JOHN SCHEINFELD
John has flown under the radar most of his career writing, producing and directing highly personal, idiosyncratic documentary films.
Born in Chicago, raised in Milwaukee, John brings a relentless optimism to everything he does. When his parents took him to a local movie theatre to see Lawrence of Arabia at the age of 12, he was completely captivated and began to dream of a career in Hollywood.
After majoring in Sociology and Communications at Oberlin College, John went on to receive an MFA from the film school at Northwestern University. Now, he was ready to head for the west coast.
With no family or other significant connections to the industry, John needed to find a way to get noticed in order to land his first studio job. A unique resume presentation (later written up in a book about how to get a job in Hollywood) was successful in getting him interviews at several major studios and production companies. He arrived in California on a Sunday and by Friday he’d been hired by Paramount Pictures as a junior TV development executive.
Eighteen months later, John was hired away by MTM, the top boutique production company at the time, to oversee development of drama and comedy TV series for a handful of years. Feeling the need to exercise his creative muscles, he then went out on his own, using his experience and contacts first as an executive producer of a pilot for CBS and later writing episodes for TV series he’d be embarrassed to admit that he wrote for.
However, this did lead him into becoming a pilot writer and for the next few years he created and wrote drama pilot scripts for ABC, NBC, and Fox – not one of which was made, but he did come close a few times. Then John discovered documentaries.
Coming out of the scripted world informed John’s storytelling and distinguishes it from other documentary filmmakers with more journalistic backgrounds. His first productions were for A&E, PBS, and National Geographic. He broke into feature documentaries with The U.S. vs. John Lennon, which was picked up early in the game by Lionsgate and he’s been on an exciting ride ever since.
John’s films have premiered at such prestigious film festivals as Telluride, Toronto and Venice and played in theaters worldwide to critical acclaim. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime have all come calling to license various titles for streaming. There has been the occasional foray to PBS as well as ABC with the first non-news documentary aired in primetime by that network in nearly 25 years.
Known for the high quality and craft of his work, John has been entrusted with the significant legacies of such iconic artists as Herb Alpert, Nat ‘King’ Cole, John Coltrane, Bob Hope, John Lennon, Garry Marshall, Harry Nilsson, Sergio Mendes, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Along the way he has interviewed an impressive roster of bold faced names in the worlds of politics, religion, history, journalism and pop culture, many of them unexpected choices to speak on the subject at hand. Harrison Ford in a documentary about Sergio Mendes… President Bill Clinton in a documentary about John Coltrane… Walter Cronkite in a documentary about John Lennon… Robin Williams and Eric Idle in a documentary about Harry Nilsson… Kermit the Frog in a documentary about Bob Hope. John was both honored and delighted to secure the services of Denzel Washington and Billy Crystal to speak the words of John Coltrane and Bob Hope respectively.
John tells anyone and everyone that he has the greatest job: he gets to go interesting places to talk to interesting people about interesting things. He also loves the detective work involved in documentary filmmaking. Bobby Colomby, bandleader of the iconic group Blood, Sweat & Tears, has been known to say, “If you suspect your spouse is cheating on you, don’t hire a detective, hire John Scheinfeld – he’s great at digging deep to find things no one else has been able to find.” With new projects continually in production and in the pipeline, he looks forward to applying those skills for years to come.
John feels blessed to work with longtime collaborators Editor and Co-Producer Peter S. Lynch II (“Pete is a true artist with a strong story sense and visual style”), Producer Dave Harding (“A straight-shooter with rock solid instincts and expansive experience, Dave gets things done”) and Associate Producer Kathleen Ermitage (“As sweet as she is relentless, no one is as good at finding people and audio/visual material as Kathleen.”)