This week Steven Spielberg spoke at the Time 100 summit about one of his regrets – his 2002 editing of 1982’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” to digital remove shotguns from a scene involving cops.
Spielberg called it a mistake, saying the film is a product of its era and “no film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily or being forced to peer through.”
It’s a sentiment filmmaker Paul Schrader would seem to agree with – strongly. In a new interview with Interview Magazine (via IndieWire), Schrader had some words about directors revisiting their previous films.
Speaking with actor Oscar Isaac, who filmed “The Card Counter” with him, Schrader calls such editing a “very slippery slope” and explains:
“Everything changes, and there’s nothing you can do about it. When people like George [Lucas] work with CGI, you’re not going to recast the movie, you’re not going to rewrite the movie. You could fool with the color. I think Terrence Malick fooling with the color was wrong, and I think when Francis [Ford Coppola] did his longer of ‘Apocalypse Now,’ it was worse than before. So I think it’s better to just let them be.”
Schrader also has an issue with filmmakers who play with “big toys” but isn’t referring to visual effects – more the kinds of things that require big budgets:
I have never been drawn to the big toys like George and Francis and Marty [Scorsese], and once you get hooked on the big toys, then the budgets go way sky-high. By big toys, I mean crowd scenes, a period wardrobe, more explosions.”
He also cares little for whimsey or “cutesy stuff” and says his definition of a room in hell is “where they only show Jacques Tati movies” with the next room over playing “Prairie Home Companion” on a loop.
Schrader has “Master Gardener,” starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver, hitting cinemas soon. He’ll soon get to work with his “American Gigolo” star Richard Gere on an adaptation of Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone”.
