37 Minutes With... Paul Schrader

At Coterie, the Hudson Yards senior-living facility the screenwriter moved into to stay close to his wife.

- By Adriane Quinlan

Paul Schrader is late and hasn’t eaten. He’s been stuck in his apartment on a Zoom call with Antoine Fuqua of Training Day, trying to get the director to sign on to a new script he’s set on calling Three Guns at Dawn. It follows three brothers—a dirty cop, a serial killer, and a drug dealer—who hate one another. At 1:30, he appears in the restaurant, orders three eggs scrambled and a scoop of cottage cheese, mixes it all together, and huffs it down, his heavy gold bracelet thumping the table. Then he looks around. The space is sterile but tasteful: big windows overlooking Hudson Yards, vaguely mid-century furniture, an open kitchen. Everything smells of jasmine. “Living in this place feels like living on the Cunard Line,” he says. “Sometimes I think, God, I’ve got to get to a dive bar somewhere.”

This place is Coterie Hudson Yards, a luxury senior-living facility that Schrader, 76, moved into in February. It’s a good spot to write in, he says, and he has been working near constantly since he arrived, managing to finish two scripts from the desk in his one-bedroom on the eighth floor. The first he optioned to Elisabeth Moss to direct; the second, an adaptation of one of the last novels by his friend Russell Banks, he is keeping for himself. He plans to shoot it this summer with Richard Gere in the lead role.