Paul Schrader

Paul Joseph Schrader (born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. Schrader wrote or co-wrote screenplays for four Martin Scorsese films: Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Schrader has also directed 18 feature films, including his directing debut crime drama, Blue Collar (co-written with his brother, Leonard Schrader), the crime drama Hardcore (a loosely autobiographical film also written by Schrader), his 1982 remake of the horror classic Cat People, the crime drama American Gigolo (1980), the biographical drama Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), the true life biopic Patty Hearst (1988), the cult film Light Sleeper (1992), the drama Affliction (1997), the biographical film Auto Focus (2002), the erotic dramatic thriller The Canyons (2013), and the dramatic thriller First Reformed (2017), the latter earning him his first career Academy Award nomination. 2Upbringing and critical writing Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Joan (née Fisher) and Charles A. Schrader, an executive. Schrader's family attended the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church. Schrader's mother was of Dutch descent, the daughter of emigrants from Friesland, while Schrader's paternal grandfather was from a German family that had come to the U.S. through Canada.His early life was based upon the religion's strict principles and parental education. He did not see a film until, when he was seventeen years old, he was able to sneak away from home. In an interview he stated that The Absent-Minded Professor was the first film he saw. In his own words, he was "very unimpressed" by it, while Wild in the Country, which he saw some time later, had quite some effect on him. Schrader attributes his intellectual rather than emotional approach towards movies and movie-making to his having no adolescent movie memories.Schrader earned his B.A. from Calvin College, with a minor in theolog