Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader
Paul Joseph Schraderis an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. Schrader wrote or co-wrote screenplays for four Martin Scorsese films: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christand Bringing Out the Dead. Schrader has also directed 18 feature films, including his directing debut crime drama, Blue Collar, the somewhat autobiographical crime drama Hardcore, his 1982 remake of the horror classic Cat People, the crime drama American Gigolo, the biographical drama Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the cult...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth22 July 1946
CityGrand Rapids, MI
CountryUnited States of America
I still think like a critic, and I still analyze films like a critic. However, it's not possible to write criticism if you're making films.
People who act against their own best interests are interesting characters.
I don't believe that anymore but you certainly know that world. But I wasn't Catholic. It was slightly different. The metaphorical strength of that stuff, of those stories, whether it's stories from the Bible or stories from contemporary mythology like The Exorcist have enormous metaphorical weight.
It's great when somebody comes at you and says, 'We have a big serious movie and we want to hire you because you're a serious person'. Particularly in today's world, when you spend so much of your time pretending that you're not.
It's an old-fashioned romance of the highest order, a real melodrama, which I wrote and directed and financed. Nobody paid me to do this film. If a studio had made it, everyone would be saying that I had whored out, but in fact I had to fight to raise the financing, so if I did whore out, I whored out to my own melodramatic side.
The problem with The Exorcist was that I wasn't holding any cards. They paid me for the movie, so they own the movie. It's like if you made this chair and I buy it from you. You want me to sit on the chair, and I want to put it in my fireplace. What are you gonna do? Time to go off and make another chair.
His gifts are now more social than sexual. He's this society walker who has his lady friends, and a boyfriend on the side.
In the end it's a revenue stream. And all revenue streams eventually reach the sea.
Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.
Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.
Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.
You think it's a blessing to know what God wants?
As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung.
I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?