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By the time Sam Fuller directed his first film at the age of thirty-six, he’d already lived three lives: as a journalist, a novelist, and an infantryman. By spinning his newsroom and frontline experiences into his movies, Fuller developed a unique cinematic voice that was complex and sophisticated, at times brutish and raw, though always truthful and personal. Fuller himself was a character only he could script—a magnanimous storyteller who spoke with brutal clarity and urgency (usually with a cigar clenched tightly in his teeth), relating to those around him as if they were comrades in a foxhole fighting deadlines, Nazi Germany, or studios unwilling to cooperate with his vision. What he once said about the writer he most admired, Balzac, Fuller could have said about himself: “He lived his stories.”
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