Table Talk: Paul Schrader and Hardcore (1979)

Anton: The Three Brothers have been thinking about Paul Schrader quite a bit recently, particularly since the release of 2017’s First Reformed, a film we all highly recommended and which signalled Schrader’s return to eminence within current film culture and criticism. On Episode 10 of the 3 Brothers Filmcast, we chatted about Paul Schrader’s latest work, The Card Counter, and I recommended Hardcore, Schrader’s second directorial effort, as a notable film of his worth checking out.

I think that Hardcore is a particularly good entry point to Schrader’s body of work as a director since it bares many similarities to Taxi Driver, the Martin Scorsese 1976 classic that is also Schrader’s most famous screenplay. If many filmgoers are chiefly familiar with Schrader through his screenplays directed by Scorsese, Hardcore is a logical first step into his directorial filmography, since, as we can talk about, the film demonstrates many of the same signature concerns Schrader explores in his screenplays. 

For example, in both Taxi Driver and Hardcore, we see the persistent influence of John Ford’s The Searchers. 

Anders: Exactly. In our initial back and forth about the film after viewing it, I noted that this is basically another revisiting of The Searchers, about a rescue mission and attempt to recover a “lost girl.” Thus, it is weighted with all the same thematic explorations of gender relations, violations of cultural norms, and fears of defilement by the “Other.” But in this case, rather than contrasting Ethan’s white settlers with the Comanche, we get the strict Midwestern Calvinism of Jake journeying into the territory of debauched post-counterculture California, a grimy world of pimps, pornography, and sexual menace.

Anton: But do the allusions to The Searchers operate the same in Hardcore as they do in Taxi Driver? For instance, is there the same dynamic between the protagonist, the perceived “lost girl” or victim, and the perceived Others?

I find that Taxi Driver is about a man who, although standing out as a loner, is more a part of the underworld he navigates, whereas Hardcore is rather a journey into the underworld by a total outsider. As critics such as Roger Ebert have noted, there’s an implied racial, perhaps racist, dimension to Travis Bickle’s revulsion at the pimps he encounters, so, yes, they are the Others to him. But it’s not like he’s not already driving around the city as a taxi driver, witnessing its sordidness, even if he is alienated from the world around him. 

Do you think that’s a fair contrast?

Anders: Yes, I think you’re getting at a key difference in the structure of the film in terms of the relation of the main character to the world he is venturing into.

It’s also hard not to see Hardcore as a deeply personal knowing something of Schrader’s own biography. Schrader was raised in the same Dutch Reformed background that George C. Scott’s Jake Van Dorn comes from, and Jake is by all accounts based on Schrader’s father. What makes it fascinating is that while Jake is clearly the protagonist, it was Schrader himself who left the Midwest for Hollywood and abandoned his childhood religion.

In the early scenes, when Jake’s brother shuts off the TV in disgust, he exclaims:

Do you know who makes things like that? All the kids who couldn't make it here go out to California and make these shows trying to make us feel bad about that. Well, I didn't like them when they were here, and I don't like them now they're out there.

Basically, Schrader was one of those kids “out there.” And that complicates our reading of the film, since it is in effect a work of empathy with Paul’s father and the fears and reservations he may have had about his son moving to LA and getting into the sinful film business. 

Anton: The attention to the character of Jake in Hardcore, to his life in the Midwest and especially to his religion, also demonstrates, in my view, an important difference from The Searchers or Taxi Driver model, and I think that difference reflects Schrader’s personal history and where his own parallels fit into the story: Hardcore has a dual focus on both Jake’s world and world he infiltrates. And both are represented as being outside the normal American experience. We aren’t journeying from a typical Midwestern lifestyle to the seedy world of pornography, nor are we journeying away from a fundamentalist worldview to a normal Californian one. 

Anders: Yes, so in Hardcore, the relationship between the two worlds is different, as both are outside what might be seen as the normal American experience.

Schrader says he never saw a film before he was out of high school, as all movies themselves were seen as perversions of the truth and therefore corrupting. So, for a certain religious viewpoint there is little to differentiate “legitimate” cinema from pornographic films, or even the more repulsive concepts of child pornography or “snuff films.” I think this shapes Jake’s journey in many ways. It’s certain that Scharder’s own father’s fears over the state of his son’s soul would certainly be on par with what Jake fears for his daughter: eternal damnation certainly trumps worldly exploitation in the Calvinist worldview.

Anton: I’m curious about what you see as the film’s portrayal of pornography as a seemless extension of Hollywood filmmaking in Hardcore. You described a similar continuum between popular cinema and pornography in De Palma’s Body Double in conversation with me recently.

It seems to me that Hardcore is, in part, depicting Jake’s worldview, which is shaped by passages in the Bible such as 1 John 2:15–16:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Passages like that, which help illuminate the Reformed view of the world, put all worldly things on a continuum of distraction and redirection away from God. And so anything that does that, from TV and regular movies to porn, and even the worst forms of porn, do that, to varying degrees—but they all do it to some extent, in this worldview. 

Anders, I know you are a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, and often cite Boogie Nights as a favourite modern classic. Since we are discussing Hardcore and its representation of the porn industy, I’ll ask you: How do you think Hardcore compares to Boogie Nights? Given not just the prevalence but also the mainstreaming of porn these days, it seems to me that both films are thematically significant, providing some insight into our modern culture.

Anders: Well, it’s an interesting comparison because Hardcore is so clearly about a certain perception of the industry that actually makes little sense in certain ways: that is, the idea that “mainstream” Hollywood films would be a gateway to pornography as the “real” pinnacle, rather than vice versa, as we see in something like Boogie Nights. At the same time, a film like Hardcore appeals on an emotional and psychological level to the worst fears of those who, very reasonably in many ways, are opposed to pornography. For instance, pornography is represented by broad stereotypes in the film: the mustache that Jake dons for his “auditions,” “Big Dick Blaque,” and the racialized identity of Ratan (played by Deep Space Nine’s Marc Alaimo, I’ll add!).

Boogie Nights, in comparison, is a story told from the inside, and is very well researched in terms of standing in for certain figures. For instance, I recall Tarantino remarking on Amy Nicholson’s film podcast at The Ringer before Once Upon a Time…  in Hollywood debuted, that despite Anderson’s objections, it’s clear that Burt Reynold’s Jack Horner is based on a real person, Gerard Damiano (who made the infamous 1972 porn film Deep Throat). And Tarantino’s objection was that Damiano would have made a film that was much more high quality than Jack Horner’s comically inept attempt at cinematic art.

But Boogie Nights is no less harrowing than Hardcore in showing the desperation and brokenness of its characters; consider the way it preys upon the audience’s moral revulsion at self-degradation in the scene when Dirk is assaulted for engaging in male prostitution in the parking lot. But the respective portrayals of the depths of the pornography industry can be linked together, as when, in Hardcore, Jake’s fantasy of his daughter’s “abduction” is revealed in the end. Jake’s daughter Kristen could be one of Jack’s “family” in Boogie Nights. But Kristen finds a way out. In Boogie Nights, there is no father to save them.

Anton: If I recall correctly, when Jake’s daughter tells him she ran away and that she wasn’t abducted, she brings up love—or rather the lack of love she felt at home. And remember, Jake’s wife left him, we sort of quietly uncover in the film. If we recall that Bible passage about the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, in a sense Jake’s rejection of all worldly things means that it has hardened him to even the good things present in the world, such as his daughter and, previously, his wife. I think the film invites us to consider whether Jake actually showed any visible love for either. 

While some think the ending of Hardcore is a melodramatic mistep or failure, and I understand some of those criticisms, I also think people overlook how the ending works as an indictment of both worlds it portrays, the religious fundamentalism as well as the porn world. Neither is good, which is pretty typical of Schrader. 

Anders: Yes, I think it’s accurate to say the film condemns both Jake’s Calvinist world and the California porn underworld. Furthermore, Jake’s journey, motivated by his previously undisplayed love for his daughter, opens him in some ways to human connection. I think it’s worth considering the non-sexual relationship he develops with Niki (Season Hubley), a prostitute and some-time porn actress, who helps him in his search for Kristen. Niki grows to appreciate how Jake isn’t interested in exploiting her, while perhaps Jake is able to see that not everyone in the porn underworld is thoroughly corrupted. However, the end of the film establishes Jake as still using her for his own purposes, and he ends up becoming violent with Niki and leaving her behind once he finally finds Kristen.

So, as you rightly point out, the film isn’t just some exploitation film with a pure hero descending into the underworld. It’s murky and people’s motivations are conflicted. I think the proper genre to view Hardcore as working within is the neo-noir. Like the classic noir, it’s all about a seemingly righteous man trying to maintain his moral code in a murky underworld, and failing in many ways. Schrader captures the labyrinthian plot structure of the noir, the idea that logic and clear-cut divisions between good and bad have to be cast aside to find the answer to the mystery.

Because the film is so hyper-real at moments and even nightmarish, it sometimes feels like something out of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire, with the lost identities and look-alikes, and the consuming darkness of Los Angeles.

Anton: Yes, I agree about the nightmarish atmosphere, at times. And I think Hardcore is underappreciated as a 70s neo-noir.

Let’s circle back to Schrader and religion, but in a different way than before. You’ve talked a lot about Schrader and his interest in the transcendental style in film. Do you see that style here at all?

Anders: Less so, or more difficult to see, than in his most recent films. Religion is explored in different, much more American ways, in Hardcore; through the exploration of moral complexity inflected by the genres of the Western and noir. Hardcore isn’t as sparse as First Reformed or The Card Counter. It fits comfortably into the tradition of New Hollywood, by bringing in darker stories and mature content into the classic Hollywood models. It mostly follows classical Hollywood style; it’s not stylistically comparable to a film by Bresson, Dreyer or Ozu. While the transcendental style eschewed overly emotional moments, austerity, and elliptical narration and off-screen space, Hardcore culminates in a melodramatic revelation in Jake’s encounter with Kristen. Perhaps the deflationary aspects of the ending point toward a slight denial of the full narrative satisfaction Hollywood typically aims for and more of the ambiguity of something like First Reformed and The Card Counter.

Hardcore (1979, USA)

Written and directed by Paul Schrader; starring George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, and Season Hubley.

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