Tom Schiller is an American Emmy Award

Emmy Award

An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

 winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live

Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

(following the show's original short film makers Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks

Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...

 and Gary Weis

Gary Weis

Gary Weis is a movie and television director. He was the second creator of short films for Saturday Night Live .-Selected Filmography:*Jimi Hendrix *Saturday Night Live...

). His films, often featuring members of the original SNL cast, aired on the program in a segment titled, "Schiller's Reel." Schiller was part of the original 1975 writing team when Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. Notable films included the Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...

 send-up "La Dolce Gilda" and "Don't Look Back in Anger", which depicted an elderly John Belushi

John Belushi

John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...

 as the last living "Not Ready For Primetime Player" and dancing on the graves of his deceased castmembers. (Belushi would become the first SNL cast member to die, four years after the film first aired). Another favorite was "Java Junkie", a send-up of a 50s style cautionary film about a coffee addict (played by Peter Aykroyd

Peter Aykroyd

Peter Hugh Aykroyd was born to Lorraine and Peter Aykroyd in Canada. He is the younger brother of comedian Dan Aykroyd. Along with his older brother he was in the Second City comedy troupe in Toronto, Ontario. The two were also on the popular NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live. Peter was a cast...

). Schiller wrote and directed the short film "Love is a Dream" for SNL with Phil Hartman

Phil Hartman

Philip Edward "Phil" Hartman was a Canadian-American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist. Born in Brantford, Ontario, Hartman and his family moved to the United States when he was 10...

 and producer/cinematographer Neal Marshad

Neal Marshad

Neal Marshad is an American film and television producer, director, cinematographer, Internet strategist, and designer.-Personal life:He was born on April 25, 1952 in Peekskill, New York and grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York...

. Schiller also wrote and directed a unique feature film, Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing Lasts Forever (film)

Nothing Lasts Forever is a 1984 movie starring a number of high profile Hollywood actors. It was directed by Tom Schiller, who had previously worked on Saturday Night Live....

(1984). The film, which was unreleased at the time and featured Bill Murray

Bill Murray

William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...

, Dan Aykroyd

Dan Aykroyd

Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...

, Zach Galligan

Zach Galligan

Zachary Wolfe "Zach" Galligan is an American actor.-Biography:Galligan was born in New York City, the son of Carol Jean , a psychologist, and Arthur John Galligan, a lawyer who was a founding partner of the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro. He has a sister, Jessica, and attended Columbia University...

, Sam Jaffe

Sam Jaffe (actor)

Sam Jaffe was an American actor, teacher, musician and engineer. In 1951, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Asphalt Jungle and appeared in other classic films such as Ben-Hur and The Day the Earth Stood Still...

, Mort Sahl

Mort Sahl

Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses...

, Lauren Tom

Lauren Tom

Lauren Tom is an American actress and voice actress perhaps best known for her roles as Lena St Clair in The Joy Luck Club, Julie in the TV series Friends, and for providing the voices for both mother and daughter characters on two animated TV comedy series: on Futurama she voices Amy Wong and her...

, Imogene Coca

Imogene Coca

Imogene Fernandez de Coca was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows....

, Apollonia van Ravenstein and Eddie Fisher

Eddie Fisher (singer)

Edwin Jack "Eddie" Fisher , was an American entertainer. He was one of the world's most famous and successful singers in the 1950s, selling millions of records and hosting his own TV show. His divorce from his first wife, Debbie Reynolds, to marry his best friend's widow, Elizabeth Taylor, garnered...

, has gained a cult following and influenced a number of young directors in recent years.

Prior to working on Saturday Night Live, Schiller worked as an assistant to documentary filmmaker Robert Snyder and directed a film about his longtime friend and mentor, author Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

. Schiller is the son of sitcom writer Bob Schiller

Bob Schiller

Bob Schiller is an American screenwriter, most notably for the television series I Love Lucy and All in the Family . For the latter series, he received an Emmy Award in 1978 as one of the writers of the episode "Cousin Liz".Schiller, born in San Francisco, California, began writing for television...

, who was a staff writer on I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

.

Schiller went on to direct over 500 comedy TV commercials and is currently represented by superlounge. http://superlounge.tv/

Schiller's body of work is the subject of the 2005 book Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller by Michael Streeter.

Further reading

• Streeter, Michael (2005). Nothing Lost Forever - The Films of Tom Schiller. Albany: BearManor Media ISBN 1-59393-022-4

External links

• Nothing Lost Forever:The Films of Tom Schiller - a book about Schiller.