than any of the patients, Stein struggles wildly to make sense of a world in which the line between sanity and madness has been irreversibly blurred."

Lewis's Clown flick has long been regarded as on the worst all-time debacles and pratfalls ever suffered by a major "name" director, which Lewis definitely was in the late '50s and '60s.

"In 1971, producer Nate Waschberger asked Lewis to direct and star in The Day the Clown Cried, based on Joan O'Brien's book by the same name, about a German clown who was arrested by the Gestapo, interred in a concentration camp, and used to march Jewish children into the ovens," the site's description reads.

"Jerry lost close to 40 pounds to play the role. The shooting began in Stockholm, but Wachsberger not only ran out of money to complete the film, but he failed to pay Joan O'Brien the money she was owed for the rights to the story. Jerry was forced to finish the picture with his own money.

"The film has been tied up in litigation ever since, and all of the parties involved have never been able to reach an agreeable settlement. Jerry hopes to someday complete the film, which remains to this day, a significant expression of cinematic art, suspended in the abyss of international litigation."

According to Film Buff Online, Harry Shearer, one of the very small handful of people who has actually seen Clown in rough-cut form, described it thusly in an interview on "The Howard Stern Show": "If you say `Jerry Lewis is a clown in a concentration camp' and you make that movie up in your head, it's so much better than that. And by better I mean worse. You're stunned."

Paul Schrader: Bollywood, here I come
'Taxi Driver' scribe leaves Hollywood for 'Extreme City'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Paul Schrader is taking a taxi to Bollywood.

Saying he feels the U.S. film market has become "barren," the writer of classics "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" is packing his bags for Mumbai to write and direct the Bollywood action movie "Extreme City."

"I've been getting indie movies made for 20 years," he said. "But I take a good look around and what I see is a barren, barren place -- in terms of the financial community, in terms of audiences, in terms of distribution. It's cold out there."

In India, on the other hand, he says there are ways to gain both creative freedom and audiences.

"City" is a cross-cultural tale that will center on an American man who travels to India to help resolve a kidnapping case for his father-in-law, only to get caught up in a gangster plot.

There likely will be some musical numbers, and dialogue will be spoken in English and Hindi. Schrader is working on the script.

While the story combines various elements, it's "not a Masala movie," Schrader said, referring to the term for a kitchen-sink Bollywood film that tosses in action, romance, family drama and other genres in one big stew.

"City" will be produced by Anubhav Sinha, the noted Indian director (he most recently directed the Bollywood action movie "Cash") who is looking to grow his producing slate and evolve from a more action orientation.

Schrader and Sinha are in talks with a number of Bollywood stars; the movie could get greenlighted at a bigger Bollywood studio or go the indie route.

Schrader, who made his name as a writer on classics like "Raging Bull" and as a writer-director on Oscar winner "Affliction," is the latest film figure seeking to build a bridge to India.

One of the fall's nascent hits is "Slumdog Millionaire," Danny Boyle's romantic-action tale set in India. Indie director Jennifer Lynch is making the India-set mystery "Hisss." Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment has a deal with Indian entertainment company UTV to produce two movies.

And DreamWorks is, of course, now financed by India-based Reliance Big Entertainment.

Still, Schrader is the first major contemporary U.S. writer or director to migrate to Bollywood, a trend he said could continue given the trajectory of both film cultures. "Old Bollywood will never go away," he said, "but it's changing. Movies can be shorter than two hours. There doesn't need to be singing and dancing."

Schrader is promoting "Adam Resurrected," a Holocaust drama starring Jeff Goldblum that he directed about a German-Jewish performer who survives the war by performing for a Nazi commander.

"At first I thought, 'The world has a lot of Holocaust movies. It doesn't need one from Paul Schrader.' But I started to read the script and got 65 pages in and thought, 'I need to do this.' It's such an original story."

Paul Schrader looks to India
Writer-director teams with Bollywood on 'Xtrme'
Source: Variety

A year after reports surfaced that Paul Schrader had abandoned Hollywood, the writer-director has been busy merging East and West.

Schrader's latest film, "Xtrme City," is a bilingual collaboration with Bollywood scribe Mushtaq Shiekh, creative director of media conglom Sahara One, with financing from former sports agent Dwight Manley.

Pic, budgeted at about $10 million, will start casting soon, with Shiekh seeking marquee thesps from India and the West.

Story centers around a former U.S. ranger who joins forces with an Indian commando to rescue the ranger's sister-in-law, who's been kidnapped by a crime lord in Mumbai's underworld.

Schrader said he was approached with a proposal for a Hindi film when he attended last fall's Osian Film Festival in New Delhi.

"I didn't think it was very good, so I came up with a better film," he said.

Schrader and Shiekh are working with producers David Weisman ("Kiss of the Spider Woman") and Anubhav Sinha ("Dus") on the pic, which is aiming for a late 2010 shoot in Mumbai, New York and the Persian Gulf. They hope for a 2011 release. As with many Bollywood films, "Xtrme City" will integrate thriller, drama and comedy elements, Schrader said. Like most Hindi cinema, the movie will be family-friendly, which means that while there may be violence, the sex will be downplayed, and there will be song-and-dance routines.

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This is an intricate portrayal of a writer's soft and turbulent life done with elegance and grace. He doesn't stereotype or condescend to this world at all. The film is so seem-less it doesn't have the impression of being made by an american. It does have the touch of Paul though, don't get me wrong and I'm all the better for seeing it.

your reviews aren't really reviews.

you're just reporting that you saw the film.

Quote from: ρ on January 04, 2010, 10:28:31 PM
your reviews aren't really reviews.

you're just reporting that you saw the film.

Dear P,

Stick to tactful posts that only take you a couple minutes to construct.

This approach isn't working, although this is on the edge of constructive criticism.

your posts aren't really posts.

you're just assembling random words.

and you don't know how to use a comma.

EDIT: you fixed it. well done!

Wow, that's a fresh couple of jokes.

An attack on grammar and something about a "random assemblage of words"

What fresh and original jokes will you come up with next?

You're worse than dane cook.

your comebacks aren't really comebacks.

you're just making sarcastic comments about a grammatical correction which you took onboard, thereby making no sense and continuing to live up to your trademark.

Quote from: ρ on January 05, 2010, 11:33:01 AM
your comebacks aren't really comebacks.

you're just making sarcastic comments about a grammatical correction which you took onboard, thereby making no sense and continuing to live up to your trademark.

No, it's just that the text that appears on this board is super important.

How can I include it in my professional portfolio with typos?



Edit: I've been trying to decide which post is more worhtless...Discussing how the Na'vi would speak Jake Sully's name, or this:

Quote from: ρ on January 04, 2010, 10:28:31 PM
your reviews aren't really reviews.

you're just reporting that you saw the film.

Bret Easton Ellis Penning A L.A. Noir For Paul Schrader, Wants Porn Star James Deen To Star
Source: CinemaBlend

Famed novelist Bret Easton Ellis and influential writer/director Paul Schrader have a film in pre-production called Bait. The film takes place at a high-end resort where, after being humiliated, an employee takes his revenge by leading the guests out to shark infested waters. High-end. Humiliation. Revenge. That definitely sounds like an Ellis story and one perfectly suited for a director like Schrader. A well matched pair, it should come as no surprise that the two, according to Ellis at least, are planning to work on another film after their collaboration - a film described as a micro budget L.A. noir where "nudity and acting are a must..."

The details of this newest collaboration are pretty thin at the moment as most of the information is coming from Bret Easton Ellis' Twitter account. As you can see below, yesterday the author mentioned how he was hoping to cast porn actor James Deen in either of two male roles for an upcoming indie film he's writing for Schrader to direct. Only a day before, the author mentions Taxi Driver hinting that he's obviously got Schrader on his mind, and with Bait on the way it stands to reason that this next collaboration isn't just wishful thinking on Ellis' part. It's also interesting that the writer would be watching the seminal Schrader-penned New York film while crafting his L.A. noir. And again, a few days before the Taxi Driver tweet, Ellis drops another hint at what to expect and why: he's thinking about James Deen to star. The porn actor has acknowledged all this on his own twitter account, while adding a simple "Party" in regards to the "full frontal naked banging guys and girls."

Paul Schrader To Direct 'The Dying Of The Light,' Nicolas Winding Refn May Produce
via The Playlist

It's coming on five years since 2008's "Adam Resurrected," writer/director Paul Schrader's last feature film, but he's returning in a big way. Later this summer, his independently financed and Kickstarter-assisted "The Canyons," starring Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen, will see a release by IFC Films as well as make a splash overseas playing out-of-competition at the Venice Film Festival (where he'll also serve as President of the International Jury for the Orizzonti section of the fest). And lucky enough for fans of the director, we won't be waiting another five years for Schrader to mount his next feature.

Catching up with the filmmaker by phone today to talk about "The Canyons," we asked him about his script for "The Dying Of The Light," a project Nicolas Winding Refn was gearing up to direct a couple of years back, until it fell apart. And the good news is the project is back on, though some of the job titles have been switched around. "I'm gonna make that this winter," he said.

"I think Nic Refn will be exec producer or something, [and] we have gotten an A-actor for that. He's agreed to the terms, but we're still negotiating the perks. I'll do that film starting at the end of the year," he added.

Originally set to star Harrison Ford and Channing Tatum during the Refn incarnation, the story centers on a C.I.A. agent who starts to become afflicted with blindness while on his last mission. So why did it fall apart? Well, simply put: Ford bailed.

"It was a wonderful, wonderful script about a C.I.A. agent who goes on an existentialistic journey and dies at the end," Refn told an audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the fall of 2011. "And I thought, 'If I could do a movie where Harrison Ford dies, I would contribute to society.' So I was really into making this film. And I had gone to Los Angeles for short periods at a time to work with him. And you know, because it's Harrison Ford and you sit around in his big hangar with all his private planes and you hang out with Harrison Ford. Then he realizes that he doesn't want to die. Then it's like, 'Fucking hell. Okay, then there's no movie, Harrison.' Well he'd been thinking about it and 'Wasn't there another way?' and back and forth. And I thought, 'Oh God dammit.' So I was so angry at myself for buying into the illusion of Hollywood and of course, nothing ever happens."

Well, the silver lining is that it is happening once again. Unlike "The Canyons," this project has financing from traditional channels, though Schrader suggested the budget will still be lean, comparative to what studio pictures are made for these days. But either way, we're glad this movie is back on track and in the hands of the man who wrote the script.

Nicolas Cage To Star In Paul Schrader's Next Film 'The Dying Of The Light'
via The Playlist

With "The Canyons" wrapped, packaged and now ready to hit theaters and VOD this weekend (you'll see our review soon), Paul Schrader is already looking ahead to his next project. Last night at the New York premiere of the film, when asked if he would ever do a movie like "The Canyons" again (a low-budget indie), Schrader said he would, but it would have to be under the right set of circumstances. He then went on to reveal his future plans, which include a project with a bit more financial muscle behind it. "The next movie I'm doing is with Nicolas Cage and it's a much more conventional process," he shared. So what is that movie?

When we spoke to the director last month (full interview coming soon), he revealed that his next directorial effort was "The Dying Of The Light," a project that Nicolas Winding Refn was originally gearing up to direct a couple of years back. "I'm gonna make that this winter," Schrader told us, adding: "I think Nic Refn will be exec producer or something, [and] we have gotten an A-actor for that. He's agreed to the terms, but we're still negotiating the perks. I'll do that film starting at the end of the year." It's likely safe to say that Cage is the actor he was lining up.

The story centers on a C.I.A. agent who starts to become afflicted with blindness while on his last mission, and Refn's incarnation infamously fell apart when he couldn't convince Harrison Ford (who was set to star alongside Channing Tatum) about the fate of his character. But presumably, Schrader—who also wrote the script—will have no such trouble here with Cage on board.

According to Roger Friedman, the project is set up at Red Granite, the upstart production house whose upcoming slate includes Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf Of Wall Street" and Scott Cooper's "Out Of The Furnace." More details likely to come, but with five years since his last feature, "Adam Resurrected," it looks like Schrader isn't wasting a moment in utilizing his newfound momentum.

Paul Schrader's 'Dying Of The Light' Acquired By Lionsgate Home Entertainment
via Deadline

Lionsgate Home Entertainment has acquired the Over Under Media/Tin Res Entertainment/Grindstone Entertainment pic Dying of The Light, starring Nicolas Cage and Anton Yelchin, announced today by producers Scott Clayton, Todd Williams and Gary Hirsch. The film will be released by Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

Paul Schrader wrote and directed it. Cage plays a veteran CIA operative, Evan Lake, who goes on a global manhunt when his old nemesis resurfaces. It's a race against time because the op has a deteriorating mental condition that puts a real ticking clock on this. Yelchin plays the CIA protégé, with Irene Jacob playing Lake's ex-lover.

"We are thrilled to have acquired "Dying of the Light," a suspenseful, thrill ride in which Schrader has captured one of the best performances of Cage's career," stated Barry Brooker, President & CEO of Grindstone Entertainment Group. Clayton added, "We are confident that our collaboration with Grindstone will give the film the exposure it deserves and continue to increase the momentum we are building for the release."

The exec producers are Barry Brooker, Stan Wertlieb, Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) and Steve Schwartz (The Tree Of Life).

Based on the poem?

Just watched 'Hardcore', another random shoutbox recommendation, again from Jenkins after I got blown away by 'Blue Collar'. A few thoughts, the movie feels like the connective tissue between blue collar and the tortured Calvinist Schrader i know.

It has some strange music cues, like schrader hadn't fully disgested the music/culture of the time (like his main character) I loved the shots through the mirrors and Peter Boyle was great as always. Some of the garish lighting was cool.

Thought of 'Drive' a lot, as i watched it and obviously 'The Searchers'.

George C Scott was cool in it, his repression, obsession and his not fitting in, although i thought it could've gone further.

Really wanted it to become as daring and free flowing as 'Blue Collar' in that regard, loved the prostitute who helped him, was hoping she was going to become a surrogate mother or daughter, the ending felt too easy and slightly too well crafted, nonetheless it had some great stuff making it another cool recommendation...

I saw it a while ago and remember liking it very much. The calvinist repression made it almost hard to watch sometimes and I loved the performance by Scott. I think American Gigolo is going to be my next Schrader.

First Look At 'The Dying Of The Light,' Paul Schrader Quits Film Over What Nicolas Winding Refn Calls "Artistic Disrespect"
via The Playlist

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Paul Schrader is no stranger to editing room battles. His travails during the production of "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist" are well documented, and in the case of last year's "The Canyons," screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis described the film Schrader turned in versus the one his script envisioned, and a similar scenario seems to have occurred during production of the director's upcoming movie, "The Dying Of The Light."

Penned by Schrader, the film follows a C.I.A. agent who is afflicted with blindness while on his last mission. At one point a few years ago, Nicolas Winding Refn was slated to direct, but the project collapsed when Harrison Ford (who was set to star alongside Channing Tatum) and the filmmaker couldn't come to terms about the fate of his character. The movie was revived recently with Schrader now directing his own script, Refn staying on as a producer, and with Nicolas Cage and Anton Yelchin in the lead roles. Filming proceeded at the beginning of the year, and by all accounts it went smoothly, but problems began when Schrader went into the editing room. After delivering his first cut, "extensive" notes from the film's producers arrived .

"We made suggestions, which Paul to a large extent didn't approve of, and so he refused to make the changes that we all wanted, despite the fact that the changes we were looking for were very much in line with the script that he wrote and shot," producer Gary Hirsch told Variety. Producer Todd Williams added, "Paul's cut of the movie deviated substantially from his own script. It was a completely different movie from the movie that was greenlit, the movie that was discussed and the movie that was shot."

Of course, there are two sides to every story, and Schrader claims he was effectively locked out of the editing process after handing in a second cut that only made some of the requested changes. "I was never asked back. They finally showed me their cut only as they were entering final post-production. It was a fait accompli," he states. Meanwhile, the producers assert that Schrader handed in his second cut and then left the project in their hands.

According to Hirsch and Williams, the two versions —theirs and Schrader's— "are 80 percent the same," perhaps failing to recognize that 1/5 of a movie being taken away from a director is still fairly substantial. Accounts from those who have seen the producers' cut say it doesn't have the trademark stamp of Schrader's work and is a far more "conventional" movie. And some of the changes to Schrader's movie included "tightened pacing, the recutting of several action scenes, and the removal of a voiceover narration." But, 80 percent the same, right?

For his part, Refn calls the dispute "artistic disrespect," siding with Schrader in the matter, and notes Cage is upset as well, adding that the actor "is very frustrated because, in his mind, he and Paul made a great movie that both of them are very proud of —and for that to be taken away from them, it doesn't make any sense."

No word yet on an official release date for "The Dying Of The Light," though the producers say "it's coming out before the end of the year." But we'd reckon there's probably a lot more to come from all sides before the film arrives in cinemas.

Paul Schrader Gets Final Cut On L.A. Noirish 'Dog Eat Dog' From Eddie Bunker
via Deadline

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EXCLUSIVE: Arclight Films and Pure Dopamine are teaming director Paul Schrader with Nicolas Cage for Dog Eat Dog, a gritty crime thriller based on the celebrated book by Eddie Bunker. The film, just acquired by Arclight, will be scripted by Matt Wilder and Paul Schrader. Set deep in the underbelly of Los Angeles, pic is a gritty contemporary crime thriller about a trio of ex-cons hired for a kidnapping. When the abduction goes awry and gets completely out of control, the cons find themselves on the run, vowing to stay out of prison at all costs. Production begins in October.

"Ed Bunker is the crime writer's crime writer,"' said Schrader. "He's in the pantheon and one of the main people who define modern crime writing. He lived the life and lived to tell the story. Dog Eat Dog is Bunker at his best."

Producers are Mark Earl Burman and David Hillary of Pure Dopamine. Executive Producers are Gary Hamilton, Don Rivers, Tim Peternel, Shaun Redick and Ray Mansfield.

"We're absolutely thrilled to be working industry legends like Paul Schrader and Nicolas Cage as well as accomplished producers Mark Earl Burman and David Hillary of Pure Dopamine," said Gary Hamilton, Managing Director of Arclight Films. "Dog Eat Dog has all the elements of a global commercial hit and the team to make it happen. We're excited to introduce the film to buyers for the first time in Cannes."

Arclight Films is handling international sales and introducing the film here at Cannes. Movie Packaging Co is handling additional sales. Cage is repped by CAA and at Link Entertainment. Schrader is repped by Parseghian Planco, and Jeff Berg at Resolution. Bunker and his Estate are represented by Jeanne Field at Windfall Management.

--------------------------------------------------

Eddie Bunker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bunker) has been a consultant on many of Michael Mann's movies. I'm a big fan of his book No Beast So Fierce (http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Beast-Fierce-Edward-Bunker/dp/1842432664/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431899429&sr=8-1&keywords=no+beast+so+fierce), which served as source material for Straight Time (1978) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4WzmOBGw2E) and later as a reference point for DeNiro's character in Heat. Here's hoping Schrader can pull himself from the depths this go around.

Paul Schrader Says His Next Film Will Be A Western Starring Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe
via The Playlist

According to Erick Weber, from Awards Ace, it would appear that Schrader is moving from "First Reformed" to a new Western, but he's bringing along his star along to this new project, as well.

Weber tweeted (https://twitter.com/ErickWeber/status/1084888262840180737), "Also spoke with Paul Schrader fresh off his #CriticsChoiceAwards original screenplay win, told me he's writing a western titled NINE MEN FROM NOW with Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe as its two leads."

Nice.

By the way, anyone here see Dog Eat Dog? It's batshit insane.

Oscar Isaac to Star in Paul Schrader's Next Film 'The Card Counter'
via Variety

Oscar is set to star in revenge thriller "The Card Counter," the next film from Oscar-winner Paul Schrader.

The film, written and directed by Schrader, follows William Tell (Isaac), a gambler and former serviceman who sets out to reform a young man seeking revenge on a mutual enemy from their past. Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. Gaining backing from mysterious gambling financier La Linda, Tell takes Cirk with him on the road, going from casino to casino until the unlikely trio set their sights on winning the World Series of poker in Las Vegas. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.

HanWay Films has acquired international sales rights and will commence sales at the upcoming American Film Market.

Braxton Pope, who previously worked with Schrader on "The Canyons," is producing the film together with Lauren Mann. William Olsson and David Wulf will executive produce.

"The Card Counter" also reunites the filmmaker with cinematographer Alexander Dynan and editor Benjamin Rodriguez Jr., who all worked together on "First Reformed." Principal photography is scheduled to begin early next year.

"Schrader is a master of economical and cinematic story-telling," said HanWay Films managing director Gabrielle Stewart. "This is essentially an unlikely and surprising three-hander that weaves together the entertaining world of gambling; a potent and personal revenge thriller; unafraid to ask some extremely current and uncomfortable questions. Isaac's Tell is set to be a modern, iconic anti-hero, unmistakably drawn by this genius screenwriter."

Oscar Strikes Back.

Alex Ross Perry's Paul Schrader profile is up on The Criterion Channel (https://www.criterionchannel.com/meet-the-filmmakers-paul-schrader/season:1/videos/meet-the-filmmakers-paul-schrader)

QuotePaul Schrader: Man in a Room

A titan of the American cinema who emerged from the ranks of the 1970s movie brats with his era-defining screenplay for TAXI DRIVER, writer-director Paul Schrader has pursued a defiantly singular vision in his provocative explorations of guilt and salvation in a soul-sick world. In this episode of the Criterion Channel's ongoing Meet the Filmmakers series, director Alex Ross Perry (HER SMELL, LISTEN UP PHILIP) visits the ever-iconoclastic auteur on the set of his acclaimed latest film, FIRST REFORMED, where Schrader reflects on the highs and lows of his legendary career, the challenges and rewards of slow cinema, and his often controversial social-media presence. Expounding on the influences and experiences that led him to FIRST REFORMED, Schrader situates his late-period masterpiece within the context of his extensive body of work.

First of all, that ^ was awesome.

Second of all, so is this:

THE METROGRAPH INTERVIEW: PAUL SCHRADER
BY AUSTIN DALE
January 29 2020

Three years ago, director Alex Ross Perry began to shoot interviews with one of the great critics and filmmakers, Paul Schrader, on the set of First Reformed. The footage has now resulted in a new documentary made in collaboration with The Criterion Channel, Paul Schrader: Man in a Room. Both directors are good friends of Metrograph, so they joined us for a screening of the new documentary, followed by one of Schrader's most controversial films, The Canyons. Schrader joined us upstairs at the Metrograph Commissary to talk about The Irishman, the apocalypse, his upcoming film, and the unlikely archival merits of pornography.

Austin Dale: How have you been, Paul? What have you been up to?

Paul Schrader: I just came back from doing this whole megillah in France. It was ten days, with a full retrospective. I gave a lecture and made about eight appearances. I did a lot of press. Willem Dafoe came over, Oliver Assayas did a talk with me, Irène Jacob came, and the mayor gave me a dinner. It was kind of exhausting.

Austin Dale: Still, I'm sure it was fun.

Paul Schrader: Well, yeah, I don't want to burden you, but nothing in my life is much fun now. I go to the hospital every day because my wife is sick. That has defined my life for the last year. I sort of gave up filmmaking to become a caregiver. When this first started happening, I had lunch with Marty [Scorsese]. He said two things: "A spouse can't be a caregiver, and don't let it stop you from working." Well, I failed at both. I became a caregiver, and I stopped working.

But now, in another week, I'm gonna go back to work. I've written a new script and I'm making a new film. We're cast and we're financed. It's an original script, very much in the style I like to do. Nice cast. Oscar Isaac is the main guy. Tye Sheridan and Tiffany Haddish. And Willem's in it too. I love Tiffany. I've never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She's a firecracker. It's like talking to a live-wire connection. She's very funny and, of course, she makes you funny. When someone's sharp, that makes you get sharp because you want to keep up. So that's all good. In my films, I'll sort of combine two worlds that seem to have nothing to do with each other. In the new one, it's the world series of poker and Abu Ghraib.

Austin Dale: I watched Hardcore for the first time this week. Those are two worlds, for sure.

Paul Schrader: The thing with that movie is, unfortunately, the studio made me change the ending to that film. I've always had a problem with that. The original script had the Chinatown ending, which is, he discovers his daughter was killed in a car crash, unrelated to pornography, and he has to go home. That's Jake in Chinatown. Columbia Pictures said that I had to have the Searchers ending, not Chinatown. So that ending never worked for me.

It's an interesting curio of a film, particularly as time goes on, my films become time capsules of a certain time and place. You know who Henri Langlois was? From the Cinémathèque Française? He believed that everything should be saved. Everything. Pornography, everything. Somebody asked him why pornography should be saved. He said, "The room decor. They don't dress the rooms." You want to see what rooms actually look like? Watch porn. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what he was watching: the decor of the rooms.

Austin Dale: You couldn't make Hardcore at a studio now. Not in a million years.

Paul Schrader: None of these films you could make at a studio. You couldn't make Chinatown, you couldn't make The Godfather. That's gone. The mid-range, serious film has migrated to television. We don't really have studios anymore. We have Netflix, Amazon, Google. The streamers are the studios. The studios can't afford, obviously, The Irishman. The studios can't afford to make that. They wouldn't make Marriage Story, and they wouldn't make the new Soderbergh.

When it comes to theatrical, there are four categories left: One is spectacle. Another is the family and children's films, because you love to see your kid watching with other kids. The third is date movies. That's primarily horror, some comedy thrown in. And the fourth is club cinema. It used to be called art house cinema, but now that has changed, pretty much, not only around the country, but the world. And club cinema is where alcohol is the new popcorn and you become a member.

Austin Dale: You lived in Los Angeles for a long time, right?

Paul Schrader: About 15 years. I went out to LA to go to UCLA film school in 1968. My mother died and I was going through her stuff, and uh, she was a hoarder. And I found, from '67 to '71, I wrote my brother every two weeks. He was in Japan avoiding the draft. And I told him all about coming to LA, being with Pauline Kael, and all about every movie I saw. It was a real interesting look into a time and a place. The thing about letter writing is, when you're writing letters about what's happening, it's not the same as remembering.

So I read these, I had thrown away his correspondence. But he had kept mine. I'm writing to him and I'm saying: I was Melnitz Hall, which was the building of the film school. There was a commotion and everybody went outside. People are running around and yelling. Sirens. And in the hall next to us, the Ralph Bunche Center, the Panthers were having a meeting. And Ron Karenga had a group called the US [Organization], who were a rival group to the Panthers. And these guys came into the Panthers meeting and there was a shooting. And there you see two cats on the linoleum bleeding. People are running this way and that. Then the cameras come. They're screaming, "Go back to your classrooms!" So I'm writing this to my brother, and the next paragraph is, "And that night, I saw a terrific silent film by King Vidor. Show People. Fabulous." So that was 1968. Panther shooting in the afternoon, silent film at night.

Austin Dale: What movies did you like this year?

Paul Schrader: It was a very good year. I liked a lot of films. There are more good movies than there are good audiences. Atlantics, Uncut Gems, Les Miserables. I wasn't knocked out by Marriage Story. The Irishman is Marty's The Wild Bunch. The end of an era. Just like The Wild Bunch is the last real Western, this feels like the last real gangster film. There will be other gangster movies, but The Irishman finally said that these guys are out of time, out of place.

Everyone's watching it on Netflix, but I watched it that first matinee screening at New York Film Festival. There was a crowd, but pretty much nobody had really seen the film. Kent Jones had only seen an hour and a half of it. And everyone was there. And I said, this is the Roman arena. And if Marty is gonna get killed in the arena, I wanna see it happen! But it was uneasy for the first half hour. You could tell. People were very judgemental. And then about a half hour in, people started relaxing and started saying that this is gonna be a good movie. I'm glad it got made. I mean, this was a movie made on six months of shooting, with $160 million.

Austin Dale: What's the biggest budget you've worked with?

Paul Schrader: Not much. Very little, in comparison. It was on The Exorcist thing, maybe $15 to $20 million.

Austin Dale: And you're more comfortable somewhere on the level of, like, Light Sleeper, for example.

Paul Schrader: You know, the film that means the most to me is 75 minutes long, and it probably cost $500,000 in today's dollars. And you know, that's Pickpocket. Pickpocket endures. I'm not interested in epics. I'm not interested in these huge historical projects. The kind of films I make, these male character studies, you can do for quite little, actually. A lot of the directors I know, including Marty, including DePalma, are enamored of the big toys. The major spectacle, the camera equipment, the extras. I was never really that interested.

Austin Dale: When people first saw First Reformed a couple years ago, I think a lot of people thought of it as sort of your final statement.

Paul Schrader: Well, it was. At the time I said, "I don't know if I'll make another film. I hope so. If I don't, it's a damn good last film." Because it brought these two branches of my life together: the critical studies into transcendental style and the filmmaking that began with Taxi Driver. And so they merged, and there's a sense of resolution and completeness.

But then I retired and became a caregiver, and this idea came to me. And I put it together the same way I did Blue Collar 40 years ago. I haven't had much luck with the streamers. You know, First Reformed was turned down at the script stage and at the finished stage by Amazon and Netflix. My new film was turned down by Amazon and Netflix. It's not a question of, you know, "They'll do anything". I'm still outside their system.

I have this film, and maybe I have another film. We'll see. I had two TV series I loved, and I walked away from them. I told them, "Do what you want." If they're successful, that's five or six years of the writer's room, which is the idea killer, and I've only got five or six years left. I don't want to spend that five or six years making compromises. Maybe I'll make a handful of little edgy films, and I'll make them for next to nothing. That seems to me much better than doing some high-price piece of junk.

Austin Dale: When you say that the writers room kills ideas, what do you mean exactly?

Paul Schrader: Well, I can imagine it being okay, if you're doing Mel Brooks' writer's room. I have a number of friends who came up through that, because then you're just a bunch of comics around the room throwing around one-liners and comic ideas. But when you're talking about a serious narrative, then it's just a level of compromise. If you're Paul Thomas Anderson and you write Magnolia, and you put it through a writer's room, there ain't no Magnolia. There's no frogs. There's no "worship the cock". All of that has been worked out.

Austin Dale: I saw that you put First Reformed on your list of your favorite films of the decade.

Paul Schrader: Yeah. It wasn't lightly done. But I think it is, as do some others. I put it up there as a critic, not as a filmmaker or as a Facebook person or whatever. I think it is. Unfortunately, I don't believe in the future, but if I did, I would believe in the future of this film.

Austin Dale: When you say you don't believe in the future, you're talking about the world ending.

Paul Schrader: Not the world. Our species. The planet is going to be just fine. 500,000 years from now, it will be buzzing along just like it is now. But our gorilla brains have outlived their usefulness. We're not gonna get out of this fix. A part of me is very curious to see what happens next, and another part of me is happy that I won't have to. It's 2020 now. In the next thirty years, we will be at another level of difficulty, with various versions of unliveability, between drought and climate refugees.

You've read Sapiens? It's about five or six years old. Yuval Noah Harari. Big best seller. Really great smart. You read this book and you think, Oh, of course. He's one of these guys who can put things together. Israeli, homosexual, went to Oxford, brilliant guy. I paid a hundred bucks to listen to him at a Times Talk. Sapiens is the history of intelligence from our planetary beginnings to the present. There's no positivity in the book. Basically, it's saying there are three horses of the apocalypse: Nuclear holocaust, climate collapse, and artificial intelligence. In some way, AI is the most appealing, because that is the natural form of evolution. That means we've evolved into a new synthetic species adapted to this world we created. They're in a race to end our species. And the question is who gets to finish us off?

Quote from: eward on January 29, 2020, 05:35:36 PMSapiens is the history of intelligence from our planetary beginnings to the present. There's no positivity in the book. Basically, it's saying there are three horses of the apocalypse: Nuclear holocaust, climate collapse, and artificial intelligence. In some way, AI is the most appealing, because that is the natural form of evolution. That means we've evolved into a new synthetic species adapted to this world we created. They're in a race to end our species. And the question is who gets to finish us off?

BLEAK. But true.

(I don't see AI as an evolution of humanity though.)

Damn he remains sharp as ever. He summed up the current movie industry better than anyone. I love how feisty he still is, still throwing punches. Also his Magnolia shoutout was awesome.

I wish the interview was longer. And he had a better interviewer.

Quote from: ©brad on January 29, 2020, 09:22:18 PM
Also his Magnolia shoutout was awesome.

Paul Schrader Confirms Tiffany Haddish for Next Film, Says It's 'World Series of Poker' Meets 'Abu Ghraib' (https://www.indiewire.com/2020/01/paul-schrader-tiffany-haddish-movie-1202207335/)

Quote
Writer/director Paul Schrader's first movie since "First Reformed" is shaping up with an enviable cast, which now includes Tiffany Haddish, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker confirmed in a recent interview with The Metrograph. As previously announced, Oscar Isaac is set to lead the film currently titled "The Card Counter" as a gambler and ex-serviceman who tries to reform a young man looking to exact revenge on a mutual enemy. According to the interview with Schrader, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe are also on board and the film is financed. (It's repped by HanWay Films.)


Regarding Haddish, the fast-rising star  who's become a favorite of many an auteur, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Schrader said, "I love Tiffany. I've never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She's a firecracker. It's like talking to a live-wire connection. She's very funny and, of course, she makes you funny. When someone's sharp, that makes you get sharp because you want to keep up. So that's all good."

To borrow a phrase from The Parallax View's poster, Hardcore is as American as apple pie. Repressed conservatism given reign to to treat culture clash as aggressor. And the juxtaposition's asking you to consider both industrialized forms of expression. Steps toward repulsion on a spiritual journey. I'm assuming CC'z streaming the latest 4K restoration because it looked great, retaining the negative's texture.

Streaming on Criterion Channel for the rest of the month, on various VOD and available on blu-ray through Indicator.

^just like bare minimum he's the one who got to use the title Hardcore (nice)

i'm reading the Light Sleeper wiki page because i just watched it last night and want to talk about it. the wiki Paul Schrader page describes it as "the cult film Light Sleeper (1992)" compared to say "the crime drama Hardcore (a loosely autobiographical film also written by Schrader)" and "the crime drama American Gigolo (1980)" i'm not sure why it's the cult one

QuoteSchrader has described the film as a "man and his room" story like American Gigolo and his most famous screenplay, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. In this film his character in dealing with anxiety over his life and the external forces that threaten it. Light Sleeper also shares with American Gigolo an ending reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, in which the imprisoned hero is shown contemplating a new and hopefully better existence.

totally

QuoteIn a 2005 interview, Schrader called Light Sleeper his most personal film and ranked it number 11 on his list of favourite films of the 1990s

that's a funny statement with his recent First Reformed ranking in mind. First Reformed is a better movie



i appreciate how Schrader is like, "okay i want to describe depression but i'll cast a beautiful actor" and he keeps doing that. in Light Sleeper Dafoe is a 40yo semi-recent-sober drug dealer insomniac who writes in his diary at night. he feels fucked the whole movie and wonders what's in his future, like usual what can save him is love

Paul Schrader Explains The Story Of 'The Card Counter'
via The Playlist

Vulture (https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/paul-schrader-has-little-hope-for-the-future-of-movies.html) spoke with Schrader about the current status of his Oscar Isaac-starring film, "The Card Counter," and what shape that film is currently in, as well as what the future of the industry might look like after the COVID-19 pandemic. Schrader discussed how he came about the idea for "The Card Counter."

"I don't give a damn about gambling. I don't give a damn about boxing. I don't give a damn about taxi driving," he explained. "These are all just metaphors. What I try to [do] is if there is a problem that's bothering me, then I try to find two concurrent metaphors. One metaphor may in fact be the problem. So the problem is loneliness, and the metaphor is the taxi cab. The problem is loss of faith, and the metaphor is climate collapse. The problem is midlife crisis, and the metaphor is a drug dealer."

Schrader continued, "I find these two sorts of things that are sort of alike but not alike at all and run them alongside each other until sparks start jumping. So the two things on this one — I was worried about the problem of punishment. If you are truly guilty, is there any end to punishment? Can you ever be punished enough? This is a nice Calvinist problem, and we know the answer to it."

As for how this process links back to "The Card Counter," the filmmaker goes into the basic idea behind the film, which may surprise you based on the title, has only a little to do with gambling. In fact, a film about a gambler in the world of poker is more about military torture.

"I was looking at the World Series of Poker. I said, There is a blankness there. That is the blankest world. They're just sitting there ten, 12 hours a day, running numbers through their heads just like slot players are," the filmmaker said. "It's a way to not exist and pretend you are existing. So what kind of person would choose that kind of occupation to not exist if he was under guilt? Then I said, Of course. There's only one guilt sufficient in our times. It's Abu Ghraib. My guy was one of the torturers. And not only one of them, he loved it. He was enjoying it, and he went to jail for eight years."

When will audiences get to see "The Card Counter?" Well, Schrader says he's about 80% done with filming and is actively working on the editing and other work behind-the-scenes (including securing Geoff Barrow of Portishead—who composed the music for "Ex Machina" and "Annihilation"—to score the film) during lockdown. So, he's hoping to be ready by the fall. And since he thinks that the odds of Venice or TIFF happening this year are "iffy," but he does have his heart set on one event.

"God knows I'd love to be in Telluride this fall," he revealed, though ultimately he thinks Berlin 2021 is going to be the "first major festival" in a post-COVID-19 world.

The Card Counter "livestream" Q&A currently archived at HanwayFilms (https://www.hanwayfilms.com/xy4cbs2e)

Hand-made films, guilt, Dune, and Bruce Willis' contract.

From The New Yorker interview (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/paul-schrader-on-making-and-watching-movies-in-the-age-of-netflix)

QuoteHave you ever entertained the possibility of working for a streaming service directly, whether a feature film or a series?

Yeah. Well, Scorsese and I are planning something, and it is . . . it would be a three-year series about the origins of Christianity.

Fiction? Drama?

No, no, no. It's based on the Apostles and on the Apocrypha. It's called "The Apostles and Apocrypha." Because people sort of know the New Testament, but nobody knows the Apocrypha. And back in the first century, there was no New Testament, there's just these stories. And some were true, and some weren't, and some were forgeries.

But these will be dramatized like "The Last Temptation"?

Yeah.

https://twitter.com/FocusFeatures/status/1392888005766131718

Yesh. :twisted: The hype iz real.

This guy

I thought he'd gone sober but he sounds drunk. it's an adorable statement of course but it's sentimental rather than intellectual, Schrader, a human after all

I enjoy watching him get kicked out of every online poker room that makes the mistake of allowing him in. What a guy.

Does Schrader livestream poker matches?? lol

Paul Schrader Sets Richard Gere Reunion; Antoine Fuqua and Elisabeth Moss Offered Scripts to Direct
The Film Stage

Enthusiasts of Paul Schrader's Facebook are well aware he's moved into a new Hudson Yards spot––I'd suggest this as essential viewing:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CpquspUL8p0

––and it's subject of a fascinating, deeply moving profile in Curbed anchored around caring for his wife Mary Beth Hurt (try reading the last couple lines and not sighing) and which portrays someone who finds enviable degrees of focus in doing their work. Mentioned therein are a few new projects: no indication of the Puerto Rico-set feature (https://thefilmstage.com/paul-schrader-will-form-a-tetralogy-with-his-next-film-following-a-nurse-in-puerto-rico/) he teased last fall, but word he'll very soon stage a reunion from his most iconic writing-directing job.

If all goes well, Schrader is directing Richard Gere this summer for the first time since American Gigolo––or, had things had once gone to plan, The Walker––in an adaptation of an unnamed novel by Russell Banks, a personal friend and source for one of his best films, Affliction. Adriane Quinlan, author of the Curbed piece, has confirmed Schrader will adapt Banks' 2021 novel Foregone, which he hopes to title Oh Canada! and compares to Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Harper Collins' synopsis would suggest interest for a filmmaker constantly dwelling on their mortality:

QuoteAt the center of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife's wife and alongside Malcolm's producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.

Imaginatively structured around Fife's secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself.

It's meanwhile said he's optioned an untitled, logline-free script for Elisabeth Moss to direct, which would mark a feature debut after dabbling in TV, and had been talking to Antoine Fuqua about helming his project Three Guns at Dawn––somehow not a western (à la his aborted Nine Men from Now) but "follows three brothers — a dirty cop, a serial killer, and a drug dealer — who hate one another." If we see even one, let alone two or three, we can consider it a verdant time for a tireless American master.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Schrader's Very Paul Schrader Days in Assisted Living
By Adriane Quinlan
Curbed

(https://i.imgur.com/EZM0Fc0.jpg)

Paul Schrader is late and hasn't eaten. He's been stuck in his apartment on a Zoom call with Antoine Fuqua of Training Day, trying to get the director to sign on to a new script he's set on calling Three Guns at Dawn. It follows three brothers — a dirty cop, a serial killer, and a drug dealer — who hate one another. At 1:30, he appears in the restaurant, orders three eggs scrambled and a scoop of cottage cheese, mixes it all together, and huffs it down, his heavy gold bracelet thumping the table. Then he looks around. The space is sterile but tasteful: big windows overlooking Hudson Yards, vaguely mid-century furniture, an open kitchen. Everything smells of jasmine. "Living in this place feels like living on the Cunard Line," he says. "Sometimes I think, God, I've got to get to a dive bar somewhere."

This place is Coterie Hudson Yards, a luxury senior-living facility that Schrader, 76, moved into in February. It's a good spot to write in, he says, and he has been working near constantly since he arrived, managing to finish two scripts from the desk in his one-bedroom on the eighth floor. The first he optioned to Elisabeth Moss to direct; the second, an adaptation of one of the last novels by his friend Russell Banks, he is keeping for himself. He plans to shoot it this summer with Richard Gere in the lead role.

Schrader didn't necessarily need to move into an assisted-living facility. He told a documentary crew speaking to him about 2018's First Reformed that it could be his last film; it was not. Over the past few years, he managed (despite COVID-induced delays) to toss off two movies about afflicted loners distanced from society: The Card Counter, which premiered in 2021, and Master Gardener, set for release in May.

But eight years ago, his wife of almost 40 years, the actress Mary Beth Hurt, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. At first, he quietly cared for her in the Putnam County home where they'd lived for years. That wasn't sustainable. "You have to strike a balance. You can't let her condition stop you from working," his friend and longtime collaborator Martin Scorsese advised him. He hired help, but recently that care "needed to escalate. I started realizing that we're not gonna be able to take care of her anymore and wondering, Where's a good place?"

His own health had also taken a downturn. Last year, heart issues landed him in the hospital; a bout of long COVID came with bronchitis. He was starting to skip events, such as the talk after a screening of Master Gardener at the New York Film Festival. Suddenly, Schrader — whose screenplays have honed the archetype of the lonesome American man driven mad — was afraid of becoming the character in his films. "Am I gonna be left as the lonely old guy at the lake house, walking into walls, drinking?" he says. "Is that gonna be my fate?"

So Hurt moved into Coterie in January, and Schrader arrived a few weeks later. Now, almost every day, he wakes up at nine, works for a few hours, then takes the elevator down to the sixth floor, where Hurt's apartment is. She lives in what Coterie calls Memory Care, a floor designed for people with cognitive impairment: Hallways flow in a circle so anyone who forgets where they're headed can just keep going, drifting through two living areas, a small café, and long rows of studio apartments. Hurt and other residents on the floor sometimes forget their room numbers, so outside each apartment is an illuminated glass box that residents and family can fill with mementos.  In Hurt's, Schrader has put a Playbill from the 1996 revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance signed by the rest of the cast. (Hurt played Julia, the troublesome divorcée; the show won the Tony for Best Revival of a Play.) Below that is a souvenir plate from a family trip to a crocodile farm in Thailand; in the middle of the plate is a photo of the family. The kids are around 9 and 13. Behind them are Schrader in a Hawaiian shirt and Hurt, with a backpack, smiling.

Sometimes he'll bring her up to the main restaurant; other days he'll stay in Memory Care and play a game or read a book beside her. When a live band came to play for residents, a staffer says, Schrader made requests. Friends come by, too. Glenn Close recently popped in a few times before heading back to her house in Bozeman, Montana.

"Would I have moved here if I didn't have a situation with my wife?" Schrader asks. "No. Will I leave if she dies? No. I like it."

Schrader likes that Coterie feels like a hotel. "I've lived in hotels half my life when I'm on location," he says. "I like the room service. I like the bar. I like the maids." Plus, those hotels on location always offered Schrader another perk: someone at the bar he knew, someone from the crew, someone to talk to. At Coterie, where the residents rarely shift, he has been getting to know his neighbors, a group that includes a former cabaret singer and a onetime Broadway set designer. "They all tend to be kind of interesting because otherwise they couldn't afford to be here," Schrader says before sensing his snobbishness, "even if they are a little on the geriatric side. But then so am I."

Coterie does feel decidedly less nursing home, more Four Seasons, at least if you ignore a few details: leather banisters along the hallways, rugs whose edges are tamped down to prevent trips, and a bar furnished with armchairs instead of teetering stools. In apartments, Alexa reacts to voice commands to raise shades, read out the weather, or turn off lights. A tech specialist can help you set it up or assist you with the computer, and a receptionist downstairs is more of a concierge who can be tasked with booking theater tickets, restaurant reservations, or a ride anywhere in Manhattan; the fee is included along with daily housekeeping, use of a 1,500-square-foot gym and spa, and dining at three on-site restaurants (room service goes until ten, but if a resident wants to order a steak at 2 a.m., staff will help them find a local restaurant to deliver it). All this comes at a cost: A one-bedroom starts at $15,600 a month.

Schrader mockingly describes the aesthetic of his apartment as "Wayfair modern." But he's made it his own. The shelves are stuffed with awards (his Spike of Honor from Valladolid, a Golden Lion) and books (a signed copy of Revolutionary Road). In a bin in the hall are copies of the script he's planning to shoot this summer with Gere. ("My Ivan Ilyich," Schrader calls the project.) In early March, he had a party — a sort of announcement that he was back in the city in the neighborhood where, more than 20 years ago, he had shot Light Sleeper. "I thought it's very cool to live in Alphaville," he says, referencing Godard's 1965 sci-fi film. He invited 80 people, colleagues and critics and friends, and all of Coterie's residents. The party spilled over from the Brass Room restaurant to a lounge outfitted with a player piano and down the hall past Coterie's private theater. In that small dark room, Schrader played a single film on loop: Chilly Scenes of Winter, a 1979 romance starring Hurt in her early 30s, around the time they met. It's his favorite movie of hers.

Wow. That's beautiful, graceful.

Paul Schrader Wants to Make Another Movie
By Alex Abramovich
The New Yorker, May 1, 2023

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His new film, "Master Gardener," completes a trilogy that began with "First Reformed." But the writer-director is no longer content with it being his last.

Paul Schrader is seventy-six years old, compact, pugnacious. When production on his film "The Card Counter" was interrupted by the arrival of the pandemic, he took to Facebook and railed against the movie's producers. "I would have shot through hellfire rain to complete the film," he wrote. "I'm old and asthmatic, what better way to die than on the job?"

Last year, he came close to getting his wish. He was in New Orleans, working on his new movie, "Master Gardener." First, the retina on his right eye detached. Without surgery, he risked damaging his vision permanently. Afraid he'd never get the movie off the ground if he stopped for an operation, he bought an eye patch instead. Then, in the middle of filming, he started gasping for breath. covid tests came back negative, so he got a nebulizer and an oxygen tank. When production wrapped, he celebrated at Teddy's Juke Joint, outside Baton Rouge. The next morning, he flew home to New York.

Schrader was living in a brown shingled house on the edge of a man-made lake in the Hudson Valley. Near the driveway was a greenhouse he'd built for his wife, the stage and screen actress Mary Beth Hurt. She and Schrader have two children, Molly and Sam, both in their thirties, and Molly, who was living in Queens, had come to stay with her mother, who has Alzheimer's, while Schrader was on location. When he got back from Louisiana that night, his breathing was shallow; the next day, they had to call 911. He had contracted walking pneumonia.

He spent a week in the hospital, watching old movies on cable and posting to Facebook. "ambien dreams," he wrote, several days in:

QuoteWoke up in hospital room 3am this morn in a TOTAL panic. I was directing a sequence about an emergency room rescue. I was the patient. I could not get anyone at the hospital to help me or take me seriously. "He's gonna die!" I screamed for help—finally hospital workers came into my room. I begged for help. Gradually it became apparent that I was in a waking dream state and the staff calmed me down and got me back into bed. Adam Driver was there. "Fuck it," he said. "I'm outta here" and left. My chest was in pain. My blood pressure was 190/60. The staff got me on oxygen and I realized what had happened.

He was sent home later that day, a Friday. On Monday, he began editing his movie.

Schrader makes the sort of serious, character-driven films that always seem to be going out of fashion. He is perhaps best known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese—"Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" among them—but he has made more than twenty films of his own, including "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters," "Light Sleeper," and "Affliction." His greatest commercial success, "American Gigolo," from 1980, with a young Richard Gere in Armani, helped set the tone and the look of the decade that followed.

Many of these movies feature an archetype Schrader calls "God's lonely man," or "the man in the room." Solitary, obsessive, in turmoil, this man writes in a journal and waits, trying not to boil over. Invariably, something terrible happens. Over the years, the character has been a cabbie, a sex worker, a drug dealer, a card sharp. In "First Reformed," from 2017, Ethan Hawke played him as a tormented pastor. Schrader had gone through years when his movies were panned or ignored, but that film attracted a passionate audience, who responded not only to its moral seriousness and its anxiety over climate change—the pastor counsels a would-be environmental terrorist—but to its depiction of Schrader's central theme, loneliness.

Then came covid-19. When movie theatres reopened, Schrader was in vogue. In New York, his films enjoyed a series of revivals. "Blue Collar," from 1978, screened at Film Forum in a run that was extended three times. "Light Sleeper," "Mishima," "Cat People," "Hardcore," and "American Gigolo" played at repertory theatres packed with people in their twenties. Perhaps, during lockdown, the idea of a man losing his mind in a room by himself had become more relatable.

Schrader was ready to screen a rough cut of "Master Gardener"—the third film in a trilogy that began with "First Reformed"—two weeks after leaving the hospital. He assembled a sympathetic audience in a private screening room and took a seat in the last row, so that he could gauge everybody's reactions. "This movie is going to piss people off," he said. "There are a number of hot-button issues."

Schrader's gardener, Narvel, played by Joel Edgerton, is a former white supremacist—as we learn when he takes off his shirt, revealing a raft of horrifying tattoos. The movie pairs him, awkwardly, with a young Black woman, Maya, played by Quintessa Swindell. Maya is the niece of the gardener's boss, played by Sigourney Weaver. Narvel becomes Maya's mentor, and then her lover. The film builds to a violent climax, then ends on a gentle note of grace.

"I need a moment to process," someone said when the lights came back on. She felt that the ending, in particular, had been too sentimental.

"How about the white-pride reveal?" Schrader asked. "Did that come as a surprise to you?"

"I have no context," she said, "for what a white-pride reveal would be."

He did his best to explain. The questions he fielded were smart; a few were quite helpful. But the consensus was that the film fell flat. When Schrader had screened his previous two movies, he knew right away that they worked. With this one, he wasn't so sure. Andrew Wonder, a filmmaker and a former assistant of Schrader's, said he felt as if he'd been watching several movies at once. As the audience filtered out, Schrader leaned over and asked him, "How much trouble am I in?"

Schrader is gruff. He is somewhat flamboyant—he likes fine things and first editions, wears a gold Rolex and several rings, and, on festive occasions, favors a jacket with Western trim and yellow piping—but he is not effusive. (Willem Dafoe, a frequent collaborator and fellow-Midwesterner, told me, "In some ways I feel very close to him, and in some ways I don't know him at all.") He is impish and ornery, a handful. Three times, when he's had a film coming out, the distributors have asked him to stop posting on Facebook, where he has a tendency to make impolitic comments, such as suggesting that he wanted to cast Kevin Spacey, an accused sexual predator, in a new project: "I believe there are crimes in life but no crimes in art," Schrader wrote. (Spacey has denied the allegations against him.)

Schrader completed his first script, "Pipeliner," in 1971, when he was twenty-five and living in Los Angeles. He described the broad strokes: "A kid whose life doesn't work out in California goes home to Oil City, Michigan, which is a real place, to work on a pipeline, which I used to do, because he has been diagnosed with a terminal affliction. He thinks this has given him the license to behave as he chooses. And he screws up the life of the girl who loves him. He screws up the life of an old guy, a friend of the family. And he doesn't die! He goes back to wallow in his own narcissistic demise and in fact just creates suffering for other people."

It didn't sell. His first marriage collapsed. He started living out of his car, a white Chevy Nova, and spent his time alone, in seedy places. "The porn theatres on Santa Monica Boulevard, in that stretch going west from La Cienega, were open for twenty-four hours," he told me. "You could go up in the balcony and sleep if you ignored certain sights and smells around you." He ended up in the emergency room with a bleeding ulcer and the realization that the only people he'd spoken with in a long while had been liquor-store clerks. "I was in the hospital when the metaphor came to me. A taxicab, like a yellow coffin floating around in the city." He wrote two drafts of a screenplay in two weeks, drinking whiskey mixed in with Mylanta.

Schrader wrote every scene from the perspective of his taxi-driver, Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro. The idea was to encourage identification by starving the audience of other inputs; by the time we understand that the man in the room is psychotic, it's too late for us. We're trapped. "It's a perverse trick that Schrader's very, very good at," the filmmaker Richard Linklater told me. "He's the master, pulling you into someone's life. Getting you to feel for them as a human being. And then they shoot up the place." Linklater was a college dropout in Houston, working on oil rigs off the Gulf Coast, when he saw "Taxi Driver," at a repertory theatre. The next day, he drove out to some land his family had in East Texas. "I remember just hiking through the woods. Beautiful nature, big thickets, and I was on the streets of Manhattan. I couldn't get out of that movie," he said. "I couldn't get out of that headspace for, it felt like, days. I don't know if I've ever been affected so much by a movie."

It was a common experience. "People forget," Bruce Springsteen, another Schrader fan, told me. "At that time, 'Taxi Driver' was 'Jaws.' Everyone in America went to see it. That feeling of someone speaking to us was unique. If you were a product of the fifties, and a deeply religious background, an Italian background—or even an Irish background, which is my neighborhood—it cut through so many existential issues you didn't even realize you were dealing with, but you were. The film was incredibly important. It was an amazing event in my friends' lives."

Schrader and Springsteen—who can quote the last lines of "Blue Collar" by heart—share certain themes: isolation, entrapment, escape. The men they write about could be brothers. A few years after "Taxi Driver," Schrader wrote a partially autobiographical script and asked Springsteen to play the lead. Springsteen declined, but he liked the title: "Born in the U.S.A." He nicked it, and, in return, wrote Schrader a song called "Light of Day." Schrader retitled his script accordingly and cast Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett. Like a lot of critics, he was disappointed with the result. "It just never worked," he said.

Schrader hit the road as soon as the "Taxi Driver" script was finished. He was in Winston-Salem when he got a letter from his brother, Leonard. Older than Paul by two years, Leonard had gone to the Iowa Writers' Workshop and then to Kyoto, to escape the draft. In Japan, Leonard's life fell apart, too. "He lost his marriage," Schrader says. "Lost his job. His health declined, and he took to watching Toei films, which were the real, hard-core, genre yakuza movies." Leonard described them to his brother, who saw commercial potential and pitched the idea for a script to an agent. He and Leonard wrote "The Yakuza" together. Like "Taxi Driver," it drew on John Ford's Western "The Searchers," telling the story of an American veteran who served in Japan and must return to rescue a friend's kidnapped daughter. The script got sixteen bidders at auction and sold for more than any studio had ever paid for a screenplay.

Schrader became a hot property. He wrote in the evenings—one screenplay after another, for Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Joan Tewkesbury (one of the only women to direct a Hollywood movie in the seventies)—and spent Sundays at a house that his friends, the producers Michael and Julia Phillips, were renting north of Malibu. Spielberg, De Palma, and Scorsese were all regulars there. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne lived up the hill and could see the house from their terrace. Didion said she could imagine all of Los Angeles being powered by the ambition she saw there. "We were all teeth and elbows," Schrader says. "We were all fighting for every inch of territory we could."

As a kid, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Schrader was always brawling. "You would have all this ad-hoc football you'd play," he says. "I remember going down, hitting people as hard as I could, and getting an asthma attack. I would lay on the ground, wheezing until I could get my breath back—and then going back and bam. I guess that's just temperament." He barrelled through Hollywood, too, adopting a wild-man persona, playing with guns, and practicing a discipline he called "fucking up," as in up the food chain. "If you're going to get anything done in this business, you've got to start fucking up," he explains. "Don't talk to anybody unless they can do something for you. Don't waste your time on losers. That kind of thing. Obviously, it creates a bad impression. But there's hardly anybody who's been a success in this kind of atmosphere who doesn't believe that."

For some, Schrader's persona was part of his appeal. I asked Scorsese how much of it was a bluff. " 'Bluffing' implies inauthenticity," he said. "For us, the construction of personae was a kind of by-product of the fact that we were filmmakers. In other words, it was always in the service of getting our films made." He added, "Paul had his troubles, and he led a complicated life. So did I. We both went to extremes—just extremes of a different nature. All I know is he was the only one I could talk to about matters of the spirit, matters of existence, of faith. I think we shared that."

Schrader's mother, Joan Fisher, was raised on the family farm in Muskegon, attending Christian Reformed services. She met Charles Schrader at Herpolsheimer's, a department store, where they both worked as clerks, and converted him to Calvinism. Charles took to it with a fervor, though his dreams of becoming a seminarian were derailed by the Great Depression. He became an executive at an oil company instead, running pipelines from Canada to Ohio, but in the basement of their house there was always a room dedicated to his theological library. Paul and Leonard did their homework there, seated at desks that faced each other. Charles hoped they would grow up to be ministers. When Paul was eight, he copied the Book of Genesis out, line by line, on a yellow legal pad, filling forty-two pages and getting as far as Chapter 17—because, he says, he wanted to "own" the words.

Belonging to the Christian Reformed Church meant professing belief in the total depravity of humankind, through original sin, and in the impossibility of being good apart from God's grace; it was the height of vanity to think that one's actions could lead to salvation. Schrader and his first wife, Jeannine Oppewall—who also grew up in the church and met Schrader at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids—have identical, not quite canonical versions of Isaiah 64:6 stuck in their minds: "My best works are like filthy rags in the sight of the Lord." Although man had free will, it was impossible for him to choose or work toward salvation, because God had already selected the saved.

Schrader found this troubling, because it seemed to leave no room for personal determination: how do you have free will, he wondered, when, in fact, you don't? There seemed to be no escape from God's sight and judgment, from his own guilt and shame. Max Weber wrote that the doctrine produced a "feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness," and that work, though it would never be sufficient, was the only available consolation for its adherents. Growing up, Schrader went door to door selling marigolds, petunias, and tulip bulbs his uncles grew on the family farm. He carried crates of soda-pop bottles, and unloaded freight cars, hauling hundred-pound sacks of potatoes. He worked in a furniture factory—the same one that he later filmed in his movie "Hardcore." But none of the work brought him closer to God.

When the time came for him to make a public profession of faith, at sixteen, he told the minister that he couldn't. The minister spoke to Schrader's father. It was decided that, on Friday nights, instead of going out with friends, Schrader would sit with a church elder discussing religious concerns. After two weeks of this, he relented and agreed to make his profession. "I remember standing there in front of the congregation, thinking, I don't believe a word of this," he says.

If Schrader's own life were a movie, the next scene would show his escape, into the world of the movies themselves. But the Christian Reformed Church grouped moving pictures in with other forbidden "worldly amusements," such as card playing, dancing, and pop music. Schrader knew about rock and roll; his mother had caught him listening to Pat Boone in the basement and had smashed the radio against a wall. The movies were harder to get to. One afternoon, he took a bus downtown, snuck into the old Majestic Theatre, and watched one: "The Absent-Minded Professor," about the invention of something called flubber. "What is this all about?" Schrader recalls thinking. "Why all the drama?" Later he would dine out on the story. His friends and competitors in Hollywood grew up obsessively watching and making movies, but he hadn't, and when he had finally seen one he was unimpressed.

That changed when Schrader arrived at Calvin College, on the other side of Grand Rapids. A neighborhood movie theatre started showing films by Ingmar Bergman, and he was hooked: Bergman seemed to be asking the same theological questions that Schrader had been wrestling with. He began to write about movies, joining the editorial staff of The Chimes, Calvin's student-run paper. He started a film club, renting 16-mm. prints from Janus Films and arranging post-screening panel discussions with professors and pastors. He screened Robert Bresson's "Diary of a Country Priest" and Carl Dreyer's "Ordet," and caused a minor scandal with a showing of Luis Buñuel's "Viridiana."

Schrader likes to say that he got out of Grand Rapids "the same way a bullet gets out of a gun." The actual path was more circuitous. He spent the summer of 1967 in New York, taking film classes at Columbia. One evening, at a bar in Morningside Heights, he was reading Pauline Kael's first book, "I Lost It at the Movies," and he struck up a conversation with another patron, Paul Warshow, whose father was the late critic Robert Warshow. Warshow knew Kael; he brought Schrader to her apartment the next day. "Sitting around an oak table, beneath a spider-patterned Tiffany lamp, we ate and drank and argued," Schrader later recalled. He slept on the sofa. In the morning, Kael said, "You don't want to be a minister. You want to be a film critic. We are going to keep in touch." For years afterward, Schrader sent her everything he wrote. She offered to help him get into film school, and he started at U.C.L.A. in the fall of 1968.

After Oppewall got her graduate degree, at Bryn Mawr, she joined him in California. She told me that she and Schrader "used each other to escape the gravitational pull of the Christian Reformed Church." They married and settled in Hollywood, in a three-bedroom bungalow on Sycamore Avenue. The back yard was dominated by a half-dead grapefruit tree whose fruit was so sour it was inedible. "We were kids," Oppewall told me, "and had no idea how to take care of a yard, and no interest in it." Schrader made a student film, now lost, about a Maoist cell that takes over the radio station at U.C.L.A. With Kael's help, he got a job as a film critic at the Los Angeles Free Press, where he wrote about "Belle de Jour," "Midnight Cowboy," and "The Wild Bunch." He met Hitchcock, Renoir, and Peckinpah. He was fired for panning "Easy Rider"—not a popular take with the alt-weekly's staff—and then hired to edit Cinema, a vanity publication that became serious under his watch. He wrote a book, "Transcendental Style in Film," that is still read by film students.

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A young Schrader standing in his father's shadow in Grand Rapids, Michigan

One day, Schrader went to visit Charles and Ray Eames at their famous design studio in Venice, hoping to interview them for Film Quarterly. Oppewall, who had been teaching in Watts, came along and ended up quitting her job to work for the Eameses. She later became a production designer, collaborating with Spielberg and Curtis Hanson and earning four Academy Award nominations. (Schrader has one, for writing "First Reformed.") The encounter changed his life, too. "Eames was my first insight into the poetry of images," he told me one afternoon at the lake house. Schrader's dogs, Harley and Tick, were darting in and out of the room. Hurt wandered in to poke around in the fridge. He put a mug down on the kitchen table.

"Coffee cup," he said. "Two words, three syllables. That is a verbal code for many things, all of which are coffee cups." Schrader pointed at the mug: "This is not a 'coffee cup,' except in verbal code. It is what it is: an object, an image. It's an idea." He picked the mug up and held it away from himself at an angle. "That's another idea. Move the image, the object, and you have another idea. Shift your perspective: another idea. As you move or the light moves, the geometry changes. This was something I'd never come across when I was growing up."

Schrader has been in and out of psychoanalysis; he views filmmaking as a form of therapy. "Taxi Driver" is a case in point. "I realized, if I wrote that guy, I wouldn't have to be him," he says. Schrader is not the man in the room. ("He's me without brains," he told Kael, about Bickle.) But, in weird, unpredictable ways, there is blurring and bleed-through between them.

"Let me tell you a story," Ethan Hawke said. "I can't read without my glasses. I really can't see at all. And we're doing this scene—it's outside, there's a crowd. My character's reading Scripture, and he's got a Bible. So, instead of memorizing the lines, I had printed them out in a bigger font and stuck them inside of the Bible. Just as we're about to start shooting, Paul runs up to me. He takes the Bible away and puts another one in my hand. I open it up: 'Merry Christmas—From Mom & Dad, Grand Rapids, 1959.' Of course, the rest of it's too small to read. But if you ask me, How personal do I think these films are? That's how personal."

As the years passed, Schrader tried to envision happier endings for the man in the room. Time and again, he lifted the last scene of "Pickpocket," Bresson's 1959 movie about a young man who has never felt human connection. The character ends up behind bars. When Jeanne, a woman who loves him, visits the prison, he cracks and allows her to reach him. Physically, he's imprisoned, but spiritually and emotionally he's been set free. "Oh, Jeanne," he says. "What a strange path I had to take to come to you."

"American Gigolo," "Light Sleeper," and "The Card Counter" end on the exact same note. ("Cat People," Schrader's stylish, slightly unhinged remake of Jacques Tourneur's nineteen-forties horror movie, also recycles the ending, albeit with a zoological twist.) These films about men on the margins, trying to find a way back in, are like a puzzle that Schrader can't quite give up on or solve. He says that the problem he's addressing in his most recent films is "despair and acceptance." But, with "Master Gardener," Schrader wanted to move the man in the room to the other side of the bars—to free him once and for all. He recut and rescreened the movie several times. Every edit improved on the first, but the film was still missing something. What it was missing, he decided, was a clear sense of Maya's inner life.

The female characters in Schrader's films, Sigourney Weaver told me, "are the answer, somehow. They are able to convert the violence, the cost to the human soul, into something ecstatic and glorious." For the same reason, these women are also at risk of becoming symbols. With Maya, Schrader thought the solution was to give her more of a voice. "I needed a scene that would show her anger and assertiveness," he said. In the spring, he wrote one: a fight between Swindell and Edgerton. "If they bring it," Schrader said of Swindell, who is nonbinary, "the movie will work." In order to shoot the scene, he would need to raise money, get the actors back together, hire a crew. It took a month. In the meantime, he wrote another script, about a trauma nurse, called "Amber Light."

Before the pandemic, Schrader had a standard routine when beginning a screenplay. He'd tell the germ of a story out loud; if the tale held a small group's attention for ten minutes, he'd go home, write it down with more detail, and run through the process again. He'd get up to twenty minutes, then forty-five. If the story still kept people interested, he'd set it all down on a legal pad, devoting a handful of words and a time stamp to every scene he envisioned. These final outlines are dense, uniform—almost without exception, they fit onto one page—and visually striking, like mathematical proofs. "Paul's writing is all about concision," Scorsese told me. "Everything counts, there's not a word out of place, and all the parts work together like a Swiss watch." Scorsese cited that precision as the reason he and Schrader eventually stopped collaborating—he had "evolved into a different kind of storytelling," he said, making movies that were "more like frescoes that keep widening, encompassing, and gathering more and more."

Schrader's papers, which are held at the Harry Ransom Center, at the University of Texas at Austin, contain ideas and outlines for dozens of movies that never got made, including other Scorsese projects—most notably, there is a full script for "Gershwin," a life of the composer, written with De Niro in mind. In 1998, De Niro approached Schrader with another idea. "Dear Marty," Schrader wrote to Scorsese afterward, "I've had a day to ponder that peculiar lunch yesterday with Bob. It seems he actually is talking about something like 'Travis Bickle 25 years later,' which we both agree is a terrible idea." A week later, he reconsidered: "After deciding not to think about De Niro's Taxi Driver suggestion, an idea unexpectedly popped into my head: Theodore Kaczynski."

The ideas still come, at all hours. During the time that it took him to make "Master Gardener," Schrader pitched two television series—one set in Biblical times and the other set, atypically, in the future. (Schrader has never made a sci-fi film, though he did write the first full draft of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," for Spielberg, who had envisioned a Watergate movie with aliens and hated the screenplay.) The trauma-nurse script was another departure. For the first time, he had imagined the man in the room as a woman.

On a drizzly morning in June, two trucks, a trailer, and a fifteen-person passenger van pulled into the parking lot of the Jacob Burns Film Center, in Pleasantville, about half an hour south of the lake house. The actors arrived an hour later, Edgerton clean-shaven and purposeful in khaki pants and a flat cap, Swindell in paint-spattered jeans and Chuck Taylors. Schrader, all in black, nibbled on a blueberry muffin, which he put down before taking the actors into a side room.

Alan Poul, a director and producer who worked on "Mishima" and "Light of Day," describes Schrader as a man who gets what he needs and moves on—he is not a perfectionist, Poul said, "in the vein of obsessively trying things a million ways and shooting twenty takes sometimes just to exhaust the actors." Still, Schrader will go to considerable lengths to get a performance. He tells a story about working with James Coburn and Nick Nolte on "Affliction," which he adapted, in 1997, from a novel by Russell Banks. Coburn plays a dominating, alcoholic father, Nolte his son. Schrader knew that Coburn had a tendency to coast on his voice. "Nick will get very intense on you," he warned him. "He may bust you. And, if he does, I won't defend you." "I get it," Coburn said. "You mean like real acting? No one asks. But I can do that." Then shooting began and, sure enough, Coburn started leaning on his voice. Schrader invited him to his hotel room and had him read all his lines in falsetto. "He was a man's man," Schrader told me. "A baritone. And if he's hiding behind his voice, and I take it away, he's got to find some new place to hide. And that's going to be inside his character." Echoes of the falsetto readings made it into the film; Coburn won his first Oscar.

Swindell told me that they and Schrader talked for hours about the script, going over it line by line and discussing the meaning of redemption and whether people change. At Jacob Burns, they had time to ease into the scene. Schrader was filming in front of a green screen, which meant that he had to shoot several takes, from several angles. Swindell shouted. They whacked a glass of water to the floor. They stormed off, again and again. Some of the readings were intense, others more fragile. Schrader hadn't meant to wear them down by shooting excessively, but the effect was the same, and it worked. Swindell brought it, he said.

There was time for an additional shot, a wordless scene that conveyed a bit more of Maya. To create the effect Schrader wanted, a team of electricians put a blind up on two lighting stands, then attached a five-thousand-watt tungsten bulb to a dolly's pneumatic boom arm, which moved up and down: car headlights coming through a window, via movie magic. Swindell sat, silently, while shadows passed across their face and shoulders. The scene re-created a famous shot from "American Gigolo," which had itself been a quote from one of Schrader's favorite films, Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist." "I needed something to give the idea of change," he said. "So, I rolled up the light on Quintessa. I did that Bertolucci thing, and it became an idea. What is the idea? When you put it into words, Quintessa's rethinking the relationship. They're wondering, 'What am I going to do?' But that pales beside the image of it."

Schrader sat down with the new footage early last summer. He was pleased, but there was still work to be done—C.G.I. shots to be inserted, colors to correct, sounds to mix. Devonté Hynes, who performs as Blood Orange, was writing a score, and Schrader had found a ballad, by the Kentucky songwriter S. G. Goodman, that he wanted to run over the closing credits. "I never want to leave this world," the song begins, "without saying I love you."

He spent a week in a midtown studio working with Hynes, playing Words with Friends on his phone during the lulls. Schrader has multiple games going, with multiple novelists. (I asked him how he does. "I win," he said. George Pelecanos told me that Schrader's lifetime record against him is 382–312.) By the end of July, "Master Gardener" was complete. The Venice International Film Festival asked to host the première, out of competition. The organizers also wanted to give Schrader a lifetime-achievement award. In the past year, festivals in Sarajevo, Kerala, Transylvania, and Victoria, British Columbia, have all reached out to him, but Venice, the oldest film festival in the world, was different.

The recognition would have seemed improbable at various points in his career. He'd endured his share of dry spells, long periods when the phone didn't ring. Quentin Tarantino was at Sundance in 1992, with "Reservoir Dogs," which became the talk of the festival, when "Light Sleeper" had its première. He was struck by how little attention the movie got. "I liked it so much," he says. "But I remember feeling sorry for Paul a little bit, because I felt that the critical community was taking him for granted. He had been around a long time. And then he came out with this really interesting movie. And no one cared."

Schrader got covid in August and nearly had to bow out of Venice, but he was determined to go. When he arrived in the city, he looked around and saw ghosts everywhere: critics, agents, directors he had come up with, now gone. Hurt was back at the lake house with a caretaker and Molly. But there he was, flanked by his stars on the red carpet. Scorsese recorded a tribute for the ceremony, and when it was Schrader's turn to give a short speech, he referenced the song he had used at the end of the movie. "I used to be an artist who never wanted to leave this world without saying 'Fuck you,' " he said. "And now I'm an artist who never wants to leave this world without saying 'I love you.' " He brought the award home in his checked luggage and put it on his bookshelf.

Schrader was having trouble breathing again. The next day his primary-care doctor told him to go to the hospital. The day after that, his pulmonologist said the same thing. Schrader packed a bag. After lunch and Martinis at his go-to spot, an Asian bistro in a nearby mall, his assistant drove him to the hospital, where he spent the next thirteen days.

He was discharged in time for the North American première of "Master Gardener," at the New York Film Festival, in early fall. It played to a sold-out house at Lincoln Center; there was knowing laughter when the film opened on yet another man in a room writing in yet another journal. But the occasion was bittersweet: the next day, on the way to a packed Q. & A. at the Walter Reade Theatre, Schrader told me that the time had come to place Mary Beth in memory care. Molly had first noticed something amiss with her mother in 2014. At Christmas that year, Schrader turned to Molly's then husband and said, "She's different, isn't she?" He said she was. "And I knew it," Schrader said. "I knew it."

Before he met Mary Beth, in the early eighties, Schrader had wrecked his life completely—"self-immolated," he says. His taste for alcohol dates back to Grand Rapids: "I found that there were all these little people who lived in the typewriter. But you had to offer them something before they came out. You'd offer them a little alcohol and caffeine and tobacco, and they'd come out and play." On the set of "Blue Collar," he had been introduced to cocaine. One night, a producer came into the office and said, "Here, this will help you work longer." At first, it took Schrader a week to go through a quarter of a gram; by 1981, he was using five grams a week. That year, while filming "Cat People," he had an affair with the lead, Nastassja Kinski, ruining a relationship with a woman he'd dated for several years and planned to marry. He went home and asked his fiancée for forgiveness. She granted it. Then the phone rang. "It was Nastassja in Paris. She said, 'I miss you, why don't you come over?' I went straight to the airport."

The affair fizzled, inevitably. He left L.A. for New York, thinking he could rid himself of his drug friends. "I came here and guess what? I made new drug friends." A publicist introduced him to Hurt. "Mary Beth saved me," he says.

She was wry, quick-witted, a little bit dark. Glenn Close, who started her career as Hurt's understudy and became a lifelong friend, told me Hurt had always liked bad boys. "When she married Paul, who was a consummate bad boy," Close said, "I thought, My God, this is not going to work." But, for four decades, Hurt rolled with the punches. Her attitude was the opposite of his Calvinist fatalism. "One thing or another will happen," she would say. "Then one thing or another will happen." They lived in Rome, Venice, Napa, Marrakech, Bucharest. They bought a spacious apartment on Riverside Drive and threw parties that were attended by movie friends, artists, writers, and musicians. They went to the theatre and the symphony and dined at Elaine's, Raoul's, Da Silvano.

Gradually, that world fell away. In 2019, around Christmastime, Schrader finally moved her into a home. But in the early days of the pandemic the home became a prison, and he brought her back to the lake house.

From the outside, it had always seemed evident that Hurt took care of Schrader. Now that the roles were reversed, friends were moved not just by the depths of his grief but by the degree of his attentiveness. He built her the greenhouse because she loved gardening. Their son, Sam, calls it her memory palace. "My dad wanted to give her a thing to look forward to and do in the winter that was warm inside and engaging," he says. "That turned into a thing with my mom's aides where she can supervise the gardening. They can go in there together and reminisce: 'Oh, tomatoes! I love tomatoes. When I was a kid, we would plant tomatoes.' "

Schrader feels that when he tries to write in a direct way about his family—his parents, his brother—he fails. He needs to come at his life slant. But as I sat through multiple screenings of "Master Gardener," which Hurt has seen but has no memory of seeing, I kept thinking about her greenhouse.

In November, Schrader decided that the screenplay about the trauma nurse, which he had thought would be his next project, wasn't his story to tell. He decided to sell it. "The film-entertainment industry now has many female writers and directors," he said. "I am no more comfortable playing in Jane Campion's yard than I would be in Spike Lee's." Elisabeth Moss plans to direct and star in the movie.

For his next project, Schrader thought of Russell Banks's most recent novel, "Foregone." The book is about a documentary filmmaker in Montreal—Leonard Fife, "the Ken Burns of the North"—who is dying, of cancer, and sits for a series of interviews. It had cinematic potential. In the book, we see the interviews and, in separate sections, the past Fife describes: the time he abandoned his first wife; seduced the wife of a friend; dodged the draft, fleeing to Canada. Half the film would be a monologue, perfect for an aging star. "Anybody from De Niro to Costner," Schrader said. "Maybe even Al," meaning Pacino.

Schrader and Banks had grown close during their work on "Affliction." It was one of Schrader's most personal projects: the portrait of an overbearing father, a submissive mother, and two sons, one more rebellious than the other. Every summer since then, Schrader had driven to Banks's home, in the Adirondacks, to hike, drink (one Martini a night), and tell stories. But, like his character, Banks was struggling with cancer. Last summer was the first one he and Schrader missed. Now Schrader e-mailed him about "Foregone."

The key inspirations for the novel, Banks said, were Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape," both of which Schrader read, along with Philip Roth's "Everyman." He rewatched Kurosawa's "Ikiru," Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," John Huston's "The Dead." He told me, "One of the problems when you go down this rabbit hole is you meet up with all the long-ball hitters in the history of art. They're all in the batting cage waiting. Because it's the ultimate long-ball challenge, from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Philip Roth, that of the dying man."

Schrader sat down to read Banks's novel, which he'd only glanced at before. Fife's missteps were less serious than he'd realized. To set a movie in motion, Schrader needed crimes, not minor infractions. He e-mailed his friend a series of questions, but Banks, who had weeks, not months, to live, replied that only Schrader could answer them, drawing on his own life. With Christmas nearing, and with Mary Beth's memory palace collapsing around them, Schrader was left with the difficult work of excavating his past and grafting it, somehow, onto Fife's.

He thought about happy trips to see his uncles in Muskegon, their homes "full of light, full of people." He recalled his mother, who had been joyous, and his father, forever scarred by the Depression, cautious to the point of paralysis. He thought about his brother. As a young man, Leonard had wanted to get on a motorbike and go on the road. Charles, their father, put his foot down, and Leonard yielded. Paul never did. At the age of sixteen, Paul went for a drive and came home at midnight, after drinking a beer. Charles was waiting in their darkened kitchen. "He started giving me this shit," Schrader says. "I didn't even think it through—I just hit him. Hit him hard as I could. He went down. He looked up at me and went back to bed. And I thought to myself, Well, you did it, didn't you."

Paul had pushed Leonard around, too. When they sold "The Yakuza," Paul fought to get more recognition: "I said, 'I want to have a career in this business. And I want the script to say written by Paul Schrader, from a story by Leonard Schrader and Paul Schrader.' " He got sole credit. "I did a bad thing," he said. He did it again when they wrote "Blue Collar." He shared the credit on "Mishima," but during the making of the film he'd elbowed his brother aside. "I stole Japan," he told me. "I stole Mishima from him." They had a final falling out a few years later, over a family Christmas; Leonard, at the last minute, refused to attend. He sent Paul a box of presents instead. Paul returned it unopened. "That tears it," he thought. Leonard died in 2006.

In the year that I spent talking to Schrader, most of his memories held up. A few didn't. One day, Schrader recalled that his mother had let him go to the movies, just once, to see "Spartacus." I pointed out that "Spartacus" was released a year before "The Absent-Minded Professor." Perhaps "Spartacus," which ends with a long line of crosses, made for a better story? "When you embellish an origin story," Schrader said, "there is a risk that you believe the embellishments. I have tried rigorously to separate what happened from what I say happened, but it's not always possible."

Russell Banks died on the first Sunday in January. By then, Schrader had started writing the screenplay. (He has since finished it and written another.) With each of his last few films, Schrader has said that he would be at peace if it were his last. "Now I'm going a step further," he told me. "I'm saying, I want there to be one more. I don't want an open-ended deal, just give me one more. Give me 'Foregone.' Give me 'Ivan Ilyich.' Give me the Huston 'Dead' film. Huston made that in a warehouse in Valencia. In a wheelchair. With oxygen." I told Schrader he wasn't there yet. "No," he said. Then he pointed to a tank in the corner of the room. "There's the oxygen."

A few weeks later, Schrader moved Hurt into memory care at a luxury assisted-living facility in Manhattan. In February, he took an apartment two floors above her. In March, Richard Gere signed on to play Fife. Forty-four years after they made "American Gigolo" together, it felt like the closing of a circle. Schrader would make at least one more movie, about a man whose past was also his own.

"You never get out," Springsteen told me. "You get out sort of. But what you forget is how much the past feels like home. No matter what it was like, you know? You're moved to move away from it. And then you're also obsessed. Artists are always trying to figure things out. They can't stop. Those are the people we're interested in." Schrader was one of those people. "Every artist has one story to tell," Springsteen said. "Over and over and over and over and over and over again. It varies, it changes, it shifts a little bit. If you're doing it correctly, it morphs every time you tell it. More information is revealed. At the same time, you're still rooted in where you came from. That's just us."