Biography
John Dorr (1944-1993), born in Massachusetts, first studied at Yale University (1962-1966), where he created the film society, edited the Yale Film Bulletin, shot his first shorts on 16mm and completed a thesis on D.W. Griffith's last pictures. After moving to Los Angeles to study at UCLA (1966-1969), he worked as a film critic, writing in Take One, On Film, Millimeter and The Hollywood Reporter, where he was ruthless with the New Hollywood, hoping for another type of American cinema.
The 1970s were spent writing around a dozen screenplays (from 1971 to 1978 : a gay drama, a vampire romance, a two-screens western, a 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 LA. Then, using one his friends' consumer-level B&W video camera, he decided to shoot, without waiting, without money, and at home, his first feature.
« Sudzall Does It All! » (1979) and its rapid follow-up, « The Case of the Missing Consciousness » (1980) were shown at 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 permanent location, the « EZTV Video Gallery », was eventually opened in 1983, with Dorr's fourth feature, « Approaching Omega » (1983), and the ambition of a new production mode for non-conventional filmmakers in the 1980s.
For Dorr, the next decade was spent maintaining EZTV's fragile existence, working as a cameraman, an editor, a 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 1991, and died from AIDS-related complications, in Los Angeles, on January 1st, 1993.
