If you want a job done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. And when you have the part of Grecco the Greek, a transgender Cleveland gangster, and everyone from Michael Douglas to Nick Nolte to Quentin Tarantino to Jeff Goldblum to Martin Scorsese to Christopher Walken to Rupert Everett to Michael Wincott decline your calls, sometimes the writer/director has to step in and get the job done. That’s what happened with writer/director Paul Schrader (“Taxi Driver,” “Affliction”) on his latest project, “Dog Eat Dog,” and a peek at the 69-year-old filmmaking veteran’s leap from behind-the-camera to the front can be seen over at Deadline.
READ MORE: The 20 Best Breakout Films From The Cannes Directors’ Fortnight
To call the clip brief would be an understatement. The clip comes in at a mere 26 seconds, and finds Schrader in character shooting the shit with co-star Nicolas Cage. The actor reunites with the filmmaker/newbie actor after their disastrous last feature together, 2014’s mismanaged CIA terrorist flop “Dying Of The Light.” The new film, which is set to premiere as the closing night film at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, finds Cage and Willem Dafoe as a pair of ex-cons involved in a kidnapping that takes a turn for the worst. And things look like they went down much, much smoother this time than they did before.
Schrader got final cut this time around, which is a more than a little reassuring considering how much he got his last film taken away from him and ripped to shreds, and there have been no bad reports or signs of ill will from the quick-to-speak Schrader. Though, of course, we’ll have to wait a week or so to see if the reviews agree.
So click over to watch that clip, and check out another above which seems to suggest the movie will flip between color and black-and-white, along with some new images.
Check out the rest of our coverage from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival by clicking here.
