Schrader had always been a strong brew: volatile, long-winded, strangely obsessed with guns. In 1972 his life blew up entirely. He had no job—he quit a fellowship at the American Film Institute in protest over budget cuts—and no money and had recently left his wife for a woman who then left him. For weeks he lay in bed all day, started drinking around five, and then drove through the darkness in his Chevy Nova, with a revolver in his glove compartment, often ending his night sleeping in porn theaters or the car.51 After several weeks of this, Schrader dragged himself to a hospital emergency
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