James "Jim" Jacks (December 29, 1947 – January 20, 2014) was an American

film producer A film producer is a person who oversees film production. Either employed by a production company or working independently, producers plan and coordinate various aspects of film production, such as selecting the script, coordinating writing, di ...

of several

blockbuster Blockbuster or Block Buster may refer to: *Blockbuster (entertainment) a term coined for an extremely successful movie, from which most other uses are derived. Corporations * Blockbuster (retailer), a defunct video and game rental chain ** Blo ...

films, and was also known for cultivating visionary independent film auteurs, having produced the first Hollywood films of Richard Linklater, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Kevin Smith. Born December 29, 1947, Jacks grew up in a military family. He graduated from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and from Cornell University with an MBA. He was working as a

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

financial analyst when he decided to be a screenwriter. Unsuccessful, he became head of production at Circle Films in the early- to mid-1980s and then senior vice-president of production at Universal Studios from the late-1980s into the early-1990s. In 1992, he became an independent producer with Alphaville Films, which he co-founded with Sean Daniel. He left Alphaville Films in 2004. The shrimp parmigiana at the Los Angeles restaurant

Dan Tana Dan Tana (born 1935 as Dobrivoje Tanasijević; ) is a Serbian and American restaurateur, actor, football administrator/executive, and former professional footballer. Tana is best known as the proprietor of an eponymous restaurant, Dan Tana's, in ...

's is named for him. Jacks died on January 20, 2014, of a heart attack at his Los Angeles home at the age of 66.

Selected filmography

''He was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.''

Film

;Thanks

Television

References

External links

* *
Rest in Peace, Mr. Mallrats... by Kevin Smith

James Jacks
at

Find a Grave Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. Its stated mission is "to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present fin ...

1947 births 2014 deaths American film producers Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering alumni Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management alumni {{US-film-producer-stub