John Krokidas.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Filmmaker // 35 // Los Angeles

JOHN KROKIDAS originally studied to be an actor, but while a student at Yale University he convinced a professor to let him make a short film instead of writing his undergraduate thesis, and the rest is history. Krokidas enrolled in graduate school at New York University, where during his interview the department head kept asking, "Who are you?" When the department head was unsatisfied with his other attempts to define himself, Krokidas finally said, "I am gay. Is that going to be a problem?" Another professor in the interview took that opportunity to come out, right then and there. After graduating and doing script coverage for Miramax in New York, Krokidas convinced executives there to let him pitch his own project. He did, and the studio signed him for a three-picture deal. Krokidas's latest film, Kill Your Darlings, which he cowrote and will direct, is about a murder that brought Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac together, and will star Chris Evans and Jesse Eisenberg. "Every time I've tried to filter myself or shy away from making the film I wanted to make, worrying if it was too gay, too explicit, those are the projects that didn't get made," Krokidas says. "The films and scripts I've had success with are the ones where I stayed true to my original intentions."