J.C. Chandor is a writer and director, known for Margin Call (2011), All Is Lost (2013) and A Most Violent Year (2014). He has been married to Mary Cameron Goodyear since 2004. They have two children.
[on the character of Abel Morales] What I love is Abel's mission was that he believes he's fulfilling his destiny, the American destiny. It's like Abel believes that he is destined for greatness and that he is better than other people.
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When sailing if you miss a degree every day, eventually you'll be going in the exact opposite direction.
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There are very few people that actually live their life in a Mother Theresa kind of benevolence. And even bad guys are often trying to be the "most right" version of themselves. So I'm trying to explore what basically makes these guys human.
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[on All Is Lost (2013) and his competitive spirit in promoting that style of movie] I think my films kind of walk this line that I'm proud of, that they feel sort of like films of my youth, which were far more commercial. I did not grow up a cinefile. No one in my family was in the film business or even anything close to it. There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this there's certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.
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The Cannes screening was one of the more enjoyable screenings I'll probably ever have. And then the reaction of everyone after, that'll be hard to beat because I was so proud that Robert was proud. I know that sounds weird, but that really is what you want, you want your actor to be proud of the work they've done. He was taking such a chance on me, especially committing before I had any momentum. He doesn't have to do this: he's seventy-five years old and he's freakin' Robert Redford So this is not something he needed to put himself through or put himself out there for judgment. The film could have ended up laughable, boring and ridiculous if it hadn't been executed correctly, and he knew that. But he was ready to do that, he was ready to just start fresh.
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[on films such as Gravity (2013) and All Is Lost (2013), concerning individuals in solitary situations, who rise above enormous physical challenges] There's something there obviously going on in the ether that I was reacting to. I do think it's representative of people in this search for authenticity in their lives, but yet not really meaning it. They sort of want the authenticity, but they don't wanna have to go through with what it takes to get it. It is a challenge this guy had never taken on in his life, and it was kind of sitting there - the thing left undone in his life in a way. So I thought it was an interesting character to look into.
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[on Margin Call (2011)] I also came into it with this insane confidence that I'd been waiting 15 years for this opportunity. This is making a little bit light of the situation, but essentially, I walked on to that set saying, 'Who gives a crap if this is Kevin Spacey? He is an amazing lump of clay who is probably going to give me a greater performance than anyone else I could have cast in that role, but I'm here to make the movie I know I want to make. Probably, had I gotten this opportunity 10 years earlier, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I was a pretty immature guy at 26. But I knew the movie I wanted to make, and I was given the gift of these actors, and they were all there for the right reason. They weren't making a ton of money. It was a movie they wanted to make.
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[on Margin Call (2011)] I knew the movie I wanted to make; we weren't experimenting or anything. It's a procedural film. One thing is absolutely required to build one thing on another. The film kind of runs like that. There were really intense times. It's a life's worth of work. You have to go up to Jeremy Irons and be like, 'Totally off the mark here, dude. This is not where we needed you to be.' It was an amazing experience in my life. Once you kind of go there with them, and you know what you're talking about, they are professionals, and they respect that, and it began these relationships that I'll remember for the rest of my life.
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[on his education] I was a classic Wooster [college] case. I had decent but not great grades in high school, because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes."
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[explaining his role in a real estate deal prior to the market crash in 2008, when the godfather of one of his partners told them to sell out and move on] It felt like a defeat at the time, but a year later, as the wheels started to come off [the real estate market], it felt like a real gift. And I began to think, what was he seeing that caused him to intervene so strongly in his godson's life? And what is it like to walk around with that knowledge?
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At its core, if the film [Margin Call (2011)] is anything, it's a tragedy. It's structured as a thriller - a ticking time-bomb movie - but an hour into the film you know the bomb can't be defused and the crux of the story becomes who are they going to drop it on?
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Fact
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By 2006, he had written what he hoped would be his debut feature. An Icelandic investor had agreed to finance the project, which seemed too good to be true until the Icelandic financial crisis bit and the money suddenly vanished. Chandor was a week away from filming and had already spent $200,000.
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Spent 15 years of his life struggling to get to in a position so that he could make feature films.
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His film Margin Call was in seventh place on the 2010 "Black List" of promising unmade screenplays, just above American Hustle and Argo.
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When he was 19 years old, he was involved in a car accident with four college friends: the driver was killed, and Chandor was suddenly seized by what he calls "a sense of urgency". Then he dropped out of college and enrolled in a film programme at New York University in order to "live enough life" for both himself and that young man who was killed in the accident.
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A 1996 graduate of Ohio's The College of Wooster.
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Prior to Margin Call (2011), Chandor worked on commercials and documentaries for some 15 years.
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His wife Mary, whose father is a lawyer, was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and was an artist in New York City.
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His first Warner project is to write "Portofino," an international thriller.
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Signed a two-picture writing deal with Warner Brothers, and hopes to begin shooting his second feature in 2012.
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Is the father of two children, and his own father worked for over 30 years with Merrill Lynch.
$700,000
