Last week, in an interview with New York Magazine, Paul Schrader let it slip that he was about to shoot a new film in the coming months.
Schrader added that the film was an adaptation of one of the last novels by his friend, the late Russell Banks. He plans to shoot it this summer, with Richard Gere in the lead role.
Last Friday, I was told, by a solid source, that this new film would be about a tormented writer on the verge of death. Now I can elaborate with a little further with more details.
It turns out that Schrader is adapting Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone,” but has retitled it “Oh, Canada”. This is said to be a very grim novel about a dying artist who comes to terms with his life. The Harper Collins’ synopsis reads as follows:
At the center of Foregone is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late seventies, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer, and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.
This next film will probably not be a part of Schrader’s recent Bresson-inspired trilogy which was composed of 2018’s “First Reformed,” 2021’s “The Card Counter,” and 2023’s “Master Gardener.”
Schrader, who is turning 77 in July, has had his fair share of health issues these last few years. He filmed “The Master Gardener,” with an oxygen tank and, despite being sick, refused to go to a hospital during the last week of production. At the Venice premiere of the film, he cryptically stated that it would be his "last rodeo”.
The maestro will not go down without a fight. He’s now adamantly waiting for production on “Oh, Canada” to begin this summer.