Director Paul Schrader walked the red carpet on the opening night of the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival, held in Tokyo for the screening of his 1985 biopic “Mishima: Four Chapters of Life,” and cheerfully told an interviewer that he considers Japan his “second home.”
But 40 years ago, organizers of the first TIFF refused to include the film in their program, largely because of objections from Mishima’s widow to the famous right-leaning writer’s depiction of homosexuality. But speaking with Schroeder in a coffee shop at the ANA Intercontinental Hotel, it seems that the old controversy that kept the film from being released in Japan for 40 years has been forgiven, if not forgotten. He also had a lot of other things on his mind, from the upcoming AI revolution to his latest projects.
The 79-year-old veteran director first gained international attention as a screenwriter for Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece, Taxi Driver, and has recently turned his focus to his beloved Man in a Room. The film trilogy, First Reformed (2017), The Card Counter (2021), and The Master Gardener (2022), has won him accolades, including his first Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Very mid-career.
We are Facebook friends and have been following you for years now. A while ago, you started posting AI images as a kind of joke. But lately, that hasn’t been the case.
Paul Schrader: I decided not to. Because it was two weeks ago. I went to a protest against Trump. And I posted this photo (on Facebook) of me participating in the protest. People thought it was AI. I said, “I’m not going to post anymore.” I get the impression you’re mistaken.
Now we’re seeing ads featuring AI actors, like the one that ran against New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani. I thought this wasn’t just a bad ad, it was stealing jobs from actors.
It’s a whole new world and it’s happening very quickly. Much faster than anyone expected. love. It’s just a tool, like a typewriter. But it’s a tool that could put me out of business.
Now, the only thing in some of these action movies that isn’t generated by AI is the face. Please wait. A face will also be generated soon.
A big question arises here. Would humans pay to watch AI stars? And I don’t know the answer. But I think I would. I think we can create AI stars. I think if you make an exciting movie with a little bit of Brando and Kevin Costner, people will pay to see it.
I mean, they already created this actress. Do you know Suzanne Somers? She was a TV star. She has written about 20 books on topics such as nutrition and beauty care. Now they cloned her on the website and entered everything she wrote there. Ask her a question and she will quickly process it and give you the answer a real person would give in her own voice.
We haven’t existed forever. We’re probably not going to be around forever. We just think we’ve been around forever.
So when will machines take over?
Do you know the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? It’s now nuclear war, global viruses, environmental collapse, and AI. They’re all coming down the back stretch.
The question is, who will reach the finish line first? Al Franken of American Comics said: “If I say I rescued the last helicopter from Saigon, my fellow baby boomers will understand what I mean.”
As a fellow boomer, I understand that. But I think we should start talking about movies starting with “Mishima”. I’ve lived in Japan for many years and remember that controversy and the Tokyo Film Festival rejecting it.
They didn’t even see it. They said they would, but they wouldn’t look. Well, Tom Ruddy, who was the producer of this film, helped set up the festival. So now, 40 years later, the festival he helped launch is presenting it for the first time. That’s great. I knew this day would come. I just didn’t know if I would live to see it.
Apparently many Japanese people have seen it, but it has never been officially released to the public. So what is the effect? I think this is a type of burger. Do you know the American expression “nothing burger”? I mean, it’s no big deal. At the time I was making this film, it was deeply ingrained in the current Japanese consciousness, but now it’s ancient history.
In a sense, yes. I saw it on pirated VHS a long time ago, and recently watched it again on Prime Video. When Mishima debated with radical students at the University of Tokyo, I was reminded of this documentary I recently watched, “Mishima’s Last Debate.” This documentary is also being screened at this year’s TIFF.
It just resurfaced, right? Previously there were only clips, but now you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
So I watched it, and of course I watched your movie. And I thought this guy was like the Charlie Kirk of his time, the kind of guy who would go into the lion’s den and confront the students.
he was respected. he was very successful. He was a major cultural figure of the world. Just like Charlie Kirk was a world cultural player. But I never thought the discussion was about politics. I don’t think he actually thought for a second that it was about politics.
It was a theatrical production. theater. Just as he and his poor cadets perform their last theatrical production (when he commits suicide with a sword in 1970). It was a theater of ecstasy that liberated him from his physical body.
Nowadays, “Mishima” is said to be your masterpiece. Do you agree with that too?
That’s the worst thing. I mean, I don’t know how they made it.
I don’t know how it came into existence. For me, films like Affliction (1997) and First Reformed feel more cohesive. For me, it’s about being more cohesive. But the ambition of this thing, the eccentricity of us doing it, I have to recoil in a kind of awe. Yeah, have I ever actually done that? I don’t know where the arrogance came from. And where did you get the money?
There are some by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, right?
Half came from Warner Bros. and the other half from Toho/Towa and Fuji Television.
When I started shooting at Toho, I was nervous. I was wearing a knife-resistant vest, because Japan is a knife culture, not a gun culture. So, if you’re going to be attacked, you’re going to be attacked with a knife, right? So I was wearing this vest.
Then, four or five days later, the producer came to me and said I could take off the vest. They’re going to let us make the movie.
The vest was meant to protect you from attack. I didn’t think it would be over if something happened. Whether it’s an attack on me or someone else, it will shut us down. Then, a few years later, I learned that there had been a meeting. Toho Towa did not want to be in the position of canceling a major international production that it was funding.
There they met the figures on the right, the ones with the soundtrack and megaphones. And they said, if you don’t stop the movie, we’ll stop you. Years later, it was discovered that this contract was a right to let Toho Towa make the film if they promised never to show it in Japan. And there was no contract, it wasn’t written on paper. But it lasted for 40 years. And now everyone who made the deal 40 years ago is dead.
Yeah, it was a different time. There have been other movies since then that have received this kind of backlash, right? If we show this, we will protest, perhaps even use violence.
Yes, that was the case with (Scorsese’s) The Last Temptation of Christ. But yeah, I don’t regret it. I think we baby boomers lived in a bubble of middle class, wealth, and peace. So we were lucky.
Yes, times are different. So let’s see what happens (when the movie is shown in Tokyo). I have never seen this movie with a Japanese audience. I don’t know what kind of reaction I’ll get. Maybe someone wasn’t planning on showing it before because they’re afraid that if one child stands up and starts screaming, everyone will be ruined.
So why take that chance? So it’s great, great, great that they’re doing it now. They had bodyguards for me. Well, it only takes one madman like the one who murdered the Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe). I just hope it goes well.
I think there will be a big standing ovation.
I think so too. But you know, the truck is still there. I listened to them on Sunday. Yes, you only need one. And yeah, sometimes things happen. People can get stung, right? I mean, in “The Last Temptation,” there was a bomb in the theater and someone was killed. Understood. And I went when “The Last Temptation” was showing at Ziegfield. My office was right around the corner from Marty’s, and he asked me to go to the first screening.
So I went there and found that the venue was full and there were two policemen on either side of the stage, protecting the stage from someone attacking them with spray cans and knives. I thought, wow, I’ve made a movie that needs to be protected by New York’s finest.
Are there any other projects you are working on?
Yes, the script is complete. When I get back, I’ll do the final mix of my latest work. We are currently doing color correction and will do the final mix next week. It seems that he is preparing two movies for next year. Of course, if I can stay healthy.
I’m old enough to be just a phone call away. Do you know when the doctor says, “Oh, can you come in?” You never know, right? It happened to many of my friends. This is my good friend Russell Banks. David Lynch was the same age as me.
That’s not surprising, right? I had a very rich and productive life. I want to make a few more. I mean, just keep going, right?
