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J.J. Abrams

A Study in Genius

John Blake Publishing Ltd

BEFORE HOLLYWOOD

'As a storyteller you have to love the characters ...'

J.J. Abrams, The Daily Telegraph, 2013

It was almost inevitable that Jeffrey Jacob (J.J.) Abrams would enter the film industry given his family background: his father Gerald W. Abrams turned his hand to television producing after ending his career as a retail commercial contractor while his mother Carol Ann Abrams (maiden name Kelvin) was an executive producer after Abrams went to college (though she was actually a lawyer during J.J.'s youth) and his sister Tracy Rosen later became a screenwriter. It was the young J.J., however, who would one day take Hollywood by storm and become one of the most successful names in modern cinema.

Not since the peak of Steven Spielberg's commercial popularity in the 1980s had Hollywood produced a director of such obvious global appeal and cinematic charm. It was as if Abrams could do no wrong. He would one day relaunch not one, not two, but three major franchises and co-create one of the most talked-about TV shows of the 2000s. He would board the Enterprise and fly to a galaxy far, far away.

Is Abrams – the young-looking forty-nine-year-old with the curly dark hair, slightly geeky glasses and overall air of puppy-dog enthusiasm – a movie mogul? Indeed, is there any such thing as a movie mogul any more, in the mould of Sam Goldwyn, Lew Wasserman, Louis B. Mayer or Darryl Zanuck, men who simply ran the business back in the day? Well, in terms of personal success, there certainly is. George Lucas has a personal fortune of $5.4 billion, producer Arnon Milchan (Pretty Woman, 12 Years a Slave) is second on the Hollywood rich list and scrapes by on $5.2 billion. Such men wield enormous influence. Abrams isn't in the top ten list yet – but of course personal wealth is not the only measure of moguldom. It is the sheer reach of Abrams's work on both the big and small screen that marks him out as a VIP mover and shaker. Albert (aka Cubby) Broccoli was a hard-working producer with over forty films under his belt: but only one world-conquering movie franchise, the Bond films? Alfred Hitchcock was a pretty good director but what do we find on the CV? Just the single solitary successful TV series? It can be argued that Abrams – as writer, producer and director – has already reached out to a bigger audience than both of them put together; he really is that big. He pulls off what is perhaps the most impressive filmic sleight-of-hand of them all (though some cineastes will disagree): he pleases all of the people some of the time – a feat accurately described by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, who describes him as 'the perfect purveyor of fictions [that] will never jade.'

But what started it all? Abrams's first paid gig is almost beyond belief. For a movie-obsessed kid, it must have been the equivalent of finding ET in the garage.

Jeffrey Jacobs Abrams was born in New York City on 27 June 1966, the same year an obscure science-fiction show called Star Trek was first broadcast, but eventually raised in the City of Angels where he attended Palisades High School.

Abrams was the typical nerd – obsessed with pop culture, especially movies and books. He could have been one of the Goonies. Abrams loved storytelling in all its manifestations. 'I remember being taught to read at a very early age,' he told The New York Times in late 2013. 'Like creepy young. I remember being in the crib, reading. My parents were very impressed. My reading speed, comprehension and overall ability has remained at that level ever since. There were always books around in the house, of course, and my parents did read to me sometimes, but my strongest memories of being read to are from kindergarten. Those teachers were excellent and made reading seem fun and adventurous.'

Abrams was drawn to the big screen over and above any other of his childhood hobbies and interests. Like anyone who aspires to become a film director, Abrams was drawn towards moving images. There was something about the way they tell a story that properly captured his attention. Abrams first picked up a camera aged eight and almost from the get-go his TV-producer father warned him against going into the notoriously unforgiving, not-to-say fickle, film industry. 'Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports,' Abrams said to The Guardian's Steve Rose in 2009. 'Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister's head using alginate plaster. So the answer is: yes, I was and am a geek.'

And Abrams also appreciated music and would one day become an amateur musician (and non-amateur composer). Was there any end to his talents? There were certain films Abrams adored while growing up, which gave him an appreciation for movie soundtracks. 'Jaws was an incredible soundtrack,' he once told Empire film magazine. 'It had such a primal quality to it, but the sequence when all the boats go out like a regatta has this incredible seafaring note to it. John Williams did so much incredible stuff, his score to The Fury for Brian De Palma stands out, but Jaws was something else. I remember listening to it as a nine-year-old and finding it as scary and as intense as anything.'

Aged eleven and obsessed with films, J.J. Abrams first saw Star Wars. It blew his mind. Star Wars became the highest grossing film of all time after its 1977 release, even surpassing Jaws, which attacked an unsuspecting public in 1975 and is generally thought to have initiated the summer blockbuster season. Abrams adored the casting, the story, and the designs and just like any other kid his age who saw the film, he was transported by the space battles and all the action and adventure of the basic, good-versus-evil plot. Characters Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo (and not forgetting the Droids R2-D2 and C-3PO) instantly became familiar names to anyone and everyone.

Abrams, like many other film buffs, not only took note of the directors but also the cast and crew of every film he watched. At the cinema, he stayed to the very end of every film to watch all the credits, when most of the audience had got up off their seats and left the auditorium.

One childhood friend of Abrams was Greg Grunberg, who later starred in some of Abrams's earliest TV productions including Alias and Lost. They made a childhood movie together called The Attic using a Super 8 camera. 'He shot it, then scratched in the monster, frame by frame. It was a bolt-of-lightning creature. He compensated ahead of time for where the monster would be,' Grunberg said to USA Today's Bill Keveney in 2005. 'We were, like, eleven.'

Abrams's dad had an office at Paramount and when he was in his early teens J.J. would go with his dad to the office and hang out on the movie lot. The young Abrams got to know the security guards on the lot and they'd let him in on some of the sets to watch Happy Days, Laverne And Shirley, or Mork And Mindy starring a young Robin Williams. He got to see Mr Williams rehearsing his lines for Mork And Mindy and he remembers Ron Howard, later an acclaimed film director himself of course, and Henry Winkler from Happy Days. Abrams found the whole experience utterly fascinating and also a lot of fun. The best part was watching his dad, though. He'd visit sets with his dad and see how production worked and ask questions about this and that. He had been making Super 8 films since he was eight years old, so to see how TV shows were made was a dream come true. It fuelled his imagination and ambition. It drove his creativity. However, years later Abrams understood that as soon as you see how the finished product is made on set, the experience of watching a movie is changed.

He was especially a fan of the make-up artists and special effects people. He loved the pre-computer-generated imagery such special effects wizards as John Dykstra, Dick Smith and Douglas Trumbull created, and adored the likes of Tom Savini and Stan Winston, whose creations looked as real as anything a computer could generate in the twenty-first century. 'I was definitely the fat kid making movies. I was the loner oddball kid who didn't have the confidence,' said Abrams to Jessica Furseth of Idol Mag. The fat kid making movies would later be recreated in Abrams's Spielbergian blockbuster, Super 8.

Abrams, much like his heroes Steven Spielberg – who'd begun making 8mm movies aged twelve in order to get a Boy Scout photography merit badge – and The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, was fascinated by moving pictures and how a sequence of images could tell a story with or without sound. Abrams, akin to almost all filmmakers, amateur or professional, strove to make the unreal seem real, and so he set himself moviemaking assignments.

What's more, Abrams had a knack for storytelling, a flair for visuals. His grandfather used to take him to Tannen's Magic in New York City: one of the oldest magic stores in America. He quickly learned how to tell a story using images. The first magic trick he learned was with an egg cup – he loved learning how the egg disappeared. Magic is why he loves the movies and special effects – the ability to transform things and people or simply make them disappear. Special effects are really just an extension of old-school magic tricks.

'When I was a little kid – and even still – I loved magic tricks,' he later told The Guardian's Katie Puckrik. 'When I saw how movies got made – at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather – I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic. It wasn't the guy with the top hat and the rabbits, it was a way of creating illusions that something was real that wasn't. It could be a time and a place, it could be a weather system, it could be an aeroplane flying through the air, it could be a creature that wasn't really there, a fight scene, blood splattering, window breaking, fire – it could be anything. All these things were little magic tricks, and the idea that they could all add up to create the illusion that something was real, so that people would have an emotional reaction to the relationship, a circumstance, an event – that was very exciting to me.'

Abrams wasn't only interested in movies – he loved comic books and horror paperbacks too: '... for me what I remember so clearly and I think I was fourteen when Night Shift, the Stephen King short story collection came out,' he told CNN's Christian DuChateau. 'That blew my mind and I got obsessed with him and read The Dead Zone and The Shining and others. Night Shift did for me what The Twilight Zone did as a TV series.' Abrams would hook up with his literary hero in 2015 for a nine-hour mini-series based on King's time-travelling JFK related bestseller 11/22/63, starring James Franco.

Aged fifteen and fuelled by a fierce imagination and creative drive, Abrams came in contact with one of his heroes: none other than Mr Steven Spielberg, who was riding high after the success of the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Arkin 1981. Spielberg, who was always on the lookout for new talent, had read about Abrams and his Super 8 movie High Voltage in an LA Times profile titled The Beardless Wonders of Filmmaking after Abrams's Super 8 movie had been shown at the LA Film Festival. 'The Best Teen Super 8mm Films of '81' ran at LA's Nuart Theatre in March 1982. The 'beardless' part of the title was a reference to the fact that many of the American filmmakers of the time – Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola – had beards.

A box of Spielberg's old Super 8 movies had been found by the person who moved into the house Spielberg grew up in in Arizona. The guy who found the box flipped open the lid and found the label 'Steven Spielberg'. The films were in disrepair and when they were returned to Spielberg he decided to restore them. Upon reading the article Spielberg thought Abrams and Reeves would be the right people for the job because they knew enough about Super 8 movies to carry out the task.

Spielberg's office called Abrams about the restoration project and offered $300 for the work. The call from Spielberg's office to Abrams was made by Kathleen Kennedy. Abrams elaborated to Jessica Furseth of Idol Mag: 'We were asked, "Would you be interested in repairing Spielberg's old 8mm films?" We were confused as hell by this. It made no sense at all. When I talk about this with him now he says, "Well I knew you guys would take care of it." I still don't believe him. It's a ridiculous story, but it's true.'

Abrams's partner on the restoration project was Matt Reeves, who went on to co-create the TV show Felicity with Abrams and direct Cloverfield, which Abrams produced. Reeves was at the festival with his twenty-eight-minute Hitchcock-inspired film Stiletto. They ended up cleaning Spielberg's films and resplicing them. Were they dreaming? Was it a fantasy? It could not possibly have happened, but it did.

Spielberg would tell stories about the horror on his mother Carol's face after seeing a pile of unspooled film rolls on the floor of her bedroom like spilled spaghetti. It was Abrams who many years later helped finish the job and make those 8mm rolls into watchable films. One of the films was Firelight, which was the precursor to the now iconic science-fiction tale Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

'... To this day it makes no sense to me why Steven would put the original prints of Firelight and Escape to Nowhere in the hands of two fifteen-year-old strangers,' Abrams told Richard Corliss of Time Entertainment. 'I mean, have you ever seen fifteen-year-olds? Don't give them things if you want them back. Especially repaired. But Matt and I did it. In 1982 it was especially rare, if not impossible, to have access to the early works of a director, let alone Steven Spielberg's. But while his films were, of course, far better than ours, it was an inspiration to see how he began.'

Also at the festival was Larry Fong (future cinematographer for Lost and Super 8) with the fifteen-minute spoof Toast Encounters of the Burnt Kind. Producers Bryan Burk and Lawrence Trilling were in attendance at the festival as well. It was the brainchild of Gerard Ravel, who hosted the public access show Word of Mouth, which was sort of the YouTube of its day. It was a thirty-minute interview format where talented (and some maybe not so talented) people could show their films. Anybody could put their own show out on public access. There was a cable system called Theta, which Z Channel was part of and they also had a public access channel called Channel 3. It was the golden age of public access TV where anybody could get an hour of broadcast time and put on his or her own show or film.

Ravel had offered assistance to Abrams with his High Voltage film by helping with the lighting, running him around various locations because he was only fifteen years old. There were some car chases in the film. Dom Deluise's oldest son Peter, an actor who later appeared in the TV series 21 Jump Street opposite Johnny Depp, was one of Abrams's buddies who starred in High Voltage. Basically, Ravel produced while Abrams wrote and directed the film.

Ravel spoke to Todd Longwell of Filmmaker Magazine about the festival: 'At the end of our show, I'd say, "If you know anyone or you'd like to come on, here's our phone number. Give us a call." One day, I get a message on my phone machine. It said, "My name is J.J. I'm fifteen years old. I've been making films for seven years, and I would like to be on your show." I thought it was a prank ...because most of my audience was older. So I called the number and I went over to his home [in LA's Pacific Palisades neighbourhood] and met him and his parents. They were really nice people and J.J. was one of the most polite, courteous kids I ever met. He loved working with makeup and special effects. He put the films on his Super 8 projector, and I knew this kid was going to make it. His enthusiasm was over the top, and as soon as I saw him, I said, "You know what? He's going to be a great interview. He's going to inspire other people to call my show." We ended up doing two shows [with Abrams]. Then the next week I get another call, and it's Matt Reeves. He says, "I'm fifteen years old. I saw J.J.'s films on your show. I have a thirty-minute film and I'd like to be on your show." That's when I knew I'd struck a chord, because now all of these kids who were wanting to be filmmakers were watching my show.'

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Excerpted from J.J. Abrams by Neil Daniels. Copyright © 2015 Neil Daniels. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
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