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