First Tell A Good Story

  “You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved, because the movie is almost always bad when you do that. Your job No. 1 is for it to be entertaining, and if it's inspiring, that is great, too.” – John Lee Hancock

 

Born in Texas on this date in 1956, Hancock is an American screenwriter and film director who has, indeed, told lot of entertaining stories that have reached the level of greatness too.  Among his hit movies – either as a director or writer or both – are such blockbusters as The Rookie, The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks.   And in 2021 watch for a crime thriller The Little Things that promises to be another on his hit parade.

Hancock said he rarely went to movies as a kid in the small Texas town where he grew up, but he still felt a pull toward the movie business by the time he was in college.  After earning an English degree and then studying law (he worked as a lawyer in Houston), he decided to try writing plays and screenplays and found almost immediate success.  By his late 20s he was living in LA and writing regularly before taking a stab at directing, another thing he hadn’t even heard about as a kid.

 

“I grew up in Texas City, Texas. I didn't know anybody who was a director or whose parents or grandparents were directors,” he said. “I met somebody from a nearby town one time whose father had been to the moon - it was far more likely to be an astronaut than it was to be a writer or a director.”

 

 

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