The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Schneider’s big goal is on small screens
TV and movie actor has launched his own studio in Georgia.
Things you may not know about John Schneider:
He takes his coffee with honey. He was 17 when he auditioned for “The Dukes of Hazzard” but told casting folks he was 24. He moved from New York to Georgia at age 14 but considered it to be a shift from the country to the city, not the other way around. (His family had lived well outside of Manhattan and relocated to the Sandy Springs area.)
We got to know Schneider, who now appears on Tyler Perry’s locally filmed series “The Haves and the Have Nots,” when he was in town last week for the premiere of his new movie “4:GO.”
Oh, another thing you might not know about Schneider? He’s launched his own movie studio.
“I moved to Louisiana about four and a half years ago,” he said during an interview in Midtown. “Louisiana has always spoken to me and Los Angeles never did.”
He purchased a 50-acre site that once was home to a YMCA camp, and it’s now home to John Schneider Studios. Movies he’s produced there, including “Collier & Co.: Hot Pursuit,” about a former race car driver who motors a familiar-looking orange Dodge Charger (minus any flag decals or musical horns) are available to stream online at johnschneiderstudios.com.
“Movies are an art form,” he said. “They should get in your soul.”
Schneider was among the guests at the private party Tyler Perry held in 2013 for the Atlanta premiere of “Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor” with Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Vanessa Williams, Lance Gross and Kim Kardashian (who attended that night with Kanye West). He enjoys embodying the role of venal and complex Judge Jim
Cryer on “Haves and Have Nots” and appreciates working with his visionary boss.
“To be working with him and learning from him – and getting paid for it?” he mused. “What I’ve learned from Tyler is you’ve got to be singular, you’ve got to be focused. You can’t run with anyone else’s vision.”
Perry runs a famously tight ship. During a recent visit to “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to promote “Boo! A Madea Halloween 2,” he said he’d shot that and the original in five days each. (“Boo 2” is out Oct. 20).
While the “Haves” set is similarly efficient, “there’s a tremendous freedom Tyler gives me with Jim Cryer,” Schneider said. (The judge takes his coffee with honey, you may have noticed. It’s a habit Schneider picked up from his grandfather.)
“I stick to the script, mostly,” Schneider said. “I had the freedom to make him worse.”
Sometimes he’ll overhear Perry watching a scene in progress and quipping “Oh no you did not,” in reaction to Cryer’s wicked antics.
“You wrote him!” Schneider responds.
“You brought him to life,” is how he says Perry assesses things.
“I think because of that as a director I give people leeway,” Schneider said. “4:GO,” a dark comedy he wrote, directed and appears in, stars Kerry Cahill of “The Walking Dead” and Dean Cain, known for “Supergirl” and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”
Off-screen, he is a cofounder of Children’s Miracle Networks Hospitals, which supports medical research and children’s hospitals nationwide, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He’s had a decadeslong career as a country singer as well. But running his own show has been his long-term aim.
“Something happened when I turned 50. It was like, this is not the dream. This is not the goal,” said Schneider, 57. “That’s when Louisiana happened.”
His partner professionally and personally is Alicia Allain, who he met in Atlanta right about the time he got served with his second set of walking papers. His relationship with Allain gradually grew from collegial to romantic, although he’s still dealing with legal rigmarole.
“My second divorce has officially lasted longer than my first marriage,” he sighed.
Both he and Allain are excited about filmmaking in the age of downloads and smart devices, and their distribution model is less about filling theaters than connecting with audiences on the device, platform and timetable that suits them.
“I’ve always been tenacious. I’ve always had a big dream,” he said. “Why bother having a small one?”