Paul Schrader was raised in Michigan by strict Calvinists and didn't see a movie until he was 18 years old. After graduating from film school in Los Angeles he worked as a film critic until selling his first script in 1975, The Yakuza. The next year he wrote the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, the success of which led to his 1978 directorial debut, Blue Collar. Known for his depictions of desperate men with moral ambivalence, he has written several screenplays, including three more with Scorsese: Raging Bull (1980, starring Robert DeNiro), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, starring Willem Dafoe) and Bringing Out the Dead (1999, starring Nicolas Cage). He has also directed movies, often from his own scripts, including American Gigolo (1980, starring Lauren Hutton and Richard Gere), Affliction (1997, starring Nick Nolte) and a biopic of Bob Crane, Auto-Focus (2002 starring Greg Kinnear).
Schrader's older brother, Leonard, is also a screenwriter and film director, and they have worked together on several films, including Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the 1985 movie about Japanese writer Yukio Mishima... Schrader has been married to actress Mary Beth Hurt since 1983.
Career Highlights: Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ
First Major Screen Credit: The Yakuza (1975)
Biography
Raised in a strict religious household in Michigan, writer/director Paul Schrader studied theology at Calvin College and didn't see a movie until he was in his late teens. His stern background would fuel many of the themes throughout his career: downbeat stories of characters who violently break down in oppressive situations. Transfixed by the cinema and encouraged by critic Pauline Kael, he moved to Los Angeles and became a film scholar at U.C.L.A. He wrote movie reviews for newspapers, edited the magazine Cinema, and wrote the highly influential critical essay "The Trancendental Style: Ozu, Bresson, Dryer." After a period of heavy drinking and serious depression, he sold his first screenplay, The Yakuza, a Japanese thriller co-written with his brother, Leonard, and Robert Towne. The next year, Schrader wrote Taxi Driver, the grim tale of urban alienation. Taxi Driver started his successful collaborative relationship with director Martin Scorsese, another so-called "film school brat" who was also raised in a religious household.
After writing the screenplays for Obsession and Rolling Thunder, Schrader made his directorial debut with Blue Collar in 1978, a forceful exposé about auto workers. The following year he directed Hardcore, a poorly received but shocking account of a Midwestern girl escaping her family for a porno career in L.A. He would continue to explore the seedy underbelly of the sex industry in American Gigolo, a glossier look at another troubled hero that gained Schrader some attention. He teamed up with Scorsese for the second time with the emotionally brutal Raging Bull, one of the most acclaimed American films of the '80s, and a good example of Schrader's reoccurring destructive male protagonists suffering from violent desperation. This high point in his career was followed by a sporadic period during which he returned to evocative sexual themes with the remake of Cat People and won a Cannes prize for Mishima. Never ceasing to address controversial subject matter, he scripted The Last Temptation of Christ in his third collaboration with Scorsese, and then went on to write Patty Hearst, based upon the real-life terrorist-kidnapping plot. Light Sleeper, which he wrote and directed in 1992, can be thought of as the last entry in a trilogy of films -- together with Taxi Driver and American Gigolo -- investigating self-destructive urban loners driven to near madness.
For many of his other directorial projects in the '90s, Schrader turned to literature adaptations. The Comfort of Strangers was based upon the Ian McEwan novel , Touch, on an Elmore Leonard novel, and Affliction, on a Russell Banks novel. The latter enjoyed critical success for Schrader's abilities, in addition to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for James Coburn. Unfortunately, the writer's fourth pairing with Scorsese for Bringing out the Dead did not do as well as hoped, compared with their triumphs in the past. After writing and directing Forever Mine, which debuted on cable, Schrader switched gears and worked only as a director for Auto Focus in 2002. This dark biopic of television star Bob Crane combines his frequent themes of sexual discrepancies and inevitable breakdowns. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Paul Joseph Schrader (born July 22, 1946) is an Americanscreenwriter and film director. His influences include Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer, whose cross-cultural similarities he examined in Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (ISBN 0-306-80335-6) in 1972. Despite his credentials as a director, Schrader has received more recognition for his screenplays for others.
Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Joan (née Fisher) and Charles A. Schrader, an executive.[1] Schrader's family practiced in the CalvinistDutch Reformed Church,[2][3] and his early life was based upon the religion's strict principles and parental education. When he disobeyed his mother, she would stab his hand with a pin, asking, "You think that felt bad? Hell is like that, only every second and all over your body". He did not see a film until he was eighteen years old, and was able to sneak away from home; in an interview he stated that The Absent-Minded Professor was the first film he saw,[4] and according to Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, he had a full blown panic attack right before he saw it.
Schrader received his BA from Calvin College, with a required minor in Theology. He then earned an MA in Film Studies from the UCLA Film School graduate programme upon the recommendation of Pauline Kael. With her as his mentor, he became a film critic, writing for the Los Angeles Free Press, and later for Cinema magazine.
Schrader also participated in an early draft of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but either the producing studio or Spielberg (Schrader does not remember who) disliked the religious overtone of his screenplay and opted for a lighter script.
His script of Taxi Driver was turned into the Martin Scorsese film, which was nominated for a 1976 Golden Globe Award and provided the critical acclaim and consequently available funding that enabled Schrader to direct Blue Collar (1978), also co-written with his brother Leonard. Blue Collar features Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto as car factory workers attempting to escape their socio-economic rut through theft and blackmail. Schrader recalls that shooting the film was difficult, because of the artistic and personal tension among him and the actors. Reportedly, Kotto broke a chair on Keitel's back; Pryor drew a pistol on Schrader, and refused to shoot more than three takes per scene. Schrader said that was the only occasion he suffered an on-set mental collapse; it made him seriously reconsider his career.
The September-October 2006 issue of Film Comment magazine published his essay "Canon Fodder" that attempts to establish criteria for judging film masterworks. Schrader headed the International Jury of the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival. Currently, he is a Jury Member of the continuing Filmaka short film contest.
On July 2 2009, Schrader was awarded the inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Screenwriting award at the ScreenLit Festival in Nottingham England. Several of his films were shown at the festival, including Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, which followed the presentation of the award by East Midlands director Shane Meadows.
Exorcist: The Original Prequel
In 2003, Schrader made entertainment headlines for being fired from the Exorcist: Dominion, a prequel film to The Exorcist (1973). The originally slated director John Frankenheimer, died in 2002 of a stroke consequent to spinal surgery complications.
Schrader's version eventually had its premiere at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film on March 18, 2005 as Exorcist: The Original Prequel, where its limited DVD release in the UK was discussed; in the U.S., it received limited cinema release under the title Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist in mid-2005.
Schrader is married to the actress Mary Beth Hurt; the couple have two children, a daughter named Molly and a son named Sam. He was trained at the AFI Conservatory. His brother was a screenwriter and director Leonard Schrader, with whom he collaborated on the screenplays of Blue Collar and Mishima.
^ John Brady, "The craft of the screenwriter", 1981. Page 248
^ Bruce Westbrook, " "Dominion" director says he feels vindication with movie's release - Latest prequel on demons matches Harlin's version ," Houston Chronicle, May 21, 2005
