Neil Daniels - JJ Abrams--A Study in Genius: The Unofficial Biography

As a storyteller you have to love the characters

J.J. Abrams, The Daily Telegraph, 2013

I t was almost inevitable that Jeffrey Jacob (J.J.) Abrams would enter the film industry given his family background: his father Gerald W. Abrams turned his hand to television producing after ending his career as a retail commercial contractor while his mother Carol Ann Abrams (maiden name Kelvin) was an executive producer after Abrams went to college (though she was actually a lawyer during J.J.s youth) and his sister Tracy Rosen later became a screenwriter. It was the young J.J., however, who would one day take Hollywood by storm and become one of the most successful names in modern cinema.

Not since the peak of Steven Spielbergs commercial popularity in the 1980s had Hollywood produced a director of such obvious global appeal and cinematic charm. It was as if Abrams could do no wrong. He would one day relaunch not one, not two, but three major franchises and co-create one of the most talked-about TV shows of the 2000s. He would board the Enterprise and fly to a galaxy far, far away.

Is Abrams the young-looking forty-nine-year-old with the curly dark hair, slightly geeky glasses and overall air of puppy-dog enthusiasm a movie mogul? Indeed, is there any such thing as a movie mogul any more, in the mould of Sam Goldwyn, Lew Wasserman, Louis B. Mayer or Darryl Zanuck, men who simply ran the business back in the day? Well, in terms of personal success, there certainly is. George Lucas has a personal fortune of $5.4 billion, producer Arnon Milchan (Pretty Woman, 12 Years a Slave) is second on the Hollywood rich list and scrapes by on $5.2 billion. Such men wield enormous influence. Abrams isnt in the top ten list yet but of course personal wealth is not the only measure of moguldom. It is the sheer reach of Abramss work on both the big and small screen that marks him out as a VIP mover and shaker. Albert (aka Cubby) Broccoli was a hard-working producer with over forty films under his belt: but only one world-conquering movie franchise, the Bond films? Alfred Hitchcock was a pretty good director but what do we find on the CV? Just the single solitary successful TV series? It can be argued that Abrams as writer, producer and director has already reached out to a bigger audience than both of them put together; he really is that big. He pulls off what is perhaps the most impressive filmic sleight-of-hand of them all (though some cineastes will disagree): he pleases all of the people some of the time a feat accurately described by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, who describes him as the perfect purveyor of fictions [that] will never jade.

But what started it all? Abramss first paid gig is almost beyond belief. For a movie-obsessed kid, it must have been the equivalent of finding ET in the garage.

Jeffrey Jacobs Abrams was born in New York City on 27 June 1966, the same year an obscure science-fiction show called Star Trek was first broadcast, but eventually raised in the City of Angels where he attended Palisades High School.

Abrams was the typical nerd obsessed with pop culture, especially movies and books. He could have been one of the Goonies. Abrams loved storytelling in all its manifestations. I remember being taught to read at a very early age, he told The New York Times in late 2013. Like creepy young. I remember being in the crib, reading. My parents were very impressed. My reading speed, comprehension and overall ability has remained at that level ever since. There were always books around in the house, of course, and my parents did read to me sometimes, but my strongest memories of being read to are from kindergarten. Those teachers were excellent and made reading seem fun and adventurous.

Abrams was drawn to the big screen over and above any other of his childhood hobbies and interests. Like anyone who aspires to become a film director, Abrams was drawn towards moving images. There was something about the way they tell a story that properly captured his attention. Abrams first picked up a camera aged eight and almost from the get-go his TV-producer father warned him against going into the notoriously unforgiving, not-to-say fickle, film industry. Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports, Abrams said to The Guardians Steve Rose in 2009. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sisters head using alginate plaster. So the answer is: yes, I was and am a geek.

And Abrams also appreciated music and would one day become an amateur musician (and non-amateur composer). Was there any end to his talents? There were certain films Abrams adored while growing up, which gave him an appreciation for movie soundtracks. Jaws was an incredible soundtrack, he once told Empire film magazine. It had such a primal quality to it, but the sequence when all the boats go out like a regatta has this incredible seafaring note to it. John Williams did so much incredible stuff, his score to The Fury for Brian De Palma stands out, but Jaws was something else. I remember listening to it as a nine-year-old and finding it as scary and as intense as anything.

Aged eleven and obsessed with films, J.J. Abrams first saw Star Wars. It blew his mind. Star Wars became the highest grossing film of all time after its 1977 release, even surpassing Jaws, which attacked an unsuspecting public in 1975 and is generally thought to have initiated the summer blockbuster season. Abrams adored the casting, the story, and the designs and just like any other kid his age who saw the film, he was transported by the space battles and all the action and adventure of the basic, good-versus-evil plot. Characters Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo (and not forgetting the Droids R2-D2 and C-3PO) instantly became familiar names to anyone and everyone.

Abrams, like many other film buffs, not only took note of the directors but also the cast and crew of every film he watched. At the cinema, he stayed to the very end of every film to watch all the credits, when most of the audience had got up off their seats and left the auditorium.

One childhood friend of Abrams was Greg Grunberg, who later starred in some of Abramss earliest TV productions including Alias and Lost. They made a childhood movie together called The Attic using a Super 8 camera. He shot it, then scratched in the monster, frame by frame. It was a bolt-of-lightning creature. He compensated ahead of time for where the monster would be, Grunberg said to USA Todays Bill Keveney in 2005. We were, like, eleven.

Abramss dad had an office at Paramount and when he was in his early teens J.J. would go with his dad to the office and hang out on the movie lot. The young Abrams got to know the security guards on the lot and theyd let him in on some of the sets to watch Happy Days, Laverne And Shirley, or Mork And Mindy starring a young Robin Williams. He got to see Mr Williams rehearsing his lines for Mork And Mindy and he remembers Ron Howard, later an acclaimed film director himself of course, and Henry Winkler from Happy Days. Abrams found the whole experience utterly fascinating and also a lot of fun. The best part was watching his dad, though. Hed visit sets with his dad and see how production worked and ask questions about this and that. He had been making Super 8 films since he was eight years old, so to see how TV shows were made was a dream come true. It fuelled his imagination and ambition. It drove his creativity. However, years later Abrams understood that as soon as you see how the finished product is made on set, the experience of watching a movie is changed.