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- First Reformed was the premise of the film.
It begins when a young man seeks counseling
from a reverend because he does not believe it's right
to bring a child into this world,
and that, sort of, sets the story in motion.
And, that's not a question
we would've been asking 25 years ago.
- Mm-hmm.
- But, my kids, as well as their friends
do ask this question now.
- Are this answer to purely American
is there a kind of filmmaking
that does not belong in America?
And Paul, you know I'm going to talk to you about that.
I don't know if you read Paul's book.
He wrote one of the seminal books about film history,
called Transcendental Style in Film.
And now,
and when we first met 20 years ago,
I asked you about that influence on Taxi Driver.
And here you are now making First Reformed,
which is clearly influenced by Ozu, Bresson,
Carl Theodor Dreyer.
- In March of 1969,
I was a film critic for the LA Free Press.
I went over to the Laemmle Theater
and saw a screening of Pickpocket,
and reviewed it.
And in that 75 minutes, it's a short film,
two things happened that changed my life.
One was I realized that there was a bridge
between my spiritual life, and my film life,
and it was a bridge of style, not a bridge of content.
- Uh-huh.
- And the other thing that I realized
is that in fact there was a place for me
in the film business, other than a critic.
And, two years later I'd written the book,
and three years later I'd written Taxi Driver,
which is a pick pocket.
And then 50 years later,
those two seeds which fell in that Petri dish,
came and wound up and I made First Reformed, so I'm done.
(laughs)
- [Cast member] You're finished!
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- I feel strongly that the additive process
is much more creative than the subtractive one.
And so, if you can have a first draft
that works at 70 pages,
- [Cast Member] Yep.
you know you're going to have a first draft
that works at 90 pages, and it's just going to get better.
And the same thing with the editing process,
at some point you say to the editor,
let's make a cut of the film
with just the stuff that's good, see how long it is.
Maybe it's 45 minutes long, 55 minutes long.
- Then you put the bad stuff on.
(laughs)
- Then see how much of the rest, we have to put in.
And now, you're thinking in an additive way,
rather than a subtractive way.
When you're always thinking subtractively,
How could I make this shorter?
How could I cut this down?
It's not good for your creative process.
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I began on spec, I'm still writing on spec.
I think I've only had a handful of paid jobs in my life.
So, I walked in the door, seeing this as a form of therapy.
- Ah.
- And I still do.
And so of course you're going to get into,
what are the things that are motivating you?
And the first script Taxi Driver was loneliness,
you know, boom.
And you find a metaphor on Taxi Cab,
take a plot, and run through the metaphor.
I've wished many times that I could be a better employee.
Because there's certainly money to be made.
But I've tried a number of times, and
(laughs)
and it's not really worked.
- [Cast Member] I like that.
- Have you ever been fired?
- Yes.
Well, not so much fired as, you hand in a first draft,
you get no notes.
(laughs)
You get paid for your re-write,
and the phone doesn't ring.
I guess that's kind of telling you
what they think of your draft.
- Is there a major film that you'd like to re-make?
Foreign film, classic, Hollywood film?
- Hm, I get terrified by that.
- Well, that's all we do.
(laughs)
- [Cast Member] Good point.
- Perfect, exactly right.
- We're a good duo.
(laughs)
- I mean, you're just picking and choosing.
You don't actually originate anything.
- [John] Nothing.
- You just go through this huge buffet of cinema,
and make your own plate.
And even though all the elements are out there
at this endless Chinese buffet,
everybody's plate is different.
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