Richard Schickel

Richard Schickel is the author, co-author or editor of 36 books and the writer-director-producer of a similar number of television documentaries. Most of his work concerns filmmakers and film history.

Among his best known books are Elia Kazan: A Biography, D.W. Griffith: An American Life, Clint Eastwood: A Biography, The Disney Version, Brando: A Life in Our Times, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity, His Picture in the Papers, and his memoir, Good Morning Mr. Zip Zip Zip.

His films include the epic five-hour history of Warner Bros, You Must Remember This, Charlie, The Art and Life of Charles Chaplin and, most recently, The Eastwood Factor, a biography of Clint Eastwood. Central to his filmography are 20 other profiles of the major American directors, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Elia Kazan and including, more recently, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Taken together, these films constitute an unduplicable history of film authorship in the United States. His reconstruction of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One, which restored 45 lost minutes to the film, won many awards when it was released in 2004.

A film critic for Life magazine and Time magazine for 43 years, Mr. Schickel has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and was awarded an honorary degree by the American Film Institute as well as the British Film Institute Book Prize, the Michael Bessy award in film criticism, the William K,Everson Award from National Board of Review and the Telluride Silver Medal, both for his contributions to film history.