J. David Shapiro

J.D. Shapiro
Born	Jake David Shapiro
Other names	JD Shapiro, J.D. Shapiro
Website	http://jdshapiro.com

J. David Shapiro (born March 18, 1969) is a filmmaker and stand-up comedian. He is best known for writing the film "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" and many consider is best work to date "We Married Margo" an independent film he wrote, directed and starred in.

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Work	Category	Result
2000	The HBO U.S. Comedy Festival	We Married Margo	Audience Award for Best Film	Won
	Slamdance Film Festival	We Married Margo	Grand Jury Prize	Nominated
2001
The NY Comedy Festival. Offical Selection	Nominated
2001	Won
Pi Phan Film Festival in Korea. Official Selection. Shapiro won Best Actor for his role as Jake	Nominated
2001	Golden Raspberry Award	Battlefield Earth	Worst Screenplay	Won

Early Life

Shapiro grew up in North Jersey and at times, Hell's Kitchen, where his father, Robert Shapiro, lived. Shapiro's parents were divorced when he was two. Shapiro has three sisters, Karen Shapiro, Nancy Cohen, Pam Schloss. He has been said that, although they didn't have money, he had a good childhood. He spent much time when he was a kid on his own. Shapiro used to sneak into neighborhood bars and he ended up being befriended by members of the Westie's, the notorious Irish-American mob considered to be one of the most violent and feared crime groups in New York City during the time of their operation. They ran much of mid-town manhattan until the mid-80's. Shapiro doesn't talk much about them, only to say they taught him how to fight and they showed him life was short.

Shapiro became interested in entertainment, mainly film, at an early age. Shapiro use to gather his sisters and friends where he would write, produce, direct and star in plays and short films. He would charge people $.25 cents to see the film or play and another $.50 cents to get a small bag of popcorn in order to fund his projects.

At times Shapiro was so poor he had to walk across the GW bridge in order to get to school. The first movie he ever entered for an award was in high school, but it ended up not being seen by the teacher selection committee. Students who saw the movie started a grassroots movement, circulated the film to other students and word of mouth caught on. The selection committee had already made all their choices, so they ended up giving Shapiro an award for "Best Forgotten Film."

Shapiro had the opportunity to attended the NYC School of Performing Arts but when he found out they had no football team he decided to stay put.

Although small in stature, he played high school football. His first year he was a running back and was terrible. Turns out his Dyslexia caused him to constantly go the other way. His mom talked into going back and playing another year and the coach switched him to defense, were he didn't have to think as much as he had to react. He was moved to roving middle linebacker after a scrimmage with his own team and he took out the fullback, a player that outweighed him by about 75lbs. Shapiro became the co-captain of the defense and led his schools team, The Raiders, to the state championship where they won after Shapiro sacked the opponents QB in the end zone. Although carried off the field in victory, the next day the wrong players picture was put in the paper stating he won the game. The team made it up to Shapiro when they awarded him the MVP. He was also on the chess team. And possibly the only person to ever get into a fist fight with an opposing player during a varsity tennis match.

Shapiro at one time thought about joining the secret service. He had several meetings and was put through a series of test. His Dyslexia and "Independent attitude and unwillingness to follow basic rules" kept him out.

After college Shapiro packed up his few belongings, the $950 he had to his name and moved to Los Angeles to peruse his dream of becoming a filmmaker. With him was Margaux St. Ledger, the woman that would eventually be the impetus of his directorial debut film, "We Married Margo."

Shapiro first moved to a 500 square foot studio apartment in Westood. He saved $50 a month in rent by becoming the assistant manager, his job being to change light bulbs and empty trash. In 1992 he was looking for a dentist and his sister Pam had hear of Evan Chandler and suggested he go. Once learning that Evan had a patient who used to work for Mel Brooks, Shapiro wrote the spec script, "Robbin' The Hood." It got to Mel who loved it but not the title. So Shapiro changed it to "Robin Hood: Men In Tights." From concept to release was a little over a year.

Career

Stand-up

Although always a huge fan of stand-up comedy, Shapiro never really thought of doing it himself. He was uncomfortable speaking in front of any audience of any size, due to his dyslexia and shyness. He started to flirt with the idea of doing stand-up after he made "Robin Hood: Men In Tights," but never did. It wasn't until after making "We Married Margo" that he started to seriously considered doing it for a combination of reasons; The accolades he was getting for his performance in "Margo," an "inspiring" conversation he had with Robin Williams at The HBO Aspen Comedy Festival and a chance meeting with Donna Moffit, wife of John Moffitt. Donna was going to see a friend's film but got the time wrong and figured she might as well see the movie that was playing, "We Married Margo." After the screening, she approached Shapiro, told him who she was, told him she had seen thousands of stand-up comedians and he had one of the greatest natural gifts she'd ever seen, and insisted on him perusing it as a career.

Still, Shapiro shied away from it. He remained friends with Moffitt who year-after-year pushed him to get up on stage. In March of 2005 Shapiro finally did get on stage at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip and officially started his stand-up career. Shapiro was quoted as saying that the first time he ever went up was for three minutes which felt like 3 hours. Not just to him, but to the audience watching. Luckily the main booker for The Comedy Store saw talent in Shapiro and thus Shapiro was able to perform3 minutes on Sunday and Monday nights in the "Friends & Family" section of The Comedy store.

Due to Shapiro's heavy obligations with film and TV projects, he was unable to perform many nights a week, going even months at a time without getting in any stage time. But Shapiro's nature abilities and hard work paid off. Mitzi Shore, the owner of the Comedy Store and the woman who started such illustrious careers as Robin Williams, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Sam Kinison, Jim Carrey and a host of others, made Shapiro a Paid Regular in record time. Shapiro had only performed stand-up 198 times, which is less then most stand-ups perform in one year.

Shapiro has performed all over the country. He is a regular at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles and San Diego as well as Stand Up NY in New York City.

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Feature Writing

The first screenplay Shapiro wrote was called "Wrestlers From Outer Space." A campy science fiction about a wrestler named "Cowboy" who learns all the bad guy wrestlers are from another planet and now they are going to show their true colors and take over the earth. Cowboy, along with the other good-guy wrestles he rounds up challenge the alien wrestlers, winner take all. Cowboy and his group win, the Earth remains as is. Bad guy alien wrestlers win, the earth is their and humanity is changed forever.

When Shapiro first came to Los Angeles in 1989, he had his first meeting with Sonny Fox, a former executive at NBC, who was a friend of a friend of his fathers. Fox told Shapiro he read the first ten pages of his screenplay "Wrestlers from Outer Space" and thought it was campy. Shapiro told him it was supposed to be campy, to which Fox replied, "It's not good campy." Fox asked Shapiro if he had had any formal training as a screenwriter. Shapiro said, "Yes, life." Fox started to tell Shapiro he should take screen writing classes, but before he even finished his sentence he changed his mind and told Shapiro that he had no talent as a writer and should get into another line of work.

Shapiro sold his first screenplay, "The Final Frontier," in 1990. He started writing it on a Monday, finished it on Wednesday, and sold it to Warner Brothers the following Wednesday. Shapiro has gone on to write over twenty screenplays to date, and sold over a dozen, selling to just about every major studio including; 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, New Line, and Miramax.

Some of the screenplays Shapiro has written are "The Final Frontier" which was bought by Warner Brothers, "Toy Soldiers" which was optioned by Trunk Productions, "Solo to Mars," optioned by Paramount, "Robin Hood: Men In Tights, bought by 20th Century Fox & Brooksfilms, "Signed, Sealed & Delivered" which he co-wrote with Aaron William Dozier and was bought by Touchstone Pictures, "Working Class Hero," co-written with James Cummings and optioned by Gale Anne Hurd, "Supercops." Co-written with James Cummings. Based on the book “Supercops" and Bought by Nittolo Entertainment, "Blast Off!" which was bought by Interscope Films, "Fear," which was optioned by Miramax and "Daddy's Girl," which was optioned by New Line.

At one point Betty Thomas was attached to direct "Signed Sealed & Delivered" Glenn Close was negotiating to play the lead and Phillip Noyce was attached to direct "Blast Off!"

Shapiro has had six of his screenplays made, several of which he either took his name off of or used a pseudonym. Those screenplays include "Robin Hood: Men In Tights," "Battlefield Earth" & "We Married Margo." Shapiro wanted to use his pseudonym "Sir Nicholas Knack" for "Battlefield Earth" but the WGA would not allow it because of a rule they have that if you are paid over a certain amount of money you can't. Shapiro could have taken his name completely off the movie, but after long discussions with his agents and attorney, he begrudgingly decided not to.

TV & Internet

Untitled: Stan Lee Project. Shapiro, along with Stan Lee (Spider Man, X-Men, Iron Man), and Tony Chargin created and will executive produce this new superhero series. (2010)

"FreakyDeak SkyLark." Shapiro created, wrote directed and executive produced this animated series for NBC. (2007)

"Inside/Out." TV series developed with Paul Rieser’s Nuance Pictures for Shapiro to star in. (2005)

"We Married Margo." Optioned by Big Ticket with Shapiro as Executive Producer and Star. Based on the movie, "We Married Margo." (2004)

Spelling Entertainment. Shapiro had an overall-deal to create and executive produce a one-hour television series. (2003)

20TH Century Fox. Development deal for Shapiro to associate produce a TV series he created called “Man Bites Dog.” (2002)

Acting

"National Lampoon's Pucked." Co-starred with Jon Bon Jovi and Cary Elwes (2006)

"The Strand Venice." Starred in an assemble web series created and executive produced by Dan Myrick (co-creator & co-director of ”The Blair Witch Project”) (2004)

"We Married Margo." Co-starred in the award winning independent film.

"Sunkist Pistachio Nut Commercial." Shapiro created the character. The commercial won Best Commercial in the commercial section of the Cannes Film Festival.

As himself

"Women in Film Awards." Shapiro was the first ever MC for the first ever awards ceremony which took place at Sundance.

The Bob & Tom Show.

The Joey Reynolds Show.

The Early Show with Mike & Juliet.

Entertainment Tonight.

Showtime.

CNN's Bizz Buzz.

Cinamax.

MTV.

Comedy Central.

E!.

Movie Talk on PBS.

Trivia

Shapiro appeared in The Osbourns in the Annoying Neighbors episode. He was approcahed to sue the series by attorny Bert Fields because he never agreed to be on the show but decided not to sue.

Shapiro was instrumental in every aspect of production in "Robin Hood: Men In Tights." From casting to locations. Mel Brooks wanted someone else for the part of Achew but Shapiro found Dave Chappell and convinced Brooks to go with him. Shapiro also wrote all the lyrics to the music, including the theme song, "Men In Tights" along with Hummie Mann who wrote all the music.

"We Married Margo" was made in 17 days, on 35mm film and shot for around $230,00. George Lucas liked the film so much he invited Shapiro to Skywalker Ranch and gave him free post-production sound editing. Frank Darabont wanted to turn the movie into a TV series for HBO.

References

http://www.bobandtom.com/show/2009/09/02

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117788587.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=jd+shapiro

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117466683.html?categoryid=1&cs=1&query=jd+shapiro

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117488166.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=jd+shapiro

ttp://www.variety.com/article/VR1117786353.html?categoryid=12&cs=1&query=jd+shapiro

External links

• Official website