Paul Schrader
September 8th, 2004
Auto Focus (2002)
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Forever Mine (1999)
Affliction (1997)
Light Sleeper (1992)
Raging Bull (1980)
Hardcore (1979)
Obsession (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Yakuza (1975)
DIRECTOR Auto Focus (2002)
Forever Mine (1999)
Affliction (1997)
Touch (1997)
Witch Hunt (1995)
Light Sleeper (1992)
The Comfort of Strangers (1991)
Patty Hearst (1988)
Light of Day (1987)
Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Cat People (1982)
American Gigolo (1980)
Hardcore (1979)
Blue Collar (1978)
He grew up in a strict religious household in Michigan, was forced to become a theology student at Calvin College, and supposedly he saw his first movie when his was in his late teens. Famed film critic Pauline Kael discovered Schrader and encouraged him to move to Los Angeles and became a film scholar and critic, writing for Cinema. But his love was on the creative side of making movies. He wrote a script, and sold it. Thus launching a career that is still bright. After writing the screenplays for "Obsession" and "Rolling Thunder", Schrader made his directorial debut with "Blue Collar" in 1978. The following year he directed "Hardcore", a shocking account of a Midwestern girl escaping her family for a porno career in L.A. His films deal forcefully with issues as sex and gender. His best script, "Taxi Driver" portrays a teenage girl (Jodie Foster) as a twelve year old hooker and in "American Gigolo", he sustains his poignant sexual theme. He teamed up with Scorsese for the second time with the emotionally brutal "Raging Bull". His central characters are almost always men who are self-loathing and self-destructive. Quote(s):
"There NOTHING more debilitating than writing scripts that don't get made or don't get sold, and if you can put yourself through as many test and as many hurdles as possible to get yourself to the position where you realize this script doesn't want to be written, you are doing yourself an enormous favor. I mean, better to spend six weeks agonizing over an idea and say `No, walk away' than six months writing it and say it doesn't work. Try to figure out before you put one word to paper whether this idea really wants to be written. How do you do that? You outline it. You tell it. You retell it. You reoutline it. You live with it, and at some point an idea will start to flag on you and it will bore you, or it will start to grow in intensity and it will start saying to you, `Get to the typewriter. It's time to go. We want to come out now. Enough of this stuff of being held back.' And once an idea wants to be written, that'll be written in what, ten days? Twenty days? That's all it takes if the idea's ready to go. Whenever a student says to me, `Will you read this script? It's not much. I just wrote it in two weeks,' boy, you know, my ears perk up. When somebody says to me, 'I've been working on this for a year,' I go, `Oh, my God!' An idea should really want to be written. And if it doesn't want to be written, then the biggest favor you can do yourself is just walk away from it." - Paul Schrader as quoted in Los Angeles Magazine; "Taxi writer - Words Worth - techniques for screenwriting"; Feb 2002
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Forever Mine (1999)
Affliction (1997)
Light Sleeper (1992)
Raging Bull (1980)
Hardcore (1979)
Obsession (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Yakuza (1975)
DIRECTOR Auto Focus (2002)
Forever Mine (1999)
Affliction (1997)
Touch (1997)
Witch Hunt (1995)
Light Sleeper (1992)
The Comfort of Strangers (1991)
Patty Hearst (1988)
Light of Day (1987)
Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Cat People (1982)
American Gigolo (1980)
Hardcore (1979)
Blue Collar (1978)
He grew up in a strict religious household in Michigan, was forced to become a theology student at Calvin College, and supposedly he saw his first movie when his was in his late teens. Famed film critic Pauline Kael discovered Schrader and encouraged him to move to Los Angeles and became a film scholar and critic, writing for Cinema. But his love was on the creative side of making movies. He wrote a script, and sold it. Thus launching a career that is still bright. After writing the screenplays for "Obsession" and "Rolling Thunder", Schrader made his directorial debut with "Blue Collar" in 1978. The following year he directed "Hardcore", a shocking account of a Midwestern girl escaping her family for a porno career in L.A. His films deal forcefully with issues as sex and gender. His best script, "Taxi Driver" portrays a teenage girl (Jodie Foster) as a twelve year old hooker and in "American Gigolo", he sustains his poignant sexual theme. He teamed up with Scorsese for the second time with the emotionally brutal "Raging Bull". His central characters are almost always men who are self-loathing and self-destructive.
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