Paul Schrader Biography

Fast Facts

• Was raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist home and didn't see his first movie (The Absent-Minded Professor) until his late teens
• Worked as a film journalist in the late 1960s and early '70s but was fired by the Los Angeles Free Press in 1969 after he panned Easy Rider
• Was mentored in journalism by film critic Pauline Kael
• Published Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (an expansion of his UCLA master's thesis) in 1972
• Also wrote Schrader on Schrader (1990)
• Wrote the screenplays for four films directed by Martin Scorsese: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead
• Collaborated with his brother, Leonard, on the screenplays for The Yakuza (his screenwriting debut, 1974), Blue Collar (his directorial debut, 1978) and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
• Was hired to direct Exorcist: The Beginning, a 2004 sequel to The Exorcist, but was fired during production
• Most of his footage wasn't used, but after The Beginning flopped, the studio reinstated the unused footage and rereleased the film as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
• Received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute (where he studied in the late '60s) in 2005