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The Gigolo Grows Up
He made De Niro a taxi driver, Gere an American gigolo, and with his latest film, The Walker, writer-director Paul Schrader refashions Woody Harrelson as a gay D.C. socialite.
From The Advocate  December 18, 2007
The Gigolo Grows Up

Imagine a middle-aged man with this unlikely résumé: In his 20s he was a taxi driver; in his 30s, a high-priced male prostitute; and in his 40s, an insomniac drug dealer. As the man enters his 50s, where would an employment agency hope to slot him?

Paul Schrader pondered that question several years ago. As the writer of Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, and Light Sleeper, Schrader has led that man -- a lonely fringe character with unusual wares to ply -- through a series of films he sees as thematically linked.

“I was thinking of Julian Kaye from American Gigolo and I started wondering what would become of a person like that in midlife,” Schrader explains. “He’d be funny, because his skills would be more social, and he’d probably be out of the closet. He’d be like a society walker, which struck me as an interesting occupational metaphor for these kinds of service industries -- like a taxi driver, a drug dealer, or a gigolo -- that look into society but aren’t really quite part of it.”

The result is Carter Page III, a gay Washington, D.C., gadfly portrayed by Woody Harrelson. Bristling under the weight of his family’s political legacy, Carter turns into a Capote-like confidant to a gaggle of society wives (including Lily Tomlin and Lauren Bacall). When one of those wives, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, becomes embroiled in a murder plot, Carter’s attempts to help her draw him deeper into the cross fire, where he discovers inner strength he didn’t know he had.

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