Badham, John 1939- (John M. Badham)

PERSONAL

Full name, John MacDonald Badham; born August 25, 1939, in Luton, England; immigrated to the United States, 1945; naturalized U.S. citizen, 1950; son of Henry Lee (a U.S. Air Force general and business executive) and Mary Iola (an actress; maiden name, Hewitt) Badham; brother of Mary Badham (an actress, best known for her role as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird); married Bonnie Sue Hughes, December 28, 1967 (divorced 1979); married Jan Speck (an actress), 1983 (divorced 1990); married Olivia Laughlin, 1992; children: (first marriage) Kelly MacDonald. Education: Yale University, B.A., philosophy, 1961, M.F.A., directing, 1963.

Addresses:

Agent—Paradigm, 360 North Crescent Dr., North Bldg., Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Manager—Todd Harris Management, 9229 Sunset Blvd., Suite 405, West Hollywood, CA 90069. Office—The Badham Company, 3344 Cleredon Rd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Career:

Director and producer. John Badham Films, Inc., president; JMB Films, Inc., chair of board; Great American Picture Show, president; Chapman University, Orange, CA, film professor, 2005; guest lecturer, Yale University, Loyola Marymount College, University of Alabama, Amherst College, University of Southern California, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Has worked in the mailroom and as a tour guide, Universal Studios; Indian Spring School, board of directors. Military service: U.S. Army, 1963-64.

Member:

Directors Guild, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Filmex Society, American Film Institute.

Awards, Honors:

Emmy Award nomination, outstanding directorial achievement in drama—a single program of a series with continuing characters and/or theme, 1971, for The Senator; Christopher Award, 1971, for The Impatient Heart; Southern California Motion Picture Council Award, 1974, for The Gun; Emmy Award, best dramatic program, and ARD reihe 'das Film Festival Award, 1975, both for The Law; Image Award nomination, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1976, for The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings; Grand Prize, International Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival of Paris, Saturn Award, best horror film, and Saturn Award nomination, best director, both Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1980, for Dracula; George Pal Memorial Award, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1980; Saturn Award, best director, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1984, for WarGames; Saturn Award nomination, best director, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1987, for Short Circuit; DVD Premiere Award nomination, best audio commentary, library release, 2003, for Saturday Night Fever; Career Achievement Award, Temecula Valley International Film Festival, 2005.

CREDITS

Film Work:

Director, Sunshine, Part II (also known as My Sweet Lady), CIC, 1975.

Director, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, Universal, 1976.

Director, Saturday Night Fever, Paramount, 1977.

Director, Dracula, Universal, 1979.

Director, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, 1981.

Director, Blue Thunder (also known as Blue Thunder the Movie), Columbia, 1983.

Director, WarGames, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, 1983.

Director, American Flyers, Warner Bros., 1985.

Director, Short Circuit, TriStar, 1986.

Director and executive producer, Stakeout, Buena Vista, 1987.

Executive producer, Disorganized Crime (also known as Disorganised Crime), Buena Vista, 1989.

Director, Bird on a Wire, Universal, 1990.

Director, The Hard Way, Universal, 1991.

Executive producer, From Time to Time (also known as Timekeeper and Le visionarium), 1992.

Director and executive producer, Another Stakeout (also known as The Lookout and Stakeout 2), Buena Vista, 1993.

(With Dan York) Executive producer, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Universal, 1993.

Director, Point of No Return (also known as The Assassin and The Assassin—(Point of No Return)), Warner Bros., 1993.

Director and executive producer, Drop Zone, Paramount, 1994.

Director and producer, Nick of Time, Paramount, 1995.

Director, Incognito, Warner Bros., 1997.

Director, Floating Away, 1998.

Executive producer, Firefighter (short), 2005.

Film Appearances:

Himself, The Revamping of Dracula (documentary short), Universal Studios Home Video, 2004.

Himself, Make Your Own Damn Movie! (documentary), 2005.

Himself, Ride with the Angels: Making "Blue Thunder" (documentary), Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2006.

Himself, The Special: Building Blue Thunder (documentary short), Sony Picture Home Entertainment, 2006.

Himself, Making Soundtrack History (documentary short), Paramount Home Entertainment, 2007.

Himself, "Saturday Night Fever": A 30 Year Legacy (documentary short), Paramount Home Entertainment, 2007.

Himself, Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (documentary), 2007.

Television Work; Series:

Associate producer, Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1970.

Executive producer and showrunner, Blind Justice, ABC, 2005.

Television Work; Movies:

Assistant to the producer, Deadlock, 1969.

Associate producer, The Neon Ceiling, NBC, 1971.

Director, The Impatient Heart, NBC, 1971.

(Uncredited) Director, No Place to Run, 1972.

Director, Isn't It Shocking?, ABC, 1973.

Director, "Epicac," Rex Harrison Presents Stories of Love (also known as Short Stories of Love, Short Story, and Three Faces of Love), 1974.

Director, The Godchild, ABC, 1974.

Director, The Gun, ABC, 1974.

Director, Reflections of Murder, ABC, 1974.

Director, The Law, NBC, 1974.

Director, The Keegans, CBS, 1976.

Director and executive producer, Relentless: Mind of a Killer (also known as Mood Indigo), NBC, 1993.

Executive producer, Rebound: The Legend of Earl "The Goat" Manigault (also known as Rebound), HBO, 1996.

Director, Floating Away, 1998.

Director, The Jack Bull, HBO, 1999.

Director, The Last Debate, Showtime, 2000.

Director, My Brother's Keeper (also known as Brother's Keeper), USA Network, 2002.

Director, Obsessed, Lifetime, 2002.

Director, Footsteps, 2003.

Director, Evil Knievel, 2004.

Television Associate Producer; Pilots:

Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Wax Museum"), NBC, 1969.

Dial Hot Line, ABC, 1970.

A Clear and Present Danger, NBC, 1970.

Television Director; Episodic:

"A Single Blow of the Sword," The Senator (also known as The Bold Ones: The Senator), NBC, 1971.

Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, ABC, 1971.

"A Terminal Case of Vengeance," Sarge, NBC, 1971.

"A Push Over the Edge," Sarge, NBC, 1971.

Cannon, CBS, 1971.

"The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes," Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1971.

(As John M. Badham) "Camera Obscura," Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1971.

(As John M. Badham) "Green Fingers," Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1971.

Cool Million, NBC, 1972.

"The Girl with the Hungry Eyes," Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1972.

"You Can Come Up Now, Mrs. Millikan," Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1972.

"The Doll of Death," Night Gallery (also known as Rod Serling's "Night Gallery"), NBC, 1972.

"Witch, Witch, Burning Bright," The Sixth Sense, ABC, 1972.

"Eddie Joe," Nichols (also known as James Garner and James Garner As Nichols), 1972.

"The Unholy Alliance," Nichols (also known as James Garner and James Garner As Nichols), 1972.

"Trail of the Serpent," The Streets of San Francisco, ABC, 1973.

"Alethea," Kung Fu, ABC, 1973.

"Dangerous Game," Police Story, NBC, 1973.

Sunshine, NBC, 1975.

"Dead Soldiers," The Shield, FX Channel, 2003.

"Up on the Roof," Blind Justice, ABC, 2005.

"In Your Face," Blind Justice, ABC, 2005.

"The Limit," Just Legal, The WB, 2005.

"Chapter Eleven ‘Fallout’," Heroes, NBC, 2006.

"Chapter Twenty-One ‘The Hard Part’," Heroes, NBC, 2007.

"Road Trip," Standoff, Fox, 2007.

"Bounty Hunters!," Psych, USA Network, 2007.

"When Life Gives You Lemon Bars," Las Vegas, NBC, 2007.

"33 Bullets," Crossing Jordan, NBC, 2007.

"Dead Again," Crossing Jordan, NBC, 2007.

Also directed episodes of The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (also known as The New Doctors), NBC; The Doctors, NBC.

Television Appearances; Movies:

Don Beard, The Last Debate, Showtime, 2000.

Television Appearances; Specials:

Art of Darkness: A "Night Gallery" Retrospective, Starz, 2002.

Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon, Channel 4, 2004.

Television Appearances; Episodic:

The Directors, Encore, 1999.

"Matthew Broderick," Biography, Arts and Entertainment, 2001.

"Saturday Night Fever," VH1 Behind the Movie, VH1, 2002.

The Screen Savers, Tech TV, 2003.

"Sets and the City," "Heroes" Unmasked, BBC, 2007.

"The Director's Cut," "Heroes" Unmasked, BBC, 2007.

Marty, "Dead Again," Crossing Jordan, NBC, 2007.

WRITINGS

Video Games:

(Story idea only) Wargames, 1998.

Books:

(With Craig Modderno) I'll Be My Trailer: Creative Wars Between Directors and Actors, Michael Wiese Productions, 2006.

BADHAM, John

Nationality: American. Born: Luton, Bedfordshire, England, 25 August, 1939; son of English actress Mary Hewitt; moved to U.S., 1945; grew up in Alabama, stepson of U.S. Army colonel. Education: Attended Indian Springs School, Alabama; B.A. in philosophy, Yale University, 1961; M.A., Yale School of Drama, 1963. Military Service: U.S. Army, 1963–64. Family: Married Bonnie Sue Hughes, 28 December 1967 (divorced 1979), daughter: Kelly MacDonald; married Jan Speck, 1983 (divorced 1990); married Olivia Laughlin, 1992. Career: Worked in various jobs for Hollywood studios, including mailroom assistant at Universal; assistant director to Steven Spielberg on Night Gallery (TV series), 1969; associate producer at Universal Studios, 1969–70; solo film directing debut, 1971; worked exclusively in TV as director until 1976; most successful period was as maker of action films and thrillers in the 1980s; guest lecturer at Yale University, UCLA, University of Southern California, Amherst College; Chairman of Yale Drama Alumni Fund. Awards: Southern California Motion Picture Council Award for The Gun, 1974; Grand Prize, Ninth International Science Fiction Festival of Paris, Best Horror Film Award, and George Pal Memorial Award, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, all for Dracula, 1979. Agent: Adams, Ray & Rosenberg, 9200 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles 90069, USA.

Films as Director:

1971

The Impatient Heart (for TV)

1974

Isn't It Shocking? (for TV); The Law (for TV); The Gun (for TV); Reflections of Murder (for TV); The Godchild (for TV)

1976

The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings; TheKeegans (for TV)

1977

Saturday Night Fever

1979

Dracula

1981

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

1983

Blue Thunder; War Games

1985

American Flyers

1986

Short Circuit

1987

Stakeout (+ pr)

1990

Bird on a Wire

1991

The Hard Way

1993

Point of No Return (The Assassin); Another Stakeout (TheLookout, Stakeout 2) (+ pr)

1994

Drop Zone (+ pr)

1995

Nick of Time (+ pr)

1997

Incognito

1998

Floating Away

1999

The Jack Bull (for TV)

Films as Producer:

1989

Disorganised Crime

1992

From Time to Time (Timekeeper, Le Visionarium)

1993

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

1994

Relentless: Mind of a Killer (for TV)

1996

Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Rebound) (for TV)

Publications

On BADHAM: articles—

Brown, Jeffrey A. "Gender and the Action Heroine: Hardbodies and the Point of No Return," in Cinema Journal (Austin, Texas), Spring 1996.

Quinlan, David, "John Badham," in Quinlan's Film Directors, London, 1999.

Vincendeau, Ginette, "Highjacked," in Sight and Sound (London), July 1993.

Wood, Robin, "Burying the Undead: The Use and Obsolescence of Count Dracula," in Mosaic: A Journal for the InterdisciplinaryStudy of Literature (Winnipeg, Manitoba), Winter-Spring, 1983.

On BADHAM: films—

John Badham: The Director's Director, 1982.

Best known as the director of Saturday Night Fever, and a raft of flawed but popular thrillers, English-born director John Badham began his career working in television on series such as Night Gallery (1969), Nichols (1971) and Police Story (1973). He also made several TV movies of variable quality in the early 1970s before going on to establish the characteristic glossy style of his 1980s film output. Badham is notable for the number of different types of films he has made, from dance drama in Saturday Night Fever through romantic horror in Dracula, techno-paranoia in War Games, and sub-Hitchcockian thrillers such as Bird on a Wire. Badham is a workmanlike director, skilled in the mechanics of movie making and with a reputation for making reliable, if sometimes predictable, entertainment.

The disco dance movie Saturday Night Fever accelerated the career of actor John Travolta, and also marked the beginning of Badham's own most successful spell as a director. The dramatic pace of the film, helped along by some sharp editing and Travolta's presence, have made Saturday Night Fever a cult movie: Travolta's dance scene in Quentin Tarantino's celebrated Pulp Fiction (1994) pays homage to the earlier film. Yet despite its cult status Saturday Night Fever is at times a rather sluggish film, rescued only by Travolta's performance and some extraordinary dance sequences. It has been released in several versions over the years, some of which are quite heavily censored.

After the success of Saturday Night Fever, Dracula became Badham's stylish contribution to the vampire film canon. An expensive production, heavy with visual effects and flamboyant theatricality, Dracula gives an indication of Badham's status in Hollywood at the end of the 1970s, and is one of his most watchable films. His period of greatest success, however, came during the 1980s, when films like Blue Thunder and War Games appealed to Cold War worries about placing too much faith in technology. Blue Thunder is a lavish action movie featuring a plot about the commissioning of a high-tech police helicopter.

More interesting is War Games, which was Oscar nominated for screenplay and cinematography. An early treatment of the dangerous possibilities for online terrorism, War Games tells the story of a teenage hacker who manages to connect his home computer into the Pentagon's system, pretending to be the Soviet military about to embark on nuclear war. At a time of great tension between the West and the Soviet Union, the film was a reminder that deadly conflicts often begin with a misunderstanding. Playing on the mystique and suspicion that still surrounded computers at the time, War Games is overburdened by the need to make the machines look as complicated and sinister as possible. It could be argued that the elements of adventure and suspense in the film contradict the message that hacking poses a serious threat. Nevertheless, both Blue Thunder and War Games were immensely successful at the box office.

Short Circuit again demonstrated Badham's ability to switch between genres, this time with the enjoyable comic story of a malfunctioning robot on the loose. It was quickly followed by the lighthearted but over-long police thriller, Stakeout. After these successes, Badham's career took a downturn in the late 1980s from which it has never really recovered. Bird on a Wire is an amusing but ultimately unbelievable star vehicle for Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn, while another comedy thriller, The Hard Way, tells the story of an actor who teams up with a real-life New York cop in order to research a film role.

Badham's later films can mostly be described as journeyman work, epitomized by Point of No Return (The Assassin), a remake of Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita. Besson's film is a gritty, violent movie about a convicted killer given the chance to avoid the death penalty if she agrees to work as an assassin for the state. While the Badham film sticks fairly closely to the plot of the original, it takes a sanitized, altogether softer approach. There seems little reason for Point of No Return ever to have been made, other than the American audience's dislike of subtitling and Hollywood's worries about the extreme levels of violence in the French original.

Having begun his career in television, Badham has returned at the end of the 1990s to making TV movies. While in filmmaking terms many of his films are uneven and unsatisfactory, in the 1980s he made some of the most popular movies of the decade. He has also been involved in the development of computer generated special effects. Ironically, having established a reputation as a director of predictable star vehicles, he will probably be best remembered as the director of Saturday Night Fever, a film which helped make a star of John Travolta.

—Chris Routledge