Laurent Bouzereau

Currently, Laurent Bouzereau is the best-known home video/movie documentary filmmaker. His name has appeared in the closing credits for over 150 "making-of" documentaries and featurettes thus far, and he has only been in the business for 10 years as of 2005. It all started when he collected film memorabilia for classic Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma films at the time of their release. It was clear that he loved films, and would hopefully get to make them in the future. He first started in the "film business" when he came over to the United States from France to work in film distribution. This was then followed up by several writing gigs for French magazines including 'L'Ecran Fantastique' and 'Globe'. On top of writing for these magazines, he wrote the book "The De Palma Cut" in 1988 about Brian De Palma's visual style and controversial films. Once Bouzereau heard that The Criterion Collection, a Laserdisc distributor for classic film, was making a Laserdisc for Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), he called them up and told them he had some collectibles they may be interested in. As it turns out, some of those at Criterion had already read his book and wanted his input on the Laserdisc, so he recorded a very informative audio commentary track to be included on the Laserdisc. This was his first foray into the home video circuit. Bouzereau then produced another Laserdisc (LD) for Criterion, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929). Universal Studios then contacted Bouzereau to produce Laserdiscs for Spielberg's 1941 (1979) and Jaws (1975). While the LD for 1941 (1979) was on hiatus, he then edited the EPK interviews for the film Alive (1993) and worked in feature development for ZM Productions. From here on in, he would produce some of the best making-of documentaries for home video, DVDs especially. Almost all of his first films were of feature-length, this includes The Making of '1941' (1996), The Last Picture Show: A Look Back (1999) and The Making of 'Jaws' (1995) to name a few. Unfortunately, the DVD format changes, and there is more demand for shorter documentaries to appeal to the masses. This resulted in having to personally cut down the The Making of 'Jaws' (1995) for the 25th Anniversary Jaws (1975) DVD. Now, the majority of his work it split up into three or so featurettes rather than one documentary. As for The Making of 'Jaws' (1995), it's finally being released onto DVD uncut, with the release of the 30th Anniversary DVD for Jaws (1975) in 2005.