Well, it finally happened: Martin Scorsese’s daughter’s dog ate part of Paul Schrader’s thumb. It’s something we’ve been expecting for many years now, a slot on literally every cinephile’s 2024 Bingo card. Welcome to our new reality, the one where Martin Scorsese’s daughter’s Scottie swallowed a bit of Paul Schrader.
It’s the type of story that can only come from Schrader, a careful weaver of his mythology, which is one of the points of a new profile in Variety. “Topspin,” Schrader calls it, “something to make the ball jump.” The topspin, in this case, is Scorsese’s Scottie just looking for a reason to get back at the man responsible for two films most objectionable to canines, Dog Eat Dog and Cat People.
Per Variety’s Steven Roderick, Schrader met him for dinner last December with a “massive, bloody bandage wrapped around his hand.” Schrader explains he was having dinner at Scorsese’s house, and the director has two “very cute” bichon frisé and one “problematic dog” just waiting to be canceled. This Scottie is the one dog Scrosese “doesn’t like,” but “they have to keep him and blah, blah, blah.” Anyway, he tried to pet the Scottie, which “not only took out part of my thumb, he ate it.”
With a piece of Schrader in the dog’s gut, the writer-director received care from Scorsese’s in-house nurse. We hope that Mr. Schrader is recovering comfortably, but we know that’s not the case. The profile tracks Schrader as he completes his latest movie, Oh, Canada, and spends much of its time attempting to disentangle Schrader’s self-mythologizing. There’s a lot of that, too, like the story of how Schrader stole a bomber jacket from an agent during a meeting and then ran into the agent and told him, “I stole it. I liked it.”
Dog bites aside, Schrader has been in rough shape these last few years. He was hospitalized twice for COVID-related bronchial pneumonia and another time for an Ozempic reaction. He resides in assisted living with his wife, who suffers from dementia, and pays nearly $400,000 a year for her care. Schrader is also ready to start working with Kevin Spacey, and the two have talked about a project about Frank Sinatra. Schrader says Spacey is reading a book about the cancelation of Charlie Chaplin, which is pretty rich, considering the many scandals of Chaplin’s life. Yeah, as usual, there’s a lot going on over in Paul Schrader’s world.