P.J. Pesce is an American film director and writer. He is also the co-creator of the MTV-animated cartoon The Adventures of Chico and Guapo, as well as the voice of Guapo and Mr. Angelo.
Pesce was born and raised in Miami, Florida in 1961. After completing an undergraduate degree majoring in both English literature and architecture at the Columbia University. He entered the Graduate Film School and studied directing under Martin Scorsese (from whom he received honors) and Brian DePalma (from whom he received an "F"). Pesce has worked as a musician, a film editor, a studio recording engineer, a film instructor at Columbia, UCLA, and USC, as a groom at Calder Racetrack. He studied editing with Ralph Rosenblum, Annie Hall, (The Pawnbroker), and acting with Brad Dourif who was part of the One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest cast.
Pesce was named Best Independent Director of the Year at the Hamptons International Film Festival for his critically acclaimed film The Desperate Trail, which he wrote and directed. Entertainment Weekly called it “The best Western on any size screen since Unforgiven,” and Tom Shales of The Washington Post described it as “A new high point in the cable movie.” It was the second highest rated cable movie of 1995, and in addition it sold over 60,000 home video units.
After a long search, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez tapped Pesce to direct the prequel of their surprise cult hit From Dusk till Dawn. The hangman’s daughter went on to become the best Direct to Video sale in the history of dimension with over 140,000 units sold. Pesce received a Special Grand Jury Award for his short film The Afterlife of Grandpa at the Houston International Film Festival (deserving winners of this award included Steven Spielberg and David Lynch, and Young Filmmaker of the Year from the Edinburgh Film Festival. He is the recipient of Grey Advertising's Student Filmmaker Award and a Presidential Fellowship from Columbia University's School of the Arts.
Amongst the films he has directed are From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter, produced by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, which is a prequel to From Dusk Till Dawn and From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money. He also directed Sniper 3, starring Tom Berenger who starred in Sniper and Sniper 2.
He is also a screenwriter of note, having sold Untitled Firestein-Pesce Action Project which was unproduced for a record-setting $2 million dollars.
Pesce often collaborates with fellow screenwriter Tom Abrams, and both of them have completed a sequel to the 1987 film The Lost Boys entitled Lost Boys: The Tribe which was released in 2008 that Pesce also directed, as well as the 2010 art film Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball.
In 1994, Pesce and six other young filmmakers, including documentary filmmaker Marco Williams and Academy Award nominee Bernard Joffa (from the 1990 Best Live Action Short film Senzeni Na?), were featured in movie journalist Billy Frolick's book called What I Really Want to Do Is Direct: Seven Film School Graduates Go to Hollywood. The book followed the lives of seven young, would-be directors over three years as they struggled with the ups-and-downs of the Hollywood world.