On paper, the idea of Paul Schrader leaving Hollywood for Bollywood shouldn't work. Schrader's had a hand in some of the most iconic American films of the last century -- he scripted Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ and directed films like American Gigolo and Affliction -- and the dark themes that have long fascinated him would seem a mismatch for the joyous, colorful world of Indian cinema. And yet, that's exactly what makes the concept so immediately compelling; like Steven Soderbergh's planned Cleopatra musical, the idea of Paul Schrader directing a Bollywood musical is simply too bold to ignore.
After reading the announcement of the project (titled Xtrme City) in Variety this week, I called up Schrader to learn just what he has in mind. "I've made a career out of doing oddball films that have a very niche market," he admitted to me, right off the bat. "This runs contrary to that image."
The last several years have been tough on Schrader. In 2003, he completed a big-studio prequel to The Exorcist that was reshot by Renny Harlin, and his last two films -- the Woody Harrelson drama The Walker and the Holocaust film Adam Resurrected -- received minimal releases. "Independent film is drowning, as everyone keeps reminding us, and maybe this is a reaction to that in a way," said Schrader. "I'm trying to find something interesting to do while independent film goes through this rather difficult stage. It's more difficult than I've ever seen it to make an independent film in the U.S."
Xtreme City found its genesis last year when Schrader traveled to the Osian Film Festival in New Delhi, which had acquired his late brother Leonard's extensive lobby card collection. While there, he was pitched a Bollywood concept to direct, but "I didn't think it was a particularly good idea," Schrader said. "Then I got back to New York and a seed had been planted in my head. So I started coming up with another idea that I thought might work: a cross-cultural international thriller with a Bollywood base."
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.