For hist latest film, “Oh, Canada,” writer/director Paul Schrader was faced with a conundrum. He knew he wanted to cast his “American Gigolo” collaborator Richard Gere as the older version of fictional Canadian documentarian Leonard Fife, but a great deal of the film would also cover Fife as a younger man as he escapes the Vietnam draft in America and crosses over the northern border.
Trying to find a younger Gere proved a predicament, especially since, in his youth, the “Days of Heaven” actor was recognized as quite the heartthrob. In a recent interview with Alison Stewart on her “All of It” podcast, Schrader discussed the NSFW reaction to him finding Jacob Elordi for the part from one of his closet peers.
“I’m good friends with Bret Easton Ellis,” said Schrader. “And I was having dinner with Bret. I said, ‘I’m trying to cast a young Richard Gere.’ Now, Bret is a big fan of ‘American Gigolo.’ He’s written about it in books and so forth. Bret said, ‘Oh, no, no, you’re not going to find a young Richard Gere. You’re just not going to find him.’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I just saw, I just zoomed with this young actor named Jacob Elordi. Bret looked at me and held up his hands and said, ‘Stop right there. I just came in my pants.’”
In reflecting on how Gere changed since he first worked with him on “American Gigolo,” Schrader noticed a few habits he wished to adjust. Somewhat ironically, though, he realized many of these habits might have come from their time working together.
“Pretty much the same. He had picked up a number of mannerisms over the years that I had to knock out of him. I gave him some of those mannerisms to begin with,” Schrader said. “I remember when we were doing ‘Gigolo,’ I showed him [a film]. I said, ‘Oh, look at this guy. Look how he walks. Look how he holds his hips. Look how he walked on his feet.’ So Richard did that walk in ‘American Gigolo.’ Then he kept doing it in his other films.”
In the film, Gere plays a man stricken with terminal cancer, while Elordi plays his younger, healthier self in the past. However, there are times where Schrader uses Gere and Elordi interchangeably, as if Fife is trying to hold on to moments where he still had more life left to live.
“He’s taking little pieces of what he remembers, and he remembers himself as vital. So when he appears, he’s really healthy” Schrader said on the “All of It” podcast.
Pointing to a specific scene as an example, he added, “Elordi walks out of his pregnant wife’s bedroom to see his father-in-law. And then after the meeting with the father-in-law, Richard Gere walks in and lies next to the wife. And they have this conversation they would have had if it were Jake. Now it’s just Richard remembering being Jake. The wonderful young actress Kristine Froseth [who plays his young wife], in the morning, she did a scene in bed with Jake. In the afternoon, she did a scene in bed with Richard. I said, ‘You’re always going to remember this day.’”
“Oh, Canada” is currently playing in theaters from Kino Lorber.
