David Schmoeller

Raised and educated in Texas, David Schmoeller began his career as a young playwright and was awarded the Texas Good Neighbor Scholarship for studies in Mexico, attending the Universidad De Las Americas from 1967-1968. In Mexico he studied theater with Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo (1970)) and was mentored in film by legendary director Luis Buñuel. After a stint as an interpreter for ABC Sports during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Schmoeller returned to Texas and completed a Masters program in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. His thesis film, The Spider Will Kill You (1976), funded by a grant from the Directors Guild of America, received an Academy Award Student Film Nomination in 1974, losing in the finals to Robert Zemeckis student short A Field of Honor (1973). Subsequently, under the auspices of the American Film Institute with funding from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Schmoeller spent six months as an intern with writer-director Peter Hy