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Taxi Driver |
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Schrader |
Schrader, however, did get to show a clip from The Canyons. Promise of an exclusive
excerpt from the already infamous
film starring Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen was my primary motivation
to attend the event. The clip, which included new music by Broken Social Scene’s
Brendan Canning, was a brief one (only four minutes or so), so it’s hard to
glean too much from such a small sample. The
Canyons seems like a stylish Hollywood noir and I’ll certainly buy a ticket
when the film is released in August. (IFC Films has North American rights.)
Schrader immediately defended the casting of Lindsay Lohan,
whose behaviour and reputation prompted an unflattering article
from The New York Times. “You can work around bad behaviour,” Schrader
explained while saying nothing to cast Lohan in a negative light. But bad
casting or miscasting, Schrader went on to say, is irreparable and a permanent
imprint on the quality of a production. Schrader’s philosophy might prove the
naysayers wrong, as Lohan’s performance seemed to jive with the rest of The Canyons. There’s was hint of seediness
to the clip, which suggests that the experience of watching The Canyons can only benefit from the
notoriety and novelty of its seeing its troubled star in such a saucy role.
Schrader elaborated on Lohan’s star persona by situating The Canyons as part of what screenwriter
Bret Easton Ellis dubs “post empire culture”. Post empire culture, Schrader
said, builds on the residue of a society’s previous cultural cycle. The residue
of one society becomes art in the next. Hence the novelty of seeing culture’s
trash becomes high-art in the dramatization of its own sordid behaviour. Put
another way, The Canyons could be
this year’s The Paperboy.
The idea of recycling and bending the rules echoed in one of
Schrader’s most surprising accounts of the night. Towards the end of the
evening, Schrader noted that his stylistic approach to The Canyons was inspired by the work of Québécois wunderkind Xavier Dolan, particularly his second feature Heartbeats,
who embodies a generation of young filmmakers that have realized that the old
rules of filmmaking have changed and have recognized how to use the
malleability of film form to their best advantage. Schrader cited Dolan’s overriding
style in Heartbeats of framing each
scene as a nod to the distinct style of an influential filmmaker as his
inspiration to use The Canyons as a
project for experimenting in the changing modes of film production where rules
can be broken and everything old can be new again.
The evening included a monologue from Schrader on his
experience developing The Canyons as
a micro-budget independent project. The
Canyons was shot for a mere $250 000, with Schrader, Bret Easton Ellis, and
producer Braxton Pope putting up $30 000 apiece and the rest of the funds
raised through the crowdsourcing site Kickstarter. Schrader noted that IFC
bought the film for a million dollars, so The
Canyons has already turned a healthy profit. The laid-back, DIY approach
worked well for Schrader after financing fell through for him on two previous
projects. Self-financing tools like Kickstarter might not always be a good
thing, Schrader observed, as he offered one of the most interesting talking points
of the night by saying that the lack of a capitalist hook in self-financing
removes an important element from the filmmaking process. “I like to think that
I’m making films for other people,” Schrader said, but when filmmakers create
their work without a concern on how they spend other people’s money, then an
important element of self-awareness is lost. The problem becomes not how a film
will be made, Schrader elaborated, but how a film will be seen.
How The Canyons
will be seen can only be imagined until the film opens in August. Could Schrader
find himself the author of another cinematic turning point, or will The Canyons prove that self-financed, post-empire
drip should remain in the gutter? It’s already a financial success, though, and
the question of its artistic success might be the most entertaining debate of
the summer.