J. F. Lawton

Jonathan Frederick Lawton (born August 11, 1960) is an American screenwriter, producer and director.[1] His screen credits include the box office hit Pretty Woman, Mistress, Blankman, Under Siege, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, The Hunted, Chain Reaction, DOA: Dead or Alive, Jackson, and the TV series V.I.P. Under the assumed name J.D. Athens, he wrote and directed Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death and Pizza Man.[2]

J. F. Lawton
J. F. Lawton in 2009
Born
Jonathan Frederick Lawton

(1960-08-11) August 11, 1960
Riverside, California, United States
OccupationFilm director, producer, screenwriter
Years active1989 – present
Spouse(s)Paola Lawton

Early life

Lawton was born in Riverside, California.[1] He is the son of author and novelist Harry Lawton and Georgeann Leona Lawton (née Honegger), a pianist.[3] The couple met in Berkeley while attending the University of California. They later moved to Riverside, where Harry was hired as a reporter for The Press-Enterprise.

As a child, Lawton suffered from severe dyslexia, which made school life difficult. It took him many years of practice and hard work to control his learning disability.[4] Despite the challenge, he decided to become a writer like his father. Harry Lawton made sure to give him as much incentive as possible. To this day Lawton credits his father for always being supportive of him, and his mother for going the extra mile to help him overcome his obstacles.

When Lawton was still in elementary school, his father's novel, Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt,[4] was made into a film starring Robert Redford.[5] During the making of Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Harry would take J.F. to the set, exposing him to the process of filmmaking. From that moment on, fascinated, he determined that he would become a screenwriter. Always curious, Lawton would observe his surroundings and write about them, although due to his dyslexia, it would take him double the time to put his stories down on paper.[1]

In high school, he continued to write short stories, plays, and scripts. After graduating from John W. North High School in Riverside, he enrolled at California State University in Long Beach, to study filmmaking.[1] There he wrote, directed, and edited two short films, The Artist and Renaissance.[2] The first was a futuristic thriller placed in which the main character kills his victims, takes their pictures, and puts them in his art exhibitions. The second, Renaissance, was a short horror film in which a sadistic sexual predator dominates and kills his victim every night, but revives her the next morning only to start the cycle all over again. Both shorts won awards on the college circuit.[1]

Career

1980s

After college, the California native moved to Los Angeles, settling near Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, one of the toughest areas of Los Angeles at the time.[6] Living among prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, junkies and the homeless, the setting gave Lawton a wide range of inspiration for his stories.[7] He wrote a number of screenplays while working at several post-production companies.[8]

During that time he met producer Charles Band, for whom he would direct his first feature film. Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death is a take-off of both Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's feature Apocalypse Now.[2] Shot in less than two weeks in his hometown of Riverside, the film starred his longtime friend, comedian Bill Maher,[9][10] Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed[11] and horror actress Adrienne Barbeau.[12] It became a cult favorite and late-night cable staple.[13]

After Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, Lawton also wrote and directed Pizza Man, a political satire about a delivery man investigating a comical government conspiracy.[14] Talk show host Bill Maher also stars in Pizza Man, along with comedian Annabelle Gurwitch.[15] In both movies, he used the pseudonym J.D. Athens.[16]

1990s

His script for the film Three Thousand[4][17] was accepted by the Sundance Institute in the late 1980s.[18] Executives at Touchstone Pictures,[19] a division of The Walt Disney Studios, became interested in making the movie.[8] He changed the title to Pretty Woman,[20] and with over $400 million in worldwide box office,[7][21] the movie became the largest grossing live-action film in Disney history. Directed by Garry Marshall,[7] with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts,[17][22] the film is a story about Vivian Ward, a prostitute who is hired by a wealthy businessman, Edward Lewis, to be at his beck and call for one week while he is in town on business.[23] Although they come from different backgrounds and lifestyles,[7] they end up developing a relationship based more on genuine love than money and convenience.[24] Pretty Woman[7] was a huge success[25] and got Lawton nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award and a British Academy Award for his screenplay.[26] Julia Roberts won a Golden Globe Award[27] for her role and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.[28]

Lawton was given an executive producer credit for his next original screenplay, Under Siege,[29] based on his million-dollar spec script Dreadnought.[30] The idea came when Lawton, who had served time in the Coast Guard Reserve, read that the Navy was retiring the USS Missouri (BB-63). The film stars Steven Seagal as a disgraced Navy Seal working as a cook on a battleship. Seagal's character must face off against a psychopathic ex-CIA agent (Tommy Lee Jones), who leads a group of mercenaries on a takeover of the battleship on its final voyage, so he can steal its arsenal of nuclear Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. A successful sequel followed: Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

With Barry Primus, Lawton co-wrote Mistress,[16] a comedy starring Robert De Niro, Danny Aiello, Christopher Walken and Martin Landau.[31] The movie is about a Hollywood screenwriter, Marvin Landisman, whose career is going downhill until he meets a has been hustler-producer who tries to help him get his career back.[31] Starring an all-star cast, Mistress was one of the first films produced by Tribeca Productions, Robert De Niro's production company,[31] and it was released in the summer of 1992.

Lawton worked with radio host and media personality Howard Stern on the script for The Adventures of Fartman, a fictional superhero character created by Stern for The Howard Stern Show.[32] With two major studios willing to produce, the movie was put into hold due to a MPAA Film Rating System dispute, as Lawton and Stern felt the content of the film was better suited for a mature audience, and wanted an R-rating for the film instead of a PG-13 rating.[33] The film was put on hold, and Howard Stern included a five-page Fartman story in comics form in his 1995 book, Miss America, which was based on Lawton's script. The book reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller list within days of its release.[34]

For Columbia Pictures he co-wrote the 1994 film Blankman,[35] a film starring and produced by Damon Wayans who plays Darryl, a nerdy, comical ghetto superhero with a pure heart ready to fight criminals in his own style.[36] The film also stars Jason Alexander, who previously had worked with Lawton in Pretty Woman, and Greg Kinnear early in his career.[37]

Lawton went on to write and direct The Hunted (1995), a thriller set in Japan starring Christopher Lambert, John Lone and Joan Chen.[38] Written and directed by Lawton,[39] the movie traces Paul Racine, a computer-chip executive from New York in one of his many business trips to Tokyo. Local authorities and a legendary ninja cult get involved in an electric chase after a crime occurs in a hotel room.[40] The Hunted was released on February 25, 1995 and distributed by Universal Studios. The score, featuring music by acclaimed Japanese taiko troupe Kodo,[41] was especially requested by Lawton.

Lawton's next film project was the 1996 action thriller Chain Reaction, which starred Morgan Freeman, Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz.[42] Filmed in Chicago, Illinois,[43] the movie was released on August 2, 1996, and grossed over $60 million worldwide.

In 1998 Lawton created and executive produced Sony Pictures Entertainment hit syndicated show V.I.P. through a successful four-year run until 2002.[44][45] The adventure series starred Pamela Anderson as Vallery Irons,[46] a small-town girl who comes to Southern California looking for a break when she stumbles into the glamorous role of heading up a Beverly Hills bodyguard agency called Vallery Irons Protection.[47] The series saw Anderson often poking fun at her tabloid image.[48]

2000s

In 2006,[49] Lawton co-wrote for Paramount Pictures a film based on the video game series DOA: Dead or Alive,[50] starring Eric Roberts, Jaime Pressly and Devon Aoki.[51]

Lawton wrote and directed the 2008 film Jackson,[16][52] a comedy-drama-musical starring Barry Primus, Charlie Robinson, Steve Guttenberg, Debra Jo Rupp and opera singers Ella Lee, Shawnette Sulker and Clamma Dale. The movie takes place on a single day involving two homeless men surviving on Los Angeles's Skid Row. Lawton wrote two songs for the movie, "Downtown Birthday" and "Love Cannot Be". Jackson was shot mainly in Downtown Los Angeles, except for one scene shot in Kentucky.

Personal life

Lawton suffers from dyslexia and ADHD, and is an avid advocate for charities related to both issues. He is also a supporter of PETA, along with his good friends Bill Maher and Pamela Anderson. Environmental issues, human rights, cancer, poverty and 9-11 are very close to his heart.[53]

He is married to journalist, writer and LGBT activist Paola Lawton.[53]

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See also
  • List of directors
  • List of people diagnosed with dyslexia

References
  1. "J. F. Lawton Biography". The New York Times.
  2. "J. F. Lawton". Variety.
  3. "Biography for J. F. Lawton". TCMDb.
  4. "J. F. Lawton". BBC News.
  5. Greenspan, Roger (December 19, 1969). "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here". The New York Times.
  6. Dan Kapelovitz (April 28, 2005). "Pirates, Pimps, Artists and Anarchy". LA Weekly.
  7. Larry Getlen (March 23, 2010). "Inside Pretty Woman". New York Post.
  8. Kate Erbland (March 23, 2015). "The True Story of Pretty Woman's Original Dark Ending". Vanity Fair.
  9. "Real Time with Bill Maher". HBO.
  10. Mark Binelli (October 8, 2006). "A Man for Our Time". Rolling Stone Magazine.
  11. "Shannon Tweed". Hollywood.com.
  12. "Adrianne Barbeau". Allmovie.com.
  13. "J. F. Lawton Bio". Film.com.
  14. "Pizza Man". Variety Magazine. Retrieved August 8, 2008.
  15. Pogrebin, Robin. "Pizza Man (1992)". The New York Times. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
  16. "J. F. Lawton Biography". Hollywood.com.
  17. "Pretty Woman turns 20". Moviefone.com. Retrieved March 23, 2010.
  18. "J. F. Lawton Biography". Hollywood.com.
  19. "Pretty Woman". AMC.
  20. Janet Maslin (March 23, 1990). "Pretty Woman". The New York Times.
  21. Richard Corliss (February 11, 1991). "New Thrills for Pretty Woman". TIME. Archived from the original on February 20, 2001. Retrieved May 20, 2009.
  22. "Pretty Woman". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  23. "Pretty Woman". Film.com. Retrieved October 8, 2005.
  24. "Pretty Woman". MTV.
  25. "Unforgettable Woman". New York Post. Retrieved March 23, 2010.
  26. "Best Original Screenplay". British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Archived from the original on August 13, 2011. Retrieved May 20, 2009.
  27. "Julia Roberts Awards". Golden Globes. Archived from the original on April 14, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
  28. "Oscars". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
  29. "Under Siege". Cinemax.
  30. "Under Siege". The New York Times.
  31. Stephen Holden (August 7, 1992). "Mistress, Merrily Dealing and Double-Dealing in Hollywood". The New York Times.
  32. "The Howard Stern Show". Sirius Satellite Radio.
  33. Richard Corliss; Jeffrey Ressner (June 28, 1993). "Hollywood's Summer: Just Kidding". Time. (Requires subscription)
  34. Bill Carter; Nat Ives (November 10, 2004). "Howard Stern". The New York Times.
  35. Jeffrey Wells (February 5, 1993). "A Look Inside Hollywood and the Movies". Los Angeles Times.
  36. Stephen Holden (August 20, 1994). "A Makeshift Superhero for Not-So-Super Times". The New York Times.
  37. "Greg Kinnear". AMC. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009.
  38. "The Hunted". film.com. Retrieved October 2, 2008.
  39. "The Hunted". HBO. Archived from the original on July 12, 2009.
  40. NIX (June 1, 2002). "The Hunted (1995) Movie Review". Beyond Hollywood. Archived from the original on January 2, 2010. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
  41. "Kodo History". Sony Music. Retrieved May 11, 2007.
  42. "Chain Reaction". Showbizdata.com.
  43. Janet Maslin (February 8, 1992). "A Scientist, a Discovery, a Plot: Let the Special Effects Begin!". The New York Times.
  44. Joel Stein (October 31, 1999). "Babe Tube". TIME Magazine.
  45. Benjamin Svetkey (October 3, 2000). "The Squad". Entertainment Weekly.
  46. "Pamela Anderson, Life in Pictures". Los Angeles Times.
  47. "V.I.P." Variety.
  48. Rick Marin (August 10, 2000). "Television, Radio". The New York Times.
  49. NIX (November 20, 2006). "DOA: Dead Or Alive (2006) Movie Review". Beyond Hollywood. Archived from the original on April 20, 2009. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
  50. Ed Meza (November 3, 2004). "DOA deal makes Impact". Variety.
  51. "Devon Aoki: Model Profile". New York Magazine. Retrieved May 1, 2009.
  52. "J. F. Lawton". Digital Hollywood. Archived from the original on May 20, 2009.
  53. Denise Ames (April 24, 2015). "One-on-One with Screenwriter J. F. Lawton". The Tolucan Times. Archived from the original on June 10, 2016. Retrieved May 3, 2016.
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