Joe Dante (1946 - )
Related: 1946 - American cinema - Roger Corman - director
Films: The Movie Orgy (1968) - Piranha (1978) - The Howling (1981) - Hollywood Boulevard (1976)
Joe Dante started his film career at Roger Corman's New World Studios as a Promotion specialist editing trailers. He soon became a protege of Cormans editing his first film, The Arena, in 1973 and directing his first film in 1976, the highly acclaimed Jaws spoof Piranha. Next came The Howling, still regarded by many as the greatest werewolf film ever made, and Joe was pushed into the limelight. One fan of The Howling is Steven Spielberg who sought out Dante and started the joint ventures which still carry on today.
Biography
Joe Dante is an American filmmaker, who is noted for his vision in "twisted" humor. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Dante [Mar 2005]Joe Dante (born November 28, 1946 in Morristown, New Jersey) is an American film director and producer of films generally with humorous and scifi content. His films include Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), both from scripts by John Sayles; Gremlins (1984), his first major hit, and its sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990); Explorers (1985), Innerspace (1987), Amazon Women on the Moon (1987); The Burbs (1989), Matinee (1993), Runaway Daughters (1994), The Second Civil War (1997), The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy (1997), Small Soldiers (1998), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and Homecoming (2005). In 1995-1996, Dante worked on The Phantom, and when he was removed from the film, he chose screen credit (as executive producer) rather than pay. He wished he had chosen pay when he saw the results. He was creative consultant on Eerie, Indiana (1991-1992) and directed five episodes. He played himself in the series finale.
Joe Dante began his movie career working for Roger Corman, similar to Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron. He worked as an editor on films such as Grand Theft Auto before codirecting Hollywood Boulevard with Allan Arkush. His first full feature film, Piranha, was released in 1978. After the release of The Howling, he was noticed by Steven Spielberg and he directed the third segment, wherein a woman is 'adopted' by an omnipotent child, of Twilight Zone: The Movie for him. His first really big hit, Gremlins, which was also produced by Steven Spielberg, was released in 1984. He would work with Spielberg again on Innerspace and Gremlins 2. His films are well known for their movie injokes and their special visual effects. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Dante [Aug 2006]
More films
"Do your parents know you're Ramones?" With those withering words, Miss Togar (Mary Woronov), the uptight neofascist principal of Vince Lombardi High School, addresses the four mop-haired, leather-jacketed members of America's first and most famous punk band. And you know it won't be long before the Ramones's jackhammer riffs are blaring through the public address system at maximum volume, the kids are running--not walking--wild in the hallways (without passes!), and Miss Togar's gulag is re-christened "Rock 'n' Roll High School." Then, in keeping with the outrageously nihilistic animus of punk, the high school students and the Ramones just blow the place to smithereens. It's a crowd- pleasing, fantasy-fulfillment climax that combines the apocalyptic finale of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point with the explosive conclusion of Alice Cooper's "School's Out." Rock 'n' Roll High School is a blast, a goofy and liberating salute to the rebel spirit behind the teen rock & roll movies of the 1950s, which always pitted the kids' insatiable appetite for fun against the adults' fear-based authoritarianism. The film is emblematic of the disarmingly silly, tongue-in-cheek humor of the youth-oriented B-pictures cranked out in the '50s and '60s by renowned low-budget exploitation mogul Roger Corman (who gave many a hungry young filmmaker, including the creators of this film, their start in the biz), and of the noisy, anarchic energy of '70s punk rock, as personified by the inimitable Ramones. In the words of the maestros' beach-blanket-buzz-saw title anthem, this movie is "Fun, fun, oh baby, fun, fun..." --Jim Emerson for amazon.com [...]
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