EXCLUSIVE: Paul Schrader On His Unlikely Reinvention as a Bollywood Auteur

Though he only had a "glancing knowledge" of Bollywood at that time, by the time Schrader connected with producer David Weisman and cowriter Mushtaq Sheikh (pictured below with Schrader) and began fleshing out his concept, he'd watched over a hundred Indian films.

"Bollywood is changing," Schrader noted. "The films don't have to be two and a half hours, they don't have to be song and dance, they don't have to be completely frivolous." Still, Schrader actually sparked to the Bollywood formula and plans to include song-and-dance sequences within Xtreme City's thriller framework. To him, it's not unlike the strong use of a soundtrack he employed in his 1992 film Light Sleeper, "but in this, I'll have to take it up another notch and use lip-sync."

Still, the cross-cultural collaboration -- echoed in Xtrme City's plot, which finds an American and an Indian joining forces to rescue the American's sister-in-law from the Mumbai underworld -- has produced its fair share of challenges. Weisman recalled how Schrader originally intended the American to fall in love with the Indian's sister, which wouldn't have been well-received by Bollywood audiences. "What Mushtaq pointed out to him is that it's impossible for that to happen in an Indian movie," he said. "If our hero falls in love with the sister of his best friend, our audience expects to find out later that the hero is actually the villain because no hero would do that."

Instead, Schrader found a work-around by embracing the uniquely Indian concept of a "paying guest," where a foreigner establishes an immediate rapport with the family hosting him. "I've seen other directors do this with foreign cultures: they try to come in and impose themselves," Schrader said. "I don't think that's going to work here. I'm very open to saying, 'What should we do about this?' not just 'What should I do?'"

Sheikh hopes that Schrader's openness to the culture will ensure that Xtrme City has the kind of effervescent Indian spirit that he felt was lacking from Slumdog Millionaire. "I felt it highlighted the pimples and it didn't look at the dimples, you know what I mean?" he said of Danny Boyle's Oscar winner. "It made India look like a hellhole, and it made me feel bad because I choose to stay in that hellhole. It's not that I'm being myopic or in denial, I just felt it was lopsided...Not everybody is taking small kids and gouging their eyes out and making beggars out of them."

Still, Schrader is quick to point out that Xtrme City shouldn't be linked to Slumdog -- or to much of his own filmography, for that matter. "Adam Resurrected was made with a certain thought in mind and it was financed by people who really didn't care if the film made money," he said. "That's not where I am now, and that's not what this film is going to be based on. You have to understand that what I want to do is make a commercial project that works across both filmmaking traditions. I'm not doing this to make some idiosyncratic statement that will define me and [adopt the attitude of] 'Who cares about the viewers?'"

Will it work? Can the R-rated auteur produce a family-friendly thriller with songs, dance, and chaste romance? "Well, we'll see, won't we?" Schrader said, before producing one encouraging sign: a long, hearty laugh.

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