The movie that made Paul Schrader feel like a sucker: “I was warned against it”
While directors often come up against issues in the post-production phase of their films, they’re usually unlikely to be fired in this critical part of filmmaking. However, Paul Schrader happens to be among the small group of directors who were replaced due to disputes over the final cut. And, when it happened, he felt like a bit of a sucker.
Having built a career writing absolute classics of film like Taxi Driver and American Gigolo before moving on to directing, Schrader was rarely a hired gun in major movies, instead wanting to direct his own material. And for good reason. When he eventually took the step for Warner Bros’ exhumed The Exorcist franchise, it was one of the biggest disasters in cinematic history.
The prequel to the spine-tingling horror was originally due to be directed by John Frankenheimer of The Manchurian Candidate and Ronin, but when the filmmaker fell into ill health and eventually died, Schrader was convinced to take his place.
Speaking to the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, Schrader discussed how he was “warned against it, people said to [him] “these are not good people. These are bad people. Everything they do ends up quarrelsome, ends up with bad blood.” But given his strong-headed and ambitious tendencies, Schrader was convinced he could see the project through without issue, “Obviously, a director is an alpha creature, full of hubris, so I said I could handle it.”
Turns out, he couldn’t. After two Schrader cuts were rejected for not being scary or gory enough, another editor was brought in to re-cut the film, and eventually, the entire project was scrapped. Then the fatal moment happened: Schrader was fired entirely, and a new director was brought in with some original actors to reshoot the entire film. What resulted was a rare case of ‘twin films’ that came about not out of coincidence but out of production disagreements.
When new director Renny Harlin’s essentially new adaptation of the film Exorcist: The Beginning was released, it bombed completely at the box office after a whopping $90million had been sunk into the film. Realising their mistake, Warner Bros. eventually agreed to a limited release of Schrader’s cut, Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist. Unfortunately, Schrader’s was only marginally better, and the endeavour went down in film history as a major flop.
Yet, it took another post-production disaster for Schrader to learn his lesson. In 2014, he wrote and directed the spy thriller Dying of the Light, but eventually went on to completely disown the film. Another rare occurrence, this time it was due to Lionsgate removing his ‘final-cut’ privileges and making what Schrader considered a mess of his film. Although, he didn’t quite say so owing to a non-disparagement agreement with the studio.
He has since learnt his lesson, explaining in the interview, “learned a hard lesson there. In our new world of financing, somebody like me needs final cut. I didn’t need it when I began but I need it now.”
