JON LANDAU

(23 July 1960 - 5 July 2024)

Film producers are generally not well-known to the general public except on awards night when the man behind the winning production is called up on stage to collect his trophy for best film. Is this right, or should the man who directed the picture get all the kudos? It is sometimes possible that the director of the best film might also receive his reward on the understanding that if he’s responsible for getting the best film on the screen, he must surely be the best director. These thoughts occurred to me while thinking about the obituary for producer Jon Landau who has died of cancer at the age of 63 – after a comparatively short working life but one packed with success. I just need to mention films he produced such as Titanic and Avatar (1 to 5) or even Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Dick Tracy, both of which he co-produced and his success is there for all to see. You don’t need much more to convince Hollywood that Landau was a man of enormous importance.

Jon Landau was born in Los Angeles, the son of Edie and Ely Landau, Jewish film producers of the series of plays filmed for the American Film Theatre that included Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Three Sisters, A Delicate Balance, Butley, The Homecoming, Luther, The Iceman Cometh and many more. Jon studied at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, then got work as an assistant on several film sets, gaining experience of the industry, and eventually became production supervisor on the romantic comedy Key Exchange with Brooke Adams, Ben Masters and Danny Aiello in 1985. He was the production manager on F/X with Bryan Brown, then worked with Michael Mann on Manhunter, Making Mr Right with John Malkovich, and Campus Man. For Disney he co-produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and with Warren Beatty co-produced Dick Tracy.

This led to his becoming executive vice president at Twentieth Century-Fox where he met and worked with James Cameron on Titanic (in 1997), for which Landau was the producer and thus his success was sealed. The film was so successful it took more money than any other before it. The hot couple then co-produced Solaris, Steven Soderbergh’s remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s science fiction movie from 1972. Sadly, it did not repeat the success of Titanic. But then Avatar came along and, in its wake, took even more money than Titanic. Here we are talking in the billions, so the obvious move was to make Avatar: The Way of Water with three more sequels still to come. Titanic won umpteen awards including an Oscar for Landau amongst other gongs, while Avatar was nominated for an Academy Award and won him a Golden Globe. Sadly for Jon Landau the story ends there while Cameron carries on with his Avatar quintet and who knows what in the future. It may be more difficult without the producer Jon Landau at James Cameron’s back, but even so the influence that Landau has had on current popular cinema is incalculable. On a more personal level, he was married to Julie Landau for nearly forty years and they have two sons, Jamie and Jodie.

MICHAEL DARVELL