John Gulager

It is 1969 and 12 year old John Gulager is perched on the hood of his father’s Cadillac, gliding down Universal Studio’s New York Street, shooting super 8 footage, always keeping an eye out for the studio security. Since John was 5 years old he was smuggled into the studios under blankets on the back floor of his parents’ car. He became adept at eluding the authorities on the back lots of studios as his father and mother worked in movies and television series.

John is the son of Clu Gulager (THE KILLERS, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE VIRGINIAN, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) and Miriam Byrd Nethery (“Barney Miller,” “Mr. T and Tina,” “The Sandy Duncan Show,” LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III). He has been immersed in the filmic arts since birth.

John's first acting job was in the largest musical comedy theatre in America located in Maggie Valley, North Carolina where he played Little Jake in “Annie Get Your Gun.” He toured with his father and mother to fairs, amusement parks and rodeos, doing karate "bad guy" acts and finally graduating to comedy speaking skits with his father on personal appearances around America.

At nine years of age, John acted the lead in a Universal Studios short subject film, A DAY WITH THE BOYS. This lovely 18 minute small film opened the 1970 Cannes Film Festival as an example of "state-of-the-art" filmmaking and was released on the GEORGE WASHINGTON DVD by The Criterion Collection for being an inspiration to director David Gordon Green.

John's directing and cinematography debut was bootlegged on weekends and weekday evenings in Universal's backlot when he was 11 years old. The super 8 film had a successful one night run at his elementary school Science Fair.

John graduated to 16mm with enrollment at the Southern California Film Institute where John studied with Don Ham. He then enrolled at the Chounard Art Institute (the original Cal Arts) in downtown L.A.

John continued his studies in filmmaking at the original Sherwood Oaks Experimental College of Film. There, he studied with world-class cinematographers: Laszlo Kovacs, William A. Fraker, Vilmos Zsigmond and John A. Alonzo. This was the first time John held the “new” 35mm Panaflex camera. During this time, John completed two short subject 16mm films in Howard Lester’s class and shot his father’s acting class in video. John also studied acting, but not with his father. He studied at the famous Loft Studio with Peggy Feury and Bill Traylor. His classmate was Sean Penn.

In Los Angeles, he studied guitar flatpicking with Herb Peterson (Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, etc.), electric guitar with Tom Wheeler (author and editor of Guitar Player Magazine) and classical guitar with George Economedes.

John was asked to compose the score and star in a rock opera motion picture, JOHN AND NORMA NOVAK. He completed the entire score for the film. Only enough money was secured to film 30 minutes of the production. Although the 30 minutes was beautiful, both visually and musically, the 35mm-scope movie was not finished because of inadequate financing.

After the rock movie, John took an esoteric electronic band he had formed, STREAM BY STANDERS, to New York City where they played world famous venues such as the Mudd Club. He stayed there in the East Village and continued to shoot film for the band's performances and videotape fashion shows.

He composed scores for several medical films while in NYC.

Eventually, John teamed with his father and actor brother, Tom, to produce a film. John and his partners moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma where they partially completed FUCKING TULSA. John was the cinematographer, the sound and film editor and was in charge of all postproduction including the score. John taught a filmmaking class for the film's crew. It included all the filmic arts necessary to complete the filming portion of the motion picture. LA WEEKLY said, “Fucking Tulsa's 20-minute promo, which was shot, scored and edited by John Gulager… are small masterpieces of craft. John skillfully set the script's atonal mayhem to an impressive visual melody: The scenes are a dreamweave of telephoto-angle shots of Tulsa's people and urban terrain, countered by brooding "nature" in the form of sun-dappled trees and disconsolate twilights.” Recently, the American Cinematheque in Hollywood, showed FUCKING TULSA, JOHN AND NORMA NOVAK and A DAY WITH THE BOYS as part of their Hollywood Outlaws series.

John works with the Coppola and Stallone families, shooting and editing Sage Stallone’s directing debut, VIC, a 30 minute, 35mm short starring Clu Gulager, Carol Lynley, Gary Frank, Richard Herd and John Phillip Law.

A few years later John entered an internet contest, Project Greenlight, created by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. He won, along with screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton. As his prize, he directs FEAST with Balthazar Getty and Henry Rollins. It played at the first Fantastic Fest and he won Best Director. His season of “Project Greenlight” is shown in universities and film schools across the country (sometimes as a cautionary tale).

John can also be seen in the Christian Slater starring film, HE WAS A QUIET MAN, doing double duty as Maurice the psychologist and the goldfish that urges Slater to kill his co-workers.

John subsequently made two DVD sequels to FEAST, FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS and FEAST III: THE HAPPY FINISH.

PDOUBLED FILMS