User:GBshaw

Jonathan Trumbull Taplin
Jonathan Trumbull Taplin, born July 18, 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio is an American academic, film producer and entrepreneur. He has produced films for Martin Scorsese, Gus Van Sant and Wim Wenders and music concerts for Bob Dylan, The Band, Judy Collins and George Harrison. He currently is a Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California where he specializes in digital entertainment and international communication management.

Biography
Taplin grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and at the age of 13 went to Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1965 and went to Princeton University where he majored in English literature. During his time at Princeton he worked on the weekends for Albert Grossman,who managed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and many other artists.He began by supervising the tours of The Jim Kweskin Jug Band and then The Band. Upon graduation from Princeton in 1969 he moved to Woodstock, New York and managed the tours of The Band until 1972.He was with The Band at the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969 and later that month he also supervised Bob Dylan's appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in England with The Band. In August of 1971, Taplin produced The Concert For Bangladesh for George Harrison at Madison Square Garden.

In late 1972 Taplin moved to Los Angeles and met Martin Scorsese who had edited part of the Woodstock movie. Taplin was introduced to Scorsese by Time magazine writer Jay Cocks, who had written a cover story on The Band. Taplin agreed to finance and produce Scorsese's film, Mean Streets. The completed film was sold to Warner Bros. and premiered at the New York Film Festival in October of 1973. In 1997, Mean Streets was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 1976 Taplin produced The Last Waltz with Robbie Robertson, which Scorsese directed. The film is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest music films ever. In 1979 Taplin and Robertson again collaborated on Carny, starring Gary Busey, Jodie Foster and Robertson. In 1983 Taplin produced Under Fire starring Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy and directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Jerry Goldsmith was nominated for an Academy Award for his score and Taplin was awarded the David di Donatello by the Academy of Italian Cinema for the Best Foreign Film in 1984.

In 1984 while working as an independent producer at Walt Disney Pictures, Taplin was instrumental in foiling a corporate raid by Saul Steinberg on Walt Disney. Taplin introduced Disney Chairman Ray Watson to Richard Rainwater and Sid Bass of Bass Brothers Enterprises. The Bass Brothers sold their Arvida Real Estate holding in Florida to Disney for stock and then joined with the Disney family to block Steinberg's attempt to take over Disney. The Bass Brothers paid Taplin as their investment advisor on the transaction and then introduced him to Ken Miller, Managing Director of Merrill Lynch Investment Banking. Taplin went to work in the Merrill Lynch Media Mergers and Acquisition group in the fall of 1984. Subsequently he worked on transactions for Viacom and Vestron. In 1989, while visiting with his friend Wim Wenders who was serving as President of the Cannes Film Festival Jury, Taplin agreed to finance and produce Wenders' epic Science Fiction film Until the End Of the World. Thus began a two year journey to 20 countries on 4 continents. The film, starring William Hurt, Sam Neill,Solveig Dommartin and Max Von Sydow ended up with a 6 hour cut. The America distributor, Warner Bros. insisted on a short version which was released in 1991 and efforts to release the three part full version have failed repeatedly.

In 1991 Taplin acquired the film and television rights to Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer prize winning book The Prize:The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. In conjunction with PBS and the BBC Taplin produced an eight hour documentary series based on the book. Taplin subsequently produced two other long form documentary series: The Native Americans for Turner Broadcasting and Cadillac Desert:Water and the Transformation of Nature for PBS. In 1995 Taplin co-financed and Executive Produced To Die For, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Nicole Kidman.

In 1996 with Richard Baskin and Jeremiah Chechik, Taplin founded the first Internet based Video on Demand company, Intertainer. Funded by Comcast, Sony, NBC, Intel and Microsoft, Intertainer developed and patented many of the content management systems for video on demand. Although the company was forced to stop providing video on demand content in 2002, its subsequent anti-trust action against Sony, Time Warner and Universal was settled before trial in 2006. Intertainer currently licenses its patent portfolio.

In 2003 Taplin began as an Adjunct Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. In 2008 he was a appointed as a full clinical Professor at Annenberg. He is a member of the Annenberg Research Network for International Communication along with Manuel Castells, Jonathan Aronson and Francois Bar. He is alos a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was appointed to the California Broadband Policy Taskforce by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in January of 2007. He sits on the Board of Public Knowledge in Washington, DC. He is married to the photographer Maggie Smith and has three children: Daniela Lundberg, a film producer; Nicholas Taplin, an audio engineer; Blythe Taplin, a public interest lawyer.