Paul Schrader / "First Reformed"

So I was very excited to get him in here and finally discussed this film, which has actually been promoting for well over a year. Uh. Movie debuted at the Venice Film Festival in two thousand seventeen. Next week, just to let you know, leading into the Oscars, we'll be wrapping things up there with a special episode full of all of our interviews with various folks who are out nominated, not just for Oscars this year, about for Spirit Awards.

The Independent Spirit Awards will be on today before the Oscars as usual, So look forward to that next week. And for now, here is my chat with Paul Schrader Weather. Huh yeah, I remember I remember this one month. I remember when I lived here one month, brand three weeks. Yeah, you ready to go? Man? Okay, everyone, I'm here today with the Oscar nominated writer and director of First Reformed, Paul Schrader. Thanks for coming on the show man, Uh,

first and foremost. As I was saying earlier, congratulations, that was I was thrilled. I mean this especially because this is a movie that's been This movie premiered at Venice in two thousand and seventy. Strange. You know, independent film Excuse me, I have a little bit of ronchitis. Uh, independent film can have a very short life, you know, sometimes as long as three or four days. We're now in the six month of this film's life. Um, it being sort of in the conversation that long, it's kind

of amazing. But we're ready to step off stage. I was just gonna ask, I mean, I'm sure you've never promoted a film for this amount of time in your life. I mean, did you take into account I've been promoting Taxi Driver for fifty years. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's such a crazy notion to to kind of live with a movie for this long as it opened different doors in the material for you, as you've lived with it this long in the Afterglobe having made it and

released too much. I mean, I have a rather peculiar career. I work on spec I've done a few assignments over the years, but mostly I have my own little shop which is just consist of me and you know, come up with something right at package it, put it together and rather than do something really past year, I just decided to play this out because it was a real sense of fulfillment, in a sense of a circle being rounded off. Is it your most rewarding film for yourself

that you've made. It's the greatest sense of completion. Yeah, the sense of, ah, whatever I came to do, I've done it. Now. I don't know what I'm gonna do next, but I certainly don't have a sense that I didn't do what I set out to do. You know, fifty years ago when I started following in love with movies, Yeah, uh, and this, you know, you received critical accolades all all season, one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. Ethan Hawk, who we had on the show around the

time of release. Tons of accodes for him as well. And this culminates with your first Oscar nomination, which, again, so happy for that was that particular recognition anything that you ever saw it No, not real. I mean, uh, you don't want to define yourself in that way. You don't want to get to a point where you say, if I'm not nominated, I'm less of an artists are I'm less accomplished? And and tru was be told if this film wasn't nominated, and it wasn't critically acclaimed, it

would still be a good film. And so I know that. Uh. But on the other side of the coin is that when you get involved in this peculiar phenomenon we have now of Awards season. I was talking to pl Pabloski about this. It so steeps into your bones that you find yourself caring about something that previously you didn't really care about. And how lovely, by the way, speaking of Pablo, that you're both nomineas this year, because I know Eda was a big influence on you. Uh well, Eda was

the movie. I was gay Pavil the award at the New York Society Film Critics and we got to talking and after the that walking up Town is what I decided to write this script. That's amazing. I'm sure he knows that story, right, now yeah, uh, has there anything? Has there been anything like particularly eye opening about having been a part of an awards circuit like this. I mean you've been around the block, You've seen it all right,

but something like this is there? Is there anything that's just like a new shade in in an interesting way for you? No? I mean I think it is, um, you know what it is a kind of addiction because you really wanted to be over, but then when it's over, you're going through withdrawal. So um, you know, you don't quite know how to deal with it all. But you know, and there's a fairly recent phenomena. It's just so post Harby Warrant, students Awards season and stuff. I mean I

remember and taxi driver. I went through the ceremony, but I got sick and I left early. But there was nothing else. There was nothing but or nothing And after we're um swift swifty loser had a party and I went about it and and so this six months you know, the Roman campaign you know began uh you know in con a year ago, you know, I mean it wasn't in coin, but that's where they started putting pieces again. Yeah, so this is has been quite phenomenon. Yeah, I take

some of the blame for that. Uh. You know, I'm the awards editor here Variety, and yeah, I mean around two thousand one is when I started covering the awards season, and and it just it's it has become as someone who makes his his his living with it. It's become a ridiculous phenomenon. Well, I mean it's driven by all these advertisements. You know, these publications who saw their ads fall off because of the Internet. All of a sudden,

this became the new or sometimes the only stores of revenue. Yeah, I mean it's it's rather incestuous that way. It's it's

it's a unique business. I mean, what can we say? Um, I want to go back here a little bit and just talk about your work and critical writing before becoming a filmmaker, you know, being an acolyte, if you will, of Pauline Kale and and uh yeah, you know, whenever someone makes that kind of a transition from journalist slash critical writer essayist, what have you to doing the work that you've been writing about? Uh? Was it a difficult

transition where you really eager to do it? I didn't think I had much choice because I had no set out to be a film critical that was my goal and and Pauline had set up a job for me in c L and I didn't take it, and I was a little thrown by that. Um I should I In my mind I said, maybe I should have taken it. But something helped me back. And then I left the a f I I. I was the first year fellow there and I got a dispute with George Stevens and

I left that. Then Uh, my marriage all apart. Then I didn't have any money, and then I didn't have a place to live, and um, I realized that non fiction wasn't going to do it for me. There was something growing inside me that was very dark and very angry, and I said, I've got to give expressions this I have to make. I have to realize this thing, or this thing is going to become me. You know. I was in the car and driving around and drinking. There's

a gun in the car. And at that time here in La you could go over to the uh pussy Cat on Santa Monica. It was open all night long and you can people go and go there and sleep beside other things and and out of that darkness I got a bleeding also and went in the hospital. And in the hospital I realized this idea of this kid and this yellow coffin trapped flowing through the city, seemingly surrounded but absolutely alone, And I said, that's me and and so I wrote that script as therapy. I wrote it,

do not become Travispecktle. And that was its primary function for almost a year. You know. It wasn't put out the cell or anything. And I drifted around the country then and got my mental health back, and I came back, and about a year later I was back reviewing again. A year later, I was talking to the Palmo and I mentioned I had written a script wance. He said, oh no, no, non't please, please, don't guilt to me. And but I he did to read it, and he gave it to Mari, and then that's where its life

started coming up. Yeah. Did you feel, uh, did you fully and properly exorcized what you were trying to do? Yeah? I think that artists can be very, very functional. Uh, as as functional as almost any other tool. You know, you can you know, you can drive a nail into piece of wood with the arts functional and uh, and I still more or less operate in the same way

I did back then. Not every film, of course, but you know, every several years you returned and you say, what issues are really troubling me now at this stage in my life. What are the metaphors possible metaphors for that issue, and how can a story be explored with that metaphor? And you know, so you're just ruminating things. You know. At one point I wanted to do a bid life movie and for six months I couldn't find it, and then it came to me in a dream. Um, a drug dealer I had known came to me in

a dream and we were talking. I woke up at six of the morning and um, he was right in my face. I said, Wow, that was vivid. Why did he come to me? Like, what were we talking to about it? He said, or he wanted to know about the movies. I said, that's him. That's my midlife crisis. A four year old drug delivery boy. It was bought his quitting to go into gothmetic and he has no skills. That's it. That's what I've been looking for him. And so that movie became Light Sleeper. We had Willham on

the show last year actually talking about that. Um, I find I saw this thing. I read something about the fact that you didn't watch movies when you were young. So you didn't. You don't You don't have like nostalgia, like childhood nostalgia from movies. No. I mean I didn't know anybody who watched movies either, so I didn't even

know I was missing anything. Uh, they were not. Uh. We we had a Synautical decree against what they called worldly amusements, which was done in the twenties, and then I know, the Roaring twenties, and it was theater attendant, smoking, card playing, dancing, drinking so far. And so that was the way I was raised. And uh, and it wasn't really tell college that I started getting interested in movies.

And that was just the best time to fall in love with movies ever, because you're dealing with the intellectual European cinema of the sixties, and all of a sudden there were these movies that were equally serious. I was a serious kid. I was in the seminaright, all of a sudden, you go see these Berkman films, and you say, these other films, and he said, hey, wait a second, there's no golf between the sacred and the profane. Bourbon is making movies about the same thing we're talking about

in class. You know, you know, it's not like these two worlds will never meet. They can meet. And so that was sort of the excitement of of doing that and then starting a film club in college and showing these films you know, uh, you know, uh, sub Rosa and all of that, you know, and so um, so I came to films as an adult and uh, I had to back up and spend quite a few years

catching up in my film education. Yeah. I find that kind of fascinating because you said that as a result of that, you approach films more cerebral e analytically, even just you know, as you just started to break down how you began to write a script. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we love to talk about

on this show. Actually, uh, and it's it seems like a different approach because you know, are you running on your gut when you're working or are you really in your head saying how do I translate this into something that reflects it? Well? Um, I believe that Scream Night was part of the oral tradition, not the literary one. So I just keep telling the story over and over again, and I'll lie in it over and over again. On

talent achieves a certain critical mass. You know, if you can tell a story for fourty five minutes and keep someone interested, you have a movie. Yeah. Uh and uh, And that's a good thing. You know, you're either gonna live or die after something a good old repetition. If it dies, that's good too, because you're saved the work of writing the script that no one would really be interested in. And if it lives, and you have enormous amount of proposition because you know it all is all

in your head. And so uh, that's so the way way I began with The Doctor Drivers the way I'm still writing. Let's let's go to a first reform. What was the genesis there? What? What? What were you? What were you thinking about? It seems rather clear when you see the movie, but I just want to hear it from you. What was on your mind that you wanted to kind of get out onto the page? Right? Well, there was the person and in the lactual decision to make a film about spiritual life, I had refused to

do this forever. I had written a book of theological aesthetics. But when people said, try to compare my films to that book, I said, no, I'm not that guy. I'm not going to make that feel I'm not going to get out on that brace ody and the ice and um, and I just refused to. And then after that meeting with the Volley as well, maybe it's time now to

write there script you swore you wouldn't write. And um and of course, um, the the whole the heaviness that was weighing down on us now in that what had been the past, a theoretical conversation that was held generation after generation, what it's man's purpose is becoming less and

less theoretical. I mean, uh, like my grandchildren might not even have that conversation, and more likely than not their their grandchildren will not have that conversation because the species will not be having that conversation anymore, because it will be a different SPECIs. So that is you know, and ask a lot to collogical loadstone. And so the first thing I did and I said, well, I've got to revisit all the films of this nature that I've liked and see all the new ones that have been made

in the last forty years. So you just start watching and then you you start cherry picking and get a little bit here, a little bit there, and it starts to come together. So you know, the metaphor then, of course, is the priest and not the priest the reverend in

this tourist church, you know, nobody attends um. And then you started taking it from there, and you take that that the reverend came from brace Own, and a little church came from Bergmann, and uh, the ending came from Driver, the levitation came from Tarkovsky, and they getting wound up together. And what surprised me most was that what was tying all these things together was the barbed wire taxi driver.

There profult propulsive, minocular obsession um of that film. And I didn't really sense that the poltergeist of Travis Nickel had come in the room. And but he had. He was across the desk from me, and I sensed his president probably on his shoulder all the time. I think I love that phrase, by the way, brasonian Ice, and I love that you just you wear your influences on your sleeve, even when when you're influenced by yourself, as we're talking about with taxi driver in some sense that

you you're not afraid of that. Well, well, you know that anybody who's honest knows that we don't do anything original. You know, it's just a whole mix and match kind of world, and the originality comes in the assemblage of influences and insights and so that uh that I know, I don't I don't see why anybody should that. I feel that they create actually something new. Speaking of Pavl By the way, what do you think of Cold War? I like it a lot. Um. Uh, maybe I admired

it more than I liked it. I wish he had warmed up his main character a little more. I had talked about that and his producer, and they originally cast a guy who was very friendly, and Pavel changed it because he wanted it more like his actual father. Interesting. Um, so you started to talk about you know, you work on spec I wanted to talk about that over over a career, because you know, you've been a writer, director in the in the purist since your whole your whole

career pretty much. How has that search for funding shifted? How has just that entire business of being that changed? Well, I mean virtually everything we've learned in the last hundred years doesn't apply. Uh it is um. It's changed a number of times. And I at one point I thought we were entering a new period of transition, and now I believe we have entered a period of permanent transition. That everything we learned this year we won't apply next year.

Just like when you open your computer, the moment you open the box is how to date, uh tall fast things are changing and every three months or so four months you've seen neither will be testing out a new economic model. And so if you figured out how to finance the film three years ago, that's not necessarily how you're gonna finance next year. And um. So I began in the studio system. I did four or five studio films,

and then I moved over into the independent system. Um and then um um, now I'm in this kind of quasi streaming independent system uh read Eastern Allis. And I did a d d Y I called the Canyons just to test the water. So, you know, talking to Brett, and I said, you think you think we could actually make a film just pay for it ourselves with this new technology. I think we could do that. And we could, and we did. It doesn't make money. You think you could do it again? No, I could do it again.

I would. Uh Well, how about like, you know, do do new doors kind of suddenly open up when you're an Oscar nominee? I mean, do you do? You have people people treat you a little bit differently, and that's a little bit of a surprise because, um, you know, because you realize that it means more to them than it does to you. You know, I say, oh, you want you got on a nomination. Yeah, you know, yes, I got a nomination and my life that means so much to you. Um and uh but uh uh. I

have never been a particularly good employee. I had a little good string there when I worked with Marty did four films, and then on Bringing Out the Dead, I could see that relationship was coming into an end because there were now two directors in the room, and Marty doesn't want another director in the room. So I knew that that was coming into an end. And I often ran into trouble with assignments and adaptations just because I mean, I've never managed to hold a job in my life.

I just said, there's always at some point you say, I've got a better idea, and somebody else says, we don't care, and I said, well, I guess I better leave. And uh so I've solid my reputation as a good employee for so many years now that I don't think people I don't think of me as as somebody they go to another job for higher um. Bringing out to that, speaking of actually loved that film, man, How did you you like how it turned out? Yes? I did. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that. Yeah. I I thought

Nick was a little too old. My only complaint, um, because it was book was written by a kid, uh when he was about twenty two, and you're gonna have a breakdown in a paramedic, you're gonna have it in your early twenties because by the time you get to be in the early thirties, you've figured it out to it and so I can. I just felt that Nick was just too old in years, not in acting style or anything. And uh but apart from that, I think

it's very cool, hilm. I really love it. Anytime I talked to someone who's associated with it, I try to bring it up. I think I talked to Patricia about that one time. It's just one of those movies from that great year of n were so many great movies that year. I also want to talk about Ethan Hawk I mentioned earlier. You know, the actors in your movies, their vessels, you know, for for what you're doing, so

much like Nicknolty, Richard DearS or she Scott well Dafoe. Uh, Ethan why why why did you feel like he was the guy for this character? Well? You know Ethan Uh, if you've you've met him, He's not like this character, not at all. He's in Austin hippie, he's in Texas goofball um. But he had at this age now he has the striking present, those wrinkles, and I kind of gravity to his appearance that we associate with tortured men of the cloth. And so I started thinking about him

while I was writing. And I was also thinking about Jake Gillenhall on Oscar Isaak, but even with ten years older. And I realized that because he had such a reserve, that maybe something good could happen if he didn't try to please you. Um. And the first time we met, I said to him, you know what a recessive performances? I said, whenever you said the viewer getting interested in you just leaning back and there's still interested leaning back

a little more. Don't do anything to curry their approval. See how see see how far are you gonna lean back? See what happens? See if they actually now start leaning towards you? And um, and so that was the approach we took and Gear, in fact, I was just talking to Richard Gear about it. He was so impressed by He said, how can he do that? How can he not show anything? Doesn't he have any emotions? Uh? It's it's uh the shame. Actually he couldn't get a nomination

of himself. Mean gosh, she was like one of the most Laurel performances of the year. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was. It seemed to be a coin flip between he and William. So I can't it's hard for you. And how about that? I mean William? Uh, Sam Rockwells. And when you've worked with also the circuit, you know you feel like people you know in the circuit. That's been nice, yes, yes, um uh, Well, because I'm a four film I've spent an unconsfortable amount of time with

Bo Burnham. And if I never see Spike again, and that will be fine. I'll see Spike and getting in an hour. Every time I turned around, there he is with his glasses. Well, he'd probably say the same year and then but he did something that so I'll touched me. This was at the A f I luncheon and Uh. They were announcing the if I graduated stud We're there and I was graduated from the first year, not really graduated.

I attended and uh, and so they mentioned my name and Spike got up and started to applaud and he just looked around the room and kept the plodding, and people are looking at each other, Well, I can't we better stand up? And eventually the whole room stot up and I could see people looking at each other. Why are we standing up? Goo Spike? Uh? And then you know what is? Uh? What's your next act? What? What do you are? You gonna keep plugging away, no change,

just work how you always have something. I was hoping to do a film in uh May or June with Ethan and Will, But two days ago Ethan got green lit on this series about John Brown that he's been wanting to do for years and years, and he's also written. So I'm scrambling to try to recast that. I should be too. I do have the money, so um and it is a very um desirable role. Just and and then it happens. I mean, you know, Travolta dropped out of Jaglo two weeks before shooting. Not that I am

surprised by this stuff anymore. Yeah, well, there's a surplus of grade actors, I should think, so good luck with that. That would have been cool to see them together in one of your movies. Uh And before we close here, we're both going to the Oscars and the Oscar nominees lunch in here in a bit, first of all, or anything you're anyone you're looking forward to meeting that you haven't met this year there or anything like that. Uh well, I mean I think the the sort of revelation of

the year is Miss Gaga. I mean, you know, she was in like one TV episodic and she just explodes on the screen, lies and Judy together. And you know, I was talking to the writer yesterday and I said, you know, when did you say that you were catching fire at the bottle? Because uh, I did not expect that performance. I love that movie. Actually, I thought it was the best iteration of the material so far, and then the last thing. I've been asking people this at

the end of the show lately. It's just a kind of a connective tissue. I'm very curious from guest to guests, what is the movie that made you fall in love with movies? Well, uh, it's a movie called Pickpocket by Robert Brace. I was a film critic here in Los Angeles for the l A Free Press, the Corner Cults Republication, and I went to the Lemley Theater uh on Lost Feelers for a critical screening. And the movie is quite short,

seventy five minutes long. And in that seventy five minutes, my life turned as if I had an axle because I realized two things. One as I realized that there was a connection between my sacred upbringing and my profane present as a U c. L A Film student. But it was a connection of style, not a diction of content. And out of that revelation I wrote that book Tris

and Dental Style Film. And the other revelation I had was I was living in a house with four you see a students who are doing a film called Naked Angels and Corman biker exploitation film and I thought, that's just so declass and there was no place for me in this business. I was very very new to you in Arrogant. You know, we'll tell you when you make a good film, and um so I just didn't really imagine um being on the creative end of this business.

And I saw this film and here's a guy writes in his diary and goes out and steal some stuff right in the diary business, David writing his diary. The cop hsit him. I said, I could make a film like that. You know, it's just about him and his room. There's the only two characters. I could do that. And then three years later I wrote you which is that film?

And now hif years on, both of those seeds which landed in that Petriot dear that morning, have grown to fruition and intertwined because I have a movie and I'm talking about the tradition and the style in the Brasonian tradition. So it feels to feel that way to you, like this has been like a culmination of a lot of things. Yes, yeah, yeah, I mean I hope it isn't my last film, but if it is, it's it's a damn good last film. Absolutely and again congratulations. Uh see the movie, folks, It's

out there. You should seek it out. It's called First Reformed, one of the best movies of the year. Uh. Paul Schrader, absolute honor to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on the show. Than