Paul Schrader On ‘Basics Of Philosophy’, Guilt, ‘Odyssey’ & Ayahuasca
EXCLUSIVE: The indomitable Paul Schrader returns to the Venice Film Festival this year with The Basics Of Philosophy, the latest in his “man in a room” stories that began with his script for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and have included his own features First Reformed, The Card Counter and Master Gardener.
Jack Huston, Sofia Boutella, Daniel Zovatto, Bill Pullman and Richard Gere (briefly) star in his latest thought-provoking drama, about a repressed professor (Huston) who has been grappling with lingering guilt over a decision from his past when the victim suddenly returns to his life. You can watch a first clip for the movie above.
The octogenarian filmmaker, best known for his collaborations with Scorsese on other classics such as Raging Bull and The Last Temptation Of Christ, is showing no signs of slowing down.
In his typically candid and insightful way, Schrader talked to us about casting Huston in a breakout role originally earmarked for Jake Gyllenhaal, why the themes of guilt and redemption remain essential to his work, his thoughts on The Odyssey, the Paramount-Warner Bros merger, and ambitious next projects.
DEADLINE: This movie explores themes and ideas that have resonated across your career. Why did you want to tell this particular story, or convey its ideas, through this particular narrative?
PAUL SCHRADER: It had a strange origin. I was talking with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jake wanted to do something, and I said, ‘you know, let me think about it’. And I thought, ‘what’s a good character for Jake? Oh, a philosophy professor. I don’t think he’s ever done that’. And then I started thinking about a philosophy professor. What’s his secret? So I came up with the idea that he had become inappropriate with a piano student in the past, and had been living in the shadow of this. So then I had to get back to Jake, and I said, ‘Jake, I think I came up with something, but I don’t think you’re going to want to do it because it’s about a pedophile’. Jake said, ‘No, I don’t suppose that would interest me’. But now that I had the idea, and it was a good idea, I had to write it, and so that’s how it came about. But the idea of the philosopher and the Spinoza of it all preceded the actual sexual transgression.
DEADLINE: Why did you alight on the Dutch philosopher Spinoza as a character in the story?
SCHRADER: Kierkegaard was too obvious. He was the big philosopher in my youth. I went to divinity school, but he was he was the guy when we were in college. The Greeks were also a little too obvious. So I started poking around in the Middle Ages and Spinoza was Dutch, and he was Jewish, and he was enlightened, and it seemed like a good fit. I didn’t know much about him, so I had to spend a week in my own self-taught Spinoza course, reading everything by and about him, and the more I read, the more he seemed like the guy I was looking for.
DEADLINE: He’s a good fit because of the way he lived, too. Ascetic, pared back, an outcast to an extent, and despite it not coming up much in his writing, probably celibate (but with suppressed thoughts along the way)…
SCHRADER: Yes. And when our professor runs into him in the movie he asks him the central question of the whole film, which is: ‘Can people change?’ And Spinoza says, ‘No, they can’t’. We are the product of circumstances. And the professor says, ‘But I believe in free will’, and Spinoza says, “Of course you do. How else could you live?’
DEADLINE: I want to come back to that thought…But just to close the loop on the casting, how did Jack Huston come about in the lead role?
SCHRADER: I was looking for an actor, and I realized I had seen Jack and had found him very interesting. I realized with this subject matter that I had to find an actor for whom this was something good for their career: a leading role. Jack hadn’t really gotten that leading role yet. I liked Jack’s grandfather, I liked his uncle, I liked his aunt, I liked his father. They’re all good actors. And I thought this would be a great turn for him. We had a mutual friend in producer Braxton Pope and I think Braxton suggested Jack. I was very happy not only for the film, but also for Jack to get a leading role, something that he should have gotten long before this.
DEADLINE: All your cast played well. I thought Daniel Zovato was very good too…To go back to what you were saying before, I wanted to ask what by now you’ve learned about guilt and inherent vice or human fallibility? You’ve explored these themes a lot across decades. What have you learned about those qualities by this stage in your work?
SCHRADER: Yes, guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. I was raised within a guilt-driven form of Protestantism: Calvinism. The notion of total depravity is very important. “Our righteous works are like filthy rags” in the eyes of God. The TULIP represents the five points of Calvinism: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints. That gets hammered into you. I was raised to believe that we are incapable of salvation. You had to accept it by grace. It was a puzzle box of a conundrum. But it was also a great education. I’m even wearing my Calvin shirt today. Unlike many from evangelical churches, John Calvin was a hardcore intellectual. He believed you could think your way into heaven, and he constructed this whole edifice of thought, the Institutes, two volumes of it. I took it in college. It was all logic with one little pinhole of faith. But of course, a pinhole of faith is about the same size as a barn door of faith because once you let faith into the argument, all the logic and all the reasoning in the world doesn’t matter, and so that was the whole gimmick of Calvinism: to try to think or reason your way into salvation, but you need to have that little pinhole of faith…
DEADLINE: Do you resent this upbringing in any way? Given how formal and strict it sounds…
SCHRADER: Not at all. It was great. My college [Calvin College/University, Michigan] has fallen a little behind. It was a premier liberal arts Christian school, and those schools, primarily because of funding, are drifting more to the right. And so, when I went to school, the idea of liberal arts, thinking, and philosophy was very much in the Christian tradition. It’s become less so now, which is a pity. But I did not feel encumbered. A number of my professors went on to become quite famous philosophers such as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga. The whole notion of Christian philosophy was very invigorating, and I think that gets sort of short shrift by some people who just assume that because you have faith, it means you don’t have to think.
DEADLINE: I’m interested in what you say about grace and redemption. There is a tantalizing moment at the end of this movie where the camera rests on one character and that question you mentioned about the ability to change really comes into focus. Is this boy in danger due to someone else’s sin or does he represent innocence that can inspire change in someone…
SCHRADER: Both. It’s the same question he asked Spinoza. Can people change? The main character is thinking ‘Here I am, and here is a young boy, and I can’t stop looking at him’. When he writes to himself earlier in the film, he says: “I believe I have changed, but I have not been forgiven, and that’s because the only person that can forgive him is himself. He has been forgiven by his victim. The person who can’t forgive him is himself, and therefore he can’t be forgiven. And so, is it possible to change him? The film leaves that open. We hold on that little ring bearer just a few beats too long.
DEADLINE: Your characters are often grappling with the question of how to lead a good life. What does it mean in your mind to lead a good life?
SCHRADER: You have to have a sense of personal morality. You have to have a sense of communal responsibility, a sense of respect and for others. Unless you have those things, you can’t have a good life. And then, you have to have appreciation of yourself, respect for yourself. Without that, you can’t have a good life.
DEADLINE: Your film also deals with trauma and navigating trauma, something unfortunately you’ve had to deal with recently after the passing of Mary Beth Hurt [the acclaimed actress and Schrader’s longtime wife] in the spring following a long illness. How did you manage to navigate making this movie while also dealing with that loss?
SCHRADER: You answered the question. Work, work is the great salve. Nothing heals a wound more than work. It was only about two weeks ago that it hit me how grieved and blue I was about this. Her death wasn’t a surprise. She had dementia for a long time. But I responded to her death by plunging into work. After that I had a couple of weeks hiatus and it really hit me.
DEADLINE: Maybe you’ll have more time now the film is done…
SCHRADER: I put off her memorial. We’re doing it on the 13th of September. I’m organizing that now…
DEADLINE: What did it mean to you to have Martin [Scorsese] come on board to support the film? It’s the second film of yours he has served as an executive producer after Card Counter.
SCHRADER: Well, we hadn’t taken the project to market yet so it helps with profile. I had just been with Martin recently and the producer and I thought that if he came aboard like he did on Card Counter that it could help. I knew Martin had seen the film and liked it so it wasn’t a problem for him. I had a birthday a couple months back and Marty spoke and he went on and on about how much he had liked the film. I didn’t realise he liked it so much. He was telling me about other films of this ilk and how few there are.
DEADLINE: To your earlier point, you’re someone who seems to relish thinking about the next project and immersing yourself in work. What’s next for you?
SCHRADER: I’ve got three movies to shoot. The next one is called Non Compos Mentis.
DEADLINE: Yes, we’ve written about that one. I heard there might be some casting changes with Sarah Pidgeon potentially dropping out?
SCHRADER: Yes, she has been replaced. We have a couple of new names joining, which I’ll be able to share soon. We should be going into pre-production when I come back from Venice. To begin filming in October and wrap in November.
Then I start another one in January. I call it my ‘drug movie’. It’s called The Doors of Perception, about ayahuasca. Cast is coming together but the star is really the trips themselves. It’s about 15 minutes of trip sequences. I wanted to merge a theatrical experience with an immersive experience. I went to an ayuahasca retreat in Costa Rica a month ago and had eight trips in two weeks. At the age of 80 I finally got round to it!
DEADLINE: Wow. That sounds like something...Is your project with Antoine Fuqua still happening?
SCHRADER: That’s an interesting one. Antoine is no longer involved. That was originally called Three Guns at Dawn. It has now become something different and is being reconfigured. It’s now an AI project.
DEADLINE: Interesting. A.I. is clearly one of the big talking points in the business right now. Another is the Paramount Warner Bros merger. What’s your take on that whole dance?
SCHRADER: Well, the studio system is sort of dead…but for me it’s kind of like that scene in The End Of Oak Street when Ewan McGregor’s character comes across two dinosaurs fucking and he wants his wife to take a picture of him in front of them…That’s sort of how I feel about Paramount and Warner Brothers…
DEADLINE: My interpretation of that is ‘somewhat grotesque, and not needed, but being done anyway to scratch an itch’…
We’re speaking at a time when theatrical is resurgent and tentpoles like Spider Man and The Odyssey are doing so well and there have been breakouts like Backrooms…What do you make of this resurgence?
SCHRADER: There will always be room for the theatrical experience, just as there is opera and different types of music. But the commercial driver of filmed entertainment isn’t theatrical anymore. Theatrical is the table setter. Occasionally, you’ll have a film which actually pays for itself in theatrical, but that’s nobody’s model anymore. Hardly any films break even theatrically any more. It’s a way to position yourself to break even. I don’t think we can look at exceptions like The Odyssey and claim that suddenly there’s a new rule. That film is the exception. A great exception, but an exception.
DEADLINE: Putting your critics hat on from back in the day, did you enjoy The Odyssey?
SCHRADER: Yes, I did. There’s been a lot of sniping about it, but I think a lot of that is just clickbait. The film has had so much press. The New York Times seems to have a daily running article about it. But it’s a rarity that such a big-budget film becomes so successful. I wouldn’t want to walk into a studio and say, ‘Give me $200 million; I’m going to make the next Odyssey’, because I don’t think anybody in the studio system thinks of The Odyssey as anything other than an exception. Some fool will make the film’s sequel and lose a fortune. We’ll see who that is.
The Basics Of Philosophy debuts at the Venice Film Festival Out Of Competition on September 4th.
