Paul Schrader is back in the room.
The screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and the director of American Gigolo, First Reformed and The Card Counter, turned 80 in July. He’s never been busier.
The Basics of Philosophy, Schrader’s latest film as writer-director, premieres out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. He says he has “three more films in the pipeline, all written on spec.” And if you’ve been following his Facebook feed — or his pronouncements on AI girlfriends, cancel culture and the latest releases — it’s clear he has long since stopped giving a damn what anyone thinks of him.
Which is all good news for Schrader fans, many of whom were concerned his previous film, Oh, Canada (2023), would be his swan song. That tale of a dying filmmaker, played by a gray and wrinkled Richard Gere, premiered in Cannes amid reports of Schrader’s failing health. It felt, at the time, like a melancholic goodbye from one of Hollywood’s greatest provocateurs.
With The Basics of Philosophy, Schrader returns, and not with a whimper. The film, starring Jack Huston, Sofia Boutella, Daniel Zovatto and Bill Pullman, continues Schrader’s obsession with the “Man in the Room” — the trope, first manifested in Travis Bickle, cinema’s original incel, in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, that he has been repeating and refining ever since.
