Some of the filmmakers coming to the festival this year are already firmly lodged in Cannes lore.
Paul Schrader was at the festival almost 50 years ago for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which he wrote. After a famously divisive response, it won the Palme d’Or in 1976.
“It was a different place. It was much more collegial and lower key,” said Schrader during a break from packing his bags. “I remember quite well sitting on the terrasse at the Carlton with Marty and Sergio Leone and (Rainer Werner) Fassbender came by with his boyfriend and joined us. We were all talking and the sun was going down. I was thinking, ‘This is the greatest thing in the world.’”
For the first time since his 1988 drama Patty Hearst, Schrader is back in what he calls “the main show” — in competition for the Palme d’Or — with Oh, Canada.
The film, adapted from a Russell Banks novel, stars Richard Gere (reteaming with Schrader decades after “American Gigolo”) as a dying filmmaker who recounts his life story for a documentary. Jacob Elordi plays him in ’70s flashbacks.
After the Cannes lineup was announced, Schrader shared on Facebook an old photo of himself, Coppola and Lucas — all primary figures to what was then called New Hollywood — and the caption “Together again.”
“I’ll be there the same time as Francis. There’s a question of whether either of us get invited back for closing,” Schrader says, referring to when award-winners are asked to stay for the closing ceremony. “I would hope that either Francis or I could come back closing night for George’s thing.”
