Lawrence Schiller

Lawrence Julian Schiller (born December 28, 1936) is a noted American film producer, director and screenwriter.

Schiller was born in 1936 in Brooklyn, and grew up outside of San Diego, California. After attending Pepperdine College in Los Angeles, he worked for Life magazine, Paris Match, The Sunday Times, Time, Newsweek, Stern, and The Saturday Evening Post as a photojournalist. He published his first book, LSD, in 1966. Since then he has published eleven books, including W. Eugene Smith's Minamata and Norman Mailer's Marilyn. Having edited and produced the 1967 Capitol Records audio documentary album Why Did Lenny Bruce Die?, he collaborated with Albert Goldman on Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce in 1974, and also with Norman Mailer on the 1982 made-for-television film adaptation of The Executioner's Song as well as Oswald's Tale in 1995. His own books that became national bestsellers and made the New York Times Bestseller list include American Tragedy, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Cape May Court House, and Into the Mirror.

He has directed seven motion pictures and miniseries for television; The Executioner's Song and Peter the Great won five Emmys. American Tragedy, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town and Into the Mirror were made into television mini-series for CBS, all of which Schiller produced and directed. In 2008, after the death of the writer Norman Mailer, he was named Senior Advisor to the Norman Mailer Estate and is the Managing Director of The Norman Mailer Center, in New York, NY, which he created with Norris Mailer. Schiller was a close friend of Mailer and collaborator on five of his works, and represents the Norman Mailer Licensing company.

Schiller served as a consultant to political campaigns and major corporations on such issues as crisis management, branding, public imaging and the use of social networking. Schiller has been an on air analyst to NBC news, a consultant to Taschen Publishing, Photographers Annie Leibovitz Studio and Steven Klein, Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas and has written for The New Yorker, The Daily Beast and other publications.

In 2005, Schiller traveled to China and over two years built a collection of Chinese contemporary art, which numbers over 80 paintings and photographs. In 2007, he showed his own photographs for the first time in the USA at the exhibition Marilyn Monroe and America in the 1960s. It is for these photographs of Marilyn that Schiller is perhaps best known as a photographer. Schiller first shot Marilyn in May 1960 on the set of Let’s Make Love, and then again in 1962 when he was hired to shoot the star on the set of what would become the last film she would ever work on, the unfinished Something’s Got To Give. Marilyn & Me, Schiller's eleventh book, commemorates his experience photographing the Hollywood legend, complete with 131 color and black and white photographs.

Filmography

• Double Jeopardy (1992) Producer/Director
• I Love My Friends (1985 Kris Kardashian music video) Director
• The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1975 documentary) USA Director
• Lenny (1974) Material supplier
• Soon There Will Be No More Me (1972 documentary) Producer/Director
• Lady Sings The Blues (1972) Titles/Still montage director
• The American Dreamer (1971 documentary) Producer/Co-Director/Writer
• The Lexington Experience (1971 documentary) Producer/Director
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Still montage director

Books

Books - as author or in collaboration with:

• Barbra Streisand (Taschen Books 2014) by Steve Schapiro & Lawrence Schiller
• Marilyn & Me, A Photographer's Memories (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday 2012) by Lawrence Schiller
• Into the Mirror: The Life of Master Spy Robert P. Hanssen (HarperCollins 2002) by Lawrence Schiller
• Cape May Court House: A Death in the Night (Harper Collins 2002) by Lawrence Schiller
• Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenet and the City of Boulder (Harper Collins 1999) by Lawrence Schiller
• American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense (Random House 1996) by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth
• I Want to Tell You — My Response to Your Letters, Your Messages, Your Questions (Little Brown 1995) by O.J. Simpson with Lawrence Schiller
• Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (Random House 1996) by Norman Mailer
• The Executioner's Song (Hutchinson & Co. 1979) by Norman Mailer
• The Faith of Graffiti (Harper Collins 2009) by Norman Mailer and Jon Naar
• Marilyn: A Biography (Grosset and Dunlap 1973) by Norman Mailer and the world's foremost photographers
• Ladies and Gentlemen Lenny Bruce!! (Random House 1974) by Albert Goldman and Lawrence Schiller
• The Killing of Sharon Tate (New American Library 1970) by Susan Atkins and Lawrence Schiller
• LSD (New American Library 1966) by Richard Alpert, Sidney Cohen and Lawrence Schiller

Television

• The Secret Tapes of the O.J. Case: The Untold Story, O.J. Speaks: The Hidden Tapes (LMN & A&E Networks, 2015) Executive Producer
• JonBenet: Anatomy of a Cold Case (Court TV, 2006) Executive Producer/Director
• Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee (Court TV, 2004, 2005) Executive Producer/Director
• Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story (CBS, 2002) Producer/Director
• American Tragedy (CBS, 2000) Producer/Director/Writer (based on Schiller's book American Tragedy)
• Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (CBS, 2000) Producer/Director (based on Schiller's book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town)
• The Plot to Kill Hitler (Warner Bros./CBS, 1990) Director
• Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White (TNT, 1989) Producer/Director
• Peter the Great (NBC, 1986) Executive Producer/Co-Director
  • Recipient of 3 Emmy Awards, Writers Guild of America Award
• The Executioner's Song (NBC, 1982) Producer/Director
  • Recipient of 2 Emmy Awards, Time Magazine, Best of the Year, Hollywood Reporter, Best of the Decade
• Murder: By Reason of Insanity (CBS, 1985) Producer
• Her Life as a Man (NBC, 1986) Executive Producer
• The Patricia Neal Story (CBS, 1982) Executive Producer
  • Recipient of 1 Emmy Award
• Child Bride of Short Creek (NBC, 1982) Co-Producer
• Marilyn, The Untold Story (ABC, 1980) Producer/Co-Director
  • Recipient of 1 Emmy Award
• The Winds of Kitty Hawk (NBC, 1978) Producer/Flying sequences and montages director
• The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (ABC, 1976) Producer
• Hey, I'm Alive (ABC, 1975) Producer/Director

• Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy Award Winner for Peter the Great
• The Christopher Award for The Patricia Neal Story
• Representative of the USA in the USA/USSR bilateral talks in Moscow and Washington, drafted and signed treaties with the Government of the USSR
• Representative from the United States to the Moscow International Peace Forum
• Numerous National Press Photographers Association Photographic Awards