"Speedway Junky" Movie Stills (1999)

Original Regent Entertainment theatrical movie stills from “Speedway Junky,” (1999) directed by Nickolas Perry, starring Jesse Bradford, Jordan Brower, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Tiffani Thiessen, Daryl Hannah, and more. 

(Worthpoint)

Update: "Teen gets wish to meet young star" Sarasota Herald-Tribune

A rare note of thanks

March 17, 1998

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Many people contribute to causes or appeals, not for a thank-you but because something has moved them to help someone in need. The cause may be disaster relief after a hurricane or tornado strikes a community. Or it may be to help a family or an individual dealing with a special problem.

Thank-your from those affected are unexpected and rare. So, when one is received, it’s usually a surprise. When it’s from a young person, the surprise is doubled.

Megan An Harmon, 16, of Englewood has been in the news because she is rapidly losing her sight. She had two wishes for visual experiences: to see the Grand Canyon and to see JONATHAN Taylor Thomas, who stars in the television show Home Improvement.

Thanks to a generous response from the community, she realized both dreams this month. People who helped pay for the trip were happy just to make it possible.

As she traveled, Megan An personally signed thank-you notes, which were mailed from Arizona. The notes let people know that her dream had come true, and that she has been raised with good manners.

Thank-you notes shouldn’t be such a surprise. In another era they were expected, a part of etiquette. Brides don’t always remember to send them anymore, nor do other adult recipients of gifts. However, Megan An did write the notes, at a time when every hour of sight is precious.

Thank you, Megan An. 

Town helps teen losing sight 

The money raised will send Megan Harmon to Baltimore, where she’ll find out if she qualifies for a “bionic eye.”

By Matthew Henry

July 12, 1999

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Sixteen-year-old Megan Harmon is lucky in some ways.

Unlike many people her age, Harmon has visited the Grand Canyon and cruised around Alaska.

She even got special permission to watch a taping of the television show “Home Improvement,” where she met teen celebrity Jonathan Taylor Thomas. And she’s felt the embrace of her home community of Englewood.

But the reason Harmon took those trips — and what sets her apart from most of her peers — is her impending blindness. Every day, Harmon’s vision shrinks a little more until the day when her world will fade to black.

On Sunday, hundreds of Englewood residents turned out for a pig roast benefit for Harmon at Sonny and Jan’s Country Store on State Road 776. Proceeds from raffle tickets and food and beverage donations will be spent on an upcoming nine-day trip to the Wilmer Eye Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Doctors will examine Harmon to determine if she’s a viable candidate for surgery, which is so risky it won’t be attempted until her vision is gone.

Harmon was born 3 1/2 months premature, before her eyes had fully developed. Her left eye is sightless and a cataract has been growing steadily on her right eye.

A series of benefits and publicity about her condition last year, when doctors expected her sight to close down at ant moment, led to vacations meant to give her a lifetime of memories.

Despite the dark projections for her future, don’t expect to hear gloom and doom from Harmon. She’s fiercely proud of the things she shares with other teens.

This is the girl who once stood at the front of her school bus and gave a short speech to her Lemon Bay High School classmates: “I’m not the blind girl. I have a name. I prefer to be called Megan.”

The Englewood teen points out proudly that she rides a bicycle, in-line skates, holds a yellow belt in tae kwon do and works at McDonald’s.

Dark future doesn’t daunt Englewood teen

Although she attends St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind, her best friend is a sighted girl, Heidi Peschke.

Peschke hangs out with Harmon “because she’s a cool person.” “We can relate to each other and talk about our problems,” Peschke said. The giggling girls say they love to talk on the phone, go to the movies and hit the mall — “typical teen-ager stuff,” Harmon says.

“I can’t think of anything we can’t do,” Peschke says. When pressed, Harmon admits to being depressed about 15 percent of the time, when she gets mad and cries to the Lord, wanting to know why she and her friends at the St. Augustine school are going blind. “I’ve never been around her that 15 percent,” Peschke says. “You’re always happy,” she tells her friend.

Harmon says her vision-impaired and hearing-impaired friends in St. Augustine talk about the same things as Peschke, “especially at the dorm.”

Harmon’s mother, Tammy Tolley, said they don’t know how much longer her vision will last or if she’s a good candidate for surgery.  The operation being considered would give Harmon a computer chip to replace her retina, “like a bionic eye,” Tolley said.

Her daughter has beat worse odds before, Tolley said. When she was born, doctors didn’t expect her to last through the night. At best, they thought she would be retarded.

They were wrong on both counts. Harmon earned a 3.75 gradepoint average last year, Tolley said.

Tolley was full of praise Sunday for the people who helped organize Sunday’s benefit, including Cheryl Shelton, Stacey Trent, Joe McCarthy, Randy Burch and Sonny and Jan Miller.

Filmography: "Walking Across Egypt" (1999)

Walking Across Egypt

Release: December 17, 1999

Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman

Writers: Clyde Edgerton, Paul Tamsay

Genre: Drama/Comedy

Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes

Starring:

Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Wesley Benfield

Ellen Burstyn as Mattie Rigsbee

Mark Hamill as Lamar N. Benfield

Judge Reinhold as Robert Rigsbee

Patrick David as Johnny

Edward Herrmann as Rev. Vernon

Gail O’Grady as Elaine Rigsbee

Synopsis:

An elderly Southern widow, Mattie Rigsbee (Ellen Burstyn), begrudgingly starts to acknowledge that she can’t live on her own. Mattie enlists the help & befriends local dog catcher, Lamar Benfield (Mark Hamill), when a stray turns up on her front porch one day, she’s introduced to his orphaned nephew, Wesley (Jonathan Taylor Thomas). Although Wesley has been in trouble with the law and incarcerated for auto theft, Mattie sees potential in the young man and tries to point him in the right direction by allowing him to live with her.

Production Companies:

Mitchum Entertainment

"Got Issues Much? Celebrities Share Their Traumas and Triumphs" (1999)

“I realize that I’m smaller than other kids my age.”

When Jonathan Taylor Thomas was just a toddler, his mother, Claudine, recognized something special about him. It wasn’t just because Jonathan was her son; there was a special spark in him. “Even when he was eighteen months old,” Claudine told People, “he seemed older than his age, and he was really outgoing.”

When the family moved from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Sacramento, California, Jonathan was four and a half years old and his brother, Joel, was eight. It wasn’t long after the move that Jonathan put to use his “something special.” He started modeling, and when he was eight he landed a major TV commercial for Burger King.

The camera loved Jonathan, and viewers couldn’t keep their eyes off the blond-haired, blue-eyed cutie when he came on-screen. And when this little guy spoke — well, his husky, almost-man-sized voice was an unexpected addition to his appeal. “I thought the whole idea of being on TV, being recognized, and having a good time was interesting,” the now seventeen-year-old actor told People around the time he was the voice of the young Simba in Disney’s The Lion King. 

In 1991, when Jonathan was nine years old, his parents split up. His dad, Stephen, stayed in northern California, and Claudine moved Jonathan and Joel down to L.A. And that was a major step for Jonathan’s career. The TV sitcom Home Improvement was his big break. Millions of viewers all over America, and eventually the rest of the world, fell in love with the Taylor family headed by actor Tim Allen. As Randy, the middle son, Jonathan grew from being everybody’s little brother to a solid-gold teen idol heartthrob.

Growing up on TV

Of course, one of the weird things about being a child star on a long-running sitcom is that you literally grow up in front of millions and millions of people. You can’t hide certain things, like the onset of teenage acne or the squeaky break of a boy’s voice change. Jonathan wasn’t growing as tall and as fast as other kids his age. When he was twelve years old, the very mature-for-his-age actor told 16 magazine, “I realize that I’m smaller than other kids my age. Like, obviously Home Improvement’s older brother, Brad, played by Zachery Ty Bryan, is bigger than I am. He’s really younger than I am, but I don’t let that bother me. Actually, in the business that I’m in, acting, it helps me because I can play younger.”

Even back then, Jonathan has a good attitude about something that often causes a lot of needless anxiety in preteens and teens. Continuing his conversation with 16, Jonathan explained, “I don’t mind being small. My dad’s about six feet two. My mom’s five feet five. My brother’s five eleven — so obviously there’s some height in my family. It just depends when I’m going to get it. The show has dealt with it. My character mentions his height. The director and I discussed this, and there was a lot of truth [in the episode]. At times I do say, man, I wish I was bigger. But I’m still very competitive in sports. I’m a good soccer player. I’m up there on my team, and it’s just a matter of how you think about it. If you always dwell on it and day, ‘Oh, I’m short. I’m never gonna be anything. I’m short so I can’t play sports,’ it’s never gonna happen. But if you focus on something else, focus on liking that soccer ball as hard as you can, on throwing a ball, you’re gonna do the best you can. You’re gonna have a very good performance.

“Sometimes I get teased, but the people who tease, I sometimes think, have no other words in their vocabulary. All they know how to do is tease. They can’t have an intelligent conversation with anybody, so they just tease people. I just let it go in one ear and out the other. I don’t really pay attention to it. Yeah, it’s something that a lot of kids have to deal with. And I know that I’m gonna be taller when I’m older, and heck, if I’m not, no big deal.”

“When I go home … I’m just Jonathan.”

Three years and not much of a growth spurt later, Jonathan still had the same attitude about his height. He even showed a sense of humor about it. A Movieline interview with Jonathan was supposed to deal with his then-upcoming summer movie, Wild America. Instead, the conversation, which was taking place in a popular restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, was constantly interrupted by fans coming over to the booth where Jonathan for an autograph. One little boy came over to the booth where Jonathan and the reporter were sitting and said, as he motioned to a little girl at another table, “My cousin likes you, but she’s scared of you.”

“Scared?” Jonathan laughed. “I’m only five foot four. What’s to be scared about?”

In another article, this time in Seventeen, Jonathan once again joked about his size. The writer had brought up his easygoing reputation, that you never hear about Jonathan Taylor Thomas throwing a temper tantrum. “I’m not one to toss my eight around — I’m only a hundred ten pounds,” kidded the then-almost-sixteen-year-old.

During the late summer of 1998, Jonathan’s personal growth made the news once again. No, there weren’t headlines declaring how many inches Jonathan had grown. Instead, it was the announcement that even though he was probably the most popular teen on TV, he was cutting back his work schedule. In the 1998-1999 season of Home Improvement, Jonathan would only appear in three episodes, because he was determined to spend the year focused on school. Just as Jonathan turned seventeen, on September 8, 1998, he was entering his junior year in high school. “Colleges really look at your junior year,” Jonathan explained in the press release. Though he’s always been a straight-A student, Jonathan really wanted to concentrate on his education at this point. He’s determined to get into a top school, perhaps even an Ivy League school like Harvard or Yale, and he wants to be prepared.

Those who really know Jonathan Taylor Thomas weren’t surprised by his decision. The youngest superstar has always approached his career and his life with that kind of self-awareness and confidence. “The industry is neurotic and weird,” Jonathan once observed to Premiere, “and so when I go home and I play basketball with my friends, I’m not Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I’m just Jonathan.”

Just Jonathan — a young man who doesn’t worry about the things he can’t control but dedicates himself to the things he can. That makes Jonathan Taylor Thomas seem ten feet tall!

Got Issues Much? Celebrities Share Their Traumas and Triumphs

By Randi Reisfeld & Marie Morreale

Published by Scholastic (1999)

"Hunks and history" The Advocate (November 9, 1999)

The Buzz

Hunks and history

What do young lookers Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Jason Priestley, and James LeGros have in common? They’re all playing gay in Showtime’s Common Ground, a trilogy about gay life in small-town Connecticut that takes our Hunkiest Cast of the Year Award even though it won’t air until sometime in 2000. Mimi Rogers and cute starlet Brittany Murphy are also in the mix, and Ground’s writers aren’t so shabby either: Harvey Fierstein, Terrence McNally, and Paula Vogel are weaving the tales that span three decades à la HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk movies. But it’s former Home Improvement heartthrob Thomas, who also goes bi in the imminent indie film Speedway Junky, who’ll get people gabbing most. Says producer A.D. Oppenheim: “He’ll obviously reel in an audience that may not otherwise tune in to gay-themed programming and will hopefully promote acceptance.” Score one for J.T.T.!

They’re so Grounded: Thomas (left) and Priestley head a gay-themed cable movie.

"Galaxy Quest" Premiere (December 19, 1999)

Jonathan Taylor Thomas attends the premiere of the 1999 film “Galaxy Quest” in Hollywod on December 19, 1999 at Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.

"Galaxy Quest" starred Tim Allen, Jonathan's TV father on Home Improvement.

(Mary Evans & Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images / Fitzroy Barrett/Globe Photos/Alamy Stock Photo)

Bradford & Brower on "Speedway Junky" The Advocate (June 5, 2001)

Actors Jesse Bradford & Jordan Brower talk about working with Jonathan Taylor Thomas on “Speedway Junky” in 1999

Via the June 5, 2001 issue of The Advocate magazine.

Bradford: “He was in Hawaii, I heard at the time, and they sent him a script. He cut his vacation short to come out to do the movie.”

Did you have a good time with JTT?

Bradford: “It’s not that he wasn’t open to talking, but mostly—“

Brower: “—he kept to himself.”

But was it fun on the set, watching the guy from Home Improvement talking about sex and drugs?

Bradford: “I liked watching him smoke a bowl. That was my favorite part. I think he pulled it off.”

Filmography: Speedway Junky (1999)

Speedway Junky 

Release: June 22, 1999 (United States)

Theatrical Release: August 31, 2001

Director & Writer: Nickolas Perry

Genre: Drama/Crime/LGBTQI+

Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes

Starring:

Jesse Bradford as Johnny

Jordan Brower as Eric

Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Steve

Daryl Hannah as Veronica

Tiffani Theissen as Wilma Price

Synopsis:

Johnny (Jesse Bradford) runs away from home to pursue his dream of becoming a professional racecar driver. He winds up in Las Vegas, where, after losing all of his money, meets and befriends Eric (Jordan Brower) a young, gay hustler, who introduces Johnny to his hustler friends, including Steve (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and ex-hooker mom (Daryl Hannah); thus introducing him to the world of hustling.

Production Companies:

Magic Entertainment Inc. (presents)

Golan-Globus Productions (production)

Miracle Entertainment

Powers That Be Pictures 

Distributors:

Regent Releasing (United States, 2001) (theatrical)

Pioneer Entertainment (United States, 2000)

Xscapade Pictures Ltd. (United Kingdom)

(Speedway Junky 2001 Regent trailer)

1999 Newspaper Article "Common Ground"

Ex-‘Home Improvement’ star not worried about gay role.

New York (AP) — Jonathan Taylor Thomas says he’s not concerned about whether rumors will surface about his sexuality because he plays a gay character in an upcoming cable TV movie.

“I’m playing a role. I’m not gay,” the 18-year-old said in the Jan. 29 issue of TV Guide. “I’m not going to sacrifice the opportunity to play a great part just because the character is gay.”

Thomas, who gained fame on the sitcom “Home Improvement,” said he is not worried at all about what people might think of his character in the Showtime movie “Common Ground.”

“At some point, every male actor in Hollywood has been (rumored to be) gay,” he says. “I just (got) it when I was 16, but hopefully it’s done with now.”

1999 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards

Jonathan Taylor Thomas at the Nickelodeon 12th Annual Kids' Choice Awards at UCLA in Westwood, California on May 1, 1999. (Footage by WireImage Video/Getty Images)

Jonathan was voted and made it into the Kids’ Choice Awards Hall of Fame of 1999.

(Photography by Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images /Photoshelter-Hutchins)