Jack Epps
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Biography
It was a fateful day in 1975 at the student union of Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI when Jack Epps Jr, a graduate and award-winning student filmmaker, returned to his alma mater for coffee and chili with one of his former instructors, Jim Cash. Epps had made the trek to Hollywood after graduation, and had begun to make some inroads, scripting episodes of such TV series as "Kojak" and "Hawaii Five-O." But he wanted to move to the big screen. During the course of a forty-minute conversation, Epps and Cash mapped out the skeleton plots for ten motion pictures, of which several would actually be produced. Although Cash chose to remain living in Michigan and the duo would rarely see each other face-to-face after that meeting, through telephone and computer modem, they became a commercially--and financially--successful writing team.
Epps returned to California and on his own contributed the story for and produced the TV-movie "Off Sides" (NBC, 1984). It took a couple of years before the Epps and Cash partnership finally made it to the big screen with the fighter pilot tale "Top Gun" (1986), a film that confirmed Tom Cruise's status as a box-office star. That same year, "Legal Eagles," a tepid courtroom romance between Robert Redford and Debra Winger that got lost in the translation, also appeared. Epps and Cash wrote Michael J Fox's follow-up to his "Back to the Future" movies, "The Secret of My Success" (1987), and the "buddy" picture "Turner & Hooch" (1989), in which Tom Hanks, in a period of his career he perhaps would sooner forget, was teamed with a drooling bulldog to solve a crime. Epps and Cash were credited with adapting "Dick Tracy" (1990) for Warren Beatty. Years of drought then brought "Anaconda" (1997), a tale of a documentary crew in the jungle terrorized by a snake. Epps and Cash were among the five credited writers on the project.
The pair also entered into a producing deal and (as of 1997) have several projects in development.
Filmography
Writer (Feature Film)
Producer (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Life Events
1975
Met with Cash in Michigan; decided to team to write screenplays; at initial meeting outlined ten ideas for screenplays
1984
Epps (alone) contributed story for and produced TV-movie "Off Sides" (NBC)
1986
First produced screenplay, "Top Gun", co-written with Cash
1990
With Cash, co-wrote screenplay for Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy"
1997
With Cash, worked on screenplay for the thriller "Anaconda"
Family
Companions
