Richard Schickel is a documentary film maker, movie historian and film critic, who has published  more than  30 books, and produced, written and directed more than 30 films for television. Among the most recent of the latter are Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin; Woody Allen: A Life in Film and  Scorsese on Scorsese and Watch the Skies! A history of 1950s Science Fiction.  In May, 2007 Turner Classic Movies l broadcast Bienvenue A’ Cannes, a portrait of the film festival and in July, 2007 TCM  aired Spielberg on Spielberg.  the 19th in the series of portraits of American film directors he has made over the course of his television career.  Among  his other television titles are,  Eastwood on Eastwood, The Harryhausen Chronicles and the legendary PBS Series, The Men Who Made the Movies, which were the first-ever TV portraits of movie directors, including such seminal figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Frank Capra. A second such series,  The Moviemaker,s profiled Elia Kazan, Stanley Donen and Arthur Penn among others. He is currently working on a five hour  history of Warner Bros.,  which will premiere in 2008.  His reconstruction of Sam Fuller’s classic war film, The Big Red One, restoring over 45 minutes cut from the original release print, has been an international success, listed as one of the year’s 10 Best Movies by the New York Times and winning awards from The National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles and Seattle Film Critics Associations and Anthology Film Archives.

The latest among Mr. Schickel’s  many books are   Elia Kazan: A Biography, which was named a New York Times “Notable Book” and  The Essential Chaplin, an anthology of criticial writings about the great comedian.  Among his other titles are:  The Disney Version, a study of “the life, times art and commerce  of Walt Disney,  His Picture in the Papers, a pioneering work about the modern beginnings of the celebrity system, D.W. Griffith: An American Life,  Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity; Brando: A Life in Our Times; Clint Eastwood: A Biography.  Matinee Idylls, and Schickel on Film, both collections of his longer essays on film  and  Good Morning Mr Zip Zip Zip. a  memoir of his formative movie going years. Film On Paper,  a collection of essays will be published in spring, 2008.

Mr. Schickel began  his reviewing career at Life in  1965 and began  reviewing  for Time in 1972.  He also writes a monthly column reviewing current books about movies for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He holds an honorary doctorate from the American Film Institute, has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and was awarded the British Film Institute Book Prize, the Maurice Bessy prize for film criticism,and  the National Board of Review’s William K. Everson Award for his contributions to film history.