The film industry is certainly full of talented people. Most
of the time, we tend to admire and pay more attention to the people that have
been in the business for several years. While others working on less projects
but with the same amount of passion and ambition tend to prove once again that
in order to belong to this industry you need to make your work talk for
yourself.
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| John Lesher at the Critics Choice Awards. |
John Lesher is certainly becoming one of Hollywood’s most
creative and ambitious producers. With only eight IMDB credits as part of his
resume, he has raised the bar this past year by being part of two of the most
acclaimed films of the year. The first one is a World War II film called
“Fury”, which presents the story of a Sherman tank crew during the war. Several
critics and magazines have acclaimed the film with different but very
complementing comments, even comparing it with “Saving Private Ryan”, Steven
Spielberg’s masterpiece.
Recently, Lesher teamed up with Mexican director Alejandro
Gonzalez Iñarritu in order to bring to life a movie called “Birdman”. The film
talks about the life of an actor who once played an iconic superhero and
battles against his ego and his past in order to recover his career, his
family, and himself in the days before the opening of a Broadway play.
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| John Lesher, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Michael Keaton, Alexander Dinelaris and Jon Hamm at the Gotham Awards. |
In a recent interview, Lesher talked about some of the
challenges that represented to shoot the movie in a city like New York.
The movie essentially takes place in a Broadway theater—on the stage and in the dressing rooms and the hallways. We tried to keep our footprint small, but then use our location in Times Square as our base camp to sneak outside.
Lesher explains that without the support of
New Regency, Searchlight and Worldview Entertainment the film would have become
almost impossible to be financed.
Whenever you’re trying to do something that someone hasn’t done before, it’s challenging. We kept saying that we’re going to put this incredible ensemble together, but until you actually do that, it’s sometimes difficult for people to take that leap of faith.
It took exactly 29 days to shoot the film
and the results keep knocking on the door as it has received many awards and
recognition from the critics. With two Golden Globes, one BAFTA, one SAG , one
AFI award and several other nominations "Birdman" prepares it’s final run for the
most important award event of this year, the Oscars. Where it certainly
promises to be in the winner list thanks to all the nominations that it has
received.
John Lesher has several “special thanks” credits
on several feature films under his belt, proving that no matter what type of
project it is, Lesher will always bring something to the table even if he isn’t
fully involved on it.
