Although it only recently hit tape and disc, bypassing the multiplexes altogether (thanks to the liquidation of its backer), Forever Mine premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival back in 1999, where and when I sat in on Schrader's "Mavericks" symposium, which is basically a Q&A attended by aspiring filmmakers. Looking over the notes I made that day, my intention to write a piece that never materialized is very clear. Here are some choice soundbites from Martin Scorsese's favourite Dutch Calvinist hyphenate 'maverick':

• "Movies are very retrograde in the social development."
• "I really don't think the screenwriter is actually a writer."
• "I don't write for actors...and I don't write for the camera."
• "I don't believe in test screenings."
• "I think we are running out of gas with all these special effects."
• "You don't really wanna make Austin Powers; you wanna be in the Austin Powers business."
• "I had always been working in existentialism...in Forever Mine, I went back to the romantic hero, the nineteenth century hero. I went back to the cinema of Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray."

And, finally,

• "All that camera bullshit slows down a story."

Schrader, which I may or may not have conveyed with these quotes, is a fun listen, captivating in his loose-lippedness. But very little of what he said to the wannabes took on the heft of advice or the bodily shape of an idea. The problems with Forever Mine, which despite any did not entirely deserve its straight-to-video fate, are that it's most successful as a dialogue dispenser (it's always fun for writers to create a purple romantic: "It is my purpose to be with Ella...like plants turning to the sun. Or death. Or taxes," Alan tells Liotta, provoking the inspired response, "Nobody talks like that. Make sense!"), and that it accepts the social outcome of movies as retrograde (for starters, its dual-setting, Florida in the seventies and eighties New York, is such because Schrader didn't bother to maintain the once-timely script in the years it fermented); Forever Mine seems to have been made only to demonstrate the futility of making it at all. It's too self-conscious to compare to Sirk and not sincerely blistering enough for Ray. The typecasting of Liotta is indicative of noncommitment, as are the all-too-tasteful period touches.

I know that any author of Taxi Driver is a contrarian at heart, and it's interesting to note that much of Schrader's audio commentary on Forever Mine's DVD release focuses on colour scheme, dolly moves, this being his first time working in 'scope--all the "bullshit" that supposedly "slows down a story." Right off the bat, Schrader says he likes to do two kinds of motion pictures, with this one falling under the "beauty" category: it lives to impress. There's even a nervy homage to colleague Scorsese's Steadicam track through the kitchen in Goodfellas. While this temporarily leavens the static quality of John Bailey's cinematography, it also illustrates the borrowed feel of Schrader's style atop his intentional deference to the genre.

In addition to Schrader's track, MGM's DVD contains a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer and Dolby Surround audio. The choppy waters of distribution might account for the unusually grainy source print (the image often appears zoomed-in), though the colours are outstanding. Shadow detail is relatively low due to heavy filtering on the lens. A quiet soundtrack necessitates jacking up the volume considerably, and rear-channel presence is rare (a club scene here, a beach scene there). (Production-sound drops out entirely beneath halting, asthmatic Schrader.) That's it for extras; I assume that a trailer was never cut.-Bill Chambers