Brief biography of famous directors how they started out to what they are up to now adays.

PETER JACKSON

Peter Jackson was born as an only child in a small coast-side town in New Zealand in 1961. When a friend of his parents bought him a super 8mm movie camera (because she saw how much he enjoyed taking photos), the then eight-year-old Peter instantly grabbed the thing to start recording his own movies, which he made with his friends. They were usually short, but they already had the spectacular trademark that would make Jackson famous: impressive special effects, made at a very low cost. For example, for his film "World War Two" which he made as a teenager, he used to simulate a firing gun by punching little holes into the celluloid, so that, once projected, the gun gave the impression of displaying a small fire. Jackson's first step towards the more serious filmmaking came with an entry in a local contest to stimulate amateur and children's film. For this film he used stop-motion animation to create a monster that ruins a city in the style of Ray Harryhausen. Unfortunately, he didn't win. When Jackson was 22, he embarked on an moviemaking-adventure that would change his life. This film, Bad Taste (1987) , was begun as any other Jackson film, in an amateuristic style, at a low budget and using friends and local people to star in his film. Jackson himself did nearly everything in the movie, he directed, produced, filmed and starred in it, in a number of roles, amongst them that of the hero, Derek. And everything was filmed on a second-hand, $250 camera. It took Jackson and his friends four years to complete the movie. What had started out as an joke in a group of friends, then became a cult-classic. A friend of Jackson who was working in the movie industry convinced him the film had commercial prospects and arranged for it to be shown at the Cannes film festival, where it won a lot of acclaim, as well as a number of prizes. The movie soon became a hit because of its bizarre humor and overdose of special-effects, some realistic, some hilarious because of their amateuristic look. After the success of Bad Taste, Jackson became recognized as a director and the door to fame and fortune was opened. He gave up his job at a local photographer's shop and became a well-known director of horror-movies, after the succes of his first professionaly made movie, Braindead (1992).

JOHN CARPENTER

John Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father was the head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky University and then USC film school in Los Angeles, not the University of South Carolina. While there, he did "The Resurrection of Bronco Billy" and started "Dark Star". "The Coupe de Villes" included directors Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle.

GEORGE MILLER

Now renowned as a world-class action director, Miller was actually in his final year of studies at medical school when a oneminute film he and his twin brother made won first prize in a student competition. He later met future partner Byron Kennedy at a film workshop and they collaborated on an award-winning short film before making their first feature, Mad Max (1979), a futuristic thriller about a cop out for revenge. The film became the most successful Australian film up to that date, and the sequel,Mad Max 2 (1981, retitled The Road Warrior outside of Australia), was a critical and popular smash internationally, making Mel Gibson a star and establishing Miller as an expert director of action films. Miller went on to direct "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," the best segment of the omnibusTwilight ZoneThe Movie (1983), as well as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), the third of the popular series, before coming to America to make The Witches of Eastwick (1987), a very broad, entertaining adaptation of John Updike's novel. It was apparently an unhappy experience for the director, who immediately returned to his native country. Miller has also produced Australian productions, such as The Year My Voice Broke (1987), Dead Calm (1989), and Flirting (1990). In 1992 he returned to Hollywood filmmaking with the unblinking drama of parents facing their son's unfathomable affliction in Lorenzo's Oil (1992), which earned him an Oscar nomination for cowriting the screenplay. (Clearly, Miller's medical background drew him to the story and made him an ideal filmmaker to communicate this difficult material.) He is sometimes confused with another Australian director with the same name, who directed such films asThe Man From Snowy River (1982).

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ

GEORGE A. ROMERO

George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure. However, by all indications, he was very successful. The director of the ground-breaking Dead trilogy was born February 4, 1940, in New York City. He grew up in there until attending Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's renowned Carnegie Mellon University. After graduation, he began shooting mostly short films and commercials. He and friends formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s and they all chipped in roughly $10,000 apiece to produce what became one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time, Night of the Living Dead (1968). Shot in black and white on a limited budget of just over $100,000, Romero's vision, combined with a solid script written by him and Image co-founder John A. Russo--along with what was then considered an excess of gore, enabled the film to earn back multitudes more than what it cost, became a cult classic by the early 1970s, and was inducted into the United States' National Film Registry in 1999. Romero's next films were a little more low-key and less-seen, including There's Always Vanilla (1971), The Crazies (1973), Hungry Wives (1973) (where he met future wife Christine Forrest) and Martin (1977). Though not as acclaimed as "Night" or some of his later work, these films had his signature social commentary while dealing with issues (usually horror-related) at the microscopic level. And like almost all of his films, they were shot in or around Romero's favorite city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1978, Romero returned to the zombie genre with the one film of his that would top the success of NotLD, Dawn of the Dead (1978). He managed to divorce the franchise from Image Ten, which screwed up the copyright on the original, making them entitled to nothing from video prints. Shooting in the Monroeville Mall during late-night hours, Romero depicted the sorrowful tale of four people who escape a zombie outbreak and subsequently lock themselves up inside what they think is paradise before the solitude makes them victims of their own (and a biker gang's) greed. Shot on just $1.5 million, the film earned over $40 million worldwide and was named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly in 2003. The film also marked Romero's first work with the brilliant make-up and effects artist Tom Savini. After 1978, Romero and Savini teamed up many times. DotD's success led to bigger budgets and better talent for the filmmaker. His early 1980s films had better casting. First was Knightriders (1981), where he first worked with an up-and-coming Ed Harris. Then came perhaps his most Hollywood-like film, Creepshow (1982), which marked the first--but not the last--time Romero adapted a work by famed horror novelist Stephen King. With many major stars and major studio distribution, "Creepshow" was a moderate success and spawned a sequel, which was also written by Romero. The decline of Romero's career came in the late 1980s. His last widely released film was the next "Dead" film, Day of the Dead (1985). Panned by critics, the film did not garner much at the box office either. His latest two efforts, The Dark Half (1993)--another King adaptation--and Bruiser (2000/I), went directly to video. Even the Romero-penned, Savini-directed remake of Romero's first film, Night of the Living Dead (1990) was a box-office failure. Pigeonholed solely as a horror director and his recent films no longer achieving the success of his earlier Dead films, Romero has not worked much since, much to the chagrin of his following. He still resides in Pittsburgh, working on a possible fourth chapter of his Dead series.