john dahl
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Strength Through Humility
You’ve heard it before: “It’s better to fail than never to have tried.” While this may be true, if you’re a director there’s no reason why you should trip over your own feet like I did. After making a few features, I learned you could get pretty far by just believing your own narrative. However, the “fake it till you make it” approach has its limits. While I was making feature after feature, deep inside I was actually harboring a growing insecurity, an insecurity for which, ironically, I compensated with more drive. Thinking I could do no wrong, my ego […]
by A.D. Calvo on Jun 11, 2018 -
John Dahl, You Kill Me
BEN KINGSLEY AND TÉA LEONI IN JOHN DAHL’S YOU KILL ME. COURTESY IFC FILMS. John Dahl has unquestionable cinematic flair and a genuine talent for telling unconventional stories, yet he never set out to be a film director. Growing up in Montana in the 60s and 70s, his great passions were art and music: he studied fine art in college, then dropped out to become a commercial artist and play in rock ‘n’ roll bands. Still uncertain of his place in the world, he ended up at film school where he focused on directing. After graduation, he worked as an […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 22, 2007 -
TALK — NO LONGER CHEAP
Producer Ted Hope e-mailed me this New York Times article by Anne Thompson which is mandatory reading for all producers, writers and development executives. The article concerns the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and its recent ruling in the Jeff Grosso v. Miramax Film Corporation case. In the case, Grosso, a freelance writer and high-stakes poker player, sued Miramax claiming that the John Dahl film Rounders lifted story details and characters from his own spec script The Shell Game, which he had submitted unsolicited to a production company that had offices in the Miramax building. As quoted in the Times, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 13, 2004
