Paul Joseph Schrader (born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter and film director. His influences include Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer, whose cross-cultural similarities he examined in Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (ISBN 0-306-80335-6) in 1972. Despite his credentials as a director, Schrader has received more recognition for his screenplays for others.
Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son...
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Paul Joseph Schrader (born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter and film director. His influences include Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer, whose cross-cultural similarities he examined in Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (ISBN 0-306-80335-6) in 1972. Despite his credentials as a director, Schrader has received more recognition for his screenplays for others.
Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Joan (née Fisher) and Charles A. Schrader, an executive. Schrader's family practiced in the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church, and his early life was based upon the religion's strict principles and parental education. When he disobeyed his mother, she would stab his hand with a pin, asking, "You think that felt bad? Hell is like that, only every second and all over your body". He did not see a film until he was eighteen years old, and was able to sneak away from home; in an interview he stated that The Absent-Minded Professor was the first...
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