Richard Schickel

Richard Schickel, one of the nation's most influential film critics, has been reviewing movies for TIME Magazine since 1972. Before that, he was the film critic for LIFE. Schickel pursues a second career as a producer-writer-director of television programs, beginning with "The Men Who Made Movies", an eight-part PBS series, which served as the basis for a book of the same title. His filmography includes "Life Goes to the Movies", a three-hour history of American movies in the sound era; "Funny Business" and the "Horror Show", genre compilations broadcast on CBS; "Into the Morning: Willa Cather's American," a biography of the writer for PBS; and biographical portraits of Vincente Minelli, the director (PBS), and Gary Cooper, Myrna Loy and Barbara Stanwyck (all for TNT), and most recently, a documentary on the making of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" for ABC and "Hollywood on Hollywood", a history of movies about making movies for AMC. He just finished "Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey", a retrospective of the director's theater and film career. Schickel was born in Milwaukee, educated at the University of Wisconsin and lives in Los Angeles. He has two daughters. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the winner of the British Film Institute Book Prize.