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Paul Schrader has addressed the film industry’s present-day release model, arguing that unless you’re a “privileged” filmmaker, you’re banished to the “Bermuda Triangle of streaming.”
The 78-year-old Taxi Driver writer and American Gigolo director, who’s right now serving as the president of the features jury at the Sarajevo Film Festival, spoke to Variety about the “morphing” industry.
“Unless you’re one of the privileged babies – and we know who those [filmmakers] are, because they get all the attention – if you’re not one of the babies, you just fly into the Bermuda Triangle of streaming and the last thing you see is the vapor trails of your film,” he said.
“The economic model keeps changing – how to monetize the ‘product,’ which is what it is,” Schrader added.
Looking back at his prolific career, he recalled: “I began in the studio system and made four or five films. That was already a different studio system, in the ’60s, ’70s. Then it became the independent system. And then it became, now, driven by the streamers.”
While he revealed that his recent films “have all been turned down by Amazon, Netflix,” he said that sending a title straight to streaming is “the new way you dump films.”
Using Benoît Delhomme’s latest Prime Video thriller, Mothers’ Instinct, starring Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, as an example, Schrader said once a film is released on streaming, it receives “no support whatsoever.”
Schrader is currently promoting his new movie Oh, Canada, which was purchased last week by New York-based distribution company Kino Lorber. The distributor is planning to release the movie in theaters this December just in time for awards season.
Led by a star-studded cast of Richard Gere, Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman and Michael Imperioli, the drama had its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival in May.
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Oh, Canada is about a famed Canadian filmmaker who tells the whole truth about his life in a final interview with a former student filmed in front of his wife.
Schrader is also working on his next feature film, Non Compos Mentis, which is in pre-production, he told Variety in May. The film’s name comes from the Latin phrase meaning “unsound mind.”
“It’s about the stupid things men do for love,” he further teased at a Cannes press conference, saying that it’s also about “sexual obsession.”
He is currently casting for the noir film and plans to begin filming this November.
