Hello, my name's Justin McClure. I'm here today with Will Sloan. And you're listening to

the important cinema club. And today, you may be wondering, how have we got 100 and so episodes in and

never done Paul Schrader before? Is there a reason for this? I have to say that Paul Schrader has to be one

of those guys that I don't know if he has any, like, massive fans in the sense that, like, when people talk about him, they usually talk about him always in conjunction with someone like Martin Scorsese, because he wrote a taxi driver, wrote a draft of Raging Bull, did a draft of The Last Temptation of Christ, and then they often go, and he also directed other films. Right, and there's, it's hard to pinpoint like one masterpiece in the Schrader. Mishima. Mishima. Yeah. But, you know, even that one, not that popular. Yeah, it's not in the public consciousness in the way that the films that Martin Scorsese directed.

And Schrader also, you know, because his sensibility is in many ways so aligned with Scorsesies,

but unlike Scorsese, his batting average isn't that great.

But he is a director that's worked consistently throughout his career.

When you consider him, you imagine that he made a film like

every five years or something like that. But look at his IMDB and it's every two years, every

three years. He just kept working. But you know, in another way, this is another barrier

to appreciating Paul Schrader because, you know, he tackles so many different genres and

there are so many compromises in his career, so many movies that were troubled in some way

or movies that he made because that was the movie he was able to make at the time.

It's not like, you know, Scorsese, where he's had, like, exactly the career that he wants.

And Paul Schrader is a guy as well that the kind of movie he makes, if he doesn't hit the nail

on the head, like, they're

not going to work.

We're going to talk probably a lot about Scorsese versus Paul Schrader, but the way to

start is to say that while they both have upbringings that are very similar, very religious,

and that kind of guilt through the religion is illustrated through their films.

Scorsese is like a city guy, and that's where his religion comes from.

And Paul Schrader is a guy who grew up in Grand Rap in Michigan as a Calvinist.

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