Dan Gordon (Hebrew: דן גורדון; born (1947-05-05)May 5, 1947) is an Israeli-American screenwriter, television writer, television producer, television director, film producer, novelist, playwright, film director, and reserve duty captain in the Israel Defense Forces.
While at UCLA, Dan pitched a one-act play he had written, Once I Was, as a film to Universal Studios, and they hired him as a writer. But he was fired by Studio Chair Lew Wasserman for stealing office supplies.[7]
In 1971, Gordon began directing the film Potluck, based on a screenplay he had written. They shot the film guerrilla style in New York, without obtaining film permits. As Gordon soon discovered, the film's independent financiers were Mafia-connected. Although the film was coming in under its $100,000 budget, they claimed the financing had dried up. Gordon and his collaborators tried to raise the funds to finish the film, but the Mafia needed the film to fail, as part of a money laundering scheme. The film was never finished.[7]
Fearing the Mafia, due to the fallout from trying to make Potluck, Gordon fled to Israel, where he served in the Israeli Army. While there, he wrote the screenplay for Train Ride to Hollywood, the 1975 pop musical starring the Kansas City R&B band Bloodstone, though he would return briefly to the United States to rewrite it prior to filming. [8] After more than a decade, Gordon returned to Hollywood to continue his screenwriting career in the early 1980s.[7]
Gordon was hired to be the head writer for the TV show Highway to Heaven (1984–88), for which he also directed three episodes. He wanted to write for both film and television, which was uncommon at the time.[7] Gordon went on to write numerous screenplays including Passenger 57 (1992), Wyatt Earp (1994), Murder in the First (1995), The Assignment (1997) and The Hurricane (1999).[6] Gordon's most recent work includes a "story by" credit for Rambo: Last Blood (2019).[1]
His play, Irena's Vow, premiered at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, New York, in September 2008. Starring Tovah Feldshuh, it is the true story of Irena Gut, who hid twelve Jews in a cellar during World War II.[9] The play opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in previews starting March 10, 2009, officially March 29, 2009, with the same cast from off-Broadway.[10] His stage adaptation of Barry Morrow'sRain Man premiered at the Apollo Theatre in London's West End in 2009, and was subsequently performed in Prague (Czech Republic), Stuttgart (Germany), Brussels (Belgium) and Utrecht (The Netherlands).
In 2012, he left the Zaki Gordon Institute after founding the Zaki Gordon Center for Cinematic Arts at Liberty University in 2011.[13] After Gordon left, The Zaki Gordon Institute, in Arizona, changed its name to the Sedona Film School.[14] Gordon was also a close friend of Tim Buckley, collaborating with him on an unfilmed movie script called "Fully Air-conditioned Inside."[15] He also played the role of a homeless man in the independent film. Waiting for Mo (1996), which he produced with his son, Zaki, who wrote and directed the film.
Gordon married his wife Jo-Ann while he was in Israel (and they divorced in 1995). They have three sons Zaki, Yoni and Adam. Zaki, his eldest, died in a traffic accident in 1998 at the age of 22. During the summer of 2019, Gordon married Leah Denmark in Rome in a small private ceremony.
Gordon is Jewish, and has acted as a keynote speaker at Jewish and Christian religious conferences.[17]
^ abc'Gaza Wars Veteran, 17-Old Documentarian Among Guests For Temple of the Arts Yom Kippur Services', The Beverly Hills Courier, October 03, 2014, Vol. XXXXVIIII, No. 39, p. 13