American film and television director, producer, and screenwriter
John Randal Kleiser[1] (born July 20, 1946) is an American film and television director, producer, screenwriter and actor, best known for directing the 1978 musical romantic-comedy film Grease.
Biography
John Randal Kleiser was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the son of Harriet Kelly (née Means) and Dr. John Raymond Kleiser. He has two brothers.[1] Kleiser attended Radnor High School.[2][3]
As a freshman at the University of Southern California, he appeared in George Lucas' student film Freiheit. (Kleiser also lived in the house that Lucas was renting at the time.)[4] Kleiser graduated in 1968.[5] His award-winning Master's thesis film, the 1973 short Peege about a grandson's bond with his ailing grandmother,[6] launched his career and was selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2007.[7] He also directed an animated short that year called Foot Fetish (which was later aired on Saturday Night Live a decade later).[8]
Kleiser directed several television movies in the mid-1970s, including Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1975), The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976), which starred John Travolta, and the Emmy Award-winning The Gathering (1977). Kleiser was tapped to direct his first feature film, the 1978 film Grease, in large part because of Travolta's recommendation based on their work together on The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.[9]
Kleiser directed several more feature films, including The Blue Lagoon (1980) with Brooke Shields, Summer Lovers (1982) with Daryl Hannah, Grandview, U.S.A. (1984) with Jamie Lee Curtis, Flight of the Navigator (1986), featuring the first use of digital morphing in a film, Big Top Pee-wee (1988), White Fang (1991) and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992). In London, Kleiser directed the comedy Getting It Right (1989).[10] In 1996, he wrote and directed It's My Party. As a writer-producer, he was responsible for the surfing film North Shore (1987) for Universal Pictures. He also directed the thriller Shadow of Doubt (1998). In 1987, he had an agreement with upstart diversified film studio Management Company Entertainment Group to develop, direct and produce low-budget pictures that were financed by the studio, and he will shepherd indie projects of promising students and decided to build various international directors on its own.[11]
Working in 70mm 3-D, he directed Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (1995) for the Disney theme parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo and Paris, re-teaming with most of the principal actors from Honey, I Blew Up the Kid.
Kleiser is openly gay.[12]
