Film Career
In 1974, Schrader and his brother Leonard co-wrote The Yakuza, a film set in the Japanese crime world. The script became the subject of a bidding war, and it sold for $325,000, which was more than any other screenplay up to that time. The film was directed by Sydney Pollack and starred Robert Mitchum. Robert Towne, best known for Chinatown, also got credit for doing a re-write.
Although The Yakuza failed commercially, it brought Schrader to the attention of the new generation of Hollywood directors. In 1975, he wrote the screenplay of Obsession for Brian De Palma. Schrader also wrote an early draft of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but Spielberg disliked the screenplay, calling it "terribly guilt-ridden", and opted for a lighter script. His script for Rolling Thunder (1977) was reworked without his participation, and Schrader disapproved of the final film.
Schrader's script about an obsessed New York taxi driver was turned into Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver, which was nominated for a 1976 Best Picture Academy Award. Besides Taxi Driver (1976), Scorsese also drew on scripts by Schrader for boxing tale Raging Bull (1980), co-written with Mardik Martin, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999).
Thanks partly to critical acclaim for Taxi Driver, Schrader was able to direct his first feature Blue Collar (1978),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 has described the film as difficult to make, because of the artistic and personal tensions among him and the actors; it was the only occasion he suffered an on-set mental collapse and made him seriously reconsider his career. John Milius acted as executive producer on the following year's Hardcore (again written by Schrader), which showed autobiographical parallels in the depicted Calvinist milieu of Grand Rapids, and the character of George C. Scott which was based on Schrader's father.
Among Paul Schrader's films in the 1980s were American Gigolo starring Richard Gere, (1980), his 1982 remake of Cat People, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). Inspired by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, the film interweaves episodes from Mishima's life with dramatizations of segments from his books. Mishima was nominated for the top prize (the Palme d'Or) at the Cannes Film Festival. Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas served as executive producers.
Schrader also directed Patty Hearst (1988), about the kidnapping and transformation of the Hearst Corporation heiress. In 1987, he was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival.
His 90s work included travellers in Venice tale The Comfort of Strangers (1990), adapted by Harold Pinter from the Ian McEwan novel, and Light Sleeper (1992), a sympathetic study of a drug dealer vying for a normal life. In 2005 Schrader described Light Sleeper as his "most personal" film. In 1997 he made Touch (1997), based on an Elmore Leonard novel about a young man seemingly able to cure the sick by the laying on of hands.
In 1998 Schrader won critical acclaim for drama Affliction. The film tells the story of a troubled smalltown policeman (Nick Nolte), who becomes obsessed with solving the mystery behind a fatal hunting accident. Schrader's script was based on the novel by American Russell Banks. The film was nominated for multiple awards including two Academy Awards for acting (for Nolte and James Coburn).
In Schrader received the Austin Film Festival's Distinguished Screenwriter Award.
In 2002 he directed acclaimed biopic Auto Focus, loosely based on the life and murder of Hogan's Heroes actor, Bob Crane.
In 2003, Schrader made entertainment headlines after being fired from Exorcist: Dominion, a prequel film to The Exorcist (1973). Production company Morgan Creek Productions/Warner Bros. disliked the resulting film and had large segments re-shot by director Renny Harlin; Harlin's version was released as Exorcist: The Beginning in 2004. Schrader's version eventually premiered at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film on March 18, 2005 as Exorcist: The Original Prequel. It received limited cinema release later that year under the title Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.
After that, Schrader filmed The Walker (2007), starring Woody Harrelson as an escort caught up in a murder enquiry, and the Israeli-set Adam Resurrected (2008), which stars Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe.
Schrader headed the International Jury of the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival, and in 2011 became a jury member for the ongoing 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 director Shane Meadows.
Schrader second marriage is to actress Mary Beth Hurt, who has appeared in smaller roles in a variety of his films.
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