John Dorr

Biography

John Dorr (1944-1993), born in Massachusetts, first studied at Yale University (1962-1966), where he programmed the Film Society, created the Film Bulletin and completed a thesis on D.W. Griffith's last pictures. After moving to Los Angeles to study at UCLA (1966-1969), he shot his first shorts in 8mm and worked as a film critic for « Take One », « On Film », « Millimeter » or « The Hollywood Reporter », where he proved himself ruthless towards New Hollywood movies, hoping for another type of American cinema. The 1970s were spent writing around a dozen screenplays (from 1971 to 1978 : a gay priest drama, a vampire romance, a two-screen revisionist western, a six-hour Griffith biopic...) which all remained unproduced. In one of his poems, Dorr judged the decade harshly : « The 70s Suck ». After a short stay in Massachusetts (1977-1978), Dorr returned to California. Then, using one his friends' consumer-level B&W video camera, he decided to shoot his first feature, no longer waiting for the traditional production route. « Sudzall Does It All! » (1979) and its rapid follow-up, « The Case of the Missing Consciousness » (1980), were shown in a public screening at LAICA in March 1980. During the next two years, Dorr helped his friends with their own video projects, while completing his Dorothy Parker biopic, « Dorothy and Alan at Norma Place » (1982). All videos were shown under the « EZTV » banner in 1982, and a brick-and-mortar location, the « EZTV Video Gallery », was eventually opened in West Hollywood in 1983, with Dorr's fourth feature « Approaching Omega » (1983) and the ambition to offer a new production model for non-conventional artists in the 1980s. For Dorr, the next decade was spent maintaining EZTV's fragile existence, working as cameraman, editor, sound engineer, producer, and sometimes actor, in other people's projects. He himself only directed a handful of short subjects, or codirected documentaries on literature, poetry and film. His last fiction project, « The Three Cassandras », was abandoned after a few days of shooting. Dorr learned he was HIV-positive in the Spring of 1991, and died from AIDS-related complications in Los Angeles on January 1st, 1993.