How to be Paul Schrader « UNO Magazine Online

How to be Paul Schrader

May 4, 2010

By Paul Schrader as told to Philbert Dy, originally printed in the December ’09 issue of UNO Magazine.

START WITH YOUR PROBLEMS

Films are just metaphors for personal problems. Start with something you’re having trouble with, and then find a metaphor that helps describe it.

HIT ROCK BOTTOM

I started out as a critic, but non-fiction wasn’t doing it for me. At the time, I fell out with (film critic and Schrader’s mentor) Pauline [Kael], I owed money to the AFI, my marriage had fallen apart, and I was basically just drifting around LA, watching a lot of pornography. I was living in my car, and that’s around the time that I came up with the metaphor of the taxi driver, stuck in this metal coffin in the city. That’s where Taxi Driver came from. I was Travis Bickle.

DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

I needed a city that was run by cabs. I’d never been to New York, so I got the streets all wrong. I had 6th Avenue running the wrong way. But it didn’t matter. The story was what mattered.

DO IT YOURSELF

With Blue Collar, this young writer was talking to me about car plants, and I came up with the idea of this story about the workers at those plants, with a racial angle. I offered it to him and he wasn’t interested, so I came home and told my brother that I had given this writer a great idea, and he’d turned it down. And I thought, we should do it ourselves. I’m very interested in characters who act against their best interests; characters who can’t see what’s good for them.

SURVIVE

(On Blue Collar, which became legendary for its cast fighting through the entire production) Richard Pryor was the unhappiest man I’ve ever known. But I guess that’s typical of comics. He’d have these wild mood swings. He’d go from extremely nice to extremely nasty in a moment. I knew that if directing was going to be like this every time, I wouldn’t be doing it much. Sometimes I think I didn’t direct that movie. I survived it.

FINDING A COLLABORATOR

(On Martin Scorsese, who Schrader worked with on four films) We’re alike in many ways. We’re both asthmatic film buffs. And we’re intellectuals. He grew up in an urban Catholic environment though, while I had a more rural upbringing, so there’s just enough difference to make it work.

STAND YOUR GROUND

(On Hardcore) I made that movie because I wanted to write about my father. I didn’t like that film very much. I didn’t like how it turned out. The studio made me change the ending, and I don’t like that ending. They made me recast the girl, and I don’t like that actress very much. I should have stood my ground on those things. I made a movie about my father and a movie about my mother and I screwed them both up. What does that tell you?

DEALING WITH DEATH THREATS

The first few days in the production of Mishima, we were receiving a lot of death threats. There were these people on the far right who didn’t like the idea of an American telling the story of their hero. There still are. The people who financed the film had to negotiate with the people on the far right, and the compromise was that instead of shutting down production, they’d block the screening in Japan instead. It still hasn’t been shown in Japan. There was talk of that a couple of years ago, but it still hasn’t happened.

Normally you assume that if you die during production, they could get someone else to finish the movie. Not with Mishima. I was thinking that if I die, the film would never get made. It’s too complex. It’s a lot to hold in your head.

HOW TO DIRECT ACTORS

Directing actors is 75% casting. You catch the right actor at the right time in the right place at their life, and you don’t have to do much else. I think that as a director, my job is to just give a couple of hints.

ON FAILURE

Why dwell on that? The truth is I’ve been lucky. [My films] have their followers, and few films can find that level of success. I love film. I love working.

Sometimes you just know that you got it. Like in Affliction. I really think that’s a perfect little film. I got that story. Or it could be a performance. Or sometimes it’s just a shot. The best moments are whenever anything feels good. I focus on that.

WRITING MOVIES IN THE MODERN AGE

They don’t make movies like the ones I used to make. Nowadays, I start with where the money is. Independent filmmakers are like scavenger dogs. I hear that there’s money in India, and I think “well I’ve got an idea for that.” But after that, it’s mostly the same. You find something you care about, and you put it up on screen.

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