Amy Holden Jones is an American screenwriter and film director best known for directing The Slumber Party Massacre[1] and for creating the FOX medical drama The Resident.
A year later Jones was struggling to make ends meet living in Boston due to a lack of funding for documentaries.
She edited American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince for Scorsese, Corvette Summer for MGM, and Second-Hand Hearts for Hal Ashby.
After scouring Corman’s library of scrapped scripts, Jones took special notice of Rita Mae Brown’s Don’t Open the Door.
Jones dropped off the nine-minute reel for Corman, confident that its three-part structure would convince him that she could fulfill all of the tropes which make up an exploitation movie.
With her tight budget as a roadmap, Jones utilized her skills acquired as a film editor and documentary filmmaker to do an intensive rewriting of the script.
Simultaneously, Jones had become fixated on Alan Parker’s 1982 family drama, Shoot the Moon, about the traumas of a married man in an affair.
When writing the script, Jones made sure the story took place in a limited number of locations for the sake of saving money and time.
Amy Madigan was in mind for the main role during the writing process, but Meg Tilly was Jones’s first choice when casting.
James Keach was a late replacement after the first choice for the role, whom Jones has never publicly disclosed, dropped out seven days before shooting.
[4] Her next big writing offer was for Indecent Proposal based on the novel by Jack Engelhard, which made Jones a big-name screenwriter.
Next, Jones wrote a pilot for the WB during its brand switch to the CW about Harvard Medical School, entitled HMS.
The Resident is a response of sorts to other medical dramas on television that she claims she got tired of watching because they are all too similar and recycle the same plot lines.
[10] Jonnie Davis, President of Creative Affairs, said about Jones, “She’s brimming with ideas, and we’re excited to have her continued services on our series as well as her development.
She’s an important voice.” Coming from her deal with 20th Century Fox, she would potentially work as co-writer and co-executive producer for a new crime drama at ABC.