John Brandon(VII)

John Brandon is an American film screenwriter, director, producer, songwriter and actor born in Saint Louis, Missouri. He also produces, directs and edits television commercials and music videos. He took an interest in writing and acting in film at 14 when he co-wrote and acted in his first short film for fun.

Brandon graduated from Webster University in Saint Louis with the intention of having a career as a newspaper reporter and actually landed his first professional job for the Saint Louis Suburban Journals while still a junior at Webster U. He worked that job off and on for two years until he entered SIU-Edwardsville as an MBA student. Shortly thereafter, he also worked three internships at television news stations in Saint Louis. He landed his first professional television news reporter job at KHQA-TV in Quincy, Illinois prior to achieving his MBA, which he never completed. During that period of his life, he also began working on his first feature film script as a hobby. At his first television news job on-air, he would cover as many as four or five stories a day, working 12 to 14 hour days and sometimes driving as many as 200 miles a day to reach all the stories in West Central Illinois.

In 1994, Brandon landed his second television news job as a one-man-band reporter in Lexington, Kentucky where he befriended acting coach Eben Henson -- who owned and operated an outdoor playhouse in Danville, Kentucky. Henson had helped train actors like John Travolta, Jim Varney and Lee Majors when they were still trying to make a career for themselves. Brandon learned a significant amount about acting from Henson, who had trained with Tony Curtis and other mega Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 60s at an acting academy in New York City years earlier.

With the help of Henson, Brandon auditioned his first group of actors in New York City in the mid 1990s and began making a series of short films and film trailers he had written and eventually would D.P., direct and edit. At his first major audition, he watched the performances of approximately 200 actors including: Mark Neveldine, Carmine Giovinazzo, and Leila Sbitani -- who he cast in a film titled "The Other Side." All three later achieved substantial fame in the entertainment business. Years later after he'd seen their successes -- Brandon realized he was on the right track with his casting methods and choices. Giovinazzo was unable to appear in the "The Other Side" film because he was moving to Los Angeles shortly after auditioning for it.

Brandon continued working in television news as an anchor/reporter/videographer until 2001 when he returned home to Saint Louis to devote more time and a more serious approach to his film scripts, his short films and a private business.

In 2010, Brandon got what appears to be his first significant break in the entertainment business when he was able to have a meeting with an accomplished film production company through one of his acting contacts. During that meeting in North Hollywood, California Brandon pitched several feature film scripts he was involved with as a writer. The head of that production company is best known for being the executive producer of the Jack Nicholson/Danny DeVito film "Hoffa" in 1992. The head of the production firm asked one of his other producers to peruse/read several of Brandon's script submissions and took a liking to one tentatively titled "The Day of the Sword" which got Brandon in the door with that company, Raging Bull Entertainment. In 2011, producer, Mr. Joseph Khouri, gave Brandon the opportunity to begin working on a series of in-development screenwriting projects for Raging Bull Entertainment which Brandon believes will all eventually be made into substantial budget feature films.

In 2014, he directed his first feature-length Indie film, "Under a Blood Red Sky" and became friends with its lead actor, Jeffry Mora, during the process.