played by andrew lincoln, screened post, threading, code thanks to ~franciska basics full name john robert deckert date of birth November 2, 1975 (43) occupation writer/director born + raised little rock, arkansas residence little rock, arkansas family tracey deckert (mother), jackson deckert (father, deceased), pamela shaw nee deckert (sister) & robbie deckert (brother) status divorced FILMOGRAPHY + AWARDS wikipedia John Robert Deckert is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He won a scholarship to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and is known for writing and directing Shotgun Stories (2007), Take Shelter (2011), Mud (2012) and Midnight Special (2016). He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Critics Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for Take Shelter. biography Excerpt from a profile on John from 2015... As a kid, Deckert would make home videos with his siblings. They would re-enact scenes from the movies they watched on family night ("Every Friday night, no exceptions.") and charge their mom and dad pocket money at the screening. "They always humoured us. I feel terrible about it now," Deckert says laughing. His siblings would do most of the acting while he worked the camera and directed them. "I don't know if that was a choice. I think my brother and sister were trying to placate me by giving me something to do, anything that didn't involve acting." Raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Deckert's mother worked as a teacher while his dad worked as an engineer. He calls his upbringing modest but rich in other ways. "My parents just about ran themselves into the ground to make sure we were taken care of, but there was a lot of family time. We didn't really want for anything." Arkansas has remained Deckert's primary home. "I can't really imagine living anywhere else. I have too many good memories here." When you meet Deckert, you can't imagine him living in amongst the industry. "I like LA but I could never work there. I can't handle the pace of a place like that." The closest Deckert has come to leaving Arkansas is when he was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. At the age of 18, he left home to pursue a career in filmmaking. "I always knew what I wanted to do but I got really lucky to end up where I did." By that time, he had written numerous screenplays, most of which he hopes will never see the light of day. "I'd rather people saw the home movies, if I'm honest." It was during his time at film school where he learned to hone his craft. "Mostly short films," he recalls, but he also wrote two feature length screenplays, one of which was Shotgun Stories. After graduating, it took him two years to get the funding together. The movie was shot on a shoestring budget in 2004, but it didn't reach audiences until 2007. "I'm glad it happened that way. There was a lot of uncertainty along the road and I questioned just about everything at one point, but I've never done that since." That confidence has quietly carried through in his work. He started writing his next film, Take Shelter, on the tail end of the success of Shotgun Stories. It is arguably his most personal film and follows a man consumed by apocalyptic dreams, who builds a bomb shelter in order to protect his wife and daughter. His mother's diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia looms over him as he is caught in a purgatory between dreams and reality. "There are aspects of the story and the characters that are very personal to me. Still, I wouldn't say it's autobiographical. I never imagined myself as the kid in the story." Deckert's own father passed away at the age of 50 after a long struggle with mental illness, but the film he wrote has a different ending. "I did have this urge to vindicate him," Deckert says of his father, "and I think that was born out of the all encompassing loneliness of what ailed him." The movie is a love letter of sorts to his late father, just as his next film, Mud, was a love letter to youth in the south. His latest venture, Midnight Special, is influenced greatly by the movies he grew up watching and re-enacting with his siblings. He admits the appeal is more mainstream than his previous work. Still, it's hard to imagine Deckert making your run of the mill sci-fi movie. "You could say it fits comfortably into that genre. More than that, it's a movie about a father and his son." It's personal again, but that's the filmmaking experience for Deckert. His work has a lot of heart and accomplishes a style that is all his own. What I've learned about Deckert is that he doesn't like to waste time. Any downtime he has is spent researching for future work and he admits that he is already working on his next project, though he is reluctant to give anything away. "I'm still writing and it's early days but it's very different from anything I've ever done, which is exactly what you want to be doing." media perception + career trajectory Due to the critical acclaim his work draws, John's name is becoming increasingly well known in the industry. He tends to work with the same crew, which reflects well on his reputation and actors generally find him easy to work with. Although he is still considered a relative newcomer among his peers, he's a very confident one. He loves the filmmaking process, from pre-production to the press tours because it gives him the opportunity to discuss the work. Though his films are critically successful, they are not always as commercially successful. He wants to continue making the movies he loves, but knows he may need to break away from his own process and style in order to reach a wider audience, which is a real compromise for John. facts - John is the oldest of his siblings. His brother, Robbie, is 39 and his sister, Pam, is 37. They are all extremely close and speak every other day. - He was married to someone outwith the industry for 14 years before they separated in 2010. Their divorce was finalized in 2012.