The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (375 page)

In his gruff, giggly way, battling with, but owning up to, his obsession, Schrader is one of the most likeable of film directors. He is also among the best talkers, capable of mixing high-flown theory with nuts-and-bolts Hollywood anecdotes. He has so many roots: Dutch Calvinism in provincial Michigan; discipleship to Pauline Kael, and then Pauline’s chilling rebuke; he is the author of a fine book on Ozu, Bresson, and Dreyer; he is addicted to rock and roll; he is aesthete and sensualist; he could probably do anything or anyone, if addicted. I went to interview him as
Cat People
was opening, and on his desk he had a book of French film criticism, the trades, and a Bible. Of course, he does decor as well as he talks, and he is a chronic scene-maker. I’m not sure the addict can do much without thinking about it, and that may be why he doesn’t much like himself.

At UCLA, around 1970, Schrader wrote for the
Los Angeles Free Press
, and he edited a magazine,
Cinema
. His writing was like his talk—packed, allusive, and looking for fresh thoughts. He was as sensitive to Peckinpah and film noir as he was to Bresson—and no one studying his films should overlook the wealth and slyness of his quotes and references. There is a scholar in Schrader, a true devotee who probably worries over his creativity and knows how often he runs the risk of being pretentious.

As a screenwriter, he and his brother Leonard drew on knowledge of Japan for
The Yakuza
(74, Sydney Pollack), which had a Robert Towne rewrite. Far more important was the script for
Taxi Driver
(76, Martin Scorsese), which grew out of Schrader’s own urban depression and feelings about violence and suicide. It is characteristic of Schrader, I think, that that script is so structured and rational in dealing with someone out of control. His work has the organizational stress of a paranoid. However,
Taxi Driver
was not just a collaboration with Scorsese and De Niro. It was a picture that helped those two identify their talents.

In other scripting jobs, Schrader was less organically involved:
Obsession
(76, Brian De Palma); he worked uncredited on
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(77, Steven Spielberg);
Rolling Thunder
(77, John Flynn);
Old Boyfriends
(78, Joan Tewkesbury);
Raging Bull
(80, Scorsese), where other writers did later work, without hiding Schrader’s typically schematic vision of a brute;
The Mosquito Coast
(86, Peter Weir); and
The Last Temptation of Christ
(88, Scorsese), where the dialogue was often at odds with the period recreation.

As a director, Schrader has placed himself on the edge of the mainstream. He understands commerce very well: he could explain how to make hits. But some perverse, rugged integrity has left his work increasingly hermetic and narrow in its range. Indeed, there are times when he does not seem to be simply an American director. Yet
Blue Collar
and
Hardcore
are both valuable for their view of the underside of American life. The first was an unusual portrait of racial mix, and George Scott’s agonized puritan in the latter was a fair measure of Schrader’s own tensions as he compared pure and profane.

American Gigolo
was his one hit. Yet it is Bressonian, as austerely aesthetic as the Ferdinando Scarfiotti design, and it had the very cool Richard Gere as the lead—John Travolta dropped out late in the day. It is a deeply ambiguous film, inhuman in some ways, nearly gay in others. It is like a New Wave film shot in L.A. on an American budget. Perhaps its success came from the title (brilliant) and the pounding music—Schrader composes his films to music.

Cat People
is his most flagrantly sensational work, beautifully vulgar, as energetic as Val Lewton, and a love letter to Nastassja Kinski (even if eventually she tried to return it to sender). The film is not highly regarded—it is truly disturbing in the nakedness of its confession and its unbridled fantasy. But I believe it is Schrader’s most dynamic work.

Thereafter, he went to Japan, to lower budgets, to England, and to Natasha Richardson as a lead actress. He was fighting to keep in work, but he seemed less and less persuaded by the hope of a large audience. I have not enjoyed the later films too much, but I do not expect Schrader to start making dull or routine movies. He is married to the actress Mary Beth Hurt, and he has children. Perhaps, passing sixty, he was becoming settled, or more wary. Or perhaps he was waiting for America to come round to small, dangerous pictures.

In recent years, Schrader has found it harder to make movies for theatres. One film was for television, and he has gone back to working on screenplays for others
—City Hall
(96, Harold Becker) and
Bringing Out the Dead
(99, Scorsese). Ironically, the film that got most attention (with a nomination for Nick Nolte and an Oscar for James Coburn) was
Affliction
, which had had to wait two years before it found release. But the most movielike work is surely
Forever Mine
, an ecstatic romantic fantasy, beautifully made, which might have been even better but for casting problems.

He shot his prequel to
The Exorcist
and cut it. The result was a haunting study in lost faith, for which he was fired by the producers, and the project was reassigned to Renny Harlin. Eventually, Schrader’s version was released—but there were no winners.
Auto Focus
was his film of the decade—very dark, yet strangely light. Neither
The Walker
nor
Adam Resurrected
was in its class, or seemed to belong to the old Schrader.

Barbet Schroeder
, b. Teheran, Iran, 1941
1968:
More
. 1971:
SingSing
(d). 1972:
La Vallée/The Valley Obscured by Clouds
. 1974:
Idi Amin Dada
(d). 1976:
Maîtresse
. 1978:
Koko, A Talking Gorilla
(d). 1983:
Les Tricheurs
. 1984:
The Charles Bukowski Tapes
(d). 1987:
Barfly
. 1990:
Reversal of Fortune
. 1992:
Single White Female
. 1995:
Kiss of Death
. 1996:
Before and After
. 1998:
Desperate Measures
. 2000:
La Virgen de los Sicarios/Our Lady of the Assassins
. 2002:
Murder by Numbers
. 2007:
Terror’s Advocate
(d). 2008:
Inju: The Beast in the Shadow
. 2009: episode of
Mad Men
.

From Teheran to Telluride, Schroeder has the air of a stranger who is always at ease. He is a man of many worlds, an entrepreneur as well as a director, and for anyone who knows his hilarious, spectral performance in
Céline and Julie Go Boating
(73, Jacques Rivette), it is tempting to think that Schroeder could himself have played Claus Von Bülow in
Reversal of Fortune
.

In fact, Schroeder is essentially Parisian: he took a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne; he organized jazz concerts; and he was a journalist. It was there, in 1964, that he formed Les Films du Losange, a company that gave immense support to Rivette and, especially, to Eric Rohmer. Thus, Schroeder was involved on most of Rohmer’s
contes moraux
and on
Céline and Julie
and
Out One: Spectre
.

As a director, he began as a documentarian.
La Vallée
was a weird mix of Paul Bowles and hippie pretension, as Bulle Ogier tried to be a diplomat’s wife being drawn deeper into the exotic wilds of New Guinea (with music by Pink Floyd). The attempt to add story to documentary riches was a disaster. But
Maîtresse
was, for its time, a startling examination of sexual power games, full of eros and role playing, with Gérard Depardieu and Bulle Ogier (a close friend to Schroeder for years) in the title role. Still, he could not develop a feature film career.
Les Tricheurs
was overlooked: it is a good, nervy movie about gambling.

A European-made TV series of interviews with the writer Charles Bukowski led to
Barfly
, a succès d’estime, even if to these eyes it is a rare kind of mess and posturing with several unbelievable performances.
Reversal of Fortune
has many problems of construction, and far too many loose ends. But Schroeder’s connections (he has had private money) were close to the world depicted, and he has a connoisseur’s eye for decadence. Of course, he could not have matched Jeremy Irons, but he may have helped Irons grasp the air of blithe comedy that made the grisly tale a small success. With
Single White Female
, and the fearsome performance by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Schroeder seemed to be, at last, an American director. But he stopped short of the real emotional vampirism possible in that film.

Still,
Barfly, Reversal of Fortune
, and
Single White Female
made three pretty good pictures in a row. Payback time followed:
Kiss of Death, Before and After
, and
Desperate Measures
were so much less original or lively. But then Schroeder revealed his enterprise and courage by going to Colombia and returning with the very impressive
Our Lady of the Assassins
. In truth, he is too interesting to be confined in America. His documentary on Jacques Vergès could have been made by Vergès himself. But Inju—pulpy and erotic—seemed made without reason or drive.

Joel Schumacher
, b. New York, 1939
1974:
The Virginia Hill Story
(TV). 1979:
Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill
(TV). 1981:
The Incredible Shrinking Woman
. 1983:
D.C. Cab
. 1985:
St. Elmo’s Fire
. 1987:
The Lost Boys
. 1989:
Cousins
. 1990:
Flatliners
. 1991:
Dying Young
. 1993:
Falling Down
. 1994:
The Client
. 1995:
Batman Forever
. 1996:
A Time to Kill
. 1997:
Batman & Robin
. 1999:
8MM; Flawless
. 2000:
Tigerland
. 2002:
Bad Company
. 2003:
Phone Booth; Veronica Guerin
. 2004:
The Phantom of the Opera
. 2007:
The Number 23
. 2009:
Blood Creek
.

While at art school, at Parsons School of Design in New York, Schumacher got a job as window designer at Henri Bendel’s. A few years later, he opened a store of his own, and he later worked for Revlon and Halston. From that, he slipped into costume design and art direction, and he worked on—among others
—Play It As It Lays
(72, Frank Perry);
The Last of Sheila
(73, Herbert Ross);
Sleeper
(73, Woody Allen); and
Interiors
(78, Allen).

In the meantime, he was writing scripts and doing some directing for TV: his
Virginia Hill Story
is a decent job, with Dyan Cannon in the lead and Harvey Keitel as her Bugsy Siegel. He was a screenwriter on
Car Wash
(76, Michael Schultz),
Sparkle
(76, Sam O’Steen), and
The Wiz
(78, Sidney Lumet), before, in 1981, he got his first theatrical movie to direct, the Lily Tomlin
Shrinking Woman
project.

This is rare training and versatility for a director, so it would be nice to report that Schumacher is thriving. He has had hits (
St. Elmo’s Fire
and
Flatliners
), and
The Lost Boys
and
Falling Down
, at least, are interesting projects. But it’s hard to find character or much more than industrial competence. Nor does Schumacher seem comfortable making waves. His films with kids are blandly flattering to the young. And
Falling Down
had the makings of a troubling, subversive portrait of Los Angeles, until it opted for keeping the Michael Douglas character deranged and supplying us with a harmless, amiable cop to like. It could have been so much more challenging if Douglas had been the movie, and if he had had no greater handicap than ordinary desperation.

In the next few, especially with two very campy Batman pictures, Schumacher hauled himself into the category of top directors. But just as the Batman movies were very detached, so
A Time to Kill
was ponderously earnest. Not that Schumacher seemed prepared to linger at the top—
8MM, Flawless
, and
Tigerland
were a very effective ladder directed downwards. So he’s a maverick, talented, good with actors and raw young people, but maybe a touch too amused to be fully involved. Still,
Phone Booth
was clever and gripping.

Arnold Schwarzenegger
, b. Graz, Austria, 1947
I remember how a friend came back from a visit to the set of
Stay Hungry
(76, Bob Rafelson) with reports that the not unobservant Rafelson was saying that this hulk with the impossible name was the smartest person on the picture, and that he was going somewhere. Fifteen years later, we thought we know where. But consider: Arnold may have more dreams yet behind that rippling grin.

There has never been a major American star with a name people were fearful of pronouncing, let alone spelling. There has never been an “Arnold” big in pictures. The closest movies had come in the past to a body-builder as an actor was Johnny Weissmuller, Steve Reeves, or Victor Mature—which is as much to say, too far already. By comparison, Arnold is a new man, a new body, a true pumper of iron where the great Mature would have seldom raised anything weightier than a glass or a lissome babe, for purposes of sardonic inspection. Arnold is beyond reality, beyond bodies even—and he knows it. How beautifully he coincides with and climaxes the movies’ passion for mechanical men, or robot insurgents.