Paul Schrader — Happy Place — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

The Death of a Beloved Figure is NOT The Time To Air Your Personal Grievances Against Them

Roger Corman’s passing provided a good illustration of how and how not to remember an influential, widely beloved figure.

The Big WhoopNathan RabinMay 15, 2024Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Roger Corman, RIP, mourning, faux pas, bad taste, Film

The 2016 Neo-Noir Dog Eat Dog is a Tough, Nasty Little Sleeper With Fine Work from Paul Schrader, Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe

The Paul Schrader-directed 2016 Neo-Noir Dog Eat Dog, which pairs Nicolas Cage with Willem Dafoe, doesn’t have much of a reputation but I dug it.

Director Paul Schrader and Star Nicolas Cage Encouraged Audiences to Skip Their 2014 Thriller The Dying of the Light But They Didn't Need Any Help in Avoiding His Late-Period Stinkers

Nicolas Cage re-teamed with Bringing Out the Dead screenwriter Paul Schrader for the muddled 2014 psychodrama The Dying of the Light, which sucks in a different way than most of Cage’s vehicles from this period, but it still sucks.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #236 The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

My patron-funded exploration of the films of David Bowie hits another major milestone with 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which smartly casts the late pop icon as a cooly pragmatic Pontius Pilate opposite Willem Dafoe’s punishingly intense Jesus.

The Travolta/Cage Project #58 Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader and Nicolas Cage got together for 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead, a pitch-black paramedic comedy of sin and salvation that, in an unsurprising turn of events is very intense and pretty fucking terrific.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #65 The Canyons (2013)

The mind behind Taxi Driver! The enfant terrible that gave us American Psycho! Lindsay Lohan and the “nice guy” of porn! Crowd-funding! It’s 2013’s disastrous The Canyons! What could possibly go wrong, other than everything?

The Big WhoopNathan RabinAugust 20, 2019Paul Schrader, Bret Easton Ellis, Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, #MeToo, Kickstarter, Flops