Amy Holden Jones has worked her way through the barrels of low-budget filmmaking for Roger Corman to become an A-list screenwriter of studio productions and, occasionally, a director of mainstream fare as well. An art history major at Wellesley College, Jones studied film at nearby MIT. When her short "A Weekend Home" (1975) won an American Film Institute student award, one of the judges, Martin Scorsese, offered Jones a job as an assistant on his film, "Taxi Driver" (1976). Scorsese then introduced her to low-budget film titan Roger Corman, who hired Jones. Her first assignment was as co-editor of "Hollywood Boulevard" (1976). She continued editing for Corman's New World Productions, including the Mark Hamill vehicle, "Corvette Summer" (1978), and eventually was given the chance to make her directorial debut with the B-movie, "Slumber Party Massacre" (1982). (Oddly, feminist Rita Mae Brown wrote the screenplay, although its possible interior meanings have never been investigated.) Jones went on to direct features with strong female leads: Jamie Lee Curtis in "Love Letters" (1983) and Ally Sheedy in "Maid to Order" (1987).
It was her script, however, for "Mystic Pizza" (1988), the film of life amongst teens in a Connecticut town, that moved Jones' star up a notch. Although additional writers were credited on the final screenplay, the original story was hers and studios took notice. She wrote the family hit "Beethoven" (1992), then reversed gears and wrote the controversial morality play "Indecent Proposal" (1993), which starred Robert Redford as a man willing to pay $1 million to sleep with a married Demi Moore. In 1996, Jones got a chance to direct with a budget greater than her Corman days, although the result, "The Rich Man's Wife" (1996), which she also wrote, did less than stellar business. It featured Halle Berry as the prime suspect in her husband's murder. The following year, Jones co-wrote the sleeper hit thriller "The Relic".