James Gunn was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, to Leota and James Francis Gunn. He is from a large Catholic family, with Irish and Czech ancestry. His father and his uncles were all lawyers. He has been writing and performing as long as he can remember. He began making 8mm films at the age of twelve. Many of these were comedic splatter films featuring his brothers being disemboweled by zombies. He attended Saint Louis University High (SLUH) college preparatory school but later dropped out of college to pursue a rock and roll career.
His band, "the Icons", released one album, "Mom, We Like It Here on Earth". He earned very little money doing this and so during this time, he also worked as an orderly in Tucson, Arizona, upon which many of the situations in his first novel, "The Toy Collector", are based. He wrote and drew comic strips for underground and college newspapers.
Gunn eventually returned to school and received his B.A. at Saint Louis University in his native St. Louis. He moved to New York where he received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, which he today thinks may have been a wonderfully expensive waste of time. While finishing his MFA, he started writing "The Toy Collector" and began working for "Troma Studios", America's leading B-Movie production company. While there he wrote and produced the cult classic Tromeo and Juliet (1996) and, with Lloyd Kaufman, he wrote "All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger".
Gunn had a spiritual awakening in Cannes in 1997 and quit Troma and relocated from New York to Los Angeles. He wrote and acted in the film The Specials (2000) with Rob Lowe, Jamie Kennedy, Thomas J. Churchill and his brother Sean Gunn. He wrote two scripts for Warner Brothers live action movies: Spy vs. Spy (1985) and Scooby-Doo (2002). In 1999, after almost five years, he finished "The Toy Collector". After doing Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), Gunn made his directorial debut with Slither (2006). He later made the superhero film Super (2010) and the successful Marvel films Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequel Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Gunn has four brothers, all of whom are in the entertainment industry. His brother, Patrick Gunn, is a Senior VP at Artisan Entertainment, the company responsible for distributing (and the marketing campaign of) The Blair Witch Project (1999). His brother, Brian Gunn, is a screenwriter who works in partnership with their cousin Mark Gunn.
Gunn's brother, Matt Gunn wrote and starred in the winner of the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, Man About Town (1997). Gunn's brother, Sean Gunn, is an actor regularly seen in films, commercials, and such TV shows as Angel (1999). James and Sean have collaborated on two occasions Sean starred in Tromeo and Juliet (1996), and they acted together and co-produced The Specials (2000). The brothers have one sister, Beth, who is a lawyer.
Gunn married actress and cartoonist Jenna Fischer in 2000. They divorced in 2008. He is now in a relationship with Jennifer Holland
Engaging, plausible and entertaining the ENTP personality type will be like a breath of fresh air, infusing people and situations with a whole array of new ideas and creative ways of doing things. However, they can become bored and withdraw their energies as they go off in search of the next thrill. Curious, child-like wonder characterises the ENTP, they are flexible, open-minded and love possibilities. They tend to see everything as a challenge, seeing opportunities even in the most difficult of circumstances. ENTPs can at times display impatience with those whom they consider wrong, and may show little restraint in demonstrating this.
The ENTP is constantly on the lookout for opportunities and possibilities, which will feed their strong desire for something new. An ENTP will bring energy, dynamism and creativity to people and projects. They are of the moment and are great at creating momentum for anything new but may become bored after the initial fascination has passed. ENTPs love telling conceptual stories. They will often go off at tangents, weaving apparently contrary pieces of information into a conceptual whole, bringing others in and teaching them in the process. Curious, communicative and challenging, the ENTP loves intellectual debate, is spontaneous, (at times shockingly so), and assertive. They sometimes confuse, even hurt, those who don't understand or accept the concept of debate or argument simply as a ‘sport.’ ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving and verbal gymnastics, as they are bored with the routine and the detail.
They are also far better at the 'front end' of projects and may slide out when it becomes tedious. The ENTP is expedient, and can disregard rules, regulations and even obligations and follow their own instincts and urges. The upside of this is the ability to bring whole new perspectives and ways of looking at things. The downside is that they may leave loose ends, and lack follow-through. The ENTP's independent streak make them excellent at challenging the status quo, self-deception and self-delusion, but this challenging can, at times, become critical or negative if the ENTP becomes bored or feels stultified or threatened.
They have a kaleidoscope type vision, seeing all the disparate parts and then, in one twist, pulling them all together into something often quite wonderful. These characteristics also mean the ENTP can be intellectually promiscuous, enjoying one new experience after another, one new idea after another and constantly looking for bigger and better things. ENTPs are excitable and this excitement is very often contagious. They have ‘the gift of the gab,’ and are at ease in social situations, winning people over and can adapt to any level and any conversation - if it interests them. They are generally confident and possess the ability to look far beyond the present, the mundane, the facts and the horizon. However, their dislike of detail, practicalities and closure, often means that their dreams, aspirations and ideas may come to nothing as they can lack the propensity for follow through and the attention to detail required to ‘complete.’ This does of course make the ENTP very flexible and they have the ability to change tack in a nano-second much to the consternation of those following, who ask ‘but I thought we were going in that direction?’ Radical experimenters, rules are there to be (gently but firmly) bent; they like to get their own way and will happily rationalise, intellectualise and build a sophisticated argument to prove they were right. Of course, next week they may change their minds because ‘right’ for the ENTP is about what is right for ‘now.’ ENTPs are nothing if not unique, having an enquiring mind, real sense of adventure and excitement for new ideas and opportunities. They thrive on a new challenge, the more impossible it seems, the more thrilling it is! But smaller, less significant issues can really get to them and see them becoming scratchy and impatient, and this will communicate itself to anyone in the vicinity
Choose another celebrity type to compare side by side the different approaches work, attitudes to conflict and the way they engage with others.
