Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is having a rough week. The film, whose all star cast includes Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Jean Smart and Tobey Maguire, flopped at the box office over the weekend, earning just $3.6 million, a sharp contrast to its $80 million budget. To pile on, audience and critical reception has been less than stellar. On Saturday, renowned screenwriter, director, and frequent Martin Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader took to Facebook to question the film’s historical accuracy.

“Babylon is many things but well-researched isn’t one of them. After reading a number of planted articles about the filmmaker’s voluminous ‘research, I was scratching my head,” Schrader wrote. “Does any film historian agree [with] the film’s putative historicity?”

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In an interview with EW last month, filmmaker Chazelle said that creating Babylon was a “daunting task,” mostly due to the amount of research that had to be done. Although the film tells the story of fictitious characters in 1920s Hollywood as they navigate the transition from silent to sound films, Chazelle wanted to present “an honest, unvarnished look at the good and the bad of a really seismic shift.” He based the film’s characters on combinations of real stars of the time, watched films that took place during the shift and studied pictures of Southern California in the 1920s. Despite the amount of time Babylon took to come to fruition, Chazelle told the publication:

“But at the same time I was pinching myself, because this project has been a dream for so long. So actually getting to make it, as taxing as it might have been, was a pretty blissful experience.”

     Showtime 

Schrader gained recognition for penning the script to Scorsese’s 1976 classic Taxi Driver. The two later collaborated on Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead. Schrader has also directed multiple films including the 1980 neo-noir American Gigolo (which he also wrote). The original film, which starred Richard Gere as a male escort framed for murder, was recently adapted by Showtime for a series that starred Jon Bernthal and Gretchen Mol. At the time, Schrader addressed the adaptation on Facebook, writing:

Schrader’s most recent film is Master Gardener. He directed and wrote the crime thriller, which stars Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, and Quintessa Swindell.

“After the Showtime trailer appeared online I’ve been asked if I am involved. The answser is No. Some years ago I received a call from Paramount asking about remaking American Gigolo as a series. I replied that I thought it was a terrible idea–times had changed, internet porn had redefined male sex work, viruses, etc. I couldn’t imagine Julian Kay working a Hen Party. (Scorsese and I had fought off similar attempts to redo Taxi Driver for years.) I thought that was the end of it.”