Samuel Fuller
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American screenwriter, novelist and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes. He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to "Fuller" possibly by inspiration of a Doctor who arrived in America on the Mayflower. At the age of 12, he began working in journalism as a newspaper copyboy. He became a crime reporter in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the story of Jeanne Eagels' death. He wrote pulp novels and screenplays from the mid-1930s onwards. Fuller also became a screenplay ghostwriter but would never tell interviewers which screenplays that he ghost-wrote explaining "that's what a ghost writer is for". During World War II, Fuller joined the United States Army infantry. He was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy and also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he was present at the liberation of the German concentration camp at Falkenau and shot 16 mm footage which was used later in the documentary Falkenau: The Impossible. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. Fuller used his wartime experiences as material in his films, especially in The Big Red One (1980), a nickname of the 1st Infantry Division. After his controversial film "White Dog" was shelved by Paramount pictures, Fuller moved to France, and never directed another American film. Fuller eventually returned to America. He died of natural causes in his California home. In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his long time friend and co-writer on White Dog. He was survived by his wife Christa and daughter Samantha.
1941
as Interceptor CommanderIn the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer...
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Pierrot le Fou
as Samuel Fuller (uncredited)Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with...
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The End of Violence
as LouisMike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action...
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A Return to Salem's Lot
as Van MeerJoe Weber is an anthropologist who takes his son on a trip to the New England town of Salem's...
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La Vie de Bohème
as GassotThree penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no...
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White Dog
as Charlie FeltonA trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that’s been raised to kill black people.
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A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
as SelfMartin Scorsese celebrates American movies from the silent classics to the Hollywood of the...
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Hammett
as Old Man in Pool HallChinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker...
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The American Friend
as The AmericanTom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture...
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The Big Red One
as War Correspondent (uncredited)A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the...
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The State of Things
as JoeOn location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger...
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House of Bamboo
as Japanese policeman (uncredited)Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson,...
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A Fuller Life
as SelfFriends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this...
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Filmmakers in Action
as Self (archive footage)What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to...
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Motion and Emotion: The Films of Wim Wenders
as SelfThough very polite and British, this feature-length documentary about German filmmaker Wim...
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The Last Movie
as SamAfter a film production wraps in Peru, an American wrangler decides to stay behind, witnessing...
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The Big Red One : The Reconstruction
as War Correspondent (uncredited)A re-working, re-editing, and restructuring of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One bringing it closer...
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Somebody to Love
as Sam SilvermanMercedes is a taxi dancer who wants to be an actress. She's involved with the married Harry, who...
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Slapstick (Of Another Kind)
as Colonel SharpA rich, beautiful couple give birth to deformed alien twins who, when their heads are together,...
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Edge of Outside
as Self (archive footage)An hour-long documentary designed to celebrate the spirit of the independent filmmaker from D.W....
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Sons
as FatherA trio of stepbrothers accompany their paralysed father on a jaunt to Normandy where the old boy...
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The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller
as SelfSamuel Fuller discusses his career as a filmmaker, illustrated by plenty of clips.
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Scott Joplin
as ImpresarioThe life story of Scott Joplin and how he became the greatest ragtime composer of all time.
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Street of No Return
as Police CommissionerA rock star-turned-bum, his vocal chords severed at the height of his career for the love of a...
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The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera
as SelfIn a documentary about Samuel Fuller, the spectator gets different impressions about the...
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Thieves After Dark
as ZoltanA crime story set in Paris about a Bonnie-and-Clyde couple -- how they got together and how they...
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Helsinki Napoli All Night Long
as BossAlex is a Finnish taxi driver in Berlin. One evening pits two men feel comfortable in his taxi...
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Sodankylä Forever
as SelfThe Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the...
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Anything for John
as SelfAn intimate portrait of actor-writer-director John Cassavetes and a loving tribute to his genius...
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Carmel
as uncreditedIsraeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï offers a look impressionist long history of armed conflict in...
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Nuits transparentes
as uncreditedStrolling through France (Roanne, Nice and Carcassonne) with some excursions abroad (Munich,...
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The Young Nurses
as Doc HaskellSexy young nurses apply special therapy in their daily rounds, as they work against a drug ring...
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Brigitte and Brigitte
as SelfEpisodes in the lives of two country girls at school in Paris and their opinions.
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Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
as SelfIn 1993, Sam Fuller takes Jim Jarmusch on a trip into Brazil's Mato Grosso, up the River...
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Where Is Musette?
as selfDocumentary filmed on-set during the making of Aki Kaurismaki's "La vie de Boheme"
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Scene Missing
as SelfThe unfinished documentary about the making of Dennis Hopper's mostly unseen feature film The...
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The Madonna and the Dragon
as Chef de bureau NewsweekExposé of two news photographers covering the People's Revolution in the Philippines.
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Golem, l'esprit de l'exil
as ElimelekAn allegory of the Golem, a Jewish mythical creature personifying displacement and exile, this...
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Sam Fuller & the Big Red One
as HimselfA documentary shot during the production of Samuel Fuller's film The Big Red One.
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Falkenau, the Impossible
as Samuel FullerDocumentary stems from 1945, when infantryman Sam Fuller, member of the U.S. Army's "Big Red...
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The Real Glory: Reconstructing 'The Big Red One'
as Himself (archive footage)Documentary about the efforts to reconstruct Sam Fuller's The Big Red One closer to the film...
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Shock Corridor
as himselfShort 35mm experimental film featuring Sam Fuller.
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The Bleeding Star
as uncreditedAn Englishman arrives in a remote French town near the coast to collect his broken-down car....
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Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
as SelfA talk show presented by Michel Drucker
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