Amy Holden Jones

Amy Holden Jones is an American screenwriter and film director.^[1][2][3][4] She has edited various films and later began directing and writing. She currently works in television.

Life and career[]

Jones grew up in Florida and lived in Buffalo, New York during her high school years. She was interested in photography and wanted to study alongside Minor White who was teaching at MIT at the time. Jones attended Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, majoring in art history, so she could also take film studies courses at nearby MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[5]

After she won first place at the American Film Institute National Student Festival, where Martin Scorsese was a judge, for her short documentary film A Weekend Home (1975). A year later Jones was struggling to make ends meet living in Boston due to a lack of funding for documentaries. After she read an article about Martin Scorsese beginning to produce another film, she reached out and called him asking "Do you remember this film? Would you advise me to move to New York?". Five days later he called her back and offered her a job as his assistant during the production of Taxi Driver. It was there that she met her husband cinematographer Michael Chapman. Martin Scorsese told Jones she was “too good to be an assistant” and got her in contact with film producer Roger Corman.^[6] She went on to work for Corman editing Joe Dante's first film, Hollywood Boulevard, when she was 22 years old. She edited American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince for Scorsese, Corvette Summer for MGM, and Second-Hand Hearts for Hal Ashby. Despite the film Second-Hand Hearts being critically panned Jones learned a lot about editing from Hal Ashby as he was an editing genius. After editing these films, she realized that she did not want to spend the rest of her life editing, she was frustrated with the fact that an editor can dramatically improve a film, however, it is not their film. After deciding she no loner wanted to edit exclusively, she reached out to Roger Corman saying she wanted to direct, to prove her ability as a director she pulled a script from his shelf titled and filmed it with a four-person crew. She was scheduled to edit Steven Spielberg’s E.T, however, it was being continuously pushed back due to Poltergeist going over schedule. At this point she made a decision she has called crazy herself and decided to walk away from E.T to direct her own film.^[6] She directed her first film The Slumber Party Massacre by the age of 27, also for Roger Corman. Jones wanted to continue to direct, however, she struggled to find any opportunities because at the time women were not typically allowed to direct films. She wrote and directed the film Love Letters starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Amy Madigan which was received well, however, she was still not receiving any chances to direct. Jones wrote the film Mystic Pizza which was optioned by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. who held onto it for years claiming that his $5,000 option gave him the rights to it for the rest of her life. As she dealt with this situation she rewrote and directed Maid to Order and again was offered nothing while her apprentice editors were getting the chance to direct due to them being men. Eventually Samuel Goldwyn Jr. made Mystic Pizza with a male director, however, her version was well known, and she began to receive offers as a screenwriter since at the time women were allowed to write films, not direct.^[5]

Eventually Jones began being interesting in television and pitched a show titled to ABC, NBC, and CBS who all wanted to buy it, however, she ended up writing the script for CBS. After this she worked on the short lived show Black Box which was still early in her television career and as such, she still had a lot to learn.^[5]

Jones is featured in the first chapter of Julie MacLusky's book Is There Life After Film School? as well as in The First Time I Got Paid for It by Peter Lefcourt and Laura J. Shapiro.

Her work on Indecent Proposal earned Jones a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay.^[7]

Jones is one of the creators of the medical drama The Resident which premiered in 2018 and is still airing. The Resident is a response of sorts to other medical dramas on television that she claims she got tired of watching because they are all too similar and recycle the same plot lines.^[5] In 2019, she signed a new overall deal with 20th Century Fox TV.^[8] Jonnie Davis, President of Creative Affairs, said about Jones, “She’s brimming with ideas, and we’re excited to have her continued services on our series as well as her development. She’s an important voice.” Coming from her deal with 20th Century Fox, she is potentially going to be working as co-writer and co-executive producer for a new crime drama at ABC. She also has a one sided rivalry with actress Susan Sarandon as evidenced by a series of tweets dating back to 2016 that criticize Sarandon's political views.^[9]

Work[]

References[]

External links[]

• Amy Holden Jones at IMDb
• The Relic - early draft