Tom Schiller

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Tom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live. (following the shows original short film makers Albert Brooks and Gary Weis) His films, often featuring members of the original SNL cast, aired on the program under the name "Schiller's Reel". Schiller was part of the original 1975 writing team when Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC. Notable films included the Fellini send-up "La Dolce Gilda" and "Don't Look Back in Anger," which depicted an elderly John Belushi as the last living "Not Ready For Primetime Player" and dancing on the graves of his deceased castmembers. (Ironically, Belushi was the first SNL castmember to die four years after the film first aired.) Another favorite was "Java Junkie", a send-up of a 50s style cautionary film about a coffee addict (played by Peter Aykroyd) photographed by cinematographer Neal Marshad. Schiller wrote and directed the short film "Love is a Dream" for SNL with Phil Hartman and producer/cinematographer Neal Marshad. Schiller also wrote and directed a unique feature film, Nothing Lasts Forever (1984). The film, which was unreleased at the time and featured Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Zach Galligan, Lauren Tom, Apollonia van Ravenstein and Eddie Fisher, has gained a cult following and influenced a number of young directors in recent years.

Prior to working for Saturday Night Live, Schiller worked as an assistant to documentary filmmaker Robert Snyder and directed a film about his longtime friend and mentor, author Henry Miller. Schiller is the son of sitcom writer Bob Schiller, who was a staff writer on I Love Lucy.

Schiller's body of work is the subject of the 2005 book Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller by Michael Streeter.