Before he wrote Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, Paul Schrader was a film critic. “I went to the dark side in the ‘70s and started screenwriting,” Schrader, who can currently be seen reflecting on his decades-long collaboration with Martin Scorsese in the new Apple TV+ docuseries Mr. Scorsese, recently told Vanity Fair. “But you cannot write criticism and make films at the same time. The danger of offending someone is too great.”
But as he approaches 80, Schrader has begun to embrace that danger. Schrader is chronically, confidently online: he has called Saltburn a “bad film,” Joker: Folie à Deux a “really bad musical,” and declared that modern moviegoing audiences are “dumber” than they used to be. His later-career films, from The Canyons to Oh, Canada, have cast some of the biggest (and most controversial) stars of the 21st century. The auteur has also openly expressed his support for AI, documented his hatred for President Donald Trump, and urged his followers to partake in No Kings protests. With his 2022 film Master Gardener—about a horticulturist whose torso sports hidden neo-Nazi ink—Schrader even inadvertently anticipated the viral controversy of Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo.
Schrader caught up with VF to chat about having his finger on the pulse of culture for half a century, becoming a pioneer for boomers using social media correctly, and why, sure, he’d make an AI movie.
Vanity Fair: Did you anticipate that your film criticism on Facebook to go so viral?
Paul Schrader: It’s not very viral. It’s 56,000, I think, is where it is now. That’s a stadium full of people but it’s not, you know, a K-Pop star.
But a lot of your Facebook posts get screenshotted, then go viral on Twitter.
Apparently. I’m not on Twitter myself, so I don’t know—but I’ve heard this.
Have you felt as though you’ve started a conversation? Do you respond to comments?
Yeah, a number of times. I don’t think that it’s the place for vitriol. If anybody uses vitriol—and by that I mean name-calling and slander, vulgarity, language—if anybody gets into that lane, I immediately block them, because I’m not interested in that way. I have to try to keep my comments encouraging of conversation rather than being judgmental.
And you do all of this yourself? You don’t employ a social media team or anything, correct?
Oh no, no.
Have you ever thought that you should?
The only thing I’ve noticed is occasionally, I’ll see a film that’s under the radar. It either has no distribution or isn’t sufficiently [marketed], and then I’ll make a post of that—and that will then help that filmmaker. I have noticed getting more kind of cold requests from people saying, ‘Please see my film.’ And this is, I assume, because they’re hoping I’ll see it and comment on it.
Have you ever received criticisms on your criticism, or are you just fully unplugged from that?
Oh yeah. Ideally you get a good discussion going and people saying ‘Schrader has a point there but I don’t think it’s as valid of a point as he does,’ etc. etc. And occasionally I get corrected. People will say, ‘You got that wrong.’ But also among my topics, I started saying, ‘What market was this made for?’ I’m just throwing this out there. I have a lot of friends who are in the film business and are critics, and I look at a film and I have a big question mark in my head. I said, ‘Who did they make this for?’ Sometimes I’ll put that out there, and people will come back and try to help me understand how a film got financed when I didn’t understand how it got financed.
What do you think was the most controversial of your posts?
There are certain subjects when you touch on them, you know, you get more [of a] reaction. And obviously, it’s very easy to stir up conversation. All I would have to type in, ‘Is Leo DiCaprio still a movie star?’ Just put that question out there. I would get a 1000 responses. I think that’s kind of nasty and an insinuation, and it’s not really that productive.
I know that Francis Ford Coppola uses Instagram, Marty Scorsese uses Instagram and Tiktok now. Have you been tempted to expand to more social media platforms?
No, no. I like Facebook because you can write it and it’s not limited to a certain word count. And so if you want to repost it—which a number of my friends do, repost [recent] articles from other media and then I get a chance to read them—you can. Gerald Perry, who is a retired critic, will often post a long article on a subject that is brought up again because of a certain film.
Who are some of your favorite critics, or favorite people that you follow on Facebook?
I only have about 200 friends. Like I said, as soon as somebody uses vitriol, I immediately block them. Life is too short to argue with people who can’t have a constructive conversation.
Can I ask about some of your favorite films this year, especially going into awards season?
It’s getting to that time to start thinking about it. There are films that I have touted, particularly films that don’t have distribution or somebody has done something very, very interesting but failed. And then you say, ‘This is a fascinating failure that people are writing it off, but if you look under the surface, you’ll see that there was a very ambitious attempt to do something original.’ I don’t want to get into titles because then it just gets to be…I mean, to tell you the truth, I don’t really vote for the Academy.
When I get my ballot every year—it’s been almost 50 years now—I just vote for two or three performances or films that I think are worthy. I rarely fill up all the five slots or 10 slots.
Do you have any films that are top of mind as ‘fascinating failures’?
The new film at the New York Film Festival that Harmony Korine produced, Barrio Trieste, is being called independent cinema. That is not independent cinema. This is experimental cinema, and its roots go all the way back to the origins of experimental cinema. This is purely a non-narrative experimental film. So just pointing things out like that.
Sometimes you point out things like the PT Anderson film [One Battle After Another]—stunning direction, but deeply confused at the script level. And that’s what reviewers do. They say, ‘This is tour de force filmmaking, this guy clearly knows how to make a film. I wish there was someone that looked a little harder at that script, because the script has problems.’ And certain films I have pointed out that have a fundamental [plot] flaw.
I would love to speak about film literacy. So many people colloquially misuse terms like cinematography or mise en scene, especially on Tiktok and social media. Do you think that having more iconic writers and directors of a certain age, like yourself, on social media could help educate Gen Zers?
I was a protege of Pauline Kael. We’re all a Paulette at one point in our lives. I came up in the era of those five major film critics: Pauline, Andy [Sarris], Stanley [Kauffmann], Parker Tyler, and Roger [Ebert]. That was kind of the Mt. Rushmore of the American film business. We don’t have that today because people don’t really…We’re getting into a whole other subject, a very interesting one. Film criticism didn’t used to exist. Then it flourished, and now it’s dying again.
The very biggest change in the history of criticism is that streaming has returned us to the era of generic ‘the movies.’ ‘Oh, let’s watch something on Netflix tonight,’ or ‘let’s watch a true crime on PBS’ or something. It’s about watching a type of movie and not a specific movie. It has diluted criticism. We still need theatrical to set the table—otherwise, films just disappear into the Bermuda Triangle of streaming.
Do you think the celebrity film critic like Pauline Kael is an obsolete concept?
I think that era is gone. Chicago [Tribune] no longer has a daily film critic, and they used to have the top two in the country. The [New York] Times will still give a review; a lot of places don’t even do that anymore.
But do you think that now, directors and tastemakers like Bret Easton Ellis—with their platforms, podcasts and Twitter and Facebook—are stepping into that role?
They’re trying to be. They are tastemakers of pop culture, but often they don’t have rigid, critical principles so it ends up being, ‘I like it. It’s cool. Blah, blah, blah.’ Rather than taking a film and putting it right with ‘this is where this film exists in the history of film taste and genre. This is what it’s doing new, this is what it’s doing old. This is what it’s redoing. Here’s the new model, here’s the old model,’ or vice versa.
I mean, cinema, throughout its history, has been constantly morphing into other things, and we’re right on the cusp of such a big change in the history of cinema that who knows how that will affect all these other things. Cinema for most of its history has been a two dimensional thing that was projected out of a wall in the dark room, and that is going away now. It’s becoming a much more environmental experience. You can’t go to an art museum without seeing a movie anymore.
Have you done the 4D in theaters?
I saw Twisters in 4D. You get sprayed and spun around and everything. You have to make sure your drink is in the cup.
What was the last movie you went to in theaters?
This afternoon. I just got back from Roofman. I’m trying to see two movies a week in theaters.
Oh, okay, I’m a huge fan of Derek Cianfrance. What did you think of the film?
Well as a fan of his, what it is is essentially true crime. The fascination is that it’s true; the fascination isn’t that it’s so well made, or so well acted. It’s just that ‘I can’t believe this thing actually happened.’
What’s next on your docket to see in theaters?
Kiss of the Spider Woman. This one, I’m so interested in how they’re doing Spider Woman as a musical. That seems worthy to see in the theater, and particularly if you get one of these big spectacle things, if you are fortunate enough to be near an IMAX. You know, movies are going to be less and less two dimensional. And also, I think they’re going to be more and more AI. I think we’re only two years away from the first AI feature.
They have the AI actress now; they have the AI director.
I was just on the phone with someone today about a script I had, and I said, ‘You know, this would be a perfect script to do all AI.’
Really? So you are willing to fully embrace it yourself?
Yeah, it’s just a tool. When you’re an author, you have to describe someone’s reaction. You use a code–you use a code of words, a certain number of letters, and so forth, and you express their facial reaction. An actor has their own code. Well, now you’re a pixelator, and you can create the face, and you can create the emotion on the face, and you can sculpt it the same way an author sculpts the reaction in a novel or a story.
Would you read an AI film review?
Well, AI is taking over film coverage, as you must know. AI does better coverage than the average coverage. And AI doesn’t have to favor anybody. Often, when you’re doing coverage, you get a hint that the person who’s paying you wants you to like this. You can’t give that information to AI.
So AI is the ultimate unbiased reporter, then?
In this way, yes. But of course, we can teach it to be biased.
But going back to the Facebook thing, it’s just like a little scratch I get to itch from time to time. And if I did have to hang up my boots and saddles, I think I probably would go back to criticism, because I’ve always liked it. But you can’t do criticism and try to finance and package films at the same time. It just doesn’t work that way. In fact, I had it out with Pauline. Warren Beatty brought her out.
I remember that. That film was never made though, correct?
Everybody in town was afraid of Pauline, but of course Warren knew how to get her, which was to buy her. He put her in an office. Told her to write the next hit, had her read scripts. It was six months, eight months, before she realized that nothing was going to happen, and she finally had to go back to New York. Warren figured [it] out: ‘Give her a lucrative offer because she doesn’t have much money. Make her think she’s in the filmmaking world. But of course, nothing will get greenlit.’
I confronted her at that time, because I had heard that she had said something about me at an industry party that was negative. I took Pauline to lunch and said, ‘Pauline, look, as a critic, you can say anything you want. That’s your right and I respect that right. But when you’re at a Hollywood party where people are packaging and making films, you are no longer a critic. You are an insider. And when you denigrate me at that party, you are not denigrating me as a critic, you are denigrating me as a financial element. So don’t get confused–what you are doing at these parties is not criticism anymore.’ And as a result, she never reviewed anything I did again.
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