Joseph Minion is an American film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

, best known for Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

's After Hours

After Hours (film)

After Hours is a 1985 American black comedy film, written by Joseph Minion and directed by Martin Scorsese. Paul Hackett , a New Yorker, experiences a series of adventures and perils in trying to make his way home from SoHo.-Plot:...

(1985).

Born in New Jersey in 1957, Minion briefly attended NYU Film School before finishing his studies at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, then renowned for its screenwriting program. In 1984, Minion's script for After Hours was optioned by Griffin Dunne

Griffin Dunne

-Personal life:Dunne was born Thomas Griffin Dunne in New York City, New York, the son of Ellen Beatriz Dunne and Dominick Dunne. His mother founded the victims' rights organization Justice for Homicide Victims and his father was a producer, writer, and actor...

 and Amy Robinson, the latter a former actress who'd appeared as Harvey Keitel

Harvey Keitel

Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...

's damaged girlfriend in Scorsese's Mean Streets

Mean Streets

Mean Streets is a 1973 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973...

(1973). Robinson sent Minion's screenplay to Scorsese, whose Last Temptation of Christ had recently fallen through; production on After Hours started shortly afterward. Later, it surfaced that Minion had plagiarized portions of After Hours

After Hours

- Television and film :* After Hours , a 1985 movie directed by Martin Scorsese* After Hours , a 1953 Canadian television series* After Hours , a 2007 television drama broadcasted in Singapore...

 from radio host Joe Frank

Joe Frank

Joe Frank is an American radio personality, known best for his often philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and sometimes absurd monologues and radio dramas.-Early life:...

, who successfully sued for an undisclosed sum.

Minion continued his screenwriting career with 1987's Julia and Julia

Julia and Julia

Julia and Julia is a 1987 Italian drama film directed by Peter Del Monte. The screenplay by Silvia Napolitano, Sandro Petraglia, Joseph Minion, and Del Monte is based on a story by Napolitano.-Plot synopsis:...

starring Kathleen Turner

Kathleen Turner

Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Prizzi's Honor...

; 1989's Vampire's Kiss, starring Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...

; Motorama

Motorama (film)

Motorama is an American road movie released in 1991. It is a surrealistic film about a ten-year-old runaway boy on a road trip for the purpose of collecting game pieces from the fictional "Chimera" gas stations, in order to spell out the word M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. By doing so he will supposedly win...

(1991); and On the Run (1999). He also worked again with Martin Scorsese in 1986 for an episode of Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories (TV series)

Amazing Stories is a fantasy, horror, and science fiction television anthology series created by Steven Spielberg. It ran on NBC from 1985 to 1987, and was somewhat erratically screened in Britain by BBC1 and BBC2 - billed in the Radio Times as "Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories" - with episodes...

.

As a director, Minion made his debut for producer Roger Corman

Roger Corman

Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...

with 1987's Daddy's Boys, said to have been thrown together at the last minute to make use of standing sets for Big Bad Mama II. His last outing as director was for another low-budget feature, Trafficking (1999).

External links

• http://www.panopticist.com/2008/05/the_scandalous_origins_of_martin_scorseses_after_hours.php