Joe Dante
After a stint as a film reviewer, Joe Dante began his filmmaking apprenticeship in 1974 as trailer editor for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. He made his directorial debut in 1976 with Hollywood Boulevard (co-directed with Allan Arkush), a thinly disguised spoof of New World exploitation pictures, shot in ten days for $60,000.
In 1977 Dante made his solo debut as a film director with Piranha, which went on to become one of the company’s biggest hits. During his tenure at New World, Dante edited Ron Howard’s directorial debut Grand Theft Auto (1977) and co-wrote the original story for Rock n Roll High School (1979).
For Avco-Embassy Dante next directed the highly praised werewolf thriller The Howling (1981), followed by the It’s a Good Life segment of the episodic Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).
Then Spielberg chose him to helm the first Amblin production for Warner Bros.
That film, Gremlins (1984) became a runaway hit and grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
Dante followed up with Explorers (1985) for Paramount, a sci-fi fantasy about three kids who build their own spaceship, and then Innerspace (1987) for Guber/Peters, Amblin and Warner Bros., an Oscar-winning (for special effects) comedy in which miniaturized test pilot Dennis Quaid is injected into the body of supermarket clerk Martin Short.
Dante then directed Tom Hanks in the The Burbs (1989) which was followed by Gremlins 2: The New Batch for Warner Bros. in 1990. Matinee (1993) featuring John Goodman as a huckster showman premiering his new horror film during the Cuban missile crisis, was Dante’s next production. Dante also directed one of his favorite actors, Bugs Bunny, in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003).
Along the way Dante contributed several comedy segments to the multi-part Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) spoof produced by John Landis, and directed various episodes of the TV series Amazing Stories, Twilight Zone, Police Squad!, Night Visions and Picture Windows. He also directed the network pilots for Caleb Carr’s The Osiris Chronicles (1995) and the NBC series Eerie, Indiana, on which he was creative consultant throughout its run.
Dante’s Homecoming, an episode of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, debuted in December 2005 to rave reviews from critics and audiences alike and was named to numerous “Top 10” critics’ lists. The Sitges and Brussels International Film Festivals both honored Homecoming with Special Jury Recognition Awards, and the New Yorker called it the best political film of 2005. Additional television work includes The Screwfly Solution, also an episode of Masters of Horror, as well as episodes of CSI: New York, Hawaii 5-0, Salem and Witches of East End.
Dante received Cable Ace nominations for his direction of Showtime’s Runaway Daughters (1994) and HBO’s The Second Civil War (1997).
In 2007, Dante began producing the innovative, critically acclaimed new media series, Trailers from Hell, which features contemporary filmmakers providing commentaries about films that influenced them – sort of a mini-DVD commentary. In 2008, he directed the interactive new media series Splatter, starring Corey Feldman and Tony Todd for Roger and Julie Corman’s New Horizons and Netflix.
Dante’s 3D thriller, The Hole, for Bold Films premiered at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival where it garnered the first-ever award for Best 3D Feature and had its North American premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2011, his legendary mash-up film, The Movie Orgy, opened the Museum of Modern Art’s Festival of Preservation in New York and has been screening all over the world.
His feature film, Burying the Ex premiered at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival.
He has been honored with many retrospectives and career achievement awards by film festivals, cinematheques and museums in the US and internationally. Amongst them are the Deauville, Locarno, Cine-Excess, Melbourne, Mar del Plata , Sitges, Amiens, Midnight Sun (Finland) and Nocturna (Madrid) film festivals. In 2013, the Vienna Film Museum, Slash Film Festival and the Slovenska Kinoteka collaborated on a major retrospective of his work. The French Cinematheque also honored Dante with a thorough retrospective of his Work in 2017.