John G Ives
John G. Ives has been in the film and TV industries for over 35 years, as a lawyer, head of two film companies, and in distribution, production, and exhibition. He is currently an entertainment attorney with film, television, animation and publishing clients in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, New England, Canada and the UK. John was co-founder of Cinecom Films in New York, one of the earliest successful independent film companies and forerunner to companies like Miramax and New Line. He was President/CEO of FilmDallas Pictures, then spent a decade in LA. Films John has been involved with include A Room With A View, Stop Making Sense, Brother From Another Planet, El Norte, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, and A Trip To Bountiful. Filmmakers with whom John has worked include Robert Altman, John Sayles, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, Jonathan Demme, John Waters, novelist Dennis Lehane, Scout Productions (Queer Eye For The Straight Guy), and documentary filmmakers Sarah Colt (Walt Disney, Henry Ford, The Amish, God In America), Laurie Kahn (Tupperware!, A Midwives' Tale), Peter Frumkin (Woody Guthrie: Ain’t Got No Home), Nancy Porter (Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women), and Malcolm Clarke (Prisoner Of Paradise). He was counsel on Wild Oats, a mid-budget feature film directed by Andy Tennant, starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Lange and Demi Moore, to be released by The Weinstein Company. In LA, John was Of Counsel to a Beverly Hills entertainment firm, packaging and financing films, providing production and distribution legal services, representing rights sales on finished films, and consulting with foreign companies seeking to set up U.S. distribution. He optioned an animated feature to Warner Bros. and was given a producer deal. He has attended hundreds of film festivals around the world. John has provided legal services to startup companies, drafting of investment documents, assistance with business organization, and the design and content of business proposals for film, TV, documentary, software and publishing projects. He has negotiated and documented many domestic, international and television distribution and licensing agreements, financing and talent agreements. He has provided legal, business, and strategic counsel—and considerable moral support—to producers, directors, writers, artists, animators and designers, and has consulted on hundreds of screenplays and teleplays, stories for children, graphic novels, non-fiction book projects and documentaries. John’s clients have completed award winning documentaries for WGBH, WNET and PBS, and have included musicians, artists and educational software designers. John’s initial legal experience was in the General Counsel’s Office at Citibank in New York. He graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1979, and NYU in 1971. He helped run the Israeli Film Festival in New York for its first three years. John’s film career began on Cape Cod, where he started and ran an art/repertory theater; he later ran theaters in NYC. John has written for magazines, and is the author of American Originals: John Waters, featuring interviews with the eclectic filmmaker, and The Keeper, historical fiction set on Cape Cod in 1899. He lives in Truro, Massachusetts, with his wife Kina Béril, an interior designer. He is fluent in French.
