Gene Quintano (born 1946 as Eugene Francis Quintano Jr.) is an American screenwriter, actor, film producer and director. He is best known for writing sequels to the film Police Academy and directing the western Dollar for the Dead and action parody Loaded Weapon 1 , both starring Emilio Estevez.
Quintano was a Xerox salesman who had his own office supply company and was interested in getting into filmmaking. He was partners in a publishing firm with Tony Anthony, a filmmaker who had made a number of Spaghetti Westerns. Looking for an angle they decided to make a film in 3-D, believing many younger film goers would not be familiar with it. It resulted in Comin' at Ya! . Quintano and his partners worked for four years on the film, experimenting and testing the technology. They raised money to make the films, shot it in Spain and Rome, and sold it to Filmways. [1]
Quintano was a writer and producer on the film. He also starred in the film "mostly as a matter of economics." [2] The film was a surprise success at the box office, leading to a brief revival of 3-D films. [3]
Quintano wanted to follow it with a Topkapi -type film about people stealing an item on an island. [4] This became Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). Quintano helped provide the story and produced, as well as appearing in the cast. The film was a box office disappointment. [5]
Treasure had been distributed by Cannon Films, and Quintano wrote a series of films for that company, including the comedy Making the Grade (1984) and the adventure films King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986). [6]
He wrote Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986) and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987). [7]
Quintano turned director with a TV movie For Better or for Worse (1989) aka Honeymoon Academy.
He followed it with Why Me? (1990) and Loaded Weapon 1 (1993). He did an uncredited rewrite on Cop and a Half (1993).
He was meant to write and direct a western for TNT, Scratch. He sold a script to Cinergi called Beauty for $500,000 as a vehicle for Bruce Willis. He also wrote films for Jean-Claude Van Damme (Quest) and John Candy (Our Father) and worked on a big screen adaptation of the comic Spy vs Spy . [8] None of these films were made. [9]
Quintano was a writer only on Operation Dumbo Drop (1995) and Sudden Death (1995) (originally called Arena).
He wrote and directed Dollar for the Dead (1998) and wrote The Long Kill (1999). Both were westerns. [10]
In 2001, Quintano wrote a kung-fu reimagining of The Three Musketeers for director Peter Hyams. The Musketeer was a critical and commercial failure. [11] [12]
He wrote a TV movie Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (2002).
His last credit was on the family feature Funky Monkey, which ended up being released straight-to-video, despite its $30 million budget.
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1981 | Comin' at Ya! | Yes | Executive | Role: Pike Thompson | |
1983 | Treasure of the Four Crowns | Story | Yes | Role: Edmond | |
1984 | Making the Grade | Yes | Yes | ||
1985 | King Solomon's Mines | Yes | |||
1986 | Police Academy 3: Back in Training | Yes | |||
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold | Yes | ||||
1987 | Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol | Yes | |||
1990 | Honeymoon Academy | Yes | Yes | Direct-to-video | |
Why Me? | Yes | ||||
1993 | Loaded Weapon 1 | Yes | Yes | ||
1995 | Operation Dumbo Drop | Yes | |||
Sudden Death | Yes | ||||
1998 | Dollar for the Dead | Yes | Yes | TV movie | |
1999 | Outlaw Justice | Yes | |||
2001 | The Musketeer | Yes | |||
2004 | Funky Monkey | Yes | Second unit director: France |
TV writer
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
2002 | The Wonderful World of Disney | Episode "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" |
Capricorn One is a 1977 British-produced American thriller film in which a reporter discovers that a supposed Mars landing by a crewed mission to the planet has been faked via a conspiracy involving the government and—under duress—the crew themselves. It was written and directed by Peter Hyams and produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment. It stars Elliott Gould as the reporter, and James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O. J. Simpson as the astronauts. Hal Holbrook plays a senior NASA official who goes along with governmental and corporate interests and helps to fake the mission.
Emilio Estevez is an American actor and filmmaker.
Stewart Granger was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.
National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 is a 1993 American parody film directed and co-written by Gene Quintano, and starring Emilio Estevez, Samuel L. Jackson, Kathy Ireland, Frank McRae, Tim Curry and William Shatner. The film mainly spoofs the first three Lethal Weapon films, as well as several others including Basic Instinct, Die Hard, Dirty Harry, Rambo, The Silence of the Lambs, Wayne's World, 48 Hrs. and TV series such as CHiPs. Loaded Weapon 1 was released on February 5, 1993.
Renée Pilar Estevez is an American former actress and screenwriter.
Deborah Lynn Foreman is an American photographer and actress. She is perhaps best known for her starring role in the 1983 film Valley Girl opposite Nicolas Cage. She is also regarded as a scream queen and known for playing in various horror films of the 1980s, such as April Fool's Day, Waxwork, Destroyer and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat.
Robert Martin Culp was an American actor widely known for his work in television. Culp earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy (1965–1968), the espionage television series in which co-star Bill Cosby and he played secret agents. Before this, he starred in the CBS/Four Star Western series Trackdown as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in 71 episodes from 1957 to 1959. The 1980s brought him back to television as FBI Agent Bill Maxwell on The Greatest American Hero. Later, he had a recurring role as Warren Whelan on Everybody Loves Raymond, and was a voice actor for various computer games, including Half-Life 2. Culp gave hundreds of performances in a career spanning more than 50 years.
That Was Then... This Is Now is a 1985 American drama film based on the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. The film was directed by Christopher Cain, distributed by Paramount Pictures, and stars Emilio Estevez and Craig Sheffer.
The Musketeer is a 2001 American action-adventure film based on Alexandre Dumas's classic 1844 novel The Three Musketeers, directed and photographed by Peter Hyams and starring Catherine Deneuve, Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Tim Roth and Justin Chambers.
The Three Musketeers is a 1993 action-adventure comedy film from Walt Disney Pictures, Caravan Pictures, and The Kerner Entertainment Company, directed by Stephen Herek from a screenplay by David Loughery. It stars Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O'Donnell, Oliver Platt, Tim Curry and Rebecca De Mornay.
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is a 1983 American-Canadian space Western film. The film stars Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Andrea Marcovicci and Michael Ironside. The film's executive producer was Ivan Reitman, and it was directed by Lamont Johnson. The film's music score was composed by Elmer Bernstein. When the film was originally released in theaters it was shown in a polarized, over/under 3-D format. The film became part of the 3-D film revival craze of the early 1980s, being widely released after Comin' at Ya! (1981). The film is about a bounty hunter who goes on a mission to rescue three women stranded on a brutal planet and meets a vagrant teenage girl along the way.
Howard Green Duff was an American actor.
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Mark Rydell is an American film director, producer, and actor. He has directed several Academy Award-nominated films including The Fox (1967), The Reivers (1969), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Rose (1979), and The River (1984). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for On Golden Pond (1981).
Comin' at Ya! is a Spanish-American 3D Western film, featuring Tony Anthony, Victoria Abril and Gene Quintano and directed by Ferdinando Baldi.
Deborah Iona Raffin was an American actress, model and audiobook publisher.
Tony Anthony is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director best known for his starring roles in Spaghetti Westerns, most of which were produced with the aid of his friends and associates Allen Klein and Saul Swimmer. These films consist of The Stranger series - A Stranger in Town (1967), The Stranger Returns (1967), The Silent Stranger (1968) and Get Mean (1975) - and the Zatoichi-inspired Blindman (1971). Anthony also wrote, produced and starred in Comin' at Ya! (1981) and Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983), the first film being largely credited with beginning the 1980s revival of 3D films in Hollywood.
The Fifth Musketeer is a 1979 German-Austrian film adaptation of the last section of the 1847–1850 novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas, père, which is itself based on the French legend of the Man in the Iron Mask. It was released in Europe with the alternative title Behind the Iron Mask.
Treasure of the Four Crowns is a 1983 action adventure film directed by Ferdinando Baldi and starring Tony Anthony, Ana Obregón, Gene Quintano, and Francisco Rabal. Anthony and Quintano also served as producers and screenwriters. The musical score was composed by Ennio Morricone.
The Petty Girl (1950), known in the UK as Girl of the Year, is a musical romantic comedy Technicolor film starring Robert Cummings and Joan Caulfield. Cummings portrays painter George Petty who falls for Victoria Braymore (Caulfield), the youngest professor at Braymore College who eventually becomes "The Petty Girl".