Herzfeld was born on April 15, 1947, in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. His father, who ran a small maintenance company, had a great love of movies, theater and ballet, and exposed his children to the arts as often as he could.[2]
Career
ABC Afterschool Specials
Herzfeld began his directing career with two ABC Afterschool Specials. He won a Daytime Emmy for best directing in children's programming for his work on the 1980 film Stoned,[3] the story of a shy, bullied high school student (played by Scott Baio) who becomes involved with marijuana.[4] He also won the first annual "Scott Newman Drug Abuse Prevention Award" for his writing on Stoned.[5] In addition to writing and directing, Herzfeld also played the part of a concerned teacher in Stoned.[4] His second Afterschool Special, Run, Don't Walk, also starred Scott Baio about two teenager learning to cope with their life in wheelchairs.
Two of a Kind
In 1983, Herzfeld made his debut as a feature film director in the romantic comedy, Two of a Kind, starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.[6] Travolta plays a failed inventor who robs a bank, and Newton-John is a teller who puts deposit slips in Travolta's bag and keeps the cash for herself. In heaven, a group of angels (including two portrayed by Charles Durning and Scatman Crothers) try to persuade God (voice by Gene Hackman) not to send a new plague to the Earth if these two characters can be reformed.[6] The film was a critical and commercial flop and was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards including both Worst Director and Worst Screenplay for Herzfeld, although its soundtrack album was praised and certified Platinum.
Television movies
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Herzfeld directed and wrote several made-for-TV movies, including:
Herzfeld described the movie, which follows ten characters over 48 hours in the San Fernando Valley, as follows: "The movie is about a lot of people who either never achieved their goals, or screwed up their lives, or dropped the football the first time it was thrown to them. What a lot of characters share in common is this unrealized potential."[10]
When the press kit and advance newspaper stories for 2 Days in the Valley depicted Herzfeld as "a first-time feature filmmaker" moving from the small screen to the big screen, the Los Angeles Times published a story focusing on the omission of Herzfeld's earlier work on Two of a Kind.[6]
Don King: Only in America
In 1997, Herzfeld directed Don King: Only in America, a biographical dramatization of the life of boxing promoter Don King aired by HBO. The film starred Ving Rhames as King and Jeremy Piven in a supporting role as closed-circuit promoter Hank Schwartz.[11] The film received much critical success winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Made for Television Movie, as well as the Directors Guild of America's DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Specials. At the time, Herzfeld described his goal for the film:
"I'm trying to tell the tale of a full-rounded character--comes from a dark past, lives in a dark world where there's always clouds overhead and somehow when the ground separates underneath him, he always seems to jump over it and never fall in. ... And how he does that and who props him up and what and when, that's what the movie's all about."[12]
15 Minutes
Herzfeld also wrote and directed the 2001 feature 15 Minutes pairing Robert De Niro and Edward Burns. Herzfeld wrote at the time that he intended the film as a study of the country's fascination with celebrity—thus the title's reference to Andy Warhol's famous quote about "15 minutes of fame."[13] The film received a mixed review from the Los Angeles Times, which noted:
"Like many ambitious, provocative films, 15 Minutes is a bit of a mess. Both audacious and unwieldy, exciting and excessive, this dark thriller is too long, too violent and not always convincing. But at the same time, there's no denying that it's onto something, that its savage indictment of the nexus involving media, crime and a voracious public is a cinematic statement difficult to ignore."[14]
Later works
From 2004 to 2006, Herzfeld returned to television, writing and directing multiple episodes of the Rob Lowe series, Dr. Vegas.
In 2007, Herzfeld directed the crime thriller The Death and Life of Bobby Z starring Paul Walker and Laurence Fishburne. Walker plays a prisoner offered a deal by the DEA in which he can win his freedom by impersonating a legendary drug dealer as part of a prisoner exchange.
In 2008, he wrote and directed the made-for-television feature SIS, about the Special Investigation Squad, an elite secret police force that hunts down criminals on the streets of Los Angeles.
In 2009, Herzfeld directed the 90-minute documentary Inferno: The Making Of The Expendables for his friend Sylvester Stallone. The two first worked together in 1969 on a low-budget self-produced film called Horses, and later again on Cobra, where Herzfeld plays a goon that Stallone's character sets on fire during the film's climax. Herzfeld also directed Stallone in his 2014 film, which was produced by Seraphim Films Productions, his wife, Rebekah Chaney's company. Chaney applied for the CA Tax credit in 2011 and received the funding in 2012, with only 90 days allotted for pre-production or the credit would be awarded to another production. Chaney and Herzfeld started the process together before any cast members were assigned. Chaney is the original first producer of the film Reach Me.
^Amy Dawes (September 27, 1996). "OUR VALLEY, HIS METAPHOR STUDIO CITY DIRECTOR JOHN HERZFELD TELLS WHAT LED HIM TO CREATE '2 DAYS'". Daily News of Los Angeles.
^Lee Margulies (May 22, 1981). "'Hospital,' 'Donahue' Among Winners". Los Angeles Times.
^ ab"An Earnest 'Stoned'". Los Angeles Times. November 12, 1980.
^"4 Win Drug Abuse Prevention Awards". Los Angeles Times. August 7, 1981.
^ abcRobert Koehler (October 2, 1996). "Herzfeld's Directing Debut: the Second Time Around; Movies: Publicity for '2 Days in the Valley' fails to mention his big-screen bomb, 'Two of a Kind.'". Los Angeles Times.
^John Voorhees (April 5, 1987). "'DADDY': IT'S MORE THAN JUST A REPLAY". Seattle Times.
^Ray Richmond (January 16, 1989). "The Ryan White Story' pushes the right buttons". Orange County Register.
^Howard Rosenberg (September 23, 1989). "'Preppie Murder' Drama Pleads Case for Victims". Los Angeles Times.
^Robin Rauzi (July 14, 1995). "Valley Takes a Hit John Herzfeld's new movie about misfits and murder, set in the 'big, vast grid,' brings the area dubious distinction". Los Angeles Times.
^Bill Higgins (November 11, 1997). "A Party Like This? Only in America". Los Angeles Times.
^Tim Kawakami (July 14, 1997). "LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: CHOMP!; HBO's 'Don King,' Based on a Biting Biography of the Promoter, Adds a New Chapter to Saga". Los Angeles Times.
^John Herzfeld (March 9, 2001). "First Person; The 15-Minute Age; Filmmaker John Herzfeld makes a statement: Is there a price to be paid for kneeling at the foot of celebrity?". Los Angeles Times.
^"For the Record". Los Angeles Times. April 2, 2001.
^Lowry, Brian (September 22, 2004). "Dr. Vegas". Variety. Retrieved January 7, 2018.
