Paul Schrader Talks Bermuda Triangle of Streaming, the Frank Sinatra Biopic That Got Awa

 Posted on July 5, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  924 words  |  Martina Birk

Paul Schrader might not be a Swiftie, but the veteran screenwriter-director admits that he’s in “awe” of the pop megastar.

“It’s not so much the music that entrances me, it’s the phenomenon. The Elvis-ness of it all,” Schrader told Variety. “You have to look in awe at how well she and her people have created this empire.”

The “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” scribe is at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week, where he’s the president of the features jury.

Schrader, who received a lifetime achievement award from the Bosnian fest in 2022, is also in town to promote his latest film, “Oh, Canada,” which reunites the “American Gigolo” writer-director with leading man Richard Gere after 40 years. The film competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

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Speaking about his prolific and lengthy career, Schrader looked back at the days of the independent system in which he got his start, first as a writer on those early, career-defining films of Martin Scorsese, then later as a director, starting with “Blue Collar” (1978).

The industry “keeps morphing,” said Schrader, who has independently financed recent films, including “The Card Counter,” “Master Gardener” and 2017 Oscar nominee “First Reformed.”

“The economic model keeps changing — how to monetize the ‘product,’ which is what it is,” he said. “I began in the studio system and made four or five films. That was already a different studio system, in the ’60s, ’70s. Then it became the independent system. And then it became, now, driven by the streamers.”

Schrader said that his recent films “have all been turned down by Amazon, Netflix,” adding: “Unless you’re one of the privileged babies — and we know who those [filmmakers] are, because they get all the attention — if you’re not one of the babies, you just fly into the Bermuda Triangle of streaming and the last thing you see is the vapor trails of your film.”

He cited “Mothers’ Instinct,” starring Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, as an example of a film that received “no support whatsoever” after its streaming release on Prime Video. “That’s the new way you dump films,” he said.

Schrader also opened up about the movies that got away, including a Frank Sinatra biopic that was killed after the late singer’s daughter refused to sign off on the script, as well as a Hank Williams project that was squashed after the filmmaker “ran into problems” with music publisher Acuff-Rose.

“In those cases, if you don’t get the music rights, you got nothing,” he said. “They can’t stop you from making a movie, but they can stop me from using the song. Who wants to do a Sinatra film where you can’t use the songs?”

However, the 78-year-old insisted he doesn’t lose sleep over such missed opportunities.

“There’s a line in [Schrader’s 1992 crime thriller] ‘Light Sleeper,’ where [Dana] Delany says to Willem [Dafoe], ‘A convenient memory is a gift from God,'” he said. “And this is also as a filmmaker. If you can just not remember the bad stuff, life is so much better.”

The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 16 – 23.

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