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John Gallagher
John
Gallagher fell in love with cinema at
a very early age. Born in Flushing,
Queens, his family moved around a lot:
“I was always the new kid in school, but
Clark Gable and John Wayne were always
my friends no matter where we lived.”
John also spent a lot of time with his
grandparents, who turned him onto the
films of the 20's, 30's, and 40's. His
appreciation for film was not restricted
to American movies; his Sicilian grandmother
took him to see the films of Fellini and
Visconti. “I got so fascinated by
old movies, I would tape-record the credits
when I was seven years old, write all
that stuff on index cards, and make notes
of shots. By puberty I had thousands
of these cards and a vast knowledge of
American cinema.”
John's
main goal has always been to be a filmmaker,
and he modeled his early film career after
that of Peter Bogdanovich. “He [Peter]
had gone to the New Yorker theatre and
said that he would write program notes
if they gave him free admission.” Similarly,
John, while living in Philadelphia where
his parents eventually settled, wrote
the program notes for a local movie theatre
and saw all the films he wanted for free.
“Peter was writing books about John Ford,
Hitchcock, and Howard Hawkes, and he was
making movies. He was a great role
model, and after studying his path, I
blatantly copied it.”
Writing
program notes eventually led him to create
a film magazine, Grand Illusions,
while attending Emerson's film school
in the 70's. He quickly learned
that by writing about film, he could interview
filmmakers, and he interviewed such greats
as Francois Truffault and Elia Kazan.
Those early interviews were collected
and published for his 1989 book,
Film Directors on Directing.
John's ultimate goal has always been to
make movies, and when he got out of college,
he and a friend knocked on doors and raised
money to make a movie. “At that
point and time an independent filmmaker
either made a T&A movie like
Porky's or
a slasher film like Friday the 13th.
So we made a film about beer, bikinis,
and rock-n-roll down at the Jersey Shore.
New Line Cinema bought Beach
House (1982)
and it played at drive-ins.”
Since
then John has worked as a screenwriter
and director on several films. In
addition, he teaches screen acting at
The Neighborhood Playhouse and film directing
at the School of Visual Arts. He
and his partner, Gregory Segal of Angel
Baby Productions, have produced six films
in the last two years. He just wrapped
production on a horror comedy, Hot
Baby, starring
Mel Gorham (Smoke,
Copland),
Adam Scarimbolo (A Guide to Recognizing
Your Saints,
the 2006 Sundance Ensemble Cast winner),
Noah Fleiss (one of the stars of
Brick, another
2006 Sundance winner), Emily Grace (star
of the 2004 Sundance winner What
Alice Found),
Brian Vincent (The Deli,
Blue Moon),
and Heidi Kristoffer (Cupidity).
He also produced the political thriller
The Insurgents,
starring John Shea and Mary Stuart Masterson,
which will have its world premiere at
the Oldenburg Film Festival in Germany;
in addition, John and Gregory's production
company co-produced My Brother, starring
Vanessa Williams, which just won the Grand
Jury Prize for Best Feature at the HBO
American Black Film Festival.
John
became a National Board of Review screening
member in 1981 and wrote his first article
for Films in Review
profiling Ulu Grosbard, who directed Robert
De Niro and Robert Duvall in True
Confessions.
In 1982 he produced the NBR Awards
Gala held that year at the Lincoln Center
Theatre Library. Guests included
Lee Strasberg, Joan Fontaine, Margaret
Hamilton, Lauren Bacall, Martin Scorsese,
Warren Beatty, James Cagney; the master
of ceremonies was Robert Preston.
John
has seen the NBR gala grow from a small
gathering at the Lincoln Center Library
to a major event held annually at Tavern
on the Green. For John, the turning point
came at the 1995 NBR Gala when Mel Gibson
received a Special Filmmaking Achievement
Award for Braveheart.
“That was the biggest major movie
star of contemporary Hollywood to attend
the gala. That's when the bigger
stars and bigger names started attending.”
For
John, the most important thing about being
a National Board of Review member is the
role that the NBR has played in film history.
After its start in 1909 to protest New
York City Mayor George McClennan's revocation
of moving-picture exhibition licenses
on Christmas Eve 1908, the National Board
became the unofficial clearinghouse for
new movies from 1916 into the 1950's,
when thousands of motion pictures carried
the legend "Passed by the National
Board of Review." The NBR's magazine,
Films in Review,
soon became must reading by serious film
fans. It is the NBR history of which John
has always been most proud.
This
January John will be a part of NBR history
when he produces the 2006 NBR Gala to
be held for the first time at Ciprani's
42nd Street, with BVLGARI as the new sponsor.
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