The Death of a Beloved Figure is NOT The Time To Air Your Personal Grievances Against Them
Cool story, bro.
I’m Facebook friends with Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Bringing Out the Dead because that’s somehow an option in 2024. I respect the hell out of Schrader as an artist and find him morbidly fascinating as a human being. He is a goddamn trainwreck of a man. I can’t look away.
There’s a reason Schrader’s “people” encourage him to pipe down when he’s up for awards consideration so that Schrader the man doesn’t fuck things up for Paul Schrader the filmmaker.
So I was not particularly surprised when the eccentric filmmaker responded to the death of Roger Corman, who is widely beloved for many reasons but primarily for the crucial breaks he gave a staggering array of major filmmakers, with a terse, “ROGER CORMAN. Let’s not (sic) too sentimental about Corman. Even in exploitational extremes I couldn’t interest Corman in my script. Rolling Thunder began at AIP but moved on to 20th. Roger wouldn’t touch Blue Collar even with Pryor. As soon as they could Coppola, Scorsese and Demme all moved away from AIP. Roger was better at hyping his rep than at making good flms or supporting good filmmakers.”
I don’t think that Schrader particularly cares what people think of him. He’s not deluded enough to imagine that movie lovers would look at his post and think, “Wow, that Roger Corman was a real piece of shit. No wonder his proteges moved on to studio films after he gave them an opportunity to prove themselves as filmmakers. It’s crazy that he’s being lionized when he should be pilloried for not buying two of Paul Schrader’s screenplays in the mid-1970s.”
No, Schrader wrote this post, which would be ratioed if it were on what I will always call Twitter, for himself. He wrote it because he couldn’t stand the lionizaton of a handsome, charming man he considered a fraud and a phony.
He wrote it because he was angry that a ninety-eight year old man did not want to work with him a half century earlier.
Schrader being Schrader and cinephiles being cinephiles, folks did not respond well to his insistence that a recently departed indie movie icon was human garbage who didn’t honor or understand true artists like himself.
The writer-director’s insinuation that Scorsese, Demme and Coppola left the AIP fold because they disliked Corman is insane and disingenuous. That’s like saying that future major league players must have really hated a beloved minor league manager because his most talented players left to play in the major leagues. Corman was an amazing talent scout who turned wannabe filmmakers into the real thing. If they inevitably moved on, it was because they’d showed the world what they were capable of and were clearly destined for bigger and better things.
Instead of conceding that it’s in poor taste to air your half-assed grudges against immediately after they die the filmmaker doubled down and defended his words and his ideas to the many people who revere Corman.
It should be self-evident that when a beloved figure dies you should not use that as an excuse to publicly air the reasons that you don’t like them and complain about all the ways they disappointed you or let you done.
Death should be a time of sober reflection and appreciation, not for an airing of grievances. This is not Festivus. You are not obligated to pop off on your pet peeves. In fact, it’s the exact worst time to do so.
Corman’s ghost coming to avenge disrespect.
Don’t make someone else’s death all about you and how you’ve been screwed over. That will reflect terribly on you rather than the recently deceased soul whose halo yank off.
Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese are like Goofus and Gallant in general but particularly in this instance. Goofus uses the death of a revered movie icon to vent bitterly about long-ago dissapointments. Gallant graciously said of Corman, “Roger Corman gave me my start in movies. He set the guidelines, and then he gave me tremendous freedom within those guidelines. In essence, he taught me how to actually make movies. If I hadn’t worked with Roger, I wouldn’t have known how to make ‘Mean Streets’ or, when it comes right down to it, any of the pictures that followed. It was the same for many, many other filmmakers of my generation. I admired Roger, I loved him, I loved the pictures he directed (especially the Poe adaptations) and the spirit of his filmmaking. And I will always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me, and the education. I will always be proud to say that I graduated from the school of Roger Corman.”
Be like Martin Scorsese and not Paul Schrader. That is good advice in general, in part because people deservedly love Scorsese the mensch as much as they do the filmmaker, but it is particularly true in this instance.
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