John Lechago

John Lechago was born in Kingston Ontario, Canada to an Argentinean mother and a Spanish father. At age four the family moved to Los Angeles California. From an early childhood Lechago was fascinated by drawing, and would spend hours creating monsters and reproducing what he saw around him. The rest of the time John would spend playing with his fraternal twin brother. At age nine Lechago was enrolled in traditional oil painting classes and thrived, winning awards every year he was with the school. This strong base in traditional painting would be very influential in Lechago's approach to his filmmaking later in life. John was also enrolled at an early age in self defense classes. Coincidentally the school that his father chose for his young sons was one owned by Chuck Norris. On the second day of karate class the teachers showed a 16mm film print of Chuck Norris's first film Breaker! Breaker! (1977). Lechago looked around the class realizing that most of the adults were also getting beaten up by the head teacher in the film! Three and a half years later at age ten, Lechago and his brother James were part of a children's class in Chuck Norris's A Force of One (1979). Being on set and seeing how scenes are actually set up and shot was a major motivator. It was at that point that Lechago decided that he would be involved in the movies. As a teenager John began studying screen writing and shooting scenes with the video cameras of the day. He went so far as to found the "Cinema Productions" club at his high school. After high school Lechago attended the prestigious art school S.A.I.C. in Chicago, concentrating in film, and then finished his degree in film at the Columbia College Chicago. When Lechago returned to Los Angeles he tried to get work on a movie set, but as luck would have it there was an actor's strike at the time. John had to get work with a corporate video company. A few months later the owner of the company (out of curiosity) gave John $5,000 and allowed him to use the cameras and office space to make a film. Lechago teamed up with Vincent Bilancio and made his first feature _Blood Gnome (Video 2004)_. Despite being a very low budget movie and being shot in only 12 days, it was distributed in Europe, Asia and North America. Lechago would make one more film with Turning Point Productions Magus (2008), before making his first self produced feature Contagion (2010) formerly known as Bio Slime. Lechago would follow up with writing and directing _Killjoy 3 (Video 2010)_ For Charles Band and Full Moon Features.