John Landis

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Age: 74, born 3 August 1950

Country of origin: United States

Currently Residing In: United States

Height: 5' 10"

Lists

26 votes

Mupnificently Muppety Muppetness (184 items)
list by Holy Godiva

Published 8 years, 9 months ago

1 comment

21 votes

Directors and composers who work together (63 items)
list by Venice

Published 9 years, 8 months ago

4 comments

13 votes

Famous directors who don't like me (23 items)
list by Rath

Published 10 years, 8 months ago

3 comments

13 votes

Free Roman Polanski (Directors) (65 items)
list by jackie

Published 15 years, 3 months ago

7 comments

11 votes

Influential Pop Culture Icons (706 items)
list by moviebuff

Published 9 years, 5 months ago

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John Landis Videos

John Landis - The Film Industry "Is Not The Military, You Don't Have To Work Your Way Up" Anymore

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Added 8 years ago

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Photos

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1 vote

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Description: John Landis began his career in the mail room of 20th Century-Fox. A high-school dropout, 18-year-old Landis made his way to Yugoslavia to work as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes (1970). Remaining in Europe, Landis found work as an actor, extra and stuntman in many of the Spanish/Italian "spaghetti" westerns. Returning to the US, he made his feature debut as a writer-director at age 21 with Schlock (1973), an affectionate tribute to monster movies. Clad in a Rick Baker-designed gorilla suit, Landis starred as "Schlockthropus", the missing link. After working as a writer, actor and production assistan John Landis began his career in the mail room of 20th Century-Fox. A high-school dropout, 18-year-old Landis made his way to Yugoslavia to work as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes (1970). Remaining in Europe, Landis found work as an actor, extra and stuntman in many of the Spanish/Italian "spaghetti" westerns. Returning to the US, he made his feature debut as a writer-director at age 21 with Schlock (1973), an affectionate tribute to monster movies. Clad in a Rick Baker-designed gorilla suit, Landis starred as "Schlockthropus", the missing link. After working as a writer, actor and production assistant, Landis made his second film, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), in collaboration with the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams. Landis rose to international recognition as director of the wildly successful National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). With blockbusters such as The Blues Brothers (1980), Trading Places (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), Three Amigos! (1986) and Coming to America (1988), Landis has directed some of the most popular film comedies of all time. Other feature credits include Into the Night (1985), Innocent Blood (1992) and the comedy/horror genre classic An American Werewolf in London (1981), which he also wrote. In 1986, Landis and four others were acquitted of responsibility for the tragic accident that occurred in Landis' segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) in which actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed. The film also included segments directed by Joe Dante, George Miller and Steven Spielberg. In 1983 Landis wrote and directed the groundbreaking music video of Michael Jackson's Michael Jackson: Thriller (1983), created originally to play as a theatrical short. "Thriller" forever changed MTV and the concept of music videos, garnering multiple accolades including the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Overall Video, Viewer's Choice, and the Video Vanguard Award - The Greatest Video in the History of the World. In 1991 "Thriller" was inducted into the MVPA's Hall of Fame. In 1991, Landis collaborated again with Jackson (I) on Michael Jackson: Black or White (1991), which premiered simultaneously in 27 countries with an estimated audience of 500 million. Although it was not the first motion picture or music video to do so, "Black or White" popularized the use of "digital morphing", where one object appears to seamlessly metamorphoses into another; the project raised the standard for state-of-the-art special effects in music videos. Landis has also been active in television as the executive producer (and often director) of the Ace- and Emmy Award-winning HBO series Dream On (1990). Other TV shows produced by his company, St. Clare Entertainment (St. Clare is the patron saint of television), include Weird Science (1994), Sliders (1995), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show (1997), Campus Cops (1995) and The Lost World (1998). In 2004 the Independent Film Channel broadcast his feature-length documentary about a used-car salesman, Slasher (2004). Deer Woman, an original one-hour episode written by Landis and his son Max Landis, inaugurated the Masters of Horror (2005) series in the fall of 2005 on Showtime. "Masters of Horror" also features one-hour episodes by John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Tobe Hooper, Don Coscarelli, Mick Garris, Dario Argento and Larry Cohen.

A sought-after commercial director, Landis has worked for a variety of companies including Direct TV, Taco Bell, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kellogg's and Disney. He was made a Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1985, awarded the Federico Fellini Prize by Rimini Cinema Festival in Italy and was named a George Eastman Scholar by The Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Both the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Torino Film Festival have held career retrospectives of his films. In 2004 Landis received the Time Machine Career Achievement Award at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. Sent as a filmmaker/scholar by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Landis has lectured at many film schools and universities including Yale, Harvard, NYU, UCLA, UCSB, USC, Texas A&M, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Miami and Indiana University. He has also acted as a teacher and advisor to aspiring filmmakers at the Sundance Institute in Utah. Additionally, he edited Best American Movie Writing 2001 (Thunder's Mouth Press, NY, 2001). Born in Chicago, Illinois, Landis moved to Los Angeles soon after his birth. He is married to Deborah Nadoolman, an Oscar-nominated costume designer, and President of the Costume Designers Guild, with whom he has two children. ... (more)

Tags: Director (15), American (6), Born 1950 (4), Screenwriter (3), Song Writer (2), Producer (2), Actor (2), Stunt Performer (2), 02 (2), American Werewolf In London (1), The Best Director Ever (1), Horrrodies (1), Worked With Michael Jackson (1), Innocent Blood (1), Blues Bothers (1), Humor (1), Beard (1), Filmmaker (1)

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Movies

Most popular

Top rated

Most recent

1. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Rating:

6.9

7085 Watched

2. RoboCop (1987)

Rating:

6.9

2623 Watched

3. The Blues Brothers (1980)

Rating:

7.6

1990 Watched

4. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Rating:

7.3

1220 Watched

5. Trading Places (1983)

Rating:

1030 Watched

View all John Landis movies (56 more)

Movies directed by

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Most recent

1. The Blues Brothers (1980)

Rating:

7.6

1990 Watched

2. Coming to America (1988)

Rating:

6.2

1628 Watched

3. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Rating:

7.3

1220 Watched

4. Trading Places (1983)

Rating:

1030 Watched

5. Animal House (1978)

Rating:

7.1

917 Watched

View all John Landis movies (22 more)

Movies written by

Most popular

Top rated

Most recent

1. The Blues Brothers (1980)

Rating:

7.6

1990 Watched

2. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Rating:

7.3

1220 Watched

3. Clue

Rating:

704 Watched

4. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Rating:

6.5

415 Watched

5. An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

Rating:

5.2

402 Watched

View all John Landis movies (6 more)

TV

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Top rated

Most recent

1. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992)

Rating:

6.1

394 Watched

2. The Boondocks (2005)

Rating:

7.2

313 Watched

3. The Stand

Rating:

6.7

274 Watched

4. Entertainment Tonight (1981)

Rating:

5.9

288 Watched

5. The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2006)

Rating:

7.9

271 Watched

View all John Landis TV (40 more)

TV directed by

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1. Psych

Rating:

7.4

730 Watched

2. Masters of Horror

Rating:

7.3

196 Watched

3. Franklin and Bash (2011)

Rating:

7.3

59 Watched

4. Fear Itself (2008)

Rating:

6.8

40 Watched

5. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show

Rating:

6.3

31 Watched

View all John Landis TV (5 more)

Books

1. Monsters in the Movies

Rating:

8.3

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Guests on Later with Greg Kinnear (315 person items)

Agent Kermit D. Fonz added this to a list 1 year, 4 months ago

Favourite Directors (98 person items)

"Favourite films: The Blues Brothers, The Three Amigos, An American Werewolf in London, Coming to America, Trading Places, and Animal House "

Diabolik added this to a list 1 year, 4 months ago

Movies: Greatest Directors (62 person items)

"Trading Places (1983) Coming to America (1988) Three Amigos (1986) An American Werewolf in London (1981) National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) The Blues Brothers (1980)"

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Monsters vs. Aliens (1980's) (12 movies items)

"Director!"

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Top Grossing Directors (200 person items)

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A bunch of white men nobody likes anymore (109 person items)

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Venice Film Festival 2017 (175 person items)

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Monstermaster added this to a list 8 years, 3 months ago

Celebs I Sympathize With (14 person items)

" I LOVE this guy, he is one of my favorite directors and it saddens me to hear that people are still accusing him of being responsible for the incident on the set of the Twilight Zone movie, when really nobody knows anything about what set it off to begin with, and I even really bad for him because movies like Blues Brothers 2000 put his directing career on hiatus for a while until he did episodes of 'Masters Of Horror' and a few other tv show episodes before coming back with Burke and Hare. "

browser posted a video 8 years, 3 months ago

John Landis - The Film Industry "Is Not The Military, You Don't Have To Work Your Way Up" Anymore

Holy Godiva added this to a list 8 years, 9 months ago

Mupnificently Muppety Muppetness (184 movies items)

" JOHN LANDISin... The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) "

Monstermaster added this to a list 8 years, 10 months ago

Celebrities I Wish To Meet (29 person items)


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