In New York, his films enjoyed a series of revivals. When movie theatres reopened, Schrader was in vogue. Schrader had gone through years when his movies were panned or ignored, but that film attracted a passionate audience, who responded not only to its moral seriousness and its anxiety over climate change-the pastor counsels a would-be environmental terrorist-but to its depiction of Schrader’s central theme, loneliness. In “First Reformed,” from 2017, Ethan Hawke played him as a tormented pastor.
Over the years, the character has been a cabbie, a sex worker, a drug dealer, a card sharp. Many of these movies feature an archetype Schrader calls “God’s lonely man,” or “the man in the room.” Solitary, obsessive, in turmoil, this man writes in a journal and waits, trying not to boil over.
He is perhaps best known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese-“Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” among them-but he has made more than twenty films of his own, including “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” “Light Sleeper,” and “Affliction.” His greatest commercial success, “American Gigolo,” from 1980, with a young Richard Gere in Armani, helped set the tone and the look of the decade that followed. Schrader makes the sort of serious, character-driven films that always seem to be going out of fashion. He was sent home later that day, a Friday. The staff got me on oxygen and I realized what had happened. Gradually it became apparent that I was in a waking dream state and the staff calmed me down and got me back into bed. “He’s gonna die!” I screamed for help-finally hospital workers came into my room. I could not get anyone at the hospital to help me or take me seriously. I was directing a sequence about an emergency room rescue. Woke up in hospital room 3am this morn in a TOTAL panic.
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