Samuel Fuller

Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and actor. He was known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made outside the conventional studio system.

After working as a reporter and a pulp novelist, Fuller wrote his first screenplay for ''Hats Off'' in 1936, and made his directorial debut with the Western ''I Shot Jesse James'' (1949). He continued to direct several other Westerns and war films throughout the 1950s. He shifted genres in the 1960s with his low-budget thriller ''Shock Corridor'' in 1963, followed by the neo-noir ''The Naked Kiss'' (1964).

Fuller was inactive in filmmaking for most of the 1970s, before writing and directing the semi-autobiographical war epic ''The Big Red One'' (1980), and the drama ''White Dog'' (1982), whose screenplay he co-wrote with Curtis Hanson. Several of his films influenced French New Wave filmmakers, notably Jean-Luc Godard, who gave him a cameo appearance in ''Pierrot le Fou'' (1965). In the latter part of his career, he worked mainly in Europe and lived in Paris. Provided by Wikipedia