Paul Schrader Talks Exorcist Making

MYERS: Then what were your thoughts on the sequels? Did you go out of your way to watch them and see what worked and what didn’t, or did you stay away?

SCHRADER: Well, John Boorman’s [Exorcist II: The Heretic] —which is far too ambitious. It’s all over the place. And Blatty’s [The Exorcist III], which suffered because he was relatively inexperienced as a director, but also from the fact that it was remade into a different film after he finished. One thing I like about a prequel is that you’re free from The Exorcist. All you had to do was have Merrin meet The Devil and make sure that he survives. You didn’t have to reference anything. Georgetown was twenty-five years in the future, and you could do it as a period film. Renny [Harlin], in his commentary [on the Exorcist: The Beginning DVD] talks about how accelerated film making has become. How many more set-ups and shots there are in the average film today, and how fast films are made. When you look at this film, it’s quite leisurely by those standards, and the thinking was, "Do a film set in the forties, set in an earlier time" and sort of adhere to the feeling of that time, of the film making, and try to have as many floor effects as possible, and shoot it in that kind of old-fashioned way.

MYERS: Given the lackluster quality of the sequels, were you ever afraid of attaching your name to the franchise?

SCHRADER: No. (laughs) I’ve done unlikely things over my career. I’ve lacked the fear of doing something that could come back and slap you in the face. I’ve never been afraid of stepping up to the plate and taking a swing.

MYERS: One of the accusations he made(Caleb) was that you took the film for a paycheck, as a way into more mainstream, commercial films.

SCHRADER: Well, he should talk. It was not my project. I didn’t originate it. It was someone else’s project. The moment someone hires you to do something they have developed, you’re being hired. So I guess if he wants to say I was hired, then he’s right. And yes, I wouldn’t have done it for free. I’m quite sure I got much less than Renny Harlin did.

MYERS: What was your initial reaction to hearing you’d been replaced by Renny Harlin?

SCRADER: I was surprised he took the job, because it’s not a very desirable job. You know, being second in line, being restrained by the scandal, the nature of Morgan Creek, not going back to Morocco. I know some other directors who turned down the job. It’s a money thing. That’s the only way you could take that job. Renny can say whatever he wants, but why else do you take that job if you can get another job? If you’ve got a nice selection of jobs, you choose the one that is both satisfying and rewarding. If you don’t have much of a selection, you choose the one that they’re offering.

 MYERS: Were you familiar with him as a director?

SCHRADER: We worked on a project together for Mario Kassar a number of years ago. I was gonna write a script for him, The Speedboat King of Miami, but Kassar’s company went down before I could begin writing it, so I never did write that one.

MYERS: I assume you’ve heard that Harlin claims your shots are "stock footage" on the DVD commentary [of Exorcist: The Beginning].

SCHRADER: He’s smart enough to know that’s not true. Obviously, he was under instructions on that commentary not to acknowledge there was another film, and so he gets stuck because he can’t really talk about the design of the church, because it’s the same church, or the design of the village, because it’s the same village.

But once he gets to a set he actually built, like the tent, then he can talk about it. He must have been under instructions never to say, "This is the church that was in the earlier film." In fact, the man who designed the church, the village, the dig site, was a man named John Graysmark. He was not brought back for [Harlin’s] film. And he was not credited.

MYERS: You haven’t spoken with Renny Harlin.

SCHRADER: No. There wouldn’t be much to talk about. I mean, theoretically, somewhere down the road, in a few months or so, it would be interesting to see if he’d do a one-on-one, but I don’t know why he’d do it.

An interesting interview, to read the rest head over to BloodyNews.

I saw Renny Harlin's version and enjoyed it. It had its weak points but it was still a pretty good movie when you compare to all the other drivel coming out to theatres. Hopefully we will get a chance to see Mr. Schraders vision of it and see how it looks.