Paul Schrader

[John Cope]

To indicate the disparity of opinion that is possible here I can say that I much prefer Master Gardener to either of the other entries in the "man in a room" trilogy and prefer by far Light Sleeper, which I consider to be the progenitor of that entire series (it's even explicitly referenced in Card Counter), to any of them (but this is far from a surprise as it's one of my favorite films). I am, however, very much looking forward to the forthcoming The Basics of Philosophy as an extension of the series; it actually sounds like a fine complement in its perversity (and possibly in tone too) to Schrader's earlier and still profoundly underrated Forever Mine.

[knives]

I agree with you Cope.

[wattsup32]

That’s a long way from it being one of maybe three films showing any talent, though. I think you forgot about this movie when you made your claim and are now pretending it still works with it

No it was one of the 3.

What were the other two?

[Never Cursed]

No polite way to say it: The Basics of Philosophy is one of the worst, most worthless films I have ever seen from a director that ostensibly knows better, or at least knew better. It is obviously a filmed first draft (to an extent that it makes some of Woody Allen's recent fare appear mannered and worked-over) and lacks all of the earnest humanity, introspection, or menace found in the writer's superior work. Schrader's characters never hid their purposes or destinations from the viewer, but they are completely functional and flavorless here, uttering the minimum of schematic dialogue required to advance a shamelessly self-serving plot about how sexual predators deserve to be forgiven. If anyone else involved with the film (several reasonably famous actors, including one big-name previous collaborator in a surprise cameo, cinematographer Sean Price Williams) did more than what was necessary to complete the film and cash a paycheck, their efforts are not recognizable in the final product. The movie is morally and artistically empty, and I don't have much more to say about it beyond shaming the film festivals that platformed this garbage. I can't believe I held out hope that it would be any good at all.

[malachi_lui]

I saw The Basics of Philosophy on Monday night with Schrader there, third time I’ve seen him for a Q&A at the Roxy Cinema in as many years. The film sucks for a lot of reasons (I never knew that Sean Price Williams could shoot something that looks so stale and boring), though there are some interesting ideas that could’ve worked if someone else had edited/reworked the script, or if someone else directed it, or even if Paul had a larger budget.

The Q&A, however… most surreal 45 minutes of my life. I recorded and transcribed it, here are some things he said:

Not this moment in time, any moment in time [A-list actors] are gonna turn down [roles as pedophiles]. This is one of the greatest taboos. It’s even a greater taboo than, than white beating or police brutality or torturing or serial killing… this is a big old taboo. And I think one of the reasons it’s such a huge taboo is because, not because it’s so abnormal, because it is so normal. And so we are so frightened of it because we know exactly what it is because we’ve all felt those things. When you see, you know, attractive young people, you know, at the swimming pool or wherever you happen to see them.

And the next film, which I start in January—theoretically was supposed to start it this week but we got pushed—is about two brothers who both fall in love with the same underage girl.

But we are all these people. You know, rapists aren’t doing something that’s alien to everybody in this room. Everybody in this room has imagined that situation. And they’ve not acted upon it, but they’ve imagined acting upon it, and they may even have become close to acting upon it. So when you write about a rapist, you’re not writing about a stranger or an alien or somebody who has plopped out from another planet, you’re writing about somebody in this room.

A bit after Paul Schrader claimed that everyone in the audience has apparently considered engaging in pedophilia and rape (????!), Rebekah from the Downtown Festival passed around the mic for audience questions. I got the last one, and asked him to clarify his stance on generative AI.

What followed was 14 minutes of batshit insanity, where he repeated the comments that got him in trouble at Venice (about how he’s AI-generating Three Guns At Dawn cos no Black actors want to be in a film where the only good/moral character is the white cop: ‘And of course, all the Black actors [Fable AI CEO Edward Saatchi] wanted were available, they were free, and they worked for nothing, because they were digital. And we are now making it. With these digital actors. Uhhh. I’ve seen the first scene, it’s really kinda good, it’s kinda cool [audience laughs] and it’s a kind of very spooky moment where all of a sudden I’m making an AI movie, based on a script that wasn’t intended for AI’), said that humanity will be killed by AI within the next 50 years, and argued that AI cinema making humans obsolete is like when photography killed the careers of portrait painters.

To which I said:

Well, I think the main concern that people are having with AI in all aspects of it is that, you know, cos you compare the development of AI cinema to when photography started and portrait painters were out of business. But I think the difference is that, you know, with certain studies, for example the AI 2027 report and things like that, a lot of researchers sounding alarms, there’s a strong contingent of people who are concerned that AI will develop to kill us all. And that’s not something that photography and cameras did. You know, cameras didn’t come along to kill us all, AI is the possibility of that. So I think that’s what a lot of people are getting hung up on, though it sounds like you’re approaching this from a sort of accelerationist fascination of you know, ‘okay this is the new thing and it might kill us all but let’s just see how long we can be the ones in control of it before it subsumes us’? Is that sort of where you’re coming from?

And Paul warmly replied:

Yeah, I mean…. I don’t think you can resist, you know, technological evolution. Something is happening. And it’s happening faster than we imagined. And we may be left in this dust. Now there’s a lot of thought being given to will there be an AI embodiment. Will AI have a corporeal presence? We don’t know quite the answer to that yet. There’s a lot of questions out there. But one thing that seems to be clear is we… there’s an evolution at work. And I don’t know how you fight this evolution. You can protest it, like Hominid people, whatever, saying ‘we’re not gonna allow those homosapiens to take over.’ Well of course they are, they don’t have a choice. And that’s sort of my feeling about this new intelligence that we are now training. And after it learns enough from us, it’ll say ‘hey, it’s been good to know ya.’

The craziest part is that my question offered him a chance to clarify himself, a chance for salvation, and yet he dug himself further and further into this hole, in front of a paying audience (not sold out) where everyone walked out wondering what the actual fuck we’d just seen. I should also clarify that by no means was I trying to lure him into a humiliation trap with my question. I have more to say about this, and I can post further transcriptions later. Another young audience member also pressed him on the AI vs human art issue when he went on this tangent, I didn’t expect that my question would lead to such craziness. He’s definitely had a few screws get loose in the last couple years, probably some combination of grief, his reputational downfall after the settlement with his former assistant, advanced age, some sort of techno-accelerationist resignation to (and even excitement for) the fate of the world at large, and maybe a touch of dementia. Whatever exactly is causing this decline, it’s starting to show in the actual work as well.

[DeprongMori]

Not this moment in time, any moment in time [A-list actors] are gonna turn down [roles as pedophiles]. This is one of the greatest taboos. It’s even a greater taboo than, than white beating or police brutality or torturing or serial killing… this is a big old taboo.

I’m guessing that’s supposed to read as “wife-beating” rather than “white beating”?