The first movie Paul Schrader ever saw: “Blackmailed into seeing”
Bedfellows don’t come much more unlikely than Paul Schrader and Disney, so while it’s highly likely the outspoken filmmaker and the family-friendly corporation will never cross paths in a professional capacity, they’re forever intertwined thanks to an unbreakable personal connection.
Despite enjoying plenty of success throughout his career, Schrader has often given off the impression that he’s succeeded in spite of himself. There’s nothing wrong with standing one’s ground and refusing to play the political game that’s often necessary to get ahead in Hollywood, but neither has the writer and director been averse to burning the odd bridge or two.
From the highs of his Martin Scorsese collaborations on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Bringing Out the Dead to the lows of being booted off an Exorcist prequel so that somebody else could step in and reshoot virtually the entire thing, Schrader has never been shy in speaking his mind and razing the ground in front of him when casting an eye over the complexion of the industry.
As hard as it seems to believe, though, he was once a fresh-faced and innocent kid who’d never even visited a cinema before, something that took a surprising amount of time to change. Although he’d grown up on a steady diet of television, the feature film was a forbidden fruit because “they were not allowed” in the strict religious household he’d been brought up in.
Schrader would have been 14 years old when he went to his local multiplex for the first time, and he felt like he’d been short-changed after his small screen education informed his first-time silver screen plunge. “I snuck off to see my first movie – The Absent-Minded Professor – which I’d been blackmailed into seeing by watching The Mickey Mouse Club,” he told Film Comment.
With television being deemed acceptable in the Schrader household, it made sense that Disney would end up steering his direction. The first iteration of The Mickey Mouse Club aired between 1955 and 1959, so he was only a nipper when it was first beamed directly into his eyeballs.
Disney-branded content was what he’d been raised on, making it a natural progression for his first movie to hail from the same company. The Absent-Minded Professor starred Fred MacMurray as a scientist who pilots a flying car and discovers a brand new form of flying rubber. It was never going to be in the running for Academy Awards, but it was nonetheless a box office hit that spawned a sequel.
However, The Absent-Minded Professor is perhaps best known in the modern age for being the progenitor to Robin Williams’ Flubber, the remake that emulated its predecessor’s recipe for striking commercial gold. Schrader and Disney may exist at opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum, but he’ll always remember the studio as being responsible for the first film he ever saw.
