[Paul Schrader breaks into a wheezy cackle as he recalls a conversation he had recently with his fellow director, Robert Altman. As is the wont of two seasoned mavericks, they were discussing the cruel nature of Hollywood.] He was laughing, ... He said, 'Every time you think they've fucked you every way they can, they come up with a new way!' |
His gifts are now more social than sexual. He's this society walker who has his lady friends, and a boyfriend on the side. |
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. |
I don't know if he was stupid, |
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. |
I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy? |
In the end it's a revenue stream. And all revenue streams eventually reach the sea. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself. |
You know, when you're in your twenties you use a great deal of symbolism. You somehow think that a character standing beneath a cross is more interesting than a character standing underneath a billboard, but when you get a little older you realize that there's not much difference. |