Cross & Crescent

John Baldecchi (California-Los Angeles 1985) grew up in Los Angeles. His father had attended the University of California-Los Angeles, earning both undergraduate and master’s degrees.

“So there was a legacy issue that I was interested in,” Baldecchi says about deciding to attend UCLA. “On top of which…I fit in there nicely. I was looking to go to a bigger school and I wanted to stay close to my family and friends.

For Baldecchi, the university provided a nice combination of quality of education, sports, and a great campus. He ended up becoming an econ major, and a biology major.

“There’s actually no connection between what I studied in school and what I ended up doing,” he says about becoming a producer.

During his senior year, Baldecchi decided to intern for a production company.

“And I wasn’t necessarily looking to get into the entertainment industry,” he says. “I was just looking to do something that sounded interesting to me at that time.”

Early Beginnings

The company where Baldecchi interned during college was in the middle of producing a couple of movies. He decided to stick with it to just “to see what it was like.”

“And actually at the time I didn’t have designs of going into the movie business…but after having spent some time there it felt like a natural fit for me,” he says.

After graduation, Baldecchi was surprised when the production company owner jumped at the chance to hire him. The company happened to have movies under production with MGM Studios. And it just all came together.

“It was sort of that easy,” Baldecchi says. “And that was the last time it was easy ever in my life….But it was a different time as well.”

After benefiting from a little luck, he eventually took a second job with a producer at The Walt Disney Studios. He stayed there for several years and his boss eventually let him start producing his own movies.

“He began to let me produce movies after I had proven myself to be able to find the projects and get them teed up so that the studio would greenlight them,” Baldecchi says. “It’s an arduous task to be with a movie from beginning to end.”

His boss had a multitude of movies going on that the time so it was the right time for him to start taking over movies that he had found and developed.

After that job, he worked for FOX 2000 with another producer. They made a couple of movies together there, but he then moved over to Columbia Pictures and spent a long time there, and made movies elsewhere, too.

First Movie Credit

In 1993, a close friend of Baldecchi’s, Stephen Sommers, wanted to write and direct “The Adventures of Huck Finn,” and asked Baldecchi for assistance.

“He went off and wrote the script,” he says. “And he came back and brought it to me and said he wanted to direct it as his first studio feature.”

Baldecchi knew that moves studios wouldn’t just automatically agree to finance it so he helped Sommers refine the script to help sell it.

“So we worked on the script until we got it to a place where we could get interest from the studios,” he says. “Disney scooped it up.”

The only catch was they had to agree to a lower sales price to allow Sommers to also direct the movie.

“I can’t say it’s gotten easier since then,” he says. “That was actually one of the easier productions I’ve worked on. It in fact has only gotten more complicated since then. But with experience you sort of deal with it in different ways.”

Going on His Own

Shortly thereafter, John Baldecchi Productions was born and he has gone on to produce a variety of other movies, including the 2001 hit “The Mexican,” starring Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, and James Gandolfini.

“It’s always a different challenge,” he says about his movies. “Every movie brings a different challenge to the party. If you’re shooting in a another country…each country has its own set of circumstances that you have to be careful and watch out for. And actors bring complications, and directors bring complications, and they are all different complications.”

The bottom line is he finds the work very interesting and never boring. Each of his projects elicits different memories.

“As they say, they’re a little bit like children…and sometimes they misbehave,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you don’t like them. There’s a reason I’ve been involved in every movie I’ve been involved in one way or another.”

One of his most recent projects was the newly-released movie, “88 Minutes,” in which Baldecchi had a secondary producer role as he was busy with several other projects. Al Pacino plays the leading role.

Nonetheless, he wanted to be involved with the movie as he was fascinated by the premise.

“On a studio, commercial level I had actually never seen anything done like that before,” he says. “I thought it was interesting to see if we could pull off this idea of the second they say 88 minutes, you’ve got 88 minutes to live.

That notion tracks throughout the movie, which is the part that was most interesting to Baldecchi.

“It was sort of a technical and creative challenge to see if that could be accomplished,” he says.

Adding TV Projects

Baldecchi has more than a dozen projects in process, including the upcoming movies, Half to Death and Scared Guys.

“It’s also a little more prudent to spread your bets out…”

He also is beginning to branch out and take on some projects for television.

“That’s been a new area of interest of mine,” he says. “I’ve generally been sticking to movies for no good reason other than it’s taken all of my energy. I have a little bit of help now and I’ve been able to expand into other areas.”

Two of the TV projects he’s working on are a miniseries and a drama, both based on books. One is a World War II mission movie the other one is historical fiction.

Television is a whole different world for Baldecchi but he says it’s a strategic move for him.

“It’s also a little more prudent to spread your bets out now because the business has tightened up a bit,” he says, “So spreading yourself in both television and movies is a good idea.”

Discovering Lambda Chi

From the beginning at UCLA, Baldecchi had his sights set on joining a fraternity.

“When I was looking at choice for fraternities, what I was looking for the most was a place where I felt I fit in and was comfortable,” he says. “And that’s what I found at Lambda Chi. There was a comfort level.”

For Baldecchi, a big part of that had to do with Lambda Chi’s anti-hazing policy.

“I just thought that the group of guys that had been put together at Lambda Chi was just a good group of guys,” he says. “And guys that I still stay in touch with.”

One of his fondest Fraternity memories remains the day he moved into the chapter house.

“One is the day that I moved into the Fraternity, which was an exciting day,” Baldecchi says. “I just remember moving in there and just the sense of independence and relief I felt.”