The movie Paul Schrader wants to delete from history: “I have no comment on the film”
To say Paul Schrader has always been a man of intense conviction would be a gross understatement. The iconoclastic filmmaker, best known for writing Taxi Driver and directing films like American Gigolo and First Reformed, has spent five decades making movies about broken people experiencing existential crises while they rail against society. Sometimes these films can be moulded into something resembling a commercial prospect; other times, not so much.
When Schrader signed up Nicolas Cage to star in Dying of the Light, a movie about Evan Lake, a dementia-riddled ex-CIA agent obsessively hunting the terrorist who tortured him decades earlier, his producers and distributors likely believed they were onto a winner. It sounded like the most mainstream film Schrader had written in over a decade, and even though Cage was on a downturn in his career, he still theoretically had enough drawing power to make the modestly budgeted film a minor hit.
However, when Schrader turned in his first cut of the film to the executives at Over Under Media and Grindstone Entertainment, they quickly realised that he’d ‘pulled a Schrader,’ so to speak. Instead of the slick, 90-minute thriller they’d wanted, the director had made a perplexing, avant-garde film that vibrated with a surreal, confusing energy intended to replicate the deterioration of Lake’s increasingly fractured mind.
In truth, it’s strange that any executive would have expected any less from Schrader, a man known for following his own artistic muse wherever it leads and battling studio suits in the process. The director was given an extensive list of notes telling him to rework his picture into something that could be profitable on VOD. He objected, leading to his producers threatening to exercise their contractual right to remove the film from his control and edit it however they desired.
In a leaked e-mail, Schrader vigorously fought his corner, writing, “I’m baffled by the fact that anyone would choose to make a film originated by Paul Schrader, written by him, directed by him and not to have a ‘Paul Schrader film.’ If you exert your will on me, take the film away from me, recut and end up with a film that both Paul Schrader and Nicolas Cage disown, is that a victory to you?”
Schrader wanted his movie to be a poignant, yet disorienting, portrait of mortality, yet his partners were threatening to turn it into yet another low-rent thriller that would be forgotten in weeks. “If you want to take it from me, you can — but you will need to pull it from my dying fingers,” he concluded, with more than a little dramatic flair.
To Schrader’s horror, the producers took control of the final cut, and the version released in 2014 bore little resemblance to what he had intended to make. The dismal experience hit the director for six, and he admitted that he did little more during post-production than get drunk, stew in his anger, and watch as his film was cut to ribbons while he could do nothing about it.
So, when Lionsgate released the film’s trailer, an angry and defeated Schrader took to Facebook to tell his fans, “We lost the battle. Dying of the Light, a film I wrote and directed, was taken away from me, reedited, scored and mixed without my input.” Alongside this message, he posted a photograph of himself, Cage, co-star Anton Yelchin, and executive producer Nicholas Winding Refn wearing “non-disparagement” t-shirts.
This was a sly reference to a clause in a director’s or actor’s contract that would leave them open to litigation if they publicly said anything “derogatory” about a movie. By wearing the t-shirts, Schrader had found a workaround to express his disowning of the film without actually stating anything negative. It gave extra power to his words: “I have no comment on the film or others connected with the picture.”
Ultimately, Schrader viewed the Dying of the Light debacle as a learning experience. It taught him that modern indie moviemaking was very different from what he had been used to in the past, and that the entire business model had become “lowball the production, presell it to VOD.” Overall, he mused, “I’d gotten involved with people and should’ve known better.”
