The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

. John Foote could have never dreamed, when he was a young lad sitting on a couch watch- ing late-night movies with his father, that one day he would not only meet, but interview, write and publish books about some of the best actors of the past 30 years. But despite his brushing shoulders with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep and Robert Duval over the past few years, he has retained his roots here in Scugog where he lives with his family. John is probably best known locally for his movie reviews in the Port Perry Star, John’s articles are a regular and pop- ular feature of the newspaper. He allz CoeERESS the operations of the history to some 450 students. In addition, as a director of the college he develops curriculum. The college's affiliation with the Career Education Corporation in Chi- cago gives John a wide exposure for his expertise. | *SEPTEMBER.FOCUS.40pgs copy.ind 3 ot NB OLUTION Ob ABIL MMAN @ He credits his father with generating an_ enthusi- asm for movies. In his child- hood, he would be sent to bed early, usually around 7 p.m., in order to be woken up for the late night movies starring the greats of the era; Hum- phrey Bogart, Charlton Heston, Clint Eastwood in the epic movies such as Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, African Queen, Third Man, and the great Hitchcock movies. John became hooked on film. His enthusiasm for film broadened to drama studies at Port Perry High School with Dianne Lackie. He then went on to study theatre and film at Humber Col- ‘During and following his college days he directed plays here in Port Perry as a member of the Borelians. John’s reviews of movies at the To- ronto International Film Festival receive worldwide interest through his website www ooteonfilm.com. He is also a regu- lar contributor to www.InContention. com an invent recognized enter- tainment review In addition to 5 these and his film re- views for local newspaper readers, he is a regular contributor to Toronto Life and Fashion magazine. As part of his work, John sees about 350 films annually, “the majority, prob- ably as many as 300, are not very good,” he says. Over the years he has developed a ‘favourites list’ which includes; Godfa- ther 2, One Flew Over the Cuckoo‘s Nest, Schindler’s List, The Searchers, Wizard of Oz and Lawrence of Arabia. “These are all films of substance,” he says. “On the opposite end of the scale, one of the worst films of all time is Exor- woop Local movie critic John Foote publishes book on directing career of Clint Eastwood cist 2, an atrocious film,” he claims. “One of the great pleasures of my ca- reer is that I get to interview many of the stars of the silver screen. I have met and interviewed some incredible people, peo- ple like Robert Duval, Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. They are the finest stars Thave met.” He hastens to add; “I dislike inter- viewing the young movie stars. They tend to be so immature and spoiled.” These interviews have led John into developing a much closer relationship with his favourite stars. He has just an- nounced the release of his latest book, a biography of Clint Eastwood entitled Clint Eastwood, The Evolution of a Film- maker. In preparing the text, John talked with Eastwood via telephone more than a dozen times. “Unfortunately with Clint shooting a new film and taking it to Cannes there was no time for aa personal interview with the busy actor/director,” says John. But during his research, he was able to arrange personally interview with nu- merous big screen stars who have worked with Clint Eastwood - including Hillary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Sean Penn and Kevin Costner. Swank and Freeman worked with Eastwood in the movie Million Dollar Baby and Freeman is noted for his work with the director in Unforgiven. “Eastwood is one of the most impor- tant directors working in film today,” ac- cording to John. The book focuses on Eastwood's ca- reer as a director and will be released this December. John estimates the time spent on research, interviews and writing would be between 18 and 20 months. Please turn to page 4 FOCUS - SEPTEMBER 2008 3. evzone +9645 PM |