After a run of health scares, and reckoning with mortality in the upcoming "Oh, Canada," Paul Schrader says he is now in his “post-dying” era of filmmaking.
Schrader recently revealed that he is working on his next film, teasing the project in a Q&A following a screening of “Patty Hearst” at the Roxy Cinema in New York City.
I was sort of saturated with dying at that time [during the making of “Oh, Canada”]. I had been to the hospital multiple times during COVID. Friends had been dying; they still are dying. And I thought, well, geez, if you’re going to make a film about dying, you better hurry up. And so I did it. I feel like it went quite well, so now I’ll make a post-dying film.
He then hinted at what his next project might be, “I’m writing something right now. I’m going over it today. … I’ve written a script about a sexual obsessor. So that’s what I’m doing now.”
It looks as though Schrader's six-decade cinematic journey will not end with “Oh, Canada.” In his own words, he is now weaving a narrative around a “sexual obsessor”, which will be an unflinching look at “sexual irresponsibility”.
Earlier in the summer, Schrader mentioned having written another screenplay, this one titled “Three Guns at Dawn,” and that he wanted Antoine Fuqua to direct it. The story, set in Los Angeles’ South Central, concerns three brothers — a dirty cop, a serial killer, and a drug dealer — who hate one another.
Schrader additionally confirmed having given up another one of his recent scripts (“R.N.”), a sexually charged drama about a trauma nurse in Puerto Rico, to Elisabeth Moss who will now star in and direct the project.
As for “Oh, Canada,” which stars Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi, it’s already been shot and completed. We’ll either see it premiering at Cannes or Venice later this year.