John Landis

John is a comedy legend. Even if he never directed another movie (he’s making two now, so don’t worry!) he would go down as one of the funniest filmmakers in movie history. Just look:

Animal House (with Jewish actor Peter Reigert). The Blues Brothers (with Carrie Fisher). Trading Places (with Jamie Lee Curtis). Coming to America.

Even ones not quite at that level, like The Three Amigos, Spies Like Us, and Beverly Hills Cop III, are waaaay funnier than most of the new stuff— The Comebacks or Underdog, anyone?

One trick is to hire really funny actors. John likes to use the early stars of Saturday Night Live, like Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Steve Martin, and Martin Short.

If you really know John, though, you know that he also has a love of horror. He directed Michael Jackson’s history-making Thriller video and the best werewolf movie ever, American Werewolf in London.

Speaking of horror, one of John’s new projects, Epic Proportions, is about the making of a movie about the Ten Plagues! The main characters are two guys who want to break into the movie biz by starting off as extras in this movie-in-a-movie.

That’s not exactly the same as how John got started in the movies. Nope, he started even lower! His first job in Hollywood was in the mailroom at 20th Century Fox.

John is a fan of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey by Jewish director Stanley Kubrick. One of the lines in that movie is “See you next Wednesday,” and John uses that line in every movie, if he can. Two of his other favorite shticks is to put other directors in his movies and to have his characters look right at the audience.

Another thing John loves is music, which he has fun with in his films. Many of the characters in The Blues Brothers are soul, jazz, and R&B stars, for instance... and all the songs in his Werewolf movie have the word “moon” in them!

Bonus:

Like we said, John Landis directed American Werewolf in London, but first Jewish songwriter Warren Zevon wrote the song “Werewolves of London.” That song was inspired by the very first werewolf movie ever, made back in 1935... and it was famously used in the movie The Color of Money starring Paul Newman.

Jewish director Mike Nichols directed Jack Nicholson as a werewolf in Wolf, and Jewish actor Corey Haim starred in Silver Bullet, Stephen King’s werewolf movie.

Two Jewish screenwriters wrote the movie Teen Wolf. And speaking of teenagers who really need to shave, the star of the movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf was Jewish actor Michael Landon, later the star of the series Little House on the Prairie.

But our all-time favorite Jewish werewolf, of course, is Oz from Buffy, played by Seth Green.

You know… Hallowe’en was only two days ago when we wrote this. Maybe that’s why we have werewolves on the brain!