James Gunn

James Gunn (born August 5, 1970, St. Louis, Missouri) is an American writer, film maker, actor, musician and cartoonist.

Biography

File:Jamesgunnsigning.jpg

James Gunn (in green), along with his wife, Jenna Fischer, and actor Nathan Fillion, sign autographs at Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors Convention, 2006

He has several siblings in the industry, including actor Sean Gunn, actor and political writer Matt Gunn, producer Patrick Gunn (previously Executive Vice President of Artisan Entertainment) and writer Brian Gunn. James and all of his male siblings attended the same high school, St. Louis University High. Gunn attended Saint Louis University for his B.A. in Theatre. He continued his graduate studies at Columbia University, getting his MFA in Creative Writing. He married television and film actress Jenna Fischer in October 2000, but they announced their separation on September 5 2007.

Gunn began his film making career with Troma Entertainment, for whom he wrote and co-directed Tromeo and Juliet (1996). After contributing to several other Troma films, Gunn wrote, produced and performed in his own superhero comedy, The Specials, directed by Craig Mazin and featuring Rob Lowe, Thomas Haden Church, Melissa Joan Hart, Judy Greer and Jamie Kennedy. Kennedy was instrumental in getting the film made, having been shown the script by James' brother Sean. Gunn also lived in Kennedy's guest house while shooting the film. The Specials was made very quickly on a very low budget, and was moderately successful, but the quality of the screenplay got James noticed and, in his own words, launched his career.

Gunn has also written a novel, The Toy Collector and he also wrote another book alongside Troma President Lloyd Kaufman, All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger a book about his experiences with Kaufman while at Troma. During his college years, he also wrote comics for several college newspapers and underground magazines.

As a musician, Gunn released one album with his band, The Icons, Mom, We Like It Here on Earth (1994). He has written music for the films The Low Life (1994), as well as Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo 2.

Career

James Gunn's directorial debut SLiTHER.

Gunn's first major Hollywood screenplay was Scooby-Doo (2002). He has since written scripts for a number of films, including Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004). James Gunn is also partially responsible for the screenplay of the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead despite receiving solo writing credit. After Gunn left the project early to concentrate on Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, both Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank were brought in for rewrites. In a commentary track on the Ultimate Edition DVD for the original Dawn, producer Richard P. Rubenstein explained that Tolkin further developed the characters, while Frank provided some of the bigger action sequences.

Gunn's directorial debut was a comedy horror film titled Slither, which was inspired by classic alien invasion films such as The Blob, The Thing and particularly Night of the Creeps.

Slither was a box office bomb, earning only $3.9 million in its opening weekend, and grossing a domestic box office of $7,802,450 and a foreign box office of $4,279,936, substantially less than its total budget of $29.5 million (when marketing costs are included). "We were crushingly disappointed," said Paul Brooks, president of Slither's production company, Gold Circle Films. Consequently, Slither's poor box office performance may have "killed off the horror-comedy genre for the near future."

Producer Paul Brooks offered this explanation about why Slither failed to catch on with movie-goers:

I think that because it was comedy-horror instead of pure horror is where the problem lay. It's the first comedy-horror in a long time, and maybe the marketplace just isn't ready for comedy-horror yet.

Trivia

• The character of Charles Gunn from the TV series Angel is named in his and his brother Sean's honor.[1]

Partial filmography

• Slither (2006)
• LolliLove (2006)
• Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
• Dawn of the Dead (2004)
• Tube (2004)
• Scooby-Doo (2002)
• The Specials (2000)
• Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

Bibliography

• All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger with Lloyd Kaufman (1998)
• The Toy Collector (2000)
• Make Your Own Damn Movie: Secrets of a Renegade Director (introduction) (2003)

External links

• James Gunn at IMDb
• James Gunn at MySpace
• JamesGunn.com Official Site