John McCarty is a full time author and filmmaker. His book "Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to 'The Sopranos'" (Da Capo Press, 2004), was produced as a major documentary by Hugh M. Hefner’s Alta Loma Entertainment, for the Starz/Encore cable network; it aired in 2005 and 2006 and has been released on DVD by Image-Entertainment.
Additionally, he is the co-producer, co-writer, and co-director of "The Fearmakers: Masters of Screen Suspense and Terror," a 13-episode documentary series of profiles of some of the world’s most influential makers of classic suspense and terror films, among them Tod Browning, Jack Arnold, Terence Fisher, Roman Polanski, Roger Corman, and Tobe Hooper. The series is based on his 1994 book of the same title published by St. Martin’s Press. It is released on DVD by Alpha Video. His 2009 film, "Confinement," a modern re-telling of the classic feminist short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' is currently in distribution by Films Media Group. His most recent films, "The Man Who Pursued Rosebud" (a documentary about the life of actor-producer-director William Alland) and "First Lady of the Confederacy" (a documentary about the life of Varina Howell Davis) are available, respectively, as a special feature on the exclusive Alpha Video DVD release of Mr. Alland’s controversial (and long unseen) 1960s classic "Look in Any Window," starring Paul Anka, and Films Media Group.
The author of more than 20 non-fiction books of his own on film and entertainment subjects, John has appeared in conjunction with his work on such national media as the Wall St. Journal, the Sundance Film Festival’s online “Film Talks,” Fox News Saturday, CNN.fn’s mid-day news, A&E’s Biography, the Bravo network series Backspin, the ICONS Radio Hour hosted by Stephen Bogart (son of screen icon Humphrey Bogart), Neal Conan’s “Talk of the Town” on National Public Radio, Turner Classic Movies, and many other major market radio and cable TV stations across the country. He created Leering Buzzard Pictures LLC () in 2009 to produce his own films in collaboration with talented colleagues and students in his native upstate New York.