Career
After college, the California native moved to Los Angeles settling himself in Hollywood, more precisely near Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, one of the toughest corners in Los Angeles at the time. Living among prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, junkies and the homeless, the setting gave Lawton a wide range of inspiration for his stories. He wrote a number of screenplays while working at several post-productions companies.
During that time he met the famous producer Charles Band who got interested in one of his screenplays. The result,Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death was a take-off of both Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's feature Apocalypse Now. Shot in less than two weeks in his hometown of Riverside, California, the film, starring his longtime friend Bill Maher, Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed and sex symbol Adrienne Barbeau became a cult favorite and late-night cable staple.
After Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, Lawton also wrote and directed Pizza Man, a political satire about a delivery man investigating a comical government conspiracy. Talk show host Bill Maher also stars in Pizza Man along with comedian Annabelle Gurwitch. In both movies, he used the pseudonym JD Athens.
Read more about this topic: J. F. Lawton
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