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54: The Card Counter (with Will Menaker) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-27 13:27:24
Imported:
2026-06
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  • JF 54 - The Card Counter (Will Menaker).mp3
  • 54_The_Card_Counter_wi... - audiogram.mp4
  • 54_The_Card_Counter_wi... - audiogram.mp4

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Content

Chapo Trap House’s Will Menaker joins us from Brooklyn to discuss the career of veteran writer-director Paul Schrader, whose latest work The Card Counter is the latest iteration of a story Schrader has told many times over his long career, in true Auteurist tradition: an immersion into a dark subculture from the anguished perspective of God’s Lonely Man.

To set the table, Will and I also discuss two important concepts of understanding modern cinema, both of which strongly apply to this podcast and The Card Counter: Movie Mindset™ and Dudes Rock Cinema. Along the way we discuss previous Schrader films that specifically relate to this latest work including Rolling Thunder, Blue Collar, Light Sleeper, Auto Focus, The Walker and First Reformed.

Plus we review Schrader’s use of Facebook to communicate takes so hot that he is often told by his distributor to log off!

Follow Will Menaker on Twitter and Letterboxd.

Movie Mindset™ used with permission (copyright 2020 Will Menaker, all rights reserved).

Paul Schrader’s Facebook posts are documented on Twitter at @paul_posts 

Music Video for Tight Connection To My Heart - Bob Dylan (Schrader, 1985)

Trailer for The Card Counter (Schrader, 2021)

Files

Previews only

Comments

Jesper Ohlsson

Actually saw this movie yesterday, and then First Reformed right after. These two were the first movies I've seen from Schrader, and while they both have really clunky writing and directing in parts, it's completely "forgivable" for having a director "going for it". My main feeling after watching both of them was just that; that there's not enough specific, earnest cranks who make movies. //And in the case of the Card Counter, I can almost - kinda - buy the jarring "off-ness" in tone to be an attempt at portraying how impossible it is to "go back to normal" from having been an Abu Ghraib torturer, and how that experience creates a permanent strangeness to "completely normal" things like "meeting a girl, and flirting a bit". ...I never saw it, but Redlettermedia did a catch-up of a bunch of shows some time ago, and they covered "Kevin Can F**k Himself", which deliberately switches between hacky sit-com to Breaking Bad-esque drama depending on which of the two main character's perspective we are following. It's not a 1-to-1, but it's what I thought of when seeing the card counter (specifically Tiffany Haddish's role). ...it's sociopathic to have been to actual hell, and having become one of the demons in it, but it's also another brand of sociopathy to go back to "the normal world" and seamlessly slide into "knowing what kind of drink a guy should order at a bar, doing playful romantic banter, etc". I really don't know to what degree this was intentional by Schrader (I honestly think very little was), but the "offness" of the movie and its subject-matter did make me think of it, which was interesting.