Paul Schrader briefly returns to Xtreme City to talk failed Leonardo DiCaprio movie
It was supposed to be “the future of filmmaking" with the biggest stars of Hollywood and Bollywood. Then it fell apart.
Photo by Stephane Cardinale (Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
In 2009, Paul Schrader took a gamble on what he considered “the future of filmmaking.” Xtreme City was supposed to be a Hollywood-Bollywood thriller led by Hollywood’s biggest star, Leonardo DiCaprio, with Bollywood’s Shah Rukh Khan. Martin Scorsese would be the executive producer, and Khan’s collaborator Mushtaq Shiekh would write it. The movie was about two members of the UN peacekeeping force in Somalia, an American and an Indian, who reconnect in India after “the American has a burdensome family obligation,” Shiekh said in 2011. “Global financing” may have been the future of movies, as Schrader told the New York Times in 2013, but Xtreme City wouldn’t be the film to make it happen.
During his promotional tour for Oh, Canada, Schrader appeared on the Schrader-focused podcast Pod Casty For Me and offered his most detailed account of his attempts to make the movie. However, it’s a tale as old as show business: complications arose, and egos followed. Schrader explains that he, Scorsese, Khan, and DiCaprio met in Berlin to discuss the movie. It soon became apparent that “Shah Rukh was the boss,” and he wasn’t about to play “second banana” to a director or Leo.
“[Khan] hires directors. Sometimes he hires multiple directors: he’ll hire somebody for the musical number; he’ll hire somebody else for the action; he’ll hire somebody else for the personal-relationship scenes,” Schrader said. “He can do that. He has never really worked under the harness of an auteur, and that, I could see, was starting to grate on him. And he had never done a film in the West before, and he had never been a second banana to somebody like Leo before.”
Schrader visited with Khan several times in Mumbai, but Schrader “could feel the ground slowly eroding underneath him.” Soon, his commitment became “provisional,” and the film fell apart. “Once his commitment went from ‘firm’ to ‘provisional,’ Leo’s went from ‘firm’ to ‘provisional.’ Now you have two ‘provisional’ commitments, which means you have no commitment at all.” Showbusiness is the same everywhere, and there’s no business like it. Still, while the movie sounds interesting, we encourage Mr. Schrader to consider reusing the title Xtreme City.