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Myself, I would have shot through hellfire rain to complete the film, he claimed.
Im old and asthmatic what better way to die than on the job?
This wasnt the first time the filmmaker roused indignation on social media.
After the Oscars,he jumped right back into the pit.
Not that he perceives himself as a provocateur.
Its just that his instinct to say what others wont (sometimes for good reason!)
has gotten him where he is, and passionate responses pro and con embolden him.
The Schrader Ive known for years is a deeply moral man with a deeper dislike of hypocrisy.
Since hisfamously Calvinist midwestern childhood, he has ventured creatively, anyway into the darkest areas of the psyche.
(It was a partial inspiration for the controversialJoker, which Schrader will not publicly discuss.)
The following interview taken from two separate conversations was edited for length and clarity.
Are you working on your film right now?Its Saturday, but yesterday I was.
How does that feel?Well, its my third film with this editor.
So we know the rules.
Were working on several things.
One is a standard work-in-progress.
And the third thing: Im working on what would have been if I had lived.
What the hell does that mean?Well, Ive done all the big dialogue scenes.
And I can sort of show what the film would have been if I hadnt died before finishing it.
I dont.Previs is an animated storyboard.
The way they can make all of these high-tech movies now is they previs them.
But what percentage of your shooting is finished?About 80 percent.
You would have still done it, though …I was ready to do it.
I was ready to work right over the weekend.
So even if I had decided to muscle through, I wouldnt have been able to.
You had the momentum and you just thought, you know,Well get through this?
At that point, you have all kinds of legal implications.
Thats gonna sound very callous.I just had a long conversation withMichael Mann.
I knew that Michael was shooting a TV series in Tokyo,Tokyo Underworld.
So he had to come home, too.
But, you know, thats the way it is with film directors.
Theyre all alpha types.
Because you would have been out in the front?Absolutely.
You say, If Im willing to die for this, you should be too.
That doesnt sound as good to others as youd think it might.
So I drove back from Biloxi, and Ive been out of human contact.
Whos in the house with you?My daughter just came up from the city.
And I have a dog who is the most loved animal on earth.
But Im doing this thing where Im calling people I havent spoken to in a long time.
They are so happy.
I called up Pat Resnick.
They say, I never thought I would hear from you again.
This is the greatest excuse in the world to talk to people who you used to know.
We can all be lonely together.I knew Michael Mann quite well about 35 years ago.
I called him up, and the first thing I said was, [Its] Paul Schrader.
How are you doing?
And he immediately responded, Oh, thank you for calling!
Whereas in another time, Michael would say, What do you want?
You have quite a cast inThe Card Counter.
Whats it about?Its another one of those Schrader movies.
In this case, its a professional poker player.
Youve never done a gambler movie, have you?Yeah, and this isnt one either.
I dont give a damn about gambling.
I dont give a damn about boxing.
I dont give a damn about taxi driving.
These are all just 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.
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.
What is his sin?Thats when it gets interesting.
I was looking at the World Series of Poker.
I said,There is a blankness there.
That is the blankest world.
Its 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.
Theres only one guilt sufficient in our times.
Its 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.
Only the onesin the pictures.
Nobody who wasnt photographed went to jail.
But none of the guys who instructed them.
None of the guys who paid them served a day.
So thats my guy.
He goes from casino to casino following conventions.
He likes police conventions because cops are bad gamblers they all think they know better.
Hes just waiting for something to happen.
Hes feeling more and more uncomfortable as hes listening to this.
And theres a young kid, Tye Sheridan, whos looking at him across the room.
He says, Do you recognize him [the lecturer]?
And Oscar [lies], No.
Tye says, Well, heres my name.
Im staying at this hotel.
If you want to call me, call me.
He gets up at 3 a.m., calls the kid up, says, Okay.
Like those real torture instructors who were in the movieThe Report?Yeah.
Originally, I called him Hernandez.
Then Oscars wife said, Why do the torturers have to be Hispanic?
His name isJose Rodriguez.
But I changed it.
Anyway, the kid says, The same guys who taught you taught my father.
My father was at Bagram.
You were at Abu Ghraib.
My father came home.
He had an Oxycontin problem.
He beat my mother a lot and then she fled without telling anybody in the middle of the night.
Then he started beating me and then he shot himself.
[Here, Schrader tells me the entire story of the film, which should not be divulged.
What all this builds up to is like nothing else.
It makes the bloody climax ofFirst Reformedlook Disneyesque.]
Did you spend a long time studying torture techniques?Theres not a lot to learn.
Theres not?I mean, any 12-year-old can tell you how to do it.
They brought him from Nicaragua over to Guantanamo, where he then perfected those techniques.
So you lived with this stuff for the last year?Well … You know …
I mean, its another job.
Its just a job; its a mask.
I was never a gigolo.
I was never a minister.
I was never a drug dealer.
I was never a torturer.
So, David, why did you call me again?
But no one even knows if there will be a fall season.
Everyones scrambling for models.
Theyre not making offers, but they want to see it.
Whatever I have 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour.
Thats one of the things were doing.
Youre in better shape than many indie directors with half-completed projects I know.Yeah.
I have well-known actors.
I had [the head of a major film festival] calling me about it.
People in that other situation are truly and deeply fucked.
All those low-budget films that rely on festivals for any sort of credibility.
That is the only road to financial viability for these films.
The other road is you sell to Netflix for $100,000.
And basically that means everybody loses money.
And its seen.Yeah, but it also disappears.
It falls into the great nether blackness of Netflix.
Im gonna survive this quite well.
I have no question about it, but boy are other people gonna get hit.
Every film that refused to go to Berlin in the past is gonna want to be there.
Youre assuming that Toronto and Venice wont happen?I think theyre iffy.
I think Berlins probably the first major festival.
God knows Id love to be in Telluride this fall.
Who knows if other filmmakers will even get their movies finished in time?
Heres the thing thats gonna be the most interesting: how theatricalwill hobble back to life.
Is there any way theatricalcan reposition itself as an important force?
But it will never ever assume the profile it once had.
What about the multiplex spectacle?I assume that would live.
But I think that may even be in danger now.
So if anything can come back, it will be childrens cinema.
Thats assuming that these corporations like AMC can survive their debt burden.
If theyre down for eight months, at what point do they simply sell their real estate?
Nobody can say, Hey, movies are such a hot business, and were gonna be cooking.
Everybody gives you that long eye.
I assume youre watching a lot of movies at home.
I envy you.And these are all the movies that informed me.
That might be the one silver lining in all of this.
But I worry that culture is getting more and more and more private.
I dont think our senses are as heightened at home as they are when we see things in public.
We cannot sustain this amount of product in this environment.
Were producing two to three times more than the environment can sustain.
Im having the actors read their lines and doing capture images of them while they do it.
Im having Google capture images of scenes, of locations.
Im learning you’ve got the option to do a lot of things in computers.
you’re able to do camera moves.
it’s possible for you to do odd cuts.
Thats fascinating.Masculin Femininhas always been a very formative film for me.
Now, what is that?
Its certainly the second: I dont need to shoot that scene.
Its more interesting if I dont shoot it.
So if I can create a simulation of the film, they can score the simulation.
Youre not gonna die.
Youre okay.Were all gonna die.
