Paul Schrader Announces New ‘Post-Dying’ Film About Sexual Obsession

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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Paul Schrader is now in his “post-dying” era.

After the Oscar-winning screenwriter shared his health ailments during the pandemic, Schrader recently revealed a new script he is working on. Schrader teased the project in a Q&A following a screening of “Patty Hearst” at the Roxy Cinema in New York City, hosted by Screen Slate (in the below video).

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“I was sort of saturated with dying at that time,” Schrader said of his upcoming “Oh, Canada” adaptation of late friend and author Russell Banks’ final 2021 novel “Foregone.” “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.”

Schrader added, “I feel like it went quite well, so now I’ll make a post-dying film.”

He continued of the currently in-the-works script, “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.”

IndieWire has reached out for additional comment on the project.

Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” reunites him with “American Gigolo” star Richard Gere, who portrays a dying documentary filmmaker that reflects on his life and legacy. Jacob Elordi stars as the younger version of Gere’s character in flashback sequences. Schrader previously described the film to IndieWire as about “Canada being a metaphor for death,” he said. ‘It’s my ‘Ivan Ilyich.’”

The “Taxi Driver” scribe infamously doesn’t watch the Academy Awards but has a slew of high-profile projects rife with Oscar winners in the works in addition to “Oh, Canada.” As formerly announced, Schrader is adapting a script for “Three Guns at Dawn,” which he revealed he had approached Antoine Fuqua to direct.

Schrader additionally told IndieWire’s Anne Thompson that one of his scripts, then-titled “R.N.” about a trauma nurse in Puerto Rico, was optioned by Elisabeth Moss to direct and star in.

“I wanted to do a film about female sexual irresponsibility, mainly behavior that just causes trouble,” Schrader said. “I thought, ‘This is really good.’ But there was a lot of explicit sex in it, masturbation. I’m an old male. ‘How am I going to direct this?’ This is not my part of town. There are a lot of female directors out there now, not like decades ago, when there were only two or three. I feel out of place here, I feel like I’m in Spike Lee’s house telling him how to redecorate. And so I decided not to do it. And then I subsequently have now offered it to Elisabeth Moss for her to star and direct.”

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