Leonard Schrader

Leonard Schrader (November 30, 1943 – November 2, 2006) was an Academy Award-nominated American screenwriter and director most notable for his ability to write Japanese language films and for his many collaborations with his brother Paul Schrader.

[edit] Early life and college

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Schrader was brought up in a strict Dutch Calvinist family and did not see his first film until he was an adult. In 1968, he finished his MFA at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop where he studied with Nelson Algren, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Yates, Robert Coover, José Donoso and Jorge Luis Borges.

His first film was The Yakuza, co-written in the 1970s with his brother, and starring Robert Mitchum and directed by Sydney Pollack.

His other films included 1985's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, based on the life of the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, whom Schrader had met before his ritual suicide in 1970. Schrader co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Chieko, and his brother. The movie was directed by Paul Schrader and executive produced by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.

Later, Schrader's adaptation of a book by Argentinian novelist Manuel Puig became Kiss of the Spider Woman and earned him a 1985 Academy Award nomination.

Between 1969 and 1971, Schrader taught American literature at Doshisha University and Kyoto University in Japan. During his time there he studied the Yakuza crime families and met Chieko Schrader who became his wife in 1977.

Schrader died at age 62 in Los Angeles, California.

The Yakuza (1974) (writer)
Blue Collar (1978) (writer)
Taiyō o Nusunda Otoko (English title: The Man Who Stole the Sun) (1979) (writer) (Japan's Best Film of the Year, 1980)
The Killing of America (1982) (writer, producer, director)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) (writer, associate producer)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) (writer) (Academy Award-nominee)

From 1996 to 1999, Scrader taught the screenwriting Master's Thesis class at the University of Southern California.
From 1999 to 2003, Schrader taught at Chapman University where he was an associate professor of film.
From 2003 until his death, Schrader was Senior Filmmaker-in-Residence at the American Film Institute where he chaired the Screenwriting Department and taught graduate screenwriting.