Paul Schrader has revealed details about a new feature film project titled The Basics Of Philosophy, for which he has written an outline and aims to write a script in the next three months.
Speaking to Screen at Sarajevo where he is currently jury president of the feature competition programme, Schrader said the film is about “an intellectual university philosophy professor”. He said it will be in the style of his recent trilogy of First Reformed, The Card Counter and Master Gardener.
Schrader will aim to write the film before shooting Non Compos Mentis, his next film for which he has begun casting, in November.
“I’ve got to do a very quick rewrite on [Compos],” said the filmmaker. “I’m hoping before November to write the new one and have another bullet in the gun ready to go.”
Discussing Non Compos Mentis [Latin for ‘an unsound mind’] in Cannes this year, Schrader said the film will be “a noir [about] a kind of sexual obsession.”
The film will shoot in New York, with an ensemble cast including “two brothers, their demented mother, a younger girl they both fall in love with, and their wives.”
Schrader would not reveal names, but confirmed he has cast the parts of the two brothers, and that the names are well-known to the international industry.
The film will be in the $5m-$6m budget range, said the director, funded through private money. “This is one of the rare cases where I had the finance before I had the cast. I can make a film in 20 days, $5m to $6m. I can get $2.5m in equity and the rest in pre-sales. Then I can make a film! With final cut and everything. Everybody works to scale.”
Schrader also confirmed that he will present the first-ever Japanese screening of his 1985 feature Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters at Tokyo International Film Festival in October. The film was unofficially banned in the country due to its depiction of the controversial Japanese writer Yuko Mishima.
The director presented his latest film, Cannes Competition entry Oh Canada, at Sarajevo this weekend. He also held a ‘Coffee with’ conversation session about his career.
Discussing the current state of the industry, Schrader said, “What has happened is it’s very easy now to make a movie. You can make a movie for $15,000. [But] it’s almost impossible to make a living. In the old system, if you made a film you earned guild minimum. If you’re self-financing, you’re not getting guild minimums because everybody is working for free.”
Sarajevo continues until Friday, August 23.
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