John Head

Cast · Writer · Director

Died

March 1, 2023

John Head is a British filmmaker and producer who's worked in a variety of capacities in the entertainment industry, often hired by his close friend Lorne Michaels. Head attended school in Canada before returning to the UK. He began his entertainment career working on the crew of the British investigative show World in Action (1963). In London in 1966, he met and befriended Lorne Michaels and Michaels's then-wife Rosie Shuster when they were in town from Toronto. Head's laidback attitude, taste, and social circle served as a model for Michaels, who was still figuring out his own personality and lifestyle at the time. Once Michaels and Shuster returned to Toronto, Head wound up following them there and becoming roommates with them before moving to Los Angeles, where he co-directed and co-produced Jimi Hendrix (1973), a documentary about the legendary musician with Gary Weis. In 1974, Michaels hired John Head to write on the first in a series of four NBC specials starring Flip Wilson that he was set to produce. Michaels quit following the first special after clashing with the network, but Head remained and wrote for the subsequent two Flip Wilson specials. The following year, Head helped Michaels hone his pitch for the show that became Saturday Night Live (1975) before he pitched it to NBC. Once the series was greenlit, Michaels hired head as a talent scout, a position that allowed Head to book the musical guests in the show's early days. In 1977, Michaels once-again tapped John Head to co-write, with SNL writer Anne Beatts, a scrapbook-style companion book to the show, also called Saturday Night Live. When Michaels and the original group left the show in 1980, Head was one of many collaborators who took up office space at Michaels's newly-formed production company Broadway Video's offices in Manhattan's Brill Building. Michaels had a deal to produce movies for MGM. Michaels and Head wrote a script for a modernized version of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', about the production of a movie in a small Ohio town. Also for Michaels's MGM deal, Head and Adam Brooks co-wrote an adaptation of Don DeLillo's 'White Noise.' Neither of these films made it into production. The only film that did from Michaels's MGM deal was Tom Schiller's Nothing Lasts Forever (1984). Head served as co-producer on the film, but it went unreleased after the studio was unhappy with it. When Lorne Michaels returned to Saturday Night Live, he added John Head in a new position in charge of film acquisitions for the show. From 1986 to 1988, Head was tasked with seeking out and buying the rights to comedic short films to air during SNL. Notable shorts that Head commissioned include Tim Robbins's "Bob Roberts," which was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1992, and Ben Stiller's directorial debut The Hustler of Money (1987), which led to Stiller (briefly) joining the show's cast in 1989. Michaels also hired Head to produce the ABC special Rolling Stone Presents Twenty Years of Rock & Roll (1987) for Michaels's friend Jann Wenner, and most notably, his new music show Sunday Night (1988) (also known as Michelob Presents Night Music). Head was the showrunner on the series. Over the course of two seasons, he booked musicians and oversaw the production. An all-music companion to Saturday Night Live that aired the following night, Sunday Night featured performances and cross-disciplinary jam sessions from an eclectic mix of musicians including Eric Clapton, Miles Davis, Lou Reed and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The show was canceled in 1990, and this was Head's last major collaboration with Michaels.