Screensaver: On his own turf

Director-writer Paul Schrader talks about his acclaimed modestly budgeted "Affliction" and the pleasures of working the fertile emotional territory the big studios can't touch.

By Cynthia Joyce

Jan 7, 1999 | Sitting at his desk in a modest midtown Manhattan office, writer-director Paul Schrader doesn't much resemble the renegade wild man he's been portrayed as in various Hollywood chronicles (most notably, Peter Biskind's recent '70s nostalgia tome, "Easy Rider, Raging Bull"). The only names he drops are those of his family: his wife of 15 years, actress Mary Beth Hurt, and their two children. Nor does his mildly gruff manner give him away as the rebel writer behind "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "American Gigolo" (which he also directed) and more than a dozen other films over the last two decades. It's just as well, because Schrader isn't particularly interested in talking about his, or anybody else's, notorious past -- he's too busy juggling his current projects. There's "Bringing Out the Dead," due this year, which he adapted from a Joseph Connelly novel (Martin Scorsese is directing); "Forever Mine," a love story starring Gretchen Mol and Joseph Fiennes, also due out this year; and, of course, "Affliction," adapted from the Russell Banks novel, which is currently winning critical acclaim and just earned Nick Nolte the National Society of Film Critics award for best actor.

The pairing of Schrader and Banks seems a particularly serendipitous meeting of minds. Both have an affinity for darkly realistic stories about men who somehow get stuck in their own lives, and who must ultimately make a choice between complete emotional detachment or constant conflict -- a theme Schrader says he can relate to, even if he no longer identifies with it. "Often in these lives, the sun doesn't poke through the clouds -- the music doesn't swell at the end."

Do you still consider yourself an independent filmmaker?

Well, I began making films for the studios, then the studios stopped making those kinds of films. I didn't really change. I'm still making the same films. "Affliction" is not that different from "Blue Collar," but the studios just don't make them and they don't release them.

I certainly would like to go back and make studio films. It's nice having those budgets and those toys and that security. But today, studio films cost so much money and they have no idea really how to make a film on a budget -- they can't -- that you really don't have much freedom. Once the budget gets up to $30, $40 million, you just can't afford the audience not knowing who the bad guy is and who the good guy is. You take a film like "Affliction," and you say, Who's the good guy? Well, Nick Nolte. Who's the bad guy? Well, it's Nick Nolte. You can't do that at $35, $40 million.

What was the budget for "Affliction"?

Six, six and a half million. When you work at moderate budgets, it requires sacrifice all up and down the line -- including from your actors. But then you have a freedom.

Nolte shared production credits as well.

Well, that was part of the trade-off in terms of lowering his salary.

He was so well-cast as Wade Whitehouse -- he really gave a haunting performance.

Didn't he? Just beautiful, subtle work. You can just see that guy's plan. He lets you into that man's mind. You could see his mind work.

It was interesting to me how, in the film, alcoholism is used as a sort of fuel --

-- a fuel for male anger. Yeah, it's sort of complicated from my point of view, because that's the ostensible theme of the book. It's not really a theme of my life, I'm not the product of an abusive alcoholic father, and that's in many ways the first theme of the book and the movie, the superficial kind of theme -- male violence as it is born in the blood, bred in the bone, passed down from generation to generation. But that's a handle that you give the audience so that when the movie's over they feel like they know why they were there.

But to me, the more fascinating themes are underneath that one -- that is, the relationship with the brothers, and the nature of the narrator's relationship to the person he's talking about. You have in this case two siblings of an abusive parent. One of those siblings will be selected out for the violence, in this case the older one. The relationship with the younger boy to his brother will be very complex, because on one hand he's very grateful that his brother took the blows for him. On the other hand, he's jealous, because in that kind of family structure, violence equals attention equals love. The father says, "I'm full of love." Well of course he's full of love, and [holds up fist] he'll show you, too. And that's as good a recipe for passive-aggressive behavior as I can think of. Everyone else in town gives the older brother good advice. You know, forget your custody suit, forget the hunting accident. But his brother walks in and says, "I think you were right about that murder," and encourages his delusions.

Next Page: Trying not to think as a director

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