In Remembrance: Leonard Schrader

     Leonard Schrader, the Academy Award nominated Screenwriter of Kiss Of The Spider Woman (1985), has passed away on November 2, 2006 in Los Angeles, CA. He was 62.

     Born in 1943 in Grand Rapids, MI, Schrader was raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist family and was forbidden from seeing movies and other “worldly amusements.” It wasn’t until Schrader was attending the local Calvin College in the 1960s that he saw his first film. He received a Master’s Degree from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa before moving to Japan to teach American literature at Doshisha University and Kyoto University. Schrader’s love of Japanese culture would figure predominantly in many of his screenplays.

     Schrader’s first film was the 1974 Robert Mitchum-starring drama The Yakuza, co-written with his brother, Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader. He followed the film up by collaborating with his brother on the screenplays for Blue Collar (1978) and Old Boyfriends (1979). In 1979 he worked on two Japanese screenplays- Taiyo O Nusunda Otoko (The Man Who Stole The Sun) and Otoko Wa Tsurai Yo: Torajiro Haru No Yume (Tora-san’s Dream Of Spring). Schrader worked on a third Japanese screenplay - Shonben Rider – in 1983.

     In 1982 Schrader served as a writer and producer on the documentary The Killing Of America, which examined violence in the United States. For 1985’s Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, Schrader wrote about the life of militaristic Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, whom Schrader once met before the writer committed ritual suicide in 1970.

     Schrader’s adaptation of Argentinian novelist Manuel Puig’s Kiss Of The Spider Woman earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay Adaptation. He made his directorial debut with the romance Naked Tango (1991) which he also wrote.

     From 1996 to 1999, Schrader taught the screenwriting Masters Thesis class at the University of Southern California's Film School and from 1999 to 2003, he revamped the Screenwriting Department at Chapman University where he was an Associate Professor of Film. From 2003, 2003, he served as Senior Filmmaker-in-Residence at the American Film Institute where he chaired the Screenwriting Department and taught graduate screenwriting.

     Schrader’s final screenplay was for the Edie Sedgwick documentary Edie: Girl On Fire which is scheduled to be released in 2007.