Advertising was fairly simple work, and I really just wanted a job where I could sit and write every day and not get fired for it like I had at other jobs, but it was fun.
At the time I came along, Hollywood's idea of teen movies meant there had to be a lot of nudity, usually involving boys in pursuit of sex, and pretty gross overall. Either that or a horror movie. And the last thing Hollywood wanted in their teen movies was teenagers!
Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie!
Getting into the Lampoon was like a Boy Scout initiation or something - they'd be very cruel to you until you made someone laugh, then they welcomed you into the fold.
I admire people like Judd Nelson, who have an innate sense of fashion. Judd could wear a bathrobe and sanitarium sandals and a fedora and look good.
I always preferred to hang out with the outcasts, 'cause they were cooler; they had better taste in music, for one thing, I guess because they had more time to develop one with the lack of social interaction they had!
I don't consider myself qualified to do a movie about international intrigue - I seldom leave the country.
I find that screen kissing wears very thin very quickly.
I like young actors because they're so unspoiled, not like some of those actors who are about half an hour into their fifteen minutes of fame by the time they get to me.
I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away.
I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw Doctor Zhivago every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.
I was really amused when someone once called me a purveyor of horny sex comedies. He listed Breakfast Club and Mr. Mom in parentheses.
I'm a former hippie, so clothes are important to me - your clothes defined you in that period. I guess clothes still defines people. But, I change a lot. I'm in my Brooks Brothers period now.
It's been about ten years since I've worked with actors who knew their lines!
It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.
Most of my characters are romantic rather than sexual. I think that's an essential difference in my pictures. I think they are more accurate in portraying young people as romantic - as wanting a relationship, an understanding with a member of the opposite sex more than just physical sex.
My generation had to be taken seriously because we were stopping things and burning things. We were able to initiate change, because we had such vast numbers. We were part of the baby boom, and when we moved, everything moved with us.
My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on.
Rock 'n' roll is a young form. People over twenty-five ruin it. This whole censorship thing has come about because old people are playing with a form that is essentially young and rebellious. Do you know how brilliant it was for The Beatles to break up when they did?
When a book is written, it's a final product. But, when a script is finished, it's really just a blueprint. And it's an extraordinary experience for me to watch someone take what I wrote and imagined and make it three-dimensional. And it's great if someone adds something I hadn't thought of.
When I go to a concert, I can't believe that people pay lots of money to see a band that they obviously like and then they dance the whole time.
Why watch someone kissing when people really close their eyes when they kiss?
You know those sexy pinup posters people put up in their bedrooms? I always saw them as being kind of silly and vacant.
John is a film director, producer, and writer.
You can share a link to this page with your friend!