Jonathan Melikidse
- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Jonathan was born in Los Angeles, California in 1972. His early impressions of film and television were stilted from a strict up-bringing. But, the youngest of five always took advantage of his siblings' captive audience at family dinner time by rambling on with his far-fetched stories and wild imagination.
After his parents divorce and the yoke of religious oppression was lifted, Jonathan became exposed to everything from Monty Python to The Exorcist. He surrounded himself with other cinephiles, furthering his exposure to film. This reached a peak when Jonathan took a job at the local video store. There he was able to run through hundreds of films he'd never had access to before. It was evident that Hitchcock and Film Noir would make a big impact on his writing, and it was coupled with the bold new style of many '90s artists like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
He wavered on college majors, never believing he could or should be a professional writer. So, Landscape Architecture shifted to Finance which quickly became Philosophy. It was while writing a paper on Existentialism that he came up with a story idea that became his first feature screenplay.
The wayward scribe stuck to tending bar to pay the bills and still had yet to follow his heart and delve into writing for a living. He and his wife moved to Maui, Hawaii in 2001 where they started a family. His love of food and wine kept him busy. But, regardless anything else, Jonathan found his stories kept showing up on the page. Finally giving into his heart, Jonathan decided to pursue the life of a writer/producer. His first work for hire was co-writing Within, a sci-fi coming of age feature set in Kauai for 4D Media.
Driftwood, his first feature, is being developed to shoot in late 2020.