This interview is published in the November/December 2002 issue of SCREENTALK magazine.

One On One With Paul Schrader

By Sheila R. Allen

Paul Schrader began his immensely successful Hollywood career with his script for The Yakuza [1974] and went on to write Taxi Driver and Obsession before his first stint as a writer-director [Blue Collar, 1977]. His screenplays include Raging Bull, The Mosquito Coast and The Last Temptation Of Christ. He has directed many of his own scripts, including Hardcore, American Gigolo and Light Sleeper, as well as collaborating on the script for his Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters.  

His long list of directing credits includes the 1981 remake of Cat People and his newest film Auto Focus (written by Michael Gerbosi). The story of Bob Crane (played by Greg Kinnear)—a 60’s radio personality who gained television fame as the title character of the hit comedy Hogan’s Heroes—chronicles the breakdown of his personal life while his professional life skyrockets. Until, with the help of video technician John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), Crane begins to videotape their sexual exploits and slips over the edge into an abyss of obsession. Their association may have led to his 1978 murder, the dynamics of their friendship and his mysterious death which are explored with deft artistry in Auto Focus.

Schrader, one of Hollywood’s most serious artists, started out as a film critic. His books include Transcendental Style In Film about French director Robert Bresson, Denmark’s Carl Dreyer and Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu. Since his successful switch into screenplay writing and then directing, he has been creating a diverse body of work, exploring complex characters and the dichotomies of human existence. 

I sat down with Paul Schrader on a hot early September morning in Los Angeles. Over coffee, the personable Academy Award® winner—as immensely likeable as he is talented—discussed his newest film and what draws him to certain projects. 

Obviously your films are thought-provoking. Auto Focus feels like an iceberg, 9/10ths submerged, mirroring the feeling we get about Bob Crane himself. How did you manage that?

Well, it all begins with the character. You have somebody who is essentially clueless, whose behavior is totally out of control and he doesn’t get it. He has a mantra about sex, about being a one-woman man, and all the while a tail is growing out his backside. I’ve often dealt with characters that wanted one thing but behaved in a totally destructive way. That’s my favorite kind of character. I think that’s how we learn about ourselves. That’s why people go through analysis. If I want to be happy, how come I’m doing things that make me sad? I am drawn to characters that live those dilemmas.

We go through so much with these two men, Crane and Carpenter, and know so much about what they did and yet we end up knowing very little about their motivations, about why they were the way they were.

Yes. With Bob you have somebody who didn’t get it. There were no dark nights of the soul with this guy. You are dealing with Bob’s sexualization but you can’t really talk about that because he didn’t open up about it to anyone. So it’s not a story that can be told the way Lost Weekend, for example, was told. Usually my characters, conflicted and self-destructive as they are, at some point kind of get it. Something Crane never did.  

In the first scenes, in his radio days, Bob Crane is interviewing Clayton Moore—the Lone Ranger. And Auto Focus is about another “lone ranger” with his own not-so-benign sidekick, Carpenter.

That was on purpose. They even call themselves the Lone Ranger and Tonto and joke about “Hi ho, Silver” when they go to the swing party. And to carry the simile further, Carpenter is half-Indian.

In the early scenes, when Bob Crane’s marriage is still working—at least they are still living together—everything seemed to be lit with a really bright light—almost a glare—and as the film continued things became darker and darker.  

In the beginning we used the bright saturated color they used in film back then. The whole film moves on a stylistic curve; it’s continually shifting. We came up with this idea of the accretion of clutter. First in the set design, with all that video cable coming into play. Then we took that idea and applied it across the board. To film stock, camera style, set design, production design, hair, make up, wardrobe, music. So that, at some point, you realize you are not watching the film you were watching an hour ago. Our goal was to do it so incrementally so that the viewer was not aware of exactly when it shifted.

Another interesting choice was the emptiness in the family dining room scene. The room was almost totally bare and there was an equally barren feeling to the marriage. The dining room could have been a store showroom instead of a lived-in home. 

Like an ad for electronic living or something—Crane was very into hypocrisy at that time. He was doing those Photoplay “Bob Crane at home” images. Which probably reflected more how he wanted the world to see him than it did the reality of his life.

As did the scene in church. Which looks like an old Photoplay “Stars at Home” article.

Yes. Exactly.

Auto Focus is full of sexual scenes and nudity but somehow there is nothing titillating about any of it. We feel as emotionally distanced as Crane seems to have felt. 

Yes, I think probably that was the case. Interestingly, Robert Crane Junior, his son by his first marriage, told me his dad was hyper-organized. When he played games with his kids he would make charts of everything they played. He did the same thing with the pornography, the books and catalogs he made of all of it. Almost as if the organizing itself was as much a turn-on as the subject matter.

Another aspect of Auto Focus that is brilliantly portrayed is the cult of celebrity.  

Well, in Bob’s case, naturally, if you are attractive and funny and somewhat famous it all comes easily. Everyone gives you a free ride. 

The celebrity chef scene was stunning. Did he actually go that far? He seems to explode.

No, I don’t think so. That show was never aired. It was shot up in Vancouver and he was off the rails a bit and talking about sex and dying in a way that I think was probably deeply unfunny. I took it the other way in the film. Which made it kind of perversely funny.

Auto Focus doesn’t say it specifically but the audience is led to conclude that Carpenter was most probably Crane’s murderer. Yet there is still a sense of mystery. Not about who, but about why. 

Carpenter had it all, motive, means, opportunity. But by the time they brought him to trial they just didn’t have the evidence. The jury was out for only about 20 minutes. If I had been on the jury I’d have had to vote to acquit as well. But, Carpenter fits both history and he fits the needs of drama. 

What drew you to this story?

In the first place? The similarity of the Carpenter-Crane relationship to that of Prick Up Your Ears, the biography John Lahr wrote about (English writers) Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Halliwell very clearly killed Orton because Joe was going to get his own apartment. You have a similar situation here. You have people who are involved with each other for fifteen years in a co-dependent relationship… who are hunting pals … and one is threatening to leave.

There seemed to be a juvenile element to their relationship with Crane’s reactions to Carpenter being friends with Richard Dawson. Like a child’s “if you’re friends with him you can’t be friends with me.” 

Bob Crane Junior said he felt that Carpenter was his father’s only friend. Crane didn’t have close male friends. He couldn’t. He’d come on to people’s girlfriends and wives thirty seconds after being introduced.

No governors.

Yes. So men learned rather quickly.

Did you feel there was a deeper jealousy between Dawson and Crane, beyond the fact that Dawson was first up for the role of Hogan? Dawson seems to have enjoyed women. He didn’t seem to have to film his sexual exploits and look at all of it later to enjoy it.

Dawson had, as you say, governors. Actually there was a whole clique of people who had all this early video equipment. But if others filmed anything like Crane did, they obviously kept the videos close to home. Crane was totally indiscreet, talking about it, showing his videos and pornography books. Whatever Dawson, who was in that clique, may or may not have been up to, he certainly showed more discretion.

Your films often take audiences past where they are comfortable going. Do you take that “no prisoners approach” with mainstream audiences on purpose or is it just the result of the subject matter you choose? 

It’s premeditated. The game that I came up with right from the get-go in Taxi Driver (1974) was to pick a fascinating person, someone multi-layered, whom the audience doesn’t necessarily deem worthy of identification. But who does seem worthy of empathy... then, start to slowly manipulate you into his mindset. Going down the road together just because it’s an interesting walk, until finally the viewer gets in too deep and has now started to identify with something he or she does not want to identify with. Then you just move your character out into the darkness.

At some point the audience always gets to the point where they want to say, I’ve come with you this far but no further—you’re on your own now! But once the viewer identifies with someone they’re not comfortable identifying with, they’ve opened the door to themselves a crack and what goes in and what comes out is always going to be a surprise.

When you write or direct, do you visualize your intended audience?

No. Well, obviously I imagine them as people like me. People with the same kind of cynical, curious attitude toward human behavior.

Do you like to see your films with an audience?

It’s always a little scary. You assume certain things are working. Like this film, Auto Focus. I saw it for the first time with an audience in Telluride this past weekend. They reacted pretty much on the mark. Except, I thought there would be more laughs. I think that particular audience of 800 people felt it was a very spooky film. Things that I think are just a hoot. Like Carpenter and Crane sitting there, watching the video and jerking off while talking about “what is it about women, they get you, they change their minds, you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.” When I was shooting that we kept laughing, and when I screened it for friends they laughed. Sometimes it takes a couple of people to start laughing for the rest to realize they can laugh too.

I’ve read critics who speak of perceiving a coldness or distance in your films but I find countless examples of romanticism. For example, the emotional relationships in Light Sleeper. I’m thinking particularly of the scenes in the hospital corridor and in Dana Delaney’s hotel room. And the use you made of the Vermeer painting in that voluptuous lovemaking scene. Why do you think these elements of your work are so much less written about?

Journalists and critics are not always the most imaginative of people. Often they get one idea and they can’t get it out of their heads. Like a dog with a bone.

I loved Light Sleeper. In it, the Dana Delaney character was supposedly murdered. But, it seemed when she ran from the room, so natural for her to jump straight out of life—did you mean she was actually pushed? Or, did he feel her soul had been murdered no matter what caused her fall?

I loved that film too. I loved the mood of yearning, of longing, in that film. But I am not entirely satisfied with the plot machinations at the end. One thing I have learned more and more is that if you have really interesting characters you don’t always need that much plot.

We haven’t spoken about Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters which is such a wonderful work of art. It has an operatic feel; it is so spectacular, so stylized, and so large in scope.

We had a sixty-five day shooting schedule. We worked in the Japanese method and we had over twenty locations and over thirty sets. It was a big undertaking. And only three of us spoke English!

When you work on a film do you find you are obsessed or are you more “nine to five” about it?

Oh, I work in bursts. Especially toward the end.

And lastly, is there any one single piece of advice you would give a talented screenwriter today?

Be sure to get a teaching degree!

Sheila R. Allen is a SCREENTALK Columnist and an award-winning novelist (published hardback and paperback, Pocket Books, Walker and Company, Berkley/Jove, as well as various foreign publishers, in languages from Norwegian to Chinese) and award-winning scriptwriter (working both staff and freelance for major studios, prodcos and producers like Columbia, New World, and Aaron Spelling). Sheila is an over fifteen-year member of the WGA as well as many other writers organizations, who is currently working on her fourteenth novel and twentieth script. A mentor for the Writers Guild of America's Internet Mentor Program, she has judged many awards, including Emmys and Edgars and has developed projects in partnership with Leonard Goldberg, Jordan Davis, Christopher Hewett, Jane Seymour and others. Early in her career, she was the last writer chosen for the prestigious P&G Head Writers Development Program, taught by the legendary Pete LeMay