Paul Schrader

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“Dark” was filmed in 2013 and released in 2014 under the titled “Dying of the Light.” That film was taken from me after the first director’s cut, re-edited as well as scored and mixed without my input. I offered to revisit the film, cut and mix a new version at my own expense but was denied permission by the producers. This cut, now called “Dark,” was created using work print DVDs. I had no access to the original hi-res footage and unmixed sound. I tried to used those limitations to my advantage when creating this new film. I had been working toward a more aggressive editing style when “Dying of the Light” was taken away. “Dark” represents the direction I was hoping to go. “Dark” was not created for exhibition or personal gain. It is for the historical record. A digital file of the film can be seen by prior request at the UCLA Film Archives in Los Angeles, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin and the Museum of Modern Art film department in New York City.
-Paul SchraderRead More »

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After looking for years for his long lost sister, Irena Gallier (Nastassja Kinski), Paul (Malcolm McDowell) finally finds her and has her come to New Orleans, where he’s currently living. While there, she gradually discovers the truth about their bizarre past and falls for a zoo curator.Read More »

A priest of a small congregation in upstate New York grapples with mounting despair brought on by tragedy, worldly concerns and a tormented past.Read More »

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A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in California to look for his runaway teenage daughter who is making porno films in California’s porno pits.Read More »

The movie … is filled with great weariness and sadness; the party has been over for a long time, and these old druggies, now approaching middle age, have been left behind. Because they were survivors, because they were more intelligent and honest than most, this is the thanks they get: They continue to work in the scene long after they should have been replaced by a new generation of losers.
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This movie isn’t about plot, it’s about a style of life, and the difficulty of preserving self-respect and playing fair when your income depends on selling people stuff that will make them hate you.Read More »

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The Canyons is a 2013 American erotic thriller film directed by Paul Schrader, written by Bret Easton Ellis, and produced by Braxton Pope. The film is set in Los Angeles and stars Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Gerard Funk, Amanda Brooks, Tenille Houston, and Gus Van Sant. The plot focuses on youth, glamour, sex, and surveillance.
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IMDB:
An English couple holiday in Venice to sort out their relationship. There is some friction and distance between them, and we also sense they are being watched. One evening, they lose their way looking for a restaurant, and a stranger invites them to accompany him. He plies them with wine and grotesque stories from his childhood. They leave disoriented, physically ill, and morally repelled. But, next day, when the stranger sees them in the piazza, they accept an invitation to his sumptuous flat. After this visit, the pair find the depth to face questions about each other, only to be drawn back into the mysterious and menacing fantasies of the stranger and his mate. Written by jhaileyRead More »

Review by Michael Hastings (Allmovie)

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Though Paul Schrader isn’t often tapped to direct scripts other than his own, his touch proves essential to Auto Focus, a true-life tale of sex, celebrity, and videotape that seems tailor-made to the man who dreamed up Taxi Driver and American Gigolo. Schrader’s clinical, detached directorial style proves well-matched to the genial, humorous tone of Michael Gerbosi’s script; it’s like Hardcore without all the proselytizing (and without the sight of George C. Scott in a campy porn-producer costume). What Auto Focus is most interested in is not the narcotizing effects of anonymous sex — though that’s undeniably a big part of it — but the latent homosexuality lurking behind Bob Crane and John Carpenter’s buddy-buddy sexcapades. Finally cast in a role that successfully sends up and subverts his All-American charm, Greg Kinnear perfectly captures Crane’s kid-in-a-candy-store sexual awakening; meanwhile, Willem Dafoe underlines the desperation at the heart of the swinging lifestyle. Schrader overplays his hand in the film’s “downward spiral” sequences, switching to hand-held camera and bleached-out film stock, but even those minor technical miscalculations don’t detract from the film’s portrait of Crane as a man whose determination to lead the unobserved life ultimately led to his death.Read More »

Paul Schrader’s visually stunning, collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima’s last day, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer’s life as well as by gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.Read More »