Legendary screenwriter and pretty good director Paul Schrader is getting a little coverage today for his, shall we say, disappointment in Woody Harrelson's decision to not junket in support of The Walker, in which he stars and which Schrader wrote and directed. Click here for Schrader's comments in a NY Observer profile. We'd be disappointed too, but can't help but think that Defamer's right, and that Woody simply has no interest in a zillion boneheads asking him to compare ad nauseum his roles as "the moron from that Cheers bar and this gay hooker with the silly moustache?" But that was't the only thing that caught our attention about this profile.
The Walker, which co-stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall and Lily Tomlin, is about Carter Page III (Mr. Harrelson), the gay escort of choice for the society ladies of Washington, D.C., who finds himself embroiled in a murder case. Mr. Schrader says that Carter Page is a relative to some of his other, famous antiheroes from Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Light Sleeper, though their similarities aren’t super apparent.
Hold up. "Aren't super apparent"? Aren't we talking about the movies about the guy who gets wrapped up in an attempted political assassination, a guy who has sex with rich ladies for money, and a guy who...OK, well, we haven't seen Light Sleeper, but really: we're guessing you can pretty much switch "drug dealer" with "gay hustler" and get something really similar to The Walker.
Now, to be clear: we're not complaining about those movies. They're genius, and so is Schrader, but let's not kid ourselves: Paul Schrader long ago figured out what his "wheelhouse" (as Scanner Sarah likes to say) is, and from what we can tell, it's populated almost exclusively with lonely, disenfranchised guys slipping increasingly into illegality, immorality, violence, and self-destruction. For crying out loud, even Schrader's script for The Last Temptation of Christ is like that, with the proviso that a) the laws Jesus was breaking were unjustly enforced by David Bowie and b) he kind of meant to get himself killed.
I mean, seriously: are there any Paul Schrader movies that don't fit that structure? Besides Cat People?