CANNES, France – After a series of long-term COVID hospitalizations, Paul Schrader realized.
“If I’m going to make a movie about death,” Schrader told himself, “I’d better hurry.”
The health of the 77-year-old filmmaker, whose films and screenplays spanned half a century of American films, from “Taxi Driver” to “First Reformed,” has since improved. But that sense of urgency only increased when Russell Banks, Schrader’s friend since adapting Banks’s “Affliction” into the 1997 film, began falling ill. Banks are dead in 2023.
Schrader decided to turn Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone” into a film. At the time, he figured it would be his last. But Schrader, who has been as prolific as ever over the past decade, has said this before.
In 2017, he assumed that “First Reformed” was his final cinematic statement. Then he did 2021’s “The Card Counter.” And after that came 2022’s “Master Gardener.”
“The irony is that every time you think, ‘Well, this is it,’ you have a new idea,” Schrader told The Associated Press in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival. “And you have to write the new idea and make the new film. ‘OK, God, put this thing on hold. I will contact you when I finish my film.’”
Schrader, laughing, adds, “I’m going to start a new company called Post-Mortem Cinema.”
On Friday, Schrader was set to premiere the Banks adaptation, now titled “Oh, Canada,” at Cannes. It is the first time he has returned to competition in 36 years. And, especially considering that he was joined this year by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas – all of them central figures of the legendary New Hollywood – Schrader’s return to Cannes bears echoes of the heyday of American cinema in the 1970s. by Schrader, won the Palme d’Or here in 1976.
Schrader, however, only allows a lot of nostalgia.
“It was magnified in the collective memory. There have been many bad films. There were a lot of bad players,” says Schrader of the ’70s. “However, it was the birth of the bootstrapped movement in film. So people like George, Francis and I, all film graduates like Marty, we all started our careers in this environment. It was kind of a golden moment, but that doesn’t mean all the films were golden.”
“Oh, Canada,” which is looking for a distributor, is a kind of bookend to one of the films of that era: the 1980 neo-noir “American Gigolo.” Schrader returned to work with Richard Gere decades after “American Gigolo” made Gere a star. So far, Schrader says, the two hadn’t discussed the meeting much.
“Richard had been developing some mannerisms that I didn’t feel completely comfortable with as a director, and roles that I didn’t feel comfortable with,” says Schrader. “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, sits grumpily for an interview with documentary filmmakers. His wife (Uma Thurman) watches Leonard tell his life story, seen in flashbacks with Jacob Elordi playing young Fife, in the 1960s. We get 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 gave it a special touch. People will be interested in it, even if it’s not the same character,” says Schrader. “I could see he had come out of retirement. He needs it, so he will do it for free.”
Schrader approached Gere with some stipulations.
“I said, ‘I’m going to send it to you on three conditions: one, that you read it immediately. Second, I receive a response within two weeks. And third, that you understand my financial parameters,’” says Schrader. “He agreed. I said the same thing to (Robert) De Niro. Bob said, ‘Well, I agree with the first two, but not the third.’”
“So I didn’t send the script to Bob,” Schrader says, laughing.
Since the 2013 film “The Canyons,” which he directed from a screenplay by Bret Easton Ellis, Schrader has found a way to make the economics of independent filmmaking work for him.
“People thought this was all some kind of desperate professional failure, but it was a glimpse of a new world. It was a test of how you make a movie yourself,” says Schrader. “After that, I knew you could make a movie and get the final cut. You could tell an investor, ‘I’m not going to make you rich – get that dog out of your head. But I think I’ll cure you. And I’ll give you a credit and I’ll put you on a red carpet somewhere, money in toasters or tires, or you can put him in this movie.’”
The significant caveat to this, says Schrader, is that it arose in the old Hollywood system. He’s not sure the same strategy could work for someone less established in today’s digital landscape.
“I stood head above the crowd when there were only 400 people in the room,” he says. “Now there are 40,000 people in the room.”
But few filmmakers remain as engaged with today’s cinema as Schrader. He goes to the cinema at least once a week and often posts short reviews on his Facebook page. Jane Schoenbrun of “I Saw the TV Glow,” he wrote recently, is “undoubtedly the most original voice in cinema of the last decade.” He liked the tennis drama “Challengers” (“Zendaya is a star”), but wrote, “The studios would never have let this insignificant story go on this 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,” says Schrader. “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 cinema,” concludes Schrader at the end of the interview. “It’s not a bad time. It’s very easy to make a film.
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