Mel Howard

Birth : 1935-02-17, Brooklyn, New York, USA

Death : 1996-07-12

Movies

Buffalo Heart
Jack
A young Native warrior seeks revenge on the cowboys who killed his buffalo herd.
Big Man on Campus
TV Director
In this version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", a hunchback is found living in the bell tower of UCLA. He is put on trial and made to go through tests. One of the research doctors falls for him, and he falls for her in the end
The Boost
Co-Producer
Lenny Brown moves to California to find his fortune in tax shelter investments. When the federal government changes the tax laws, poor Lenny finds himself $700,000 in hock with nowhere to turn. His friend, Joel, introduces him to cocaine to give Lenny that needed "boost". What ensues next is a descent into drug addiction and insanity as Lenny tries to regain control of his life, all the while needing that extra "boost".
Rented Lips
Line Producer
A documentary filmmaker, who has spent the last 15 years making films like "Aluminum: Our Shiny Friend," is finally given the chance to make the documentary on Indian farming he has always wanted to. The catch? He must simultaneously direct a porn film. But as he tries to make the porn film, which he turns into a musical called "Halloween in the Barracks," he must deal with a temperamental actor, a fundamentalist preacher, and other obstacles.
The Goodbye People
Associate Producer
An elderly man is determined to reopen the Coney Island boardwalk hot dog stand he closed twenty-two years earlier for renovation, despite the fact he's recovering from a severe heart attack and it's the middle of February.
Riding Fast
Peter Olson
A daredevil motorcycle rider falls for an older artist.
The Chosen
Associate Producer
In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their two families.
The Chosen
Unit Production Manager
In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their two families.
Night of the Juggler
First Assistant Director
An ex New York cop is desperate to find his kidnapped daughter.
Eyes of Laura Mars
Assistant Director
A famous fashion photographer develops a disturbing ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer.
Renaldo and Clara
Ungatz
Filmed in the autumn of 1975 prior to and during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour – featuring appearances and performances by Ronee Blakley, T-Bone Burnett, Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Hawkins, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Arlen Roth, Sam Shepard, and Harry Dean Stanton – the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and dramatic fictional vignettes reflective of Dylan's song lyrics and life.
Renaldo and Clara
Producer
Filmed in the autumn of 1975 prior to and during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour – featuring appearances and performances by Ronee Blakley, T-Bone Burnett, Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Hawkins, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Arlen Roth, Sam Shepard, and Harry Dean Stanton – the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and dramatic fictional vignettes reflective of Dylan's song lyrics and life.
The Washington Affair
Sam
An unscrupulous businessman tries to win a government contract by playing up to the engineer assigned to review the project. He comes to the engineer's hotel room to offer him money, all the while secretly filming the proceedings with a hidden camera. Meanwhile the engineer, unhappily married to an alcoholic, uses the hotel room to continue his affair with the businessman's attractive young wife.
Hester Street
Bernstein
A Russian emigre prides himself on the way he's molded himself into a real Yankee in the USA, though the world he lives in, New York's Lower East Side in the late 19th century, is almost exclusively populated by other Jewish immigrants. When his wife finally arrives in the New World, however, she has a lot of assimilating to do.
Snapshots
Co-Writer
This experimental film, a self-described mix of reality and fiction shot in Greenwich Village and a Vermont commune, captures past and present moments from the life of Mel Howard, the film’s co-writer & co-narrator. Scenes chronicling Howard’s doomed romance with Scandinavian girl friend Turid Aarsted are interwoven with scenes detailing Howard’s relationship with his parents and with a former girl friend, as well as his failed attempts at moviemaking. One sequence depicts Aarsted leaving the thirty-seven-year-old Howard for the film’s cameraman, Paul Goldsmith, and includes a sex scene between the new lovers. In off-screen commentary, producer Kenneth E. Schwartz expresses concern about the film’s content. He reveals that he raised $50,000 for the project, complains to the viewer that the film was not supposed to be a “diary of freaky people.” Eventually he and Howard come to terms about the film’s direction and allow the film’s story to unfold unobstructed.
Snapshots
This experimental film, a self-described mix of reality and fiction shot in Greenwich Village and a Vermont commune, captures past and present moments from the life of Mel Howard, the film’s co-writer & co-narrator. Scenes chronicling Howard’s doomed romance with Scandinavian girl friend Turid Aarsted are interwoven with scenes detailing Howard’s relationship with his parents and with a former girl friend, as well as his failed attempts at moviemaking. One sequence depicts Aarsted leaving the thirty-seven-year-old Howard for the film’s cameraman, Paul Goldsmith, and includes a sex scene between the new lovers. In off-screen commentary, producer Kenneth E. Schwartz expresses concern about the film’s content. He reveals that he raised $50,000 for the project, complains to the viewer that the film was not supposed to be a “diary of freaky people.” Eventually he and Howard come to terms about the film’s direction and allow the film’s story to unfold unobstructed.
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx
Producer
In Dublin, a working class family has been unsuccessful in convincing their son to get a real job: the son prefers his job of scooping up horse's dung and selling it for flower gardens. An American exchange student almost runs him over and gets to know him. The dung man has ignored warnings from his family and suddenly the horses have been banned from Dublin. His new love is leaving for America and he must find a way to cope with the new reality.
The Group
Unit Production Manager
It's 1933, and eight young women are friends and members of the upper- class group at a private girl's school, about to graduate and start their own lives. The film documents the years between their graduation and the beginning of the World War in Europe, and shows, in a serialized style, their romances and marriages, their searches for careers or meaning in their lives, their highs and their lows.
The Fool Killer
Casting
After the Civil War, a southern boy, aged 12, runs away from his foster home, wanders the countryside, and meets various odd characters along the way, including Milo, a mysterious drifter who may or may not be the vengeful "Fool Killer" of folklore.