Background

John Dahl was born on December 11, 1956, in Billings, Montana, United States. He and his brother Rick, with whom he has collaborated on several scripts, enjoyed a secure, traditional, middle-American upbringing with their three other siblings.

Education

During his school years Dahl participated in a familiar mix of recreational and civic activities that included Boy Scouts, church functions, and school government. His parents also encouraged his artistic inclinations. Dahl studied art at college for two years, then transferred to the film program at Montana State University in Bozeman. Meanwhile, Dahl’s own teachers and classmates at film school derided his hopes of success in Hollywood, but on the basis of an eight-thousand-dollar, sixteen-millimeter black-and-white horror film titled The Death Mutants, he was accepted at the American Film Institute. However, he remained there only one year of the two-year program.

Career

Dahl began to work in Hollywood drawing storyboards for other people’s films-that is, drawing illustrations to provide a visual blueprint or “script” for the film. He also made friends at a new company called Propaganda Films and secured backing for his first feature Kill Me Again. Although Dahl storyboarded the script extensively and co-wrote the script, he was still a novice director. The film, which stars Val Kilmer and his wife, Joanne Whalley- Kilmer, attracted positive reviews but enjoyed little exposure. Unfortunately for Dahl, it was released in San Francisco just before the 1989 earthquake, and Propaganda quickly withdrew it. The film’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollar gross was enough, however, to get Dahl a second chance from Propaganda.

The next film was Red Rock West, which Dahl wrote with his brother Rick, and which featured Nicholas Cage and Dennis Hopper. The studio lost confidence in the film before releasing it, however, and sent it directly to cable. But in an odd move—and, for Dahl, a fortunate one—Propaganda then returned it to theatrical release on a local scale in San Francisco, where it grossed two and a half million dollars. Red Rock West is a film noir set in the contemporary Wyoming flatlands, but with strong 1940s stylistic elements.

Dahl’s next project, written this time by Steve Barancik, was The Last Seduction, starring Linda Fiorentino. The film was widely seen as having “finally made a star out of Fiorentino,” as Biskind put it, even though its pre-theater cable release made the actress ineligible for Oscar nominations.

Dahl’s first three films, Kill Me Again, Red Rock West, and The Last Seduction, are, in reviewers' view, “each a perfect jewel of the genre, a Swiss watch of the doublecross.” Dahl’s next project, Unforgettable (1996), is “a little different, more of a thriller, but, like the others, by no means for the squeamish”. The motion picture had a twenty million dollar budget, the largest Dahl had worked with to date, and Dahl was pleased at the added latitude that kind of support gave a director during the shooting process. Dahl went on from Unforgettable to work on Blackout, a film he scripted with his brother; and Striking Back: A Jewish Commando’s War against the Nazis.

The transition from The Last Seduction to Unforgettable was one of the most embarrassed gulps in modern film. Despite the presence of Linda Fiorentino, Unforgettable was in title denial from its first few minutes. Again, despite the radiant gloom of Ms. Fiorentino in Last Seduction, the film was more than just her—it had a bunch of nicely weak men, a terrific feeling for money, and real guile in the filming. It could have been better: the woman might have been more steadily aggressive, instead of content to be in hiding. But The Last Seduction is one of the movies of the nineties, and it makes everything else by Dahl look limp.

Dahl was at the American Film Institute (AFI) and then he worked as an assistant director and storyboard artist on The Dungeonmaster (85, too many directors to name); Something Wild (86, Jonathan Demme); and Married to the Mob (88, Demme). The later films, however, are those of a talent that has lost its way, and its momentum. Rounders was especially regrettable in that it seemed so promising in its lineup.

Achievements

• Dahl is best known for his work in the neo-noir genre. His film The Last Seduction was named one of the best pictures of the year by many film critics, the film garnered Fiorentino the Best Actress award from the New York Critics circle and an Independent Feature Project's Spirit award. His script of Red Rock West also won high praise.

Works

More photos

• film

  • Watch The Last Seduction | Prime Video

    (A devious sexpot steals her husband's drug money and hide...)

    1994
  • Hannibal Season 3
  • Rounders 1998
  • Let the Right One In
  • Red Rock West
  • Joy Ride

Connections

Dahl met his future wife, Beth-Jana Friedberg at Montana State University in Bozeman. The couple dated for ten years before marrying, a union broke up in part by a conflict over whether to raise their future children in Dahl’s Methodist church or Friedberg’s Jewish religion.

Father:

Leonard Dahl

A manager of an insurance office.

Mother:

Marguerite Dahl

Wife:

Beth-Jana Friedberg

References

• International Motion Picture Almanac
  1997