Born in New York, Luca Josef Bercovici has quite mixed origins: Romanian gypsy Jew on his father’s side and Italian on his mother’s side. His great-great-grandfather, in order to escape conscription into the Romanian army, bought falsified letters of transit under the name of “Halpern”, but he got caught. A little while later he tried again and bought letters of transit under the name of “Bercovici”. This time he made it out with his family. Although Luca’s original family name is “Halevy”, they’ve been Bercovici’s ever since.
His father, Eric Bercovici, and his grandfather, Leonardo Bercovici, were both directors and screenwriters. Leonardo wrote the script for The Bishop’s Wife, which starred Cary Grant, and Portrait of Jennie, which starred Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones. Eric wrote the screenplay for Hell in the Pacific, the famous John Boorman film starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune’, and later went on to adapt and produce James Clavell’s “Shogun” and Noble House.
In 1979 Luca spent six months in Japan, working on the miniseries _”Shogun” (1980/II) as Dialogue Director, once returned to the US, Luca started his acting career and has starred in many feature films, including American Flyers, Clean and Sober, Pacific Heights, Drop Zone and The Big Squeeze.
In 1982 he began his professional writing career, working with his partner Jefery Levy (director of S.F.W.), developing new series concepts for MGM, Spelling and 20th Century Fox. Shortly after that, Luca made his directorial debut with the hugely successful cult-hit Ghoulies. Ghoulies” was the top grossing independent film in 1985 and went on to spawn three sequels. Luca wrote, directed, and produced the cult hit “Rockula,” a musical about a vampire, “Dark Tide”, “The Granny”, “The Chain”, “Convict 762”, “BitterSweet” and “Luck of the Draw” with William Forsythe, Dennis Hopper, Eric Roberts, Ice-T, Michael Madson and Patrick Kilpatrick.
When Jake asked Luca for some input on some of the complicated hospital props they were to use in their most harrowing scenes, Luca demonstrated his masterful skill and depth in filmmaking by gilding each of the props on his own.
