John is a native of San Diego, California, and graduated from USC School of Cinema-Television (1988).

His scores for The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Cable Guy (1996) gave him some recognition and since then he has created the scores for many major motion pictures, ranging from Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) and Lake Placid (1999) to Apt Pupil (1998).

He composed and conducted the score for Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000); this film also marked his directing debut.

Other works include writing the theme for TV's Fantasy Island (1998), Eight Legged Freaks (2002) and most recently X-Men 2 (2003).