Joel Soisson

In Hollywood, it never hurts to be adaptable, as Joel Soisson discovered at an early age. A native of Los Angeles, he headed east to study character animation at New York's prestigious Pratt Institute. Unfortunately, this was just before the time that hand-drawn animation started to become obsolete. Returning to L.A., Soisson shifted gears and began working various low-level jobs in live-action films. For example, he was a production assistant on "Triumphs of a Man Called Horse" (1983), the second of two period movies about a white man assimilating into a Native American tribe. Advancing through the ranks to higher positions, he started to occupy the producer's chair. His first hit came on only his second film as producer. It was another sequel--"A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge" (1985). Several years later, he scored a bigger hit with the slacker science-fiction comedy "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989), starring Keanu Reeves. Soisson was quite busy throughout the following decades, producing budget-friendly fare such as "No Way Back" (1995), a revenge thriller about an F.B.I. agent, and the humorous documentary about Star Trek fanatics, "Trekkies" (1997). Much of Soisson's later work was done in his capacity as president of Neo Art & Logic, a production company.