Books in Film
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Is this film any good? I've always half wanted to see it but never got round to it.
not seen it for years and years, maybe not since it was on moviedrome...
its a kind of interesting mood piece and has the odd good sequence, but it's pretty hollow and the main issue for me was that you don't really care about richard gere as a person, he's really quite an unlikeable character. i think paul schrader is always an interesting director and there's stuff going on (i really liked cat people). it felt to me at the time that he was basically trying to make a european art house film in an american context, but it was unconvincing.
if you watch it, let us know what you think
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ALEX ISRAEL — We’ve spoken about your interest in Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo. Tell me about your relationship to the film.
BRET EASTON ELLIS — I was 16 when it came out and back then it seemed very shocking. It was Paramount’s big spring movie of 1980 and it reverberated through our culture and started to change things. What was shocking was that there had never been a movie that looked at male beauty in the way American Gigolo did. We’d seen women lit, addressed, and undressed in that fashion, but we’d never seen a movie essentially about male beauty. It was the first metrosexual movie. I think it anticipated a change in culture that would be seen with more clarity later on in Calvin Klein ads and in the photographs of Herb Ritts.
ALEX ISRAEL — So it offered a new way of thinking about male sexuality’s role in mass culture?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — A lot of movies have dealt with male sexuality. But does American Gigolo really deal with male sexuality? Richard Gere plays a prostitute in it. It’s a film noir. Regardless of what Paul Schrader was going for at the time, it has a heavy homoerotic element. But it wasn’t a gay film. It was saying, look, this is where we’re headed as a culture: male beauty in straight culture is going to be embraced in this way — not as it is in gay culture, but in this other way. I remember seeing the movie a number of times, knowing that it wasn’t a great film, but that it was very suggestive. Now, 30 years later, it’s a key LA movie.
ALEX ISRAEL — An especially key movie for you, right?
BRET EASTON ELLIS — Completely, right down to the fact that I named Julian in Less Than Zero after Gere’s character in American Gigolo. For better or worse, in 1980 I began working on Less Than Zero. There wasn’t really a Julian character in the first draft of that book. When that character began to announce itself in subsequent drafts he was named Julian — in homage to American Gigolo.
Bret Easton Ellis - purple MAGAZINE
interview and portraits by ALEX ISRAEL I pulled off of Sunset Strip heading for BRET EASTON ELLIS's home. I’d finished reading his much-anticipated
purple.fr
perhaps it warrants a rewatch, altho i'm not a massive fan of BEE... have you watched it recently version?
The paul schrader story i love is where he was writing taxi driver, the one in 'easy riders raging bulls':
"In his first flourishing years as a Hollywood screenwriter, Paul Schrader hung out at a sprawling house in Brentwood, just across the street from where Marilyn Monroe was found dead. He would sleep during the day, or drive round looking for porno cinemas. At night, he would sit up writing; a brass crown of thorns perched on his head and a .38 idling on the desk beside him.
Whenever Schrader hit a tricky patch he would stop typing, put the gun to his temple and dry-fire the trigger. Click, click, click. Taxi Driver was written this way."
https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/feb/12/features1
He's what i call a "proper american" - raised strict by god-fearers, went the other way massively.
The paul schrader story i love is where he was writing taxi driver, the one in 'easy riders raging bulls':
"In his first flourishing years as a Hollywood screenwriter, Paul Schrader hung out at a sprawling house in Brentwood, just across the street from where Marilyn Monroe was found dead. He would sleep during the day, or drive round looking for porno cinemas. At night, he would sit up writing; a brass crown of thorns perched on his head and a .38 idling on the desk beside him.
Whenever Schrader hit a tricky patch he would stop typing, put the gun to his temple and dry-fire the trigger. Click, click, click. Taxi Driver was written this way."
https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/feb/12/features1
He's what i call a "proper american" - raised strict by god-fearers, went the other way massively.
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Never seen it. I just remembered reading and posting that interview and thought it was relevant.
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I have been watching lots of Schrader recently though; rewatched Taxi Driver and Bringing Out the Dead, watched Light Sleeper and recently bought Blue Collar and Hardcore. Got First Reformed here to watch too.
He's got a new one on the way called The Card Counter and he's supposed to be doing some sort of Western too, plus another collab with Scorsese. He did an interview with the New Yorker the other week,
www.newyorker.com
He's got a new one on the way called The Card Counter and he's supposed to be doing some sort of Western too, plus another collab with Scorsese. He did an interview with the New Yorker the other week,
Paul Schrader on Making and Watching Movies in the Age of Netflix
The screenwriter and director discusses the future of cinema and the transformation of audiences.
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What does this mean?
i really like that diagram actually, makes a lot of sense. ben rivers is quite interesting filmmaker, he's the only one i know in the top bit. the rest feels all quite obvious.
i did get hold of his book at one point, cos i really like bresson, but it was way over my head.
Amazon product ASIN 0520296818
i never really got into dreyer or ozu, but i love bresson.
i did get hold of his book at one point, cos i really like bresson, but it was way over my head.
Amazon product ASIN 0520296818
i never really got into dreyer or ozu, but i love bresson.