"Hollywood faces a crisis of form"

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: Paul Schrader shot into the limelight as a scenarist for the Martin Scorsese-directed Taxi Driver (1976). As he says, “It’s a touchstone of world cinema. A lot of people go through their entire career without getting that kind of affirmation ever. I got it straightaway.” Not one to rest on those laurels, he has gone on to direct 18 films to date, besides writing 21 films and books, including one on directors who influenced him most — Yasajiro Ozu, Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer.

Schrader is in India as part of Osian’s Cinefan festival, which concludes in Delhi today, where his remarkable 1985 film, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, on the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, was screened.

And if the crowds who have been thronging to hear this rather blunt scenarist-director are any indication, his has been a voice that travels across continents. For his is a voice that has consistently explored undercurrents and peripheries.

Today, the best writers in Hollywood work for cable rather than in Hollywood, he says. “When I got involved in movies, there was a crisis of content. We sat around and rethought movies, and came up with answers over the next 15 years. Today there is crisis of form — we don’t know how long a movie should be, how to see it, how you interact with it. Movies as you know them will not survive. I prefer using the phrase audio-visual entertainment.” He says it is television today that is exploring emotions while movies are less and less about good writing. “When the theatres start closing and there is a move to downloaded entertainment, the importance of the writer is going to rise again, as the spectacle reduces in importance.”

Schrader, who is visiting India for the second time after almost 20 years, says he is not a real writer. “Real writers write everyday. I don’t write until I know virtually everything in my head. I wait for months working on an idea and then spend three to four weeks on a script. I haven’t written for a while, but have done two screenplays this year.”