Paul Schrader Felt Death Closing In, So He Made a Movie about It

 Director Paul Schrader poses for portrait photographs for the film "Oh, Canada", at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP)
Director Paul Schrader poses for portrait photographs for the film "Oh, Canada", at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP)
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Paul Schrader Felt Death Closing In, So He Made a Movie about It

 Director Paul Schrader poses for portrait photographs for the film "Oh, Canada", at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP)
Director Paul Schrader poses for portrait photographs for the film "Oh, Canada", at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP)

After a string of hospitalizations for long COVID, Paul Schrader had a realization.

“If I’m going to make a film about death,” Schrader told himself, “I’d better hurry up.”

The health of the 77-year-old filmmaker, whose films and scripts have covered half a century of American movies, from “Taxi Driver” to “First Reformed,” has since improved. But that sense of urgency only increased when Russell Banks, a friend of Schrader’s since he adapted Banks’ “Affliction” into the 1997 film, began ailing. Banks died in 2023.

Schrader resolved to turn Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone” into a film. At the time, he imagined it would be his last. But Schrader, who’s been as prolific as ever in the past decade, has said that before.

In 2017, he surmised that “First Reformed” was his final cinematic statement. Then he made 2021’s “The Card Counter.” And, after that came 2022’s “Master Gardener.”

“The irony is every time you think, ‘Well, that’s about it,’ you have a new idea,” Schrader told The Associated Press in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival.

On Friday, Schrader was to premiere his Banks’ adaptation, now titled “Oh, Canada,” at Cannes. It’s his first time back in competition in 36 years. And, particularly given that he’s joined this year by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas — all of them central figures of the fabled New Hollywood — Schrader’s Cannes return comes with echoes of the heyday of ’70s American moviemaking. “Taxi Driver,” which Schrader wrote, won the Palme d’Or here in 1976.

Schrader, though, allows for only so much nostalgia.

“It’s gotten aggrandized in the collective memory. There were a lot of bad films. There were a lot of bad players,” Schrader says of the ’70s. “However, it was the birth of the self-starting movement in cinema. So people like George and Francis and I, all film-school graduates like Marty, we all started our careers in this environment. That was a kind of a golden moment, but that doesn’t mean all the films were golden.”

“Oh, Canada,” which is seeking a distributor, is a kind of bookend to one of the films from that era: the 1980 neo-noir “American Gigolo.” Schrader reteams with Richard Gere decades after “American Gigolo” made Gere a star. Until now, Schrader says, the two hadn’t much discussed reuniting.

“Richard had been developing some mannerisms that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with as a director, and roles I wasn’t comfortable with,” Schrader says. “I was thinking more in terms of Ethan (Hawke) and Oscar (Isaac).”

But the idea of “Oh, Canada” as a kind of spiritual sequel to “American Gigolo” appealed to him. In the film, Gere stars as a revered Canadian filmmaker named Leonard Fife who, nearly on his deathbed, grouchily sits for an interview with documentary filmmakers. His wife (Uma Thurman) watches on as Leonard tells his life story, seen in flashbacks with Jacob Elordi playing the younger Fife, in the 1960s. We have the impression that Fife, who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War, is speaking more honestly than ever before.

“I thought the dying Gigolo — that put some spin on it. People are going to be interested in that, even though it’s not the same character at all,” Schrader says. “I could see that he had come out of retirement. He needs this, therefore he’ll do it for nothing.”

Schrader approached Gere with a few stipulations.

“I said, ‘I’ll send it to you on three conditions: One, that you read it right away. Two, that I get an answer in two weeks. And, three, that you understand my financial parameters,’” Schrader says. “He agreed. I said the same thing to (Robert) De Niro. Bob said, ‘Well, I agree to the first two but not the third one.’”

“So I didn’t send the script to Bob,” Schrader says, laughing.

Since the 2013 film “The Canyons,” which he directed from a Bret Easton Ellis script, Schrader has found a way to make the economics of independent filmmaking work for him.

“People thought that was all a kind of desperate career failure, but it was a glimpse into a new world. It was a trial run of how you do a film yourself,” says Schrader. “After that, I knew that you could make a film and get final cut. You could say to an investor: ‘I’m not going to make you rich — get that dog out of your head. But I think I’m going to make you whole. And I’m going to give you a credit and I’m going to put you on a red carpet somewhere. You could put your money into toasters or tires, or you could put it into this film.’”

The significant caveat to that, Schrader says, is that he came up in the old system of Hollywood. He’s not sure the same strategy could work for someone less established in today’s digital landscape.

“I got my head above the crowd when there was only 400 people in the room,” he says. “Now there’s 40,000 people in the room.”

But few filmmakers remain as engaged with current cinema as Schrader. He goes at least once a week to the movies and often posts brief reviews on his Facebook page. Jane Schoenbrun of “I Saw the TV Glow,” he recently wrote, is “hands down the most original voice in film in the last decade.” He liked the tennis drama “Challengers” (“Zendaya is a star”) but wrote: “The studios would have never let this slight a story run so long — on the other hand, the studios aren’t making this movie anymore.”

“You usually go to the movies because it’s something you want to see in a crowd,” Schrader says. “Like, I went to see ‘Cocaine Bear’ because I knew it would be great to see with an audience.”

“It’s not a particularly good time for film,” Schrader concludes as the interview winds down. “It’s not a bad time. It’s very easy to get a film made. It’s very hard to make a living.”



With the Box Office Down, James Gunn Predicts Summer of ‘Superman’ to the Rescue 

Actor David Corenswet, promoting the movie "Superman", poses during a Warner Bros presentation at CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, April 1, 2025. (Reuters)
Actor David Corenswet, promoting the movie "Superman", poses during a Warner Bros presentation at CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, April 1, 2025. (Reuters)
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With the Box Office Down, James Gunn Predicts Summer of ‘Superman’ to the Rescue 

Actor David Corenswet, promoting the movie "Superman", poses during a Warner Bros presentation at CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, April 1, 2025. (Reuters)
Actor David Corenswet, promoting the movie "Superman", poses during a Warner Bros presentation at CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, April 1, 2025. (Reuters)

The 2025 box office has been hit with a deficit. Can the James Gunn-dubbed “summer of ‘Superman’” save it?

Warner Bros. showed off a diverse and starry slate of its upcoming films on Tuesday — but the night was carried on the shoulders of Clark Kent.

“I really do believe in this movie. And I do believe that there is a lack of human kindness, or at least a degradation of human kindness,” Gunn said. “This is a movie that celebrates kindness and human love.”

At the annual CinemaCon convention and trade show in Las Vegas, Gunn — the director and writer of the first film in the new iteration of the connected DC Universe — also brought out its stars, who gushed over their experience making the film.

“It’s a great honor to play a role that exists so clearly in the public consciousness, to the point where everyone I think, even if you haven’t seen a film or read a comic, you sort of know what the Superman symbol means and you know what it stands for,” said David Corenswet, adding that he hopes to “illuminate something new about the character, or even just bring the beloved character to a new audience.”

Corenswet was joined onstage by Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult, who plays Lex Luther.

“James makes a family out of every set,” Brosnahan said. “The set is full of people who want to be there, who love making these movies. And it’s such a joy to come to work every day. As many of you have probably heard from other people, it’s not always like that.”

Gunn was announced to direct the film in 2023 shortly after he and Peter Safran became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios.

“We appreciate and share your passion for this art form,” Safran told a room full of theater owners. “It’s the fulcrum of our ambitious DC Studios slate and it’s what inspired James to shoot all over the world and push filmmaking technology to its limits, to propel moviegoers out of their homes into your theaters.”

The film will be released theatrically in July amid a summer of superhero titles, including “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” and “Thunderbolts(asterisk).”

In addition to “Superman,” Warner Bros. teased some of its April releases on the convention’s main stage, like Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and “A Minecraft Movie,” but they also looked further down the road for 2025.

In a nod to cinephiles, the studio kicked off its presentation by bringing out the stars of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” including Leonardo DiCaprio and Regina Hall. The film is set to hit theaters in September.

“I’ve been wanting to work with Paul for over, gosh, almost 20 years now. He’s one of the most unique talents of our time,” DiCaprio said. “With this film, he’s tapped into something politically and culturally that is brewing beneath our psyche. But at the same time, it’s an incredibly epic movie and has such scope and scale.”

Director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer also treated the audience to an extended sneak peak of “F1,” Brad Pitt’s Formula One racing drama premiering in June.

In addition to Hollywood studios and stars boasting their theatrical menus which they believe will lure audiences to cinemas, the annual convention is also a time to discuss current industry debates, like how long movies should stay in theaters and the extent to which studios should get into production with streaming companies.