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J.D. Funari
works in Los Angeles as an editor, producer, and writer, when not committing time
to his own ongoing projects. J.D.'s wide-ranging career includes gripping for
ESPN, editing news in a prominent East coast market, producing
promotional material for popular national TV networks, and interviewing actors
such as Charlize Theron, Keira Knightley, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
among others.
Unable
to pinpoint a single movie watching experience as inspiration, J.D. discovered
late in his teenage years a change from casual viewer to technical critic.
Around that time, J.D. began viewing as many movies as he could, both in the
theater and from the past, paying close attention to camera work, production
value, dialogue, performance, and direction.
In
the summer of 2000, wielding a mini-DV camcorder and a primitive PC editor, J.D.
attempted his first visual narrative, a dark dramatic short titled
Seven O’clock. This was followed soon after by Masters of the Sword,
a Samurai battle farce shot during the course of one day in his backyard. While
both these early efforts initially only circulated among friends and family,
they were valuable learning tools in J.D.’s creative progression.
The
release of
Evening Message
in March 2002 marked Funari’s official movie debut, met by enthusiastic
reception at numerous local screenings and
hailed as "...required viewing for any grass-roots filmmaker" by
FilmThreat.com.
After
successful self-distribution of
Evening Message, J.D. continued to work on smaller projects, eventually
shifting his focus to developing
QRmovie.com
(Quick Reviews Online), an archive
of his capsule movie reviews. The web site grew in popularity after
launching in October 2003, later featured on
Microsoft.com for
excellence in web design and listed on
Yahoo.com as one of the Internet's most visited.
In March 2004, J.D. relocated
to Los Angeles to further his career in the TV and film industry where he has
worked on projects for a number of major networks and studios.
J.D.
currently has "a
number of projects in various stages of production," including a new short movie
titled
this way>, as well as continual
maintenance of
JaredFunari.com,
the official web site of singer/songwriter (and younger brother), Jared Funari.
Directors
who have inspired J.D. include: P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky,
Joel & Ethan Coen, Spike Jonze, Neil LaBute, Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher, Alfred
Hitchcock, Tom Tykwer, and many others.
Among
J.D.’s favorite movies are 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shawshank Redemption,
After Hours, Magnolia, Requiem for a Dream, Donnie Darko, Swingers, The Royal Tenenbaums,
Se7en, True Romance, The Man Who Wasn’t There and many, many others.
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