Directing

John Dorr

Born 1944-09-22 · Lancaster, Massachusetts

John Dorr (1944-1993), born in Massachusetts, first studied at Yale University (1962-1966), where he programmed the Film Society, created the Film Bulletin and completed a thesis on D.W. Griffith's last pictures. After moving to Los Angeles to study at UCLA (1966-1969), he shot his first shorts in 8mm and worked as a film critic for « Take One », « On Film », « Millimeter » or « The Hollywood Reporter », where he proved himself ruthless towards New Hollywood movies, hoping for another type of American cinema. The 1970s were spent writing around a dozen screenplays (from 1971 to 1978 : a gay priest drama, a vampire romance, a two-screen revisionist western, a six-hour Griffith biopic...) which all remained unproduced. In one of his poems, Dorr judged the decade harshly : « The 70s Suck ». After a short stay in Massachusetts (1977-1978), Dorr returned to California. Then, using one his friends' consumer-level B&W video camera, he decided to shoot his first feature, no longer waiting for the traditional production route. « Sudzall Does It All! » (1979) and its rapid follow-up, « The Case of the Missing Consciousness » (1980), were shown in a public screening at LAICA in March 1980. During the next two years, Dorr helped his friends with their own video projects, while completing his Dorothy Parker biopic, « Dorothy and Alan at Norma Place » (1982). All videos were shown under the « EZTV » banner in 1982, and a brick-and-mortar location, the « EZTV Video Gallery », was eventually opened in West Hollywood in 1983, with Dorr's fourth feature « Approaching Omega » (1983) and the ambition to offer a new production model for non-conventional artists in the 1980s. For Dorr, the next decade was spent maintaining EZTV's fragile existence, working as cameraman, editor, sound engineer, producer, and sometimes actor, in other people's projects. He himself only directed a handful of short subjects, or codirected documentaries on literature, poetry and film. His last fiction project, « The Three Cassandras », was abandoned after a few days of shooting. Dorr learned he was HIV-positive in the Spring of 1991, and died from AIDS-related complications in Los Angeles on January 1st, 1993.

Acting credits

6.2

Tammy, a teenage timebomb, arrives in Orange County with her ignorant redneck parents, and eighteen years of bottled-up frustration give way to a summer of lethal excess. Get out the body bags; call in the SWAT team!

Blonde Death

1984

Shakespearian actress Cordelia Coventry is about to give up on her career when she is chosen by director Bruce Rapport to become the star of a national ad campaign for Sudzall washing powder.

Sudzall Does It All!

1979

In 1963, living a routine life on Norma Place in Los Angeles, recluse writer Dorothy Parker and bisexual husband Alan Campbell recall their often-rocky relationship, started thirty years earlier.

Dorothy and Alan at Norma Place

1982

It's the Reagan years and all of the husbands in the neighborhood are turning gay.

As the World Burns

1982

In a sarcastic mood, EZTV's founder John Dorr makes fun of the extensive aspiring Los Angeles spoken word scene of the 1980s and the enormous number of people who routinely approached EZTV asking for free service in getting their project made

Do It Yourself Video for Poets

1987

7.0

« When I returned to Los Angeles after my Christmas break, I found a rather belated Christmas present in my letterbox; it was John Dorr’s new film. John Dorr’s Seasons Greetings, the latest in a series of video letters that John sent to his friends each year. (…) Although I’ve never seen John’s other Christmas cards, his latest delivery is clearly different from those that preceded it, in that he knew he was ill when he made it. It begins with a short statement to the camera about living with AIDS, which serves as a prologue to a series of vignettes recorded during trips he made last year with companion George La Fleur. » Bill Krohn, « John Dorr’s New Year’s Greetings », Cahiers du cinéma, n°470, Nov. 1993

Season's Greetings

1992

Serving as a guinea pig in Dr. Wyoming's REM sleep research at the Second Sight institute, private detective Nick Malace is secretly implanted with a brain monitor by rival researcher Dr. Keiger.

The Case of the Missing Consciousness

1980

Behind the camera

Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country poster

8.0

A documentary insight behind the scenes of Roberts Altman's Short Cuts.

Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country

1993

Shakespearian actress Cordelia Coventry is about to give up on her career when she is chosen by director Bruce Rapport to become the star of a national ad campaign for Sudzall washing powder.