Starting with First Reformed in 2017, the writer-director has been on quite a run. Oh, Canada, his latest, bows 47 years after Taxi Driver won the Palme d’Or.
Amid some serious health struggles over the past few years, Paul Schrader, 77, has entered one of his most prolific phases.
Over a recent five-year stretch, Schrader wrote and directed what he describes as an accidental trilogy — First Reformed (2017) with Ethan Hawke, The Card Counter (2021) with Oscar Isaac and Master Gardener (2022) with Joel Edgerton. Each film involved a spin on the “man alone in a room” archetype he invented with his script for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976).
Schrader is now back with new feature, Oh, Canada, co-starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, and Jacob Elordi.
Oh, Canada tells the story of a lionized documentary filmmaker (Gere) at the end of his life, who is visited by a pair of his former students (Imperioli, Hill) who want to shoot a final interview chronicling his life and career. But instead of recounting the beats of his public mythology, the director uses the sit-down as an opportunity to confess to his wife (Uma Thurman) and the world at large that he’s lied for decades about crucial aspects of his origin story — especially the real reasons he fled to Canada in the 1970s during the Vietnam War. Much of the film is made up of a moving re-creation of the director’s memories, with rising star Elordi playing the young version of the character.
How did this film come about?
Film adaptation
Every adaptation is different. With Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, there were probably five or six different stories I could have written, but I had to select one for me. With Affliction, there was really only one. It depends. Some books, you really have to jump in and carve out your spot. With Oh, Canada, I didn’t really feel that, because even though the book is longer, the heart of it is really rather short. I was able to get it down to 90 minutes naturally and purely.
I said this to Chase, Russell’s widow, after he died Banks died Jan. 7, 2023]: He put a lot of himself into Foregone, but I’ve always had the feeling that Russell exaggerated his own bad behavior for personal reasons. And she laughed and said that’s very true. Russell wasn’t that much of a bad behaver. And the character in the book isn’t that much of a bad behaver either, in my view. He leaves a couple of families behind, but a lot of men have done that. He didn’t maim or kill anyone. So, I had to add something that ratcheted up the blackness to make it a bit more biblical. I added a moment when he turns his back on his own son. Russell and I went back and forth about that — whether the character needed to do something more reprehensible.
Structure of film: depicting the intellectual life of an artist through assemblage of memories and episodic sequences
Yeah, it’s a mosaic. The others, I’ve called “monocular.” You just see through one eye — they’re not stereo. This one is like 4DX. It’s like you pick up a vase and drop it, and then you start picking up those broken pieces as you lay out the story. The film I learned this from was Performance (1970). I loved that film and have always borne that structure in mind — that you can just reassemble things.
There are two main throughlines in Oh, Canada. One is the last day in the character’s life and the other is the trip he took from Richmond to the Canadian border. We filmed them in different formats, with different types of color and screen ratios. And then there’s a third level, which is the black-and-white memories that are not connected to the trip north. They’re just sort of scattered in like spice. Then there’s fourth thing–handing the story over to the character’s son, Cornell. Those are all filmed in that Bergman Cries and Whispers red-orange. I mapped it all out.
Yes, it’s a metaphor for escape, irresponsibility and death. It sort of gets twisted up in his mind. When he goes to Canada, he becomes free from his responsibilities as father and man. When he passes over into death, he becomes free from his responsibilities as a living person. This is a highly ironic use of the Canadian national anthem.
Making a film about dying?
Impact of age on directors
I certainly don’t feel I have declined. Some artists have done their strongest work right at the end–John Huston with The Dead and his other late films. On the other hand, it is more likely that, like Renoir, Lang or Wilder, you do sort of peter out. But that’s also because the studio system stopped giving those artists the same opportunities. Wilder didn’t get a chance to make the films that he used to make. Nowadays, you can find a way to keep getting things made. You just have to go independent.
There are a bunch of us geriatric directors still finding a way to work. The studios don’t want the new Schrader, Cronenberg or Coppola, but we’re still finding a way to do it.
He had really moved on to his causes. Richard is a very devout Buddhist. But he said to me, “I’d forgotten how much fun it can be to act.” He had been offered those kinds of Liam Neeson things. But he’d rather be involved in his social causes than that repetitive streaming stuff.
As actor, Richard had developed over the years certain number of mannerisms that I was not enamored with. I was maybe responsible for some of them from American Gigolo. But they increasingly irritated me. So I was always looking at other actors. But when you write a story, you’re always looking for the buzz — what will make this connect? De Niro would have been buzz, but he wants money. But Richard? That’s kind of a buzzy idea. The dying gigolo. People could talk about that — a mixture of Affliction and American Gigolo.
So when I wrote Oh, Canada, I reached out to him with the script and said to him, “Remember when you asked me that, Richard? Well, let’s find out.” It turned out to be pretty easy to get him to do less. When you work with actors, you have to find the magic phrase. And Richard’s phrase was “take it inside.”
The other problem we had with him was trying to make him look old. He’s 74, but it’s easier to make him look 60. We had to do many makeup tests.
Marty is one of the handful that gets those budgets and retains final cut. I do what I have to do to keep the final cut. We keep things tight.
I don’t mind the low budget, as long as I can get the actors on board. When I get in touch with the actors, I say, “I’ve written a script for you and I think you’d be very good in it. And I have just three conditions for you: One is that you read it quickly; two is that you give me an answer within two weeks; and three is that you understand my financial parameters.” When I called up De Niro for this one, he said, “The first two, yes; that third one, no.” And that’s fair enough. He’s got wives and dependents. People to pay. He just couldn’t work it.
But Richard Gere’s done very well for himself and saved lot of money. He even offered to put his salary back into the movie. I said no, but I would occasionally tell that to the producers whenever we were arguing over money. And then they would come back and say, “Oh no, no, don’t take Richard’s money, we can work this out.”
I’ve been five times. But when Thierry Frémaux replaced Gilles Jacob as artistic director, I never got invited to the main show after that. I was invited to Directors’ Fortnight. So I went to Venice 7 times. Thierry kind of jerked me around on another film, leading me to believe he was going to take it and then not taking it.
Yes, I’m grateful. I also have a second gig at Cannes this year. I’m giving an intro for Robert Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer, screening in the Cannes Classics section. That will be a pleasure.
You, Coppola and George Lucas are at the festival this year
I just exchanged emails with George. He’s getting his honor at the end of the festival, so I told him hopefully Coppola and I are invited to stick around for the awards ceremony so we can all get together. If things are looking good for your film, the festival asks you, “don’t go too far. Why don’t you go stay at the Hotel du Cap for a couple nights, it’s very nice there.”
