The Big Picture - ‘Fast X’ and the Desecration of Movies. Plus: Paul Schrader!

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

What a double feature. Sean and Amanda discuss ‘Fast X’ and the troubles of the franchise (1:00), before making the hard pivot to Paul Schrader’s ‘Master Gardener’ (40:00). Then, Sean is joined by Schrader to discuss the film, his long career as a writer and director, the state of movies, and more (57:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Paul Schrader Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Helwani and I wanted to let you know that each and every week I'm part of a great program called the Ringer MMA Show. I host it alongside two absolutely brilliant minds. Their names, Chuck Mendenhall and Pete C. Carroll. And every Thursday, a new episode drops where we preview the weekend in mixed martial arts and react to all the biggest news. Plus, after every UFC pay-per-view, we give you a post-fight show. So, this is what you have to do. Just follow the Ring of MMA show on your Spotify app so you don't miss an episode. We'll talk to you then.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins.

And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about fast men and about lonely men. Brother. I'm Amanda Dobbins. date of movies, what he wants to say about life at 76 years old, many more things. This is one of my favorite filmmakers really ever. And he's still doing the work, still thinking through life, still thinking through the experience of life. I hope you'll stick around for our conversation. He was as wry and eloquent as ever. We're going to talk a little bit about Master Gardner in this episode, but there could not be a more different cinematic experience from Master Gardner than the big release of the week. That movie is Fast X, aka Fast 10, the 11th film in the Fast and the Furious franchise. It's good. It's good to bring an accounting mindset to this podcast early on. Well, I can assure you that this film was made only for accounting purposes because it is

an absolute abomination and I have not been this depressed in a movie theater in some time and I am I'm gonna I'm gonna open this plainly yeah I don't really like the Fast and the Furious

movies that's true I've said this before I'm on the record about this so I'm not the target audience for the movie I get it even with that in mind if I don't love a franchise or love a filmmaker's work, I still go in with an open mind. I'd like to be surprised. You, Amanda Dobbins, you've been up and down on the Fast

franchise. One of the installments is one of your favorite movies in recent times. I have been up and down on the franchise as the franchise has been up and down itself. It's had highs and it has had lows. Let me say right now, this is not a good movie. And even if you're a fan of the Fast X franchise, I don't know that I can recommend you spending money to go see this movie. It is notably unsuccessful. I didn't really have a breakdown like you did.

And so I am interested to interrogate it in real time on this podcast. Well, let's do that. So just a little context around this film. It's officially credited to Louis Leterrier, who is a filmmaker who made an incredible Hulk movie, who has worked on the Now You See Me franchise. He's also done a lot of work in television. He's a sort of big tent, safe pair of hands.

He did not start out as the director on this project. In fact, Justin Lin did, who has directed many of the Fast and Furious films. And he left midstream, literally in the middle of production. It's not totally clear why he left, though. It seemed like there was quite a bit of stress around the production of this film. This is an extremely expensive movie. It's part of a very essential franchise to Universal Comcast. And it features a great many stars and ever-expanding, I don't know, like, just miasma of garbage storytelling. Like, I really, really hate what they do with these movies. I really thought that you were going to say family. There is a family, I guess.

You can't even say it once. I mean, you know, it's just one aspect of the dumb shit, over enunciated, bland thematics of a movie like this. I realized that it's a turn your brain off movie. So before I get too high and mighty about fast movies, I know what they are. I like a lot of dumb movies. Okay. I'm literally last night was planning a solo podcast about the Transformers franchise of films. That's how willing to get into movies

like this I am. Because no one will do it with you? I don't even want to have to ask anyone. I want to be able to just vamp solo. I'm going to throw to Bob

every 12 minutes and be like, Bob, did you see Dark of the Moon? You know, did you see The Last Knight? You know, it's going to be

one of those. Okay. I was a big Transformers head. I was in there. I was in the theaters. So you're well suited to this, Bob. But this, I cannot abide this.

I'm going to describe the plot of this movie as I understand it. I think the plot is really telling and sums up a lot of the problems. I agree with you. So go ahead. So the film picks up

apparently after the, or sort of midstream in the events of Fast Five. And Fast Five features an exceptional action sequence that you have raved about in the past, the stealing of a vault by way of two cars driven by Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, the lead characters then of the franchise

before Walker passed away tragically. And we see in Rio de Janeiro as this vault is being taken away that Hernan Reyes, the sort of big bad of that film is sort of chasing after and is murdered but we learn that in fact he has this much more complicated family circumstance including a son

named Dante who is played by Jason Momoa. Jason Momoa is then effectively re-edited into the sequence from Fast Five. So we get a kind of recap, recalibration of Fast Five at the beginning of this movie. Yeah, the opening set piece of Fast X is Fast Five re-edited with Jason Momoa, very obviously inserted in certain shots. Now, I understand the decision-making here because Fast Five is widely considered.

I think along with Furious 7, the sort of two best of the recent films, in part because that closed the loop on the Paul Walker story in a very emotional way, and Fast Five is thought to have the best action of the franchise. Now, obviously, your mileage may vary on this series. Fast Five is the apotheosis of the, and was one of my favorite movies of the decade because it's when the franchise like realizes what it can be and is the right level of absurdity and knowingness and spectacle and and fun um but before it jumps the shark so I would say that the last two films Quite bad.

have been poor. Yeah. Eight was very badly reviewed. Nine, arguably as badly reviewed. They both were successful at the box office. This is a very steady franchise. I think Fast Five is when the franchise realized that it had an opportunity to become

a modern-day James Bond kind of a franchise. Like as long as there was that kind of central figure in the central concept, Dom Toretto in the center, cars, family, heists, big bads, we got something here. But it has fallen on hard times creatively in a big, big way. I didn't like these movies very much in the first place, but the last two have not been very good. This feels like that choice to open with fast five is a signal to the audience like hey don't forget we are special we've done special stuff in this movie and we're going to go back to it to tell a new story and constantly remind you of when we were good exactly

that seem right yes a thousand percent i don't think that that worked no in I think it had the exact opposite effect, which was that it reminded me how far this franchise has fallen. Because Jason Momoa is in the film, and this is his first appearance in a Fast and the Furious film. I'm not sure. You know, we mentioned him very briefly when we talked about 35 over 35. I think he's a very fun presence in movies. I wouldn't describe him as a great actor by any means, but he's kind of well suited to a franchise like this because he's huge, he's very expressive, he's got a sense of humor,

he certainly has had experience working in movies like this with Aquaman. And he has made a very strong decision in this movie to act like a very

silly villain. The part is written in a silly way and he's really taking it over the top. He's styled over the top. A lot of drapey fabrics. Yeah, rings, jewelry.

And lots of accessories in bright colors. Wearing his hair in goofy fashion. There's something slightly, I don't know, feminized about what he's trying to do in the performance that I don't totally know that he understands what it is that he's doing. But the way that it's coming across is, it's kind of funny, but not really that funny.

Anyway, that's kind of, that's neither here nor there in terms of whether the film is successful or not. Because otherwise, the rest of the movie felt like an uber watered down version of every other Fast and the Franchise movie. Well, an uber watered down version of every other Fast and Furious movie lumped together.

Because this is the other thing that the Fast Five opening signals and the other thing that the fast act the fast five opening signals and the other problem which is not only hey we're gonna go back to this good thing but um we can't let go of anything good or bad that this franchise has done and we're not gonna make any choices we're just gonna bring fast five back and we're going to make it more. And then we're going to bring Fast Six and Seven. And literally every single movie star or middling, you know, wannabe movie star who has ever been in one of these movies is crammed into Fast X. Definitely not in the same location as each other at any point. You can i don't know which sound stages i'm guessing you know atlanta you know somewhere in europe like vancouver you know probably check all the tax

havens you know and they've got it never never together uh respectfully to many of those actors but you know they aren't olivier and they all got to have their moment and it's just it's so baggy i who enjoy these movies don't remember half of what happened i don't know any of their motivations it's like it's just you know there's the basic storytelling and a failure to stitch things together it's incoherent and they just can't let go of anything it's the culmination of the mcuification of culmination of the MCUification of a lot of film franchises in a lot of ways

because as you say, so Vin Diesel is here. Michelle Rodriguez is here as Letty. She becomes a critical figure in the film because she's kidnapped and her kidnapping

then leads to Dom Toretto seeking revenge. Jason Statham is back. Ludacris is back. Tyrese is back. Jason Momoa is here for the first time, but otherwise John Cena returns. Jordana Brewster is there for some godforsaken reason.

Natalie Emanuel's character is back. Sung Kang is back after returning in Fast 9. On and on and on and on we go. And then there's the addition of a handful of figures. And you're right. Everybody has to get their moment, including Helen Mirren has to get her moment for some reason. And none of the parts are well-written.

Every character talking to each other feels like the first time they've ever talked to each other, with the exception of Ludacris and Tyrese, who are basically just doing the same bit, I think slightly less effectively than they've done for the last five movies. Correct. And it's a big glob of set pieces and fake tension. we don't really know what anyone is ultimately after

we know that dom is trying to get his family back or protect them that's basically i guess that's every movie at this point but i was so bored i felt not a not an ounce of tension throughout the entire movie i thought the set pieces were okay. I thought, relative to where they've gone before, I mean, in Fast 9, you know, they literally went to space.

Well, not literally. Well, the characters literally went to space. Yeah, but like, they didn't actually. Tom Cruise is gonna burst into this studio, finally.

He's gonna come talk to us to be like, they did not go to space. No. I went to space. No, no, no. He's gonna save that for the Top Gun Maverick watch along that he's joining for.

That I'm just going to speak into existence. From the mere space station. Yeah. A friend of ours and a listener of this podcast sent me a screenshot from the NASA channel, like TV guide, which I didn't know any of those things still existed, which was Tom Cruise doing a one hour conversation with someone from nasa about the body in space i i haven't had time to seek it out yet but like tom cruise is gonna go to space okay let just leave it i'm fine with that i mean and and when tyrese and ludicrous

went to space i didn't enjoy it but i understood it as the logical end point in terms of raising the stakes on how to tell the story I mean that really sucks because and that's the franchise's like problem in a nutshell which is like last time they went to space and then this time they're just stuck like making like you know IOU jokes in like a bad office set like on us on a lot all the characters are separated at a certain point fairly early on in the film after a fake heist is orchestrated by Dante, the Jason Momoa character, to draw everyone together and then break them all apart.

Where does it draw everyone? In theory, it draws everyone to Rome. Yeah. And there are several drone shots of Rome and there is a car chase sequence that takes place on the streets of Rome. We almost never see any of the actors on foot in Rome. I don't believe that any of them were actually in Rome. It's possible that they were, but it is a failure of the filmmaking to never actually let us see them doing anything there because of this kind of like breakneck, phony tension building that they need to do with the set pieces.

It's possible, but i was watching all of the actual you know cuts to actors and even when helen mirren allegedly shows up in rome and they're looking out over the there's a vista uh and that was definitely not that was that was animated or like a green screen or whatever it often feels like we are looking at something like that. And, you know, I think that the Fast franchise has done some interesting things with like the way

that the camera moves through car to car, through races. You know, there have been, you know, Justin Lin, I think is a pretty talented kind of visual filmmaker. I always think that

the scripts of these films are desperately wanting. But this seemed to be, there's been a lot of speculation over the years about Vin Diesel's desire to kind of really fully take control of this franchise.

Some of the speculation around why Justin Lin moved on may or may not have been around the complexities of working with Vin Diesel. This feels like the time when he finally wrestled control fully of the franchise

away from everybody else. Because not only is there all of this sort of typical noisiness that you would expect from this film there are several scenes where vin diesel is asked to act in deep emotional terms and he is incapable he is literally not capable of performing a scene and making you feel anything at least to my eyes and obviously many characters who are close to him have died in the film story and of course we know that paul walker has died in in real life as well

right but not in the film story but not in the film story which is a extremely confusing choice to me but anyway so but because of that he's constantly confronted by memory and reflecting on memory. And he does not have it. He does not. He can't. Like, you're watching. I want to laugh. And there are, of course, movies like this.

There are action franchises where when there's an emotional moment, you're meant to laugh or you're meant to have a good time. And there are a lot of jokey moments in this movie. But the desire to challenge the audience with the weight of family in this story is fucking bullshit it's phony bullshit well the problem is that vin diesel clearly is taking these scenes about the importance of family and the emotion very seriously like he doesn't think that you're supposed to be laughing in that moment so that's's tough. There were, we were seated next to some real fans who were laughing a lot. And I, I, you know, I didn't stay to ask them how they felt,

but my assessment was they had a great time. They maybe didn't take those things seriously and maybe could laugh at all of it. And, but I don't think Vin Diesel is in on that joke. I have no doubt that certain people will enjoy this movie. I think for many people this is the ultimate in

I'm just killing two hours. Yeah. And that's perfectly fine. I'm not judging anybody. But in my honest experience of the movie, I felt the death rattle. I felt this is what we've come to.

Like we are a dead culture in a dead society. And all we want is the same bullshit filtered at us over and over again. Now, obviously, I've been a little like emotional about this with some of the comic book movies in the last year and a half or so. I've never really been on board with this franchise, as I mentioned. So take it with a grain of salt. But this is circling the drain stuff. This is like we need a reset

heavy and if we don't get one soon it's only going to get worse so i think you need to relax like a little bit i that's why you're here to say that i think that this is the death rattle of this franchise for sure like this franchise is there's nothing left to milk from it. They tried anyway. They let Vin Diesel share his ideas and like bad news, bad news. And the only logical conclusion is like stop making these movies. Like you had a great run at least for five and then you made a lot more money

and like it's over. Now, obviously capitalism does not work that way. So that's tough. And if you're arguing that because of capitalism we are a dead culture like no that's not that's actually not what i'm saying and i don't think that that's the case because they're oh great here we go capitalist much like logan roy and with that in mind i it's not that. There are plenty of franchises. James Bond is a really good example.

James Bond, the franchises have ebbed and flowed. Like the stories, the actors who have participated in those stories, the filmmakers who have mounted those movies has changed over time. It can evolve. It doesn't just have to be like this, but a little worse every time. But there's no standard. There's only power. And so when you only have power rattling around inside this machine, no one gets a note. No one figures

out how to change things. So I don't know what has to change specifically. It's probably ultimately less money made at the box office that will change this. It's not going to kill it. The interesting thing about this movie is, and I'm going to put a big banner around the next minute of this conversation. Bobby, play the air horn. The spoiler warning that you created. Zach gave really

positive reviews on the air horn. I thought that was great. I just wanted you to know, Bobby. I listened to it. I thought it was very good. Thanks, Bob. Spoiler warning.

Spoiler alert. This movie ends on a big, big, big, big cliffhanger and it is the most cynical fucking thing i've ever seen in my life it made me it made me want to throw throw my furniture in the fucking river you know like i was i i was i couldn't believe when they ended the movie like this now guess what i had the same weird reaction to dune part one you know i was like what where's the rest of my movie so obviously I'm prone to getting upset by this yeah but it's not well

there's that plus you're rarely in the position of having to watch bad versions of things you don't like no I'm dead serious you're like you are rarely in a place where you're like this isn't for me and also they did it badly and like

it's still gonna make money that's interesting what do you're like, this isn't for me, and also they did it badly, and it's still going to make money. That's interesting. What do you mean by that? You don't experience that. Literally that. Like, even things. But I watch all the DC movies. Those movies stink.

Sure, but you don't mind that comic books have taken over American culture, and there are still things are being made for you. I think this is slightly overstated. I understand what you're saying. I don't think it is. I don't know. I mean, I was happy to get on pods and destroy the last Star Wars movie, like Solo. A lot of the stuff that I like has been really, really bad. Right.

But of course, you know, you have standards. And I thought so much about you being like i don't think my standards are oh yeah oh i'm sorry you're saying that that you i like a lot of things yes so because i like a lot of things in theory there's very few things that i'm like i'm out on this right and you're already out on it and then it's also like really bad and you're just like i can't believe i have to fucking be here this thing that i think I have no interest in that is like insultingly bad. Yeah. And people are still just like going to go see it and then I'm going to have to do more of it.

How does it feel? It feels horrible. Yeah. I mean, it feels horrible. I think that there is a way to make these movies slightly better. And this movie did not even attempt to do so. I agree with you. I think I'm sure that a huge reason for that is that the production was just massively interrupted like

this is not like louis letarge should never be allowed to make a movie again it's not about that it's kind of above the echelon of that kind of conversation i i did feel this way um about the last star wars movie that was the last time where i was like oh my god why is this so ineffective why is this so badly rendered imagine right but executed did that make you feel that culture was over as we know it um no because it was a you were you were big mad I do remember about that film yeah well I it was a different kind of frustration because it was and thanks for asking these questions you know just very generous of you um it was it was meant to be the conclusion these questions, you know, just very generous of you. It was meant to be the conclusion of a story.

And this made me much angrier because it was an attempt to drain the blood from an entire audience for the next five to seven years, like a fucking vampire, just to watch the next installment of this shitty movie. And then maybe even a third one,

which Vin Diesel threatened last week. And it is rank garbage, like mass conspiracy to control audience that I find so gross. And we've talked a lot about the TVification of movies over the last 20 years. Marvel, no doubt, the biggest purveyor and criminal in that respect

but this was like the stupidest fucking version of it the movie ends again spoiler alert with a bomb that may or may not go off

that is in a dam that Dom and his son are in is this a fucking episode of Mission Impossible from 1965 like what are we doing we're ending movies

like that and now we have to wait two and a half years to see whether or not Don blows up and he's obviously not going to blow up because he's the star of the movie?

Like, there's no stakes. There's nothing matters. It is the vacancy of creativity. I have two words for you. The snap. Defend it. Go. Literally the exact same same thing happened we knew exactly all the people that disappeared were the people who had movies that were already released and all they're doing

are already on the schedule and they were just making money here's the thing yeah iron man died he died okay he died for now that was a genuine dramatic choice that they made. You don't know. Of course I don't know. You don't know. Maybe Don Toretto dies in the first minute of the next film. That would be an authentically bold choice. But until we see something like that, and we haven't seen Iron Man come back. I love you, and I thought this movie sucked, and you need to have some, you know, you need to sit there and think about your choices.

I'm doubling down. I'm dead serious. No, I'm dead serious no i'm dead serious i'm dead serious about this because we can do the nolan thing and be like oh sean just he blinked in the in the face of angst this is this is garbage this is garbage like this is even garbage-ier than quantum mania or whatever like it is beyond the realm it I mean, it actually does look incredibly bad. I mean, it is just a very, very bad movie. Poorly made. But this being the one that sets you off when all the other ones are like, well, I have some notes.

I know you're mad. What did you like about it? I liked sitting next to you while you started crying. I didn't cry. I tried to, like, I was actually, I thought, quite generous in the moment and trying to lift your spirits and tried to start some conversations with you. Through the first 45 minutes, I was, we were chit-chatting a little bit and having fun making some jokes very quietly.

Respectfully. Yeah, we were sitting in the back row. It's also a fast movie. People are cheering. It's a very loud movie too. But about 45 minutes in, I realized what I was in for. I realized whose hands I was in, essentially. And I lost interest in chatting with you.

And I just got really depressed. Yeah, and you blanked me through a number of great conversation starters, including one. Remember when Brie Larson won an Oscar? I mean, she is absolutely abominable in this movie. It's stunning. Was she on set with anyone? Maybe not. Her acting style is just opening her eyes very widely.

And she was asked to deliver some truly brutal exposition that made no sense. Her dialogue stinks. Yeah, so it's not her fault. I liked her in movies in the past, too. I mean, it's not like she is a completely incapable actor, regardless of whether or not you thought she deserved that Oscar. Short Term 12 is a good example of it. There's a good actor.

Yeah. The decisions that she's made in the movies that she's made since then is not ideal. But in this movie, I'm just like, why are you here? You're here just to be on the poster her styling i spent a lot of time thinking about so she's wearing always um truly ugly shoes either heels or sequin sneakers with spikes on them i didn't really know why ever. Also, she's dangerous. Girl boss power suits in bright colors, you know, which is not her fault. Someone is making those choices for her. And I wouldn't say that anybody else in the movie is really like, you know, fashion forward. But then

and I spent a lot of time just like looking at her eyebrows. And Brie Larson is a very beautiful woman. And they just got the styling on the fluffy eyebrows wrong on one eye. And so like, as you said, her scenes are only just like her like staring with really big eyes. And then that's her acting. But then the eyebrows don't match. And I was so distracted. I just like spent so much time just being like, well, but how does that one, like, are they just honoring

the natural growth of the eyebrow? Like it was so many scenes that I was like, this must be intentional, but I don't understand it. Anyway, that's how I filled my time. Was there anything else you liked about the movie?

I'm serious. Like what is to recommend this movie? Another question I asked you was have you ever been to Rio? Because I thought the drone shots of Rio were quite beautiful. Sure, but we've seen that in the first nine films. You didn't answer me. Have you ever been to Rio?

I've never been to South America. I have been to Brazil, but I didn't go to Rio. And I'm really regretting it. It looks quite beautiful. Sure. You were asking me, and I was like, wow, that looks really nice. You liked one thing, which was the performance of the very large man um i enjoyed alan rich yeah so can you at like 30 minutes after i asked you about him you were

like wait that's the guy from uh reacher yeah he is the new jack reacher in reacher okay um and he is an extremely large man he's one of the few actors in Hollywood who can actually say dialogue that could hold the screen with someone like The Rock or John Cena. He looks like a professional wrestler. And I couldn't really clock who he was at first because it was so out of context.

And then it hit me about 45 minutes in. I'm like, of course, this is Reacher. I watched all of Reacher season one. I don't know how I didn't realize it was him. I don't know if he was good, but he's a pretty good actor. Has he bulked up since Reacher? But he's a pretty good actor. Or is he that size in Reacher as well?

He's that big, but he's not wearing like tactical gear all the time. Bobby, it's like a real, it's a full triangle that he's achieving. Yeah. You know? You've seen him before? For the last five minutes,

I saw this on the outline. I've just been reading his men's health article about how he got this body doing five body weight exercises as many reps as possible. And I'm like, Hmm. Interesting.

So how many reps were possible? Did he share? He, well, he didn't say he didn't, he didn't commit to that amount of reps probably because that's not how he got that body. Sure.

Right. Yeah. I think he's huge. And I think he's got some good things going on with this. How many reps are possible? Like 300? Well, he's got some pull-ups some dips some some press-ups some sit-ups so he could probably do like a few hundred of all of those

things that's pretty good yeah i did 30 push-ups the other day congratulations i was pretty proud and like in a row not you know on my toes and everything here's my next question yeah why i was in a workout class i did 30 i. I was pretty proud of myself. Great. Congrats. Thanks so much. Why are you hating on Amanda's grind right now? Yeah. Come on. She enlisted in the Marines for some reason. Like, what are we doing? We need to do 30 pushups. I'm trying to protect my bag against my 25 pound child. I literally have a 25 pound kettleball that I am picking up in non-ergonomically supported positions on a regular basis so I gotta do some push-ups and I got to 30 I was pretty proud of myself sounds like you need to call

Alan Richson the man is fucking yoked he is huge and uh he here's the thing he's like kind of an interesting actor to me he does he's basically just doing like smarmy you know agency guy in the movie it's not an actual part he's not john c reilly or anything but he was it was a it was a change of pace from the same 11 people that i've seen over and over again and it was just fun to recognize him but i didn't actually like him in the movie i wasn't like this is so great now he's on screen like it was pretty bad john scene is in this movie again despite the fact that he was the arch-villain of the last film and Dom's secret brother, who we had never heard of for 10 films. There are like eight arch-villains from previous films who all show up and are like, quote, a part of the family

now, unquote. Including Charlize Theron. That was the one thing I liked. There's a fight sequence between Charlize and Michelle Rodriguez, where I was like, couldn't we just do a little bit more of this in this movie? Like Like lower the stakes a little bit, stop with the mediocre CGI and show us characters that hate each other fighting each other. Yeah. That actually is a big part of this franchise.

We started to get like a minute of it with Statham and Han, and then they took it away from us for I thought a very bad joke with a very stupid payoff. I don't know if you remember that sequence. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Oh, I do, but I didn't really know what was going on.

It was, I thought badly. Great styling on Charlize, which I mean, it's not hard to style Charlize, but very on trend also. The pants that both she and Michelle Rodriguez are given to wear, no spoilers. And then also their parkas. Enjoyed that.

That's a bit of a spoiler, but yeah. Wow. When that title card flashed up, I just started laughing a lot. I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm just, I was depressed. Yeah. I was really depressed. No, I know. And I, there's a sick part of me that wants there to never be another, like, a conclusion to this story.

Okay. Like, I, I don't want anybody, I don't want it to bomb because I don't want people to, like, their a conclusion to this story. Okay. Like I don't want anybody I don't want it to bomb because I don't want people like their livelihoods to be threatened. I'm sure there's a lot of people that work really hard

on these movies. That's not really the point of what I'm trying to say but there needs to be consequences for like letting this kind of bullshit get out of the world and I don't know

how we can render that but I'm disappointed and hurt. Okay. This is I mean you're like I'm not'm I'm disappointed yeah and hurt okay and this is I mean hurt you're like I'm not mad I'm disappointed face this is good practice for and when you deliver that to Alice in like 10 years it's good it's effective it's not making me forget that I just like I got you big time like 10 minutes ago and you tried to fast forward right past no because I gave you some stakes you're trying to be like well what about what about this? But you're not paying close attention to the stories. I paid really close attention. And I was also paying a lot of close

attention to Disney's marketing schedule. So I knew everyone was going to live. You're only concerned about Infinity War, but Endgame gives you a payoff. That's the point of what I'm saying. And maybe there will be a payoff. How do you know that there won't be a payoff? Is Dom Toretto ever going to die in these movies? No, of course not. Will any meaningful character ever die in these movies? I guess not because Brian, played by Paul Walker, is still alive and just like in a hidden location and doesn't even come to rescue them,

even though Paul Walker tragically died in real life. That's all you need to know. I'm not clamoring for them to, you know, have killed brian's character that's not the point that i'm making it's more just that i think elsa pataki's character is an example of a character who was killed in this story and there's a callback to her character in this film in fact a couple of different callbacks to times we have seen her in this film yeah and and but is that a character that we had a relationship to in a meaningful way i mean we

know dom did in theory because they boned but like what i don't know what there's definitely a little bit of me that's like this is going to be funny for a podcast to be just completely bent out of shape about this movie yeah but there's also a part of me that is really depressed about it that is like this is just bummer town for movies and when people and i spend every week on the show just saying like let's keep hope alive. Go to theaters. There's still great stuff. There's great stuff at this level too. It's not just like, oh, only A24 puts out good movies. That's not what I'm saying. I mean, studios can make grand scale entertainments. I got super pumped about the movie, The Creator, the trailer

I saw, which I had mentioned on the show a couple of weeks ago. And I think it looks really good. It's an original story, grand scale science fiction from someone who i think is a really interesting filmmaker there's still hope but this shit just grinds me down man it grinds me down i don't know what else to say yeah that's fine i it was really bad i just and i think the next one will be equally very bad and then i fear that they will try to you know they'll just be like sure vin Diesel we need content why don't you make like a tv show for 45 you know i like and then the circle will be complete yeah and and i i don't care for it and it's not really how i want to spend my time so that's where i am and i think this one didn't make me super existential but that's okay bob you're gonna see fast x i am

yeah i actually already have tickets so tough tough beat for me yeah or tough beat for me because you paid money to go see the movie i mean that's the thing it's like art as we are recording it's already made like a huge amount of money internationally like these are also kind of the blueprint of make a movie that can just be FedExed everywhere. Let's just do five minutes on this because I think it's relevant. Yeah. Obviously, there's an inherent contradiction in everything I'm saying. And everybody who's very excited to be like, well, actually, the way that you just did a minute ago.

I hear you. I get it. I liked whatever. Eight Marvel movies. So I can never have an opinion about movies being shit. My point is, the franchise-ification obviously kind of destroyed moviegoing, like, in a lot of ways. It increased moviegoing,

but it kind of destroyed a lot of the things that we really care about, and we talk about this constantly. You're just so mad. It does feel like the worm is turning a little bit, though. But there's nothing there to replace it. And so I'm trying to kind of wrap my head around all the kind of angsty emotional podcasting aside.

It's pretty clear this movie is going to get annihilated critically. It's probably going to make less money than the highest grossing versions of these films. Some of that can be attributed to the post-COVID, you know, theater going experience. But a lot of movies have done well this year. We're slowly getting back. We're not getting back to the heights of 2019,

where there's like two or three or four billion dollar movies a year. But audiences are coming back. And I'm just kind of, I'm trying to sketch out, okay, Fast Flames Out. You know, we talked about how, you know, Harry Potter's flamed out and is now going to be a TV show. Marvel going through this really rough patch. Like all these reliable franchises.

They don't have a James Bond. No James Bond cast. Like everything's kind of down bad at the moment. So you saw there was a lot of money moving for Aaron Taylor Johnson. On Bond? Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like that was always where I was going to net.

Yeah. I think he like did a screen test or something. Okay. Well, he's talented. That's just a rumor. I'm not a broccoli. Am I? You're not a broccoli. Am I? You're not a broccoli?

No. What? You must delete the last five years of the show now. I thought you were sharing. I don't know. The broccolis are pretty litigious, so I felt like I should just add that in to be clear. Just for the record. You do not have Aaron Taylor Johnson's cell phone number.

Yeah, I don't know. I just have seen reports. Is there any part of you that feels like there's a fissure here? Where this thing that the industry has been building towards for a quarter of a century is starting to come apart a little bit? Yes, but I felt that long before this film. When did you remember when you started to feel it? I think when you guys really... When Marvel's own fan base started turning on itself. Yeah.

And, you know, because the thing about Marvel, in addition to it being like a genuine achievement in terms of... I don't know. Building a franchise that people want to see but it was like really fan connected and that that was the engine of its success and so it's like oh okay so now they're turning and this like you know voracious fan attention is it's coming back to to bite them and then the box office of that starts going down and it's not really where it was and I do think some of that is again just like changes in moviegoing behavior which were already starting before the pandemic and I think like were fundamentally changed but

yeah I think once not my reaction to any recent Marvel movie, but just how, even I guess starting with like Doctor Strange 2 and when I was on leave and you guys were just kind of like, huh, Thor 11 Thunder, which I never, I still haven't seen because I never had to, you know?

It's not successful. Right, but I mean, but that's an amazing thing. It's like I, to my chag I mean but that's an amazing thing it's like I to my chagrin have always had to see these films because I do this job much to other people's chagrin and

I just was like oh I don't have to catch up on that like the things are kind of gonna turn or not turn without it and I was like once the MCU movies stopped being essential at least in a like just like discussion standpoint if not in a financial standpoint then i was like oh okay here we go they're they're gonna continue to be successful i think they actually haven't lost the mega fans i think they've lost the like sincere fans but who are

not obsessed i wouldn't describe myself as a person who is obsessed with marvel storytelling i liked the movies or at least some of the movies quite a bit but this just it just feels like a convergence moment where certainly the marvel thing has been an ongoing discussion point for the last couple of years but there's a lot of other franchises that are at a at this end yeah we i i got a trailer for the flash another one i just keep getting it and i'm like this I know is supposed to be a reboot, and I'm also aware of the various production issues at play there. But I'm like, we're doing this again.

Are people actually excited about that movie? Or have they just been told to be excited about that movie? And the story, and it just looks like a rehash of everything 45 different times. I think Keaton and Affleck look wonderful and have a certain gravitas. But it just feels like we're at the end of the cycle. It's possible that Indiana Jones is a product of this as well. It's possible that things that we ostensibly like and are hyping up are also a factor. I mean, if there's an immediate announcement of four more Dune films

after the success of Dune Part 2, I'll be just as cynical about that, I promise, even though I think the filmmaking will obviously be much, much better. It's an epidemic for sure. I don't know if there's an elegant way to pivot to Master Gardener, but it is certainly the emotional, tonal,

structural, intellectual inverse of Fast X uh it is not the masculine inverse in fact it has a relationship to the storytelling i was thinking through i mean it is the emotional inverse i guess but i don't know like you know all roads lead somewhere or come from somewhere or something. And I'm just like, there is. I dare you to draw the line from taxi driver all the way to Fast X. I dare you because an angry man behind the wheel could be what brings us all together. Master Gardener is Paul Schrader's latest film. He wrote and directed it as he does so many of his movies and it is the final film in his lonely man trilogy which was not created to be a trilogy but has evolved into one after i

think the big success of first reformed which is 2018 movie about a preacher has sort of lost his way and is confronted with climate change and the death of a young congregant. And is just, for me personally, just a tremendous masterpiece. Like one of the most significant movies to me of my life. And it's overdrawn on purpose is something I'll say. Maybe in a similar fashion to Fast X, but it really, really affected me. He made a movie a few years ago called The Card Counter. That was the second film in this trilogy. And then now Master Gardener. Master Gardener stars Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Isai Morales, Quintessa Swindell. It's about, in fact,

a master gardener, a horticulturist who oversees a grand estate in the American South. And he takes on, because of the owner of the estate's wishes, an apprentice. And that apprentice enters his life. And then that, as it so often does in a Schrader film, dredges up a violent past that this character has. Boy, does it. And I thought this film was very effective, almost to the point of self-parody.

And I know for sure now that Paul Schrader is very purposefully iterating on everything that's come before, but especially what's come recently and this kind of revival that he's had because he has really been up and down in his career as a writer and director and as a public person, and is often amazingly vulnerable about the scary stuff that he has done. So what I like about the movie is the movie is a complete construct and false, but is also tremendously honest

about people who feel like they're fucked up. And a good friend of mine who's a filmmaker texted me and said, why does Paul Schrader keep making the same movie over and over and over again? Did you ask him that? And I didn't exactly

ask him that but I asked him a version of that. Now Amanda you know how important Schrader is to me. I do. You've seen the other films.

Yeah. You don't dislike his films. No. Maybe you feel a little walled off from them. I was rereading Easy Rider's Raging Bulls

this week because, This is Peter Biskin's history of the new Hollywood. It was in a stack on the floor and my son pulled it out

and then we were doing, we were, I was doing prep for our upcoming episode which we'll, I guess, announce at the end of this and I knew that we were going to be talking about Masterener, so I reread some of the Schrader sections.

And there is just, there's a section that introduces him that talks about how he was like the movie nerd of the movie nerds. And was just there among that whole group of male filmmakers. Scorsese, De Palma Spielberg etc and all the women were like who is this guy like what what are you talking about and so Margot Kidder was interested in dating a lot of those guys but not Paul Schrader and and and then goes through and like all of the women perspectives were like yeah he wasn't interested in us and it was it a very masculine, as you said, closed off experience. So I, you know, view all of Paul Schrader's work through the lens of

all the men in my life who absolutely love it. And, you know, obviously, he wrote Taxi Driver, and he is the subject of one of the greatest pieces of celebrity journalism of all time, which was the profile of him and the making of The Canyons. Look that up. Also features Lindsay Lohan. He comes off as one of the most sane people in that story. Sort of. Except, like, you know, that he wanted to do this, that project, and then agreed to be in the New York Times profile. See, that recommends him to me.

Like, even more so that he understands that there is something kind of of the old world where he's like, this is all a show. We have to put on the show. Him sitting in the chair

across from me, he's putting on the show. Yeah. He's being, he's an ace provocateur. The casting of the Canyons in Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Dean,

that was a provocation and it worked brilliantly at least insofar as people know what the Canyons is. So in that respect, like, I like it. No, I, like, I, I don't know if respect

is the word, but I acknowledge that he's, like, doing a thing quite successfully and obviously is an incredibly talented screenwriter and sometimes very powerful director. It's funny that we started this podcast with Fast X because, you know, one quick summary of that could be either just keep making the same movie over again, but with less power. It's crossed my mind as I was putting it together. And I enjoyed Master Gardener. I will watch anything with Sigourney Weaver, as evidenced by me having seen all the Avatar movies.

She's quite good in this movie. She's an incredibly haughty woman. You know, I feel that Paul Schrader and I have spent some time on the same gardening blogs. And we have learned the same amount about gardening, which is some pretty surface level stuff about deadheading roses. Because you don't want to, you know, that can be used metaphorically in a voiceover while journaling. So I responded to that. And I think that there is something like almost a little sweet about this being like the late stage Paul Schrader project of moving towards like hope in a very fucked up way. So I, you know, I could only watch it knowing that you had seen it twice already and were like Paul Schrader, but I enjoyed it in that way. I think I've seen it four times now.

Okay, that's normal. I think that this one is quite different, actually, in some respects from the other two and from all of the films. And for one very specific reason, it is hopeful. That at kind of what feels like the end of his life, the end of his career, you know, not the immediate end, but, you know, certainly in the back quarter. This movie, and I hope I'm not spoiling anything by saying that, is hopeful. It's kind of sweet. Yeah.

And his stories do not end that way. Almost ever. And, you know, you can read a bit about his personal life, and he's shared a lot. He was profiled in the New Yorker recently and talked a lot about his marriage and, you know, his life in the last 30 40 years and perhaps what informed the decision to end the story this way i thought it was a fascinating choice he's done

something in the last couple of films these kinds of colorful visual fantasia sequences that um are also a change and they're not just imitating shots from Bresson movies you know they are they are an elevation they are like a new style they're a new late style for him that I think are interesting and effective he does keep casting the same kind of actor to play what I think is maybe the most um elevated version of Paul Schrader himself you know Joel Edgerton and Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke all are sort of like somewhere between the ages of 45 and 55 and they're quite handsome but my there's such a storm inside them you know like that is the same character is over and over and over again and that's obviously appealing to somebody like me too

the way that we idealize our experience while also making it simultaneously quite tragic. Please see my reaction to Fast X. And so I don't think, I think that that accusation of like the same movie over and over again, this movie kind of defies that in some way. And he now claims that the next thing he does will be quite different from this. But as a capstone on that trilogy, I think it's really interesting.

I'm kind of amazed that he's even making movies. You know, like, De Palma doesn't make movies anymore. It was really hard for Coppola to make another movie. Spielberg, of course, is in kind of a league of his own because he's just so incredibly active. Scorsese even, it's, you know, one every four or five years, and he gave this, I thought, kind of heartbreaking interview to Deadline ahead of the release of Killers of the Flower Moon

about how he is at the end. And he sees that and there's so much more he wants to do, but he can't do it. And Schrader is just like head down like I'm making another one. He wrote a movie that he basically sold to Elizabeth Moss for her directorial debut about a trauma nurse in Central America. Like he's just going. He's just trying to get as much done as he can. I think that's incredibly admirable. When I'm recapping Succession season 37 that is rebooted on Max Discovery Max in 2057, I'll be feeling the exact same way. The deathless struggle

to express oneself, that's what it's all about. That's what it's all about, guys. Bob, you saw Master Gardener. I did, yeah. What'd you think? I was a little bit surprised by the sweetness at the end like you guys are describing the thing that when I think about these last three movies especially that I think really attracts me to Paul Schrader's movies is that he's just a guy with a question and he wants to make a movie to try to answer it for himself and you might also have that question and you might also want to see how that question plays out in the world of a movie it doesn't have to make any fucking sense at all in the real world necessarily like these characters don't have to reflect how this would play out if we had twitter like these are

just a few characters in this world and it's very internal and it's fascinating how it plays out because he is so he he draws such richly you know built characters in the way that in the worlds that he imagines and they they internally reflect in a way that honestly while i'm watching i'm like should i be thinking this much about my own life and my existence in the world and i think that's a fascinating sitting experience while watching his movies like i have never felt the way that i felt when I finished First Reformed from watching a movie. Me too. First Reformed is very different from these other two films for a very specific reason that I think is notable. Ethan Hawke's character in First Reformed is sort of like fundamentally a good person. He's flawed and he's made mistakes.

And we see that say in the relationship that he has with one of the women who works at the church, but he is not a demonic figure in any means. And he is not a person who has caused great harm and pain throughout the world. In The Card Counter, Oscar Isaac's character was an Abu Ghraib torturer. In this movie, Joel Edgerton's character is a proud boy and a hitman and has done some terrible things. And the movie genuinely asks you to confront the question, can someone like this be forgiven?

Not just by God, but like in our own society, in our world. Can a person like this have love? Does a person like this deserve love? I don't have the answer to that. I think it's at least useful that someone's trying to ask a question like that as opposed to platitudinously muttering about family while looking at Rita Moreno as Vin Diesel does in Fast X. And so for that, I appreciate Paul Schrader.

I appreciate you watching the films of Paul Schrader, Amanda, through clenched hands and confused emotional register. I'm not confused. I think I just, I'm very clear on what I think. And I'm very clear on what I think Paul Schrader's answer to that question is in the film Master Gardener, but that's okay. What is your masculine ideal? I feel like we talk about it on literally every podcast. Alexander Skarsgård hunched over at 6'11", talking about tech companies.

No, not that part. Brutalizing a Norwegian village. No, not that part um brutalizing a norwegian village um no not that part either but i mean the example that i was gonna give i honestly don't understand half of what he does in little drummer girl but it's not good you know i see yeah it but it's you know international espionage but really it's just i mean it's just messed up stuff. Bobby, is Alan Richson your masculine ideal? No, I don't think so. I don't think that I could really, like, I don't think that I could stand next to that, you know? Like, that would really, not that I would feel emasculated by that necessarily, but I'd be like, you're just committed to this like 100% of the time every single day, huh? That's just what it's going to be?

I mean. Like, there's no imperfection here? No, you make a good point though, Bobby, because one thing that is lost in film is scale. And so I'm curious how tall this person is in real life and like how wide, you know?

Like I can't really tell. When he's standing next to Brie Larson, who I believe is quite petite. Then I believe he's six, seven. Seriously? Which is what Jack Reacher is in those books. I know I frequently like joke about the men's health articles and whatnot in the bulking and the cutting pod that me and Craig have brought up on multiple occasions. But like, isn't that kind of part of the vast X problem that everybody just has to be more and more of the thing?

Like more muscular. Yes. More chiseled. Yes. Bigger. Taller. A more defined jawline. More plies.

People actually used to look fucking normal. People used to look normal. Not to boil it down too much though but that actually is a criticism I have of the movie is that I didn't even really

get a sense of more-ness from this new movie. I wasn't like oh the grand conclusion was somehow more high stakes or more exciting than anything that had previously happened.

That is obviously what Bond struggles to do. Bond tries to put Bond in increasingly extravagant situations that he has to escape from. Right, with increasing like networks of events. The web of intrigue

expands well beyond, even among his most trusted colleagues. They're all, you know, like this movie has none of that it has no thinking beyond that we don't really understand the alliances

there's a reveal of an alliance at the end of the movie that didn't make any sense to me there's like there's a flip and then another flip

where I was just like why? who cares? like I would just it was a pure insult to the audience thing that was written in the script

like that day because they hadn't really considered how one thing would play if another thing didn't work over here anyway i'm back to ranting about fast x i hope everyone goes to see master gardener i don't think very many people will i hope uh enough people go so that trader can make movies for the rest of his life you put this episode on the spreadsheet like three months ago and i've been like this is a cursed episode you didn't think i

could pull it off and no let me tell you this was a cursed episode what this is this was just like you absolutely losing your mind in like two different directions let's go let's go beneath the surface for a moment i'm about to get on a plane about to leave my family for nine days i don't feel good about it here we're putting the soil in our nose and we're sniffing it to see what's there. Yeah. The nutrients. No, I'm deadheading culture. Cut out Fast X so that something new may bloom before us. Thank you very much. Okay. Let's go to my conversation with Paul Schrader.

Honored to have Paul Schrader here on the show thanks for being here paul thank you sean okay so uh i saw master gardener for the first time at the new york film festival this has been acknowledged a couple of times but when the credits ended and we see this image of joel edgerton's character sitting over his journal people started laughing and warmly excitedly noting we are inside of a Paul Schrader world. So I was wondering, how much are you thinking about the audience and the followers of your work at this stage when you're writing? Because you seem to be sending a message to us with that opening moment.

And that particular one, because this has become a de facto or post-facto trilogy. It wasn't designed that way. I did First Reformed as a kind of spiritual film, and then I had Card Counter about torture. And then I had this idea of The Gardener. And I told somebody about it, and somebody said to me, oh, it's a trilogy. And I said, no, it's not a trilogy.

And then I thought a little more and said, yeah, I guess it kind of is. And maybe I should acknowledge that in the writing of it, which was not only through what you just mentioned, but also through this sort of Fant um, Fantasia sequence three quarters of the way through. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that as well, but I am curious how much you think about the arc of the kind of story that you're trying to tell versus maybe films you were writing 10, 20, 30 years ago. Do you think more specifically about how it connects to your other work now? There's always been a thread starting, uh taxi driver and uh if i had made taxi driver over and over again it would have been too much but about half the films do revert back to that in some way the taxi driver the gigolo the dealer, the society walker, the minister, the card player, and now the gardener.

And in between that, you get things like cat people and Mishima and so forth. So it has been a ground zero for my sensibility and I lucked into it in 72 or 73 because I had some personal problems that needed to be addressed in fiction and I was a critic at the time. He had this notion of the metaphor of the taxi driver. And I saw him, and people at that time thought of taxi drivers as kind of friendly Joes, your brother-in-law, the guy with the hat on. And I looked at him, and I saw the black heart of Dostoevsky. I saw the underground man, the boy locked in a bright yellow coffin, floating in the sewers of the city, getting angrier and angrier. And I knew that that mold was not an American mold.

It was a mold that had come from European fiction, starting with Dostoevsky and moving through Sartre, Nausea, Robert Musso, The Man Without Qualities, Camus, Le Latournage. monocular, self-involved men. They were not societal books. They were not about the times. They were just about these underground men. And one of the reasons that Taxi Driver has survived and decided to be a good film is that it caught the zeitgeist. People knew who this guy was. He just hadn't been in American films yet. You know, like, you know, the opening lines of The Stranger,

you know, Mother Died Today or Was It Yesterday? And there was a kind of, I know with both De Niro and Scorsese and myself, a kind of shock of recognition. We know this guy. We don't have to talk about him much. We know this guy. And so that's how I walked in the room, and a number of people have remarked to me,

how do you pull these off? And I have responded, it's really not hard. I've figured out how to do it. And it's easy. Imitation is very tricky. Certain artists, let's do a Brayson. Let's do a Fellini. It's so easy. I see all the pieces there. My AI mind can make one. And then they don't work because there's, and I, and so

a number of people have tried to do what I do and I say,'s really easy but then they but it doesn't work for them so and i of course i also feel the other side of the coin there are there are films that are very easy for other people to write i just say how and how can they do that it's so funny that you say that though because you're saying that the character the character types and the stories that you're telling are inspired by these europe European works of fiction and that they're not society stories. But your films are society stories oftentimes. I mean, deeply reflective of the world. Well, you have a central conflicted metaphor.

And then you have a societal soup. It floats it. By societal stories, I mean essentially Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. You know, this group, this group here. And, you know, moving up and down in society and all social forces. Now, these are monocular stories of just one person. But that one person

finds himself, usually himself, in a larger malaise that he reaches out to reflect his own inner malaise, whether that be global warming, history of American torture, psychopathic loneliness, et cetera, the vanity of midlife crisis.

And so that when you connect the individual occupational metaphor, say, light sleeper, drug delivery boy, with a larger social malaise, which is midlife crisis, I'm reaching the midpoint. What do I do? You know, it's something everyone wonders. Well, let me ask you about that. What comes I do? You know, it's something everyone wonders. Well, let me ask you about that. What comes first then? If you're writing Light Sleeper, is it I want to reflect my own middle-aged crisis or I have an idea about a drug dealer and I want to tell that story? What's the right way to tell it? It goes both ways.

But in the case of Light Sleeper, I turned 40. So I want to do a midlife film. And I kept trying to think of a metaphor for it, and they were all cliches. They were all bad. The professor who runs off with his student, the guy who decides to be a race car driver, you know, whatever. And then I was in a dream about 5 a.m.

And a man appeared to me in the dream. His name was John. Very, very close. It was like inches from my face. And he was a drug dealer delivery boy that I had known. And it was so vivid. I popped awake. I said, wow, I haven't thought about John in a year.

Why did he come to me so vividly? It was 5 a.m. I said, what in the hell were we talking about? And I remembered he said, oh, he wanted me. He wanted to know what movies he should see. And I realized right then and there, I said, that's him. That's the guy I've been looking for. I couldn't find him, so he came to me.

He's a 40-year-old drug delivery boy who has no skills, whose boss is quitting to start a cosmetics company, and he has no idea what to do. That's a midlife crisis. A unique one. This one is so interesting to me, Master Gardner, because it certainly feels like the kind of idea and limits of forgiveness are on your mind. And that seems to be a big theme of this film. Yeah. Where can people change? There was a little line in the film that I cut out where the Janine, the nurse says,

why can't people change? And it just was a little too on the mark, I took it out. But that was right, I was underneath it. Is change even possible? Can you be, can a proud boy become a loving husband to a young interracial girl? Can that even happen? And, you know, movies are not always this is the way it is. Sometimes they're what if this was the way it is. Sometimes they're, what if this was the way it is?

They're fable-like. I know this is unlikely, but let's suppose it and see what happens to our thinking when we suppose it could happen. So the movie is more a fable in that way. I mean, there have been a few isolated cases of white nationalists who have turned and gone the other direction, but mostly they don't. Was the sort of discussion of those kinds of people in our culture in the last 10 years why that came to mind as an archetype for looking at this? Well, certainly, the racism engendered by Trump and his followers came as a bit of a shock, certainly to everyone from my generation, because we thought change was incremental, but it was in the works, and every year it was getting better and and you know

that the whole generation of racists that had motivated the 50s and 60s are now dead and the generation of the late uh 60s and 70s are now older and it should be better now. And in some areas it was, but what we didn't realize was the tenacity of bigotry and hatred and anger to reinvent itself with every new generation. And when you saw those kids in Charleston, you thought, oh my God, they didn't die. We didn't, you know, we didn't phase them out in the evolutionary pattern. They just got reborn.

Yeah, or re-inspired or something. Yeah. Something that brought them out. The other thing about the film that I really like that i didn't see coming is deeply romantic and i i felt even watching it i felt like i was waiting for the other shoe to drop maybe because i i know your work pretty well and it doesn't always end warmly but i was wondering maybe you could talk about why you made that decision to make a more romantic film? Well, originally it wasn't. Originally he killed a lot of people and then took off. And I wasn't satisfied with that. I thought that that was too simple and derivative of my own work.

And then I had heard this song by S.G. Goodman on YouTube called Space and Time. She's an Appalachian singer. And I put on Facebook how much I loved this song. And sure enough, she contacted me. And sure enough, we became friends. And I speak with her and email with her. And this song touched me a lot. The main lyric is, I don't want to leave this world until I say I love you.

I said, you know, maybe that's what it's come to. That in my younger days, I didn't want to leave this world until I said, fuck you. And now maybe it's time to realize I don't want to leave this world until I say I love you. It's tremendously effective. One thing, I don't know if you've been asked about this but the film is also in a way about apprenticeship and someone learning at someone else's feet i was wondering if you had had experiences where i know that you know you studied and and were friends with pauline kale but did you have have you had apprentices as writers people that have worked for you that

you have trained in the world of writing well i have I have one now. It was in the other room, Taylor, who came with me. But David Ehrlich, he said something very smart about First Reformed, and it's true about Kyle Conner in this one. I didn't realize it until he brought it. He said that there was a scene in Taxi Driver where the confused Travis Beckel character doesn't know what to do with his emotions, and he seeks an older man for advice.

Turns out to be Peter Boyle. And Peter Boyle gives him the worst advice in the world. Peter Boyle just said, hey, you're fine. Don't worry. It'll all work out. Well, it wasn't fine, and it didn't work out. Yeah. Outside the diner there.

Yeah. It's a wonderful moment. And David Ehrlich wrote, he said, what Schrader has done in the later part of his career is reverse those rules. So now it's the troubled Peter Boyle who's coming out of the Belmar cafeteria and it's the young I mean it's the young kid coming out of the Belmar to meet the troubled

so the troubled minister who is almost on a death trip because he can't reach God this kid comes up to him and says the world is ending because of climate change. And it just allows him to displace his own inner torment with a global inner torment. So now his death has meaning.

He's dying for a cause rather than just dying because he can't make contact with God. And so similarly, making the poker player, former torturer Abu Ghraib, gives the poker player another dimension. Gardening is another very, very rich metaphor, one of the oldest. And it is a two-forged metaphor because on one hand, it's about nurturing and encouraging and blooming and beauty. On the other hand, it's about cutting and snipping and deadheading. So both sides of the political spectrum can use this as their metaphor.

The right nationalist says, you know, we're gardeners. We're pulling out the weeds. On the other hand, you know, he's trying to create a garden and be a teacher to this young woman to help her find the peace a garden has brought to him as a former thug. And so when you get a metaphor that way that works, and I think David Ehrlich was right that I have now reversed the pattern. And it's always the young person.

The tortured one is now the old person. And it's the young person who comes to him and the old person suddenly says, maybe I can change this person. Maybe if this kid rides around with me while we go to poker tournaments, I can turn his hatred away from the glare of the light. Or maybe I can make this girl feel better. And so that's really, I think,

you're talking about the mentor relationship. Yeah, it's fascinating. When you land on an occupation for one of your characters, how do you get into the world of horticulture? Obviously, with Taxi Driver, it felt like you had some understanding or experience of that world. Well, you know, research is obviously so much

easier today. Back in the day, you know, you would have to, when I had to bring out the data, I spent time in an EMS bus, you know, and Bobby spent time driving a taxi cab, but now you just go on the internet, it's all there. You know, I did a script last year about a trauma nurse, and it's just so much documentary raw footage of what it's like to be in a trauma ER, you know, you don't even have to show

up there. But I've never been a taxi driver, nor a gigolo, nor a society walker, nor a drug dealer, minister, car player, gardener. And I see them all as means to another end. And we had a screening last week at the Botanical Garden in New York, and I had to say to the employees, I know it's called Master Gardener. I know everyone here involved in this room loves gardening, but this is really not about gardening anymore than Harry Conner was about poker. You don't want complaints about the accuracy of the rendition of flowers.

Yeah. Or the fact that it doesn't take flowers as seriously as they do. Right. Of course. I was interested to read that you use the kind of audience testing process, you know, that you showed the film to people that you trusted and that you took their feedback and you thought about how it played and then modified it in some ways based on that. Well, yeah, that's just part of it because you have an idea of how it's going to play. Then you have a screening. I never cared much about test marketing

because I don't know how honest people are. But when you have a screening, you're watching everybody watching. You watch their body language. You watch their breathing patterns. You watch their attention language. You watch their breathing patterns. You watch their attention span. You know when you have them. You know when there's a problem. You can just feel it in your bones,

and then you try to correct it. In the case of First Reformed, I wanted to get to a point where an equal number of the audience thought he was dead or thought he was alive at the end. So I would have a screening and ask for a show of hands. And finally, when they came about it equal, I said, I can't. I'm finally in the place I want to be. And the case of The Gardener, there was something I was missing and I couldn't figure it out.

And I screened it and I finally realized it it out. And I screened it, and I finally realized it was a scene that I had failed to write. And that I had just gotten it wrong. For one reason or another, in the screenwriting process, the film directing process, I didn't see this. But now I, fortunately enough, have caught it in the editing process. That means I can get the players back and I can write a new scene, which takes out two previous scenes and gives the character of Maya something that she needs. It's interesting. I think that it kind of detonates this idea that you've actually put on screen of like a man alone with a singular idea

who's capturing it perfectly the first time around. And you know that it's a much more like fungible process of making a movie. I don't know quite what fungible means in that context. It can change, you know, that it is not, you know, you have to be open-minded about what you've created. This whole thing about waiting, you know, it starts with Taxi Driver.

Life goes on day by day, each day like the last, and then there is a change. And that keeps coming up. You know, good things happen while you wait. And these people are all waiting. They're sitting in a room, filling time with a diary, wearing a mask, which is their occupation, waiting for something to happen. And then that thing happens. And the case of the last three is a young person comes into their life.

And in the case of the earlier ones, he spots two women, you know, and he's been waiting. And I think there is a line in Master Gardener where you say in narration, the moment I had been waiting for had come, you know. And I like that idea. So I look for occupations that involve a lot of waiting that's why i like poker because you don't do anything you do the same thing over and over day after day and what are you doing you're just waiting you're waiting for that one magic hand that happens every two or three weeks where you four players think they can win at the same time you know and then that hand happens and then then you win or you lose it and then you go back to That happens every two or three weeks where four players think they can win at the same time. And then that hand happens.

And then you win it or you lose it. And then you go back to waiting. I am a poker player, so that resonates deeply. You know, you're at this incredible moment. You've kind of concluded this trilogy. You celebrated out here in L.A. They're showing your films. Even in talking to you, you're referencing films that you made 20, 30, 40 years ago, and they still seem very fresh, the themes and the ideas and how you made them.

How are you, like, do you go back and look at your work at this point? Are you thinking a lot about what you've accomplished? I think about it, but I don't rewatch it because, you know, not much good can come out of that. You know, either you're going to look at it and you're going to say, God, I was talented. You know, where did my talent go? Or you're going to look at it and you're going to say, Jesus, I was never talented.

I wasn't talented then. I'm not talented now. You know, so I know there are directors who look at their work and say, Oh, it's so great. Fucking Bob Albin never made a bad film, according to Bob Albin. I noted that Quentin Tarantino wrote about some of your work in his book of film writing. I don't know if you actually read that book. Yeah.

It seemed like he spoke to you for it. I was curious. Yes, he did. And Quentin is hoping to do a film about Hollywood, like in the 70s. And he asked me, you know, he said, I'm going to have some clips from existing movies. But then I want to also refilm different movies. I'd like to, I don't know if he's going to do this. He said, I'd like to refilm the ending of Rolling

Thunder. I said, oh, great, great, great. I'd love to see that, Quentin. And that's a better, I don't know, but it is an interesting idea on his part. It's funny to think of him, I think, recontextualizing a lot of your work and reimagining if you had more control over more of those projects, what you would have done or what would have even been better like do you think about that with the films that you actually did make are there some where you're like i actually would have ended this film differently or i would have not would have i mean hardcore being the most painful example where at the end of the film the father after experiencing this dante s journey through the world of pornography,

finds out his daughter is dying in a car accident unrelated to pornography, and the ending is that famous line or a reworking of that famous line from Chinatown, which is, it's Chinatown, you know, go home. You know, you didn't belong here in the first place, and now it's time for you to take all these terrible experiences, put them in your head, and then try to go to sleep at home. And I liked that ending, and Columbia just said he has to rescue his daughter.

And it was all the more painful for me because I had hired a girl to play the daughter who was in porn, who couldn't act. But there were no lines. And then all of a sudden, Edith came down, and I had to make a scene with her, write a scene. And I was kind of stuck, you know, trying to make something better than it was. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting how much more resonant the idea of that movie would have been if she had died, not for the reasons that her father was asking about. It has had a resurgence, but I think it's just because of nostalgia for pornography, for physical pornography. When you go down Santa Monica Boulevard

and there were all these marquees and all these sex shops, and you'd have to sneak in and make sure that your friend of your mother's wasn't driving by that saw you go into the shop. And then you get in the shop and it's all these sleazy people on these little peep machines. That's all gone now. And, you know, preteens can access even more explicit material

with a keystroke. And so, you know, people sort of look back at hardcore and say as a kind of a lost world. A dinosaur has once lived here are you aware of the fact that the the sequence where george c scott is in the theater watching his daughter and covering his hands has become has a kind of currency on the internet now that i think it's called a meme it is a meme yeah i'm not sure if you're up on memes it's so funny that something like that can emerge i mean more people have seen that meme than have probably seen the film, which is fascinating. So of all your films, is there one that you wish more people had seen or that has a bigger reputation?

I'm a big to have some shelf life that it becomes not like something we have to see this year. It becomes more like a novel or a painting that you can go back to. And so if a film has shelf life, and Frankstein talks about this, how to build shelf life into a song, then I'm much happier than it would be if it had a really flashy life and then people forgot about it. And so there are, I'm even gratified to see some of these films. You know, Mishima's still hanging around. Screens here all the time.

Yeah. And you go into an elevator and you hear Phil Glass playing Mishima. And then Concomerous Strangers has been going around again. I'm trying to get Criterion to revisit Patty Hearst. And one that really got lost was Adam Resurrected,

but I didn't quite get the ending right. Patty Hearst has always been an interesting one to me because I think it's a really good, really different kind of a film for you as a director too among the least seen of that time yeah, yeah, yeah

I keep badgering the folks at Criterion because that's how Comfort of Strangers got seen by a new generation it's not that Criterion has such a reach as it has a symbolic reach.

Um, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen. Have you seen anything recently that you really responded to? It's not great. Perhaps it's not even good, but it is a force of the imagination that stays with you. And, you know, Bo is afraid.

I had a lot of problems with it, but on the other hand, it remained in my head. You know, it was like, you know, this very cute girl that you just want to slap. That's a Paul Schraderer metaphor i've ever heard one uh that's a fascinating pick congrats on everything your films mean a great deal to me thank you so much for doing the show thank you paul schrader thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Next week on The Big Picture, one of the most normal drafts we've ever had. Very calm and reasonable draft. Chris Ryan returns. I thought it was okay.

To draft the films. I mean, you can't really get back to summer movie draft, you know? So there were like hot moments. There's a 40-minute divergence in the middle of this podcast about travel. Oh, right. And your manners. Well, among other things. Just to put a cap on it, we're drafting the movies of Robert De Niro.

We'll see you then.