"Hollywood faces a crisis of form"

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: as a director, he is not sure of writing for television himself. And as he admits, “it breaks your spirit to write and then not sell.”

Schrader’s films have largely been about the man on the margins. “I like to term them ‘peepers’ — gigolos, drug dealers, taxi drivers — trying to find a life for themselves. I have always been attracted to this character.” The best film he directed in his opinion is The Comfort of Strangers (1990). And the most emotional one for him — Light Sleeper (1992).

Not a fan of Hollywood’s tendency to explain it all, Schrader says: “I like the idea of picking up a man and moving him forward, and letting the audience fill in the backdrop. One of the signs of good art is to get the reader or the viewer to be a part of the process.” For him, the last scene of a movie should be on a sidewalk outside the hall. Coming out of the theatre, “one guy should be saying the director’s a creep, while the other guy says he’s not.” As the film is still on!