Jon Peters

For other people of the same name, see John Peters (disambiguation).

Jon Peters
Born	June 2, 1945 (1945-06-02) Van Nuys, California

Jon Peters (born John H. Peters; June 2, 1945) is an American movie producer.

Early life

Peters was born in Van Nuys, California, the son of Helen (née Pagano), a receptionist, and Jack Peters, a cook who owned a Hollywood diner. He is of Cherokee (father) and Italian (mother) descent. His mother's family owned a renowned Rodeo Drive salon in Beverly Hills. Jack Peters suffered a heart attack and died when his son was ten, and Helen's marriage to a construction worker devastated the family.

Career

Peters went into the family hair styling business and was successful on Rodeo Drive in Hollywood where he made many industry connections. Peters first gained national prominence when he began dating superstar singer and actress Barbra Streisand after designing the short wig Barbra wore for the 1974 comedy For Pete's Sake. He then produced Streisand's 1974 Butterfly album, from which two songs, There Won't Be Trumpets/A Quiet Thing and God Bless the Child, were later released on her 'Just For the Record' box set - on the liner notes she stated that 'no one at the record company shared my enthusiasm. They thought the songs didn't belong on a contemporary album like Butterfly'. In 1976 he was given a controversial producing credit on Streisand's remake of A Star Is Born ("Barbra" by Donald Zec and Anthony Fowles, chapter 17). He worked with Peter Guber for the next ten years. Their hits included The Color Purple, Flashdance, Batman, and Rain Man. He headed Sony Pictures with Guber for two years until Guber fired him. The pair were the subject of the book Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters.

Peters and Superman

In his Q&A/comedy DVD, An Evening With Kevin Smith, writer/director Kevin Smith relates an anecdote about working with Peters when he was hired to write a script for a new Superman movie, then called Superman Reborn, and would later be renamed Superman Lives. According to Smith, before being hired to draft a screenplay he had to meet with Peters, the project's producer. During this meeting, Peters expressed disdain for most of Superman's iconic characteristics by demanding that Superman was never to fly or appear in his trademark costume. He also suggested Sean Penn as being ideal for the role, based on his performance as a violent death row inmate in Dead Man Walking saying that Penn had the eyes of a "caged animal, a fucking killer," even though Superman is known for refusing to ever kill. Peters then demanded that if Smith were to write a script, the third act of the film would have to include Superman fighting a giant spider, to be unveiled in an homage to King Kong. Peters later produced the 1999 steampunk western Wild Wild West, the finale of which features a giant mechanical spider.

Smith says he met with Peters again after finishing an 80-page outline, which Peters asked him to read aloud in its entirety. Peters then instructed him to include a robot sidekick for Brainiac (who would speak with a stereotypical homosexual lisp), a fight scene between Brainiac and two polar bears, and a marketable "space dog" pet, similar to Star Wars character Chewbacca. While Smith, against his own judgment, acquiesced to Peters' demands and inserted them into his script, the project eventually was abandoned and the script discarded.

In Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Jon Peters admitted that the Superman franchise was problematic for him: "The elements that I was focusing on were away from the heart, it was more leaning towards Star Wars in a sense, you know. I didn't realize the human part of it, I didn't have that." He subsequently served as Executive Producer for Superman Returns, the 2006 movie directed by Bryan Singer.

Peters and The Sandman

Jon Peters's involvement in producing the adaptation of the Sandman comics for Warner Brothers met with controversy. One draft script commissioned by Peters was reviewed on the Internet at Ain't It Cool News, and was met with scorn. Sandman creator Neil Gaiman called the last screenplay that Warner Brothers would send him "...not only the worst Sandman script I've ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I've ever read." By 2001, the project had become stranded in development hell.

In a 2005 interview, Gaiman summarized the Peters approach as follows: "But Sandman movies, they just got increasingly appalling. It was really strange. They started out hiring some really good people and you got Elliott and Rossio and Roger Avary came in and did a draft. They were all solid scripts. And then Jon Peters fired all of them and got in some people who take orders, and who wanted fistfights and all this stuff. It had no sensibility and it was just...they were horrible."

Book

Nikke Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog reported on a book proposal for the autobiography of Jon Peters, written by him and Los Angeles writer William Stadiem. Peters reportedly intended to write about his life with Streisand and string of other lovers including Kim Basinger, Pamela Anderson, Nicolette Sheridan, Sharon Stone, Salma Hayek and Catherine Zeta-Jones, among many other celebrities. In 2009 he subsequently withdrew from the HarperCollins book deal after adverse publicity triggered by the leaking of the proposal and potential lawsuits.

Legal issues

In November 2008, Peters was sued for sexual harassment by his Superman: Man of Steel co-producer Brian Quintana.

In December 2008, Peters sued his past President and General Counsel, Ronald Wayne Grigg. Peters accused Grigg of a campaign of deceit that included hiring an assistant with the company's money, stealing his computers, and drugging and raping two women on Peters' property.

In August 2011, a Los Angeles jury ordered Jon Peters to pay a former assistant $3 million after finding she was subjected to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment during the production of Superman Returns.

Selected filmography as producer and executive producer

• A Star Is Born (1976)
• Caddyshack (1980)
• An American Werewolf in London (1981)
• Flashdance (1983)
• The Color Purple (1985)
• Clue (1985)
• Rain Man (1988)
• Tango & Cash (1989)
• Batman (1989)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
• Batman Returns (1992)
• Money Train (1995)
• My Fellow Americans (1996)
• Wild Wild West (1999)
• Superman Returns (2006)
• A Star Is Born, announced

Further reading

• Griffin, Nancy; Masters, Kim (1996). Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony For a Ride in Hollywood. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80931-1. 

External links

• Jon Peters at the Internet Movie Database