Rob Epstein, also credited as
Robert P. Epstein, is a director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for
Best Documentary FeatureThe Academy Award for Documentary Feature is among the most prestigious awards for documentary films.- Winners and nominees:Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the award year...
for the films
The Times of Harvey MilkThe Times of Harvey Milk is an American documentary film that premiered at The Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco...
and
Common Threads: Stories from the QuiltCommon Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt,...
.
In making the transition to scripted narrative, Epstein wrote, directed, and produced (with
Jeffrey FriedmanJeffrey Friedman is a non-fiction filmmaker, director, producer, writer and editor. Friedman has won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....
), the feature film
HowlFirst Howl is an upcoming horror film directed by David Flores and written by Clint Morris and stars Parisse Boothe, Eric Stoltz and Kristina Anapau...
, starring
James FrancoJames Edward Franco is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, performance artist and instructor at New York University. He left college in order to pursue acting and started off his career by making guest appearances on television series in the 1990s...
as young
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
.
Howl was the opening night film of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and in the official competition at the
Berlin International Film FestivalThe Berlin International Film Festival , also called the Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978...
.
Howl won the 2010 Freedom of Expression Award from the
National Board of ReviewThe National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
.
Epstein is the recipient of numerous other awards, including a
Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
and the
International Documentary AssociationInternational Documentary Association , founded in 1982, is a non-profit organization promoting documentary film, video and new media, to support the efforts of documentary filmmaking and video production makers around the world and to increase public appreciation and demand for the art of the...
's Pioneer Award for his contributions to the field, as well as the
OutfestOutfest is an LGBT-oriented film showcase and festival in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1982 as the "Gay and Lesbian Media Festival and Conference", the name was changed to Outfest in 1994.-Programs:...
Achievement Award and the
Frameline Film FestivalFrameline is a nonprofit media arts organization that produces the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, the oldest film festival devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender programming currently in existence...
Award.
Biography
As a child, Rob Epstein had a painting studio set up in the basement of his suburban New Jersey home, but it wasn't until he discovered filmmaking that he found his artistic career.
Epstein began his filmmaking career at at age of 19, after taking a bus from New York City to San Francisco. Soon after arriving on the west coast, he answered a classified ad for a documentary seeking a production intern.
This led Epstein to become the youngest of six filmmakers in the Mariposa Film Group, the entity responsible for directing the landmark 1977 documentary
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our LivesWord Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives is a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women. It was directed by six people collectively known as the Mariposa Film Group. Peter Adair conceived and produced the film, and was one of the directors...
, considered to be the first feature documentary about the gay experience in America. The film played in theaters and was broadcast nationally on PBS, an unusual occurrence for a documentary at that point in time.
After
Word Is Out, Epstein set out on his own to make a film about series of events occurring in San Francisco in the late 1970s which eventually became the film
The Times of Harvey MilkThe Times of Harvey Milk is an American documentary film that premiered at The Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco...
. During the five years it took make the film, Epstein worked a series of jobs to support himself, including as a concessionaire at the
Castro TheatreThe Castro Theatre is a popular San Francisco movie palace which became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, in the Castro district, it was built in 1922 with a Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window...
, and as an assistant editing on feature and documentary films. Written, directed, and co-edited by Epstein,
The Times of Harvey Milk, premiered at the
Telluride Film FestivalThe Telluride Film Festival was started in 1974 by Bill and Stella Pence, Tom Luddy and Jim Card in the town of Telluride, Colorado, United States. It is operated by the National Film Preserve....
in September of 1984.
USA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
called the film "the hit of the festival" and from there it went on to the
New York Film FestivalThe New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
, the Sundance Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Award, and the Berlin Film Festival. The film became an international sensation and is still in distribution through out the world.
At age 29, Epstein won an Oscar for
The Times of Harvey Milk along with producer Richard Schimechen, becoming the first "out" filmmakers to do so on the Oscar broadcast. In addition to the Oscar,
The Times of Harvey Milk went on to receive the New York Film Critics Award for Best Non-Fiction Feature, three Emmy Awards, and a
Peabody AwardThe George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
.
In 2000,
The Times of Harvey Milk was selected by the
Sundance InstituteSundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
and
UCLA Film and Television ArchiveThe UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...
as a preservation project and for the first time the film was blown-up to 35mm. In 2011,
the Criterion CollectionThe Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
released a newly digital re-master Blueray edition of
The Times of Harvey Milk with numerous additional materials, including interviews with
Gus Van SantGus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
and others involved in his film
MilkMilk is a 2008 American biographical film on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...
, which was inspired by the documentary.
In 1986, Epstein made an early AIDS documentary for PBS with Peter Adair, titled
The AIDS ShowThe AIDS Show is a collaboratively written theater piece about AIDS, and a documentary video about the making of the stage show.-1984 production:...
, and in 1987, he was a producer/director on a public television series called
We The People. This documentary TV series was the first time he worked with editor Jeffrey Friedman. Their sensibilities and creative styles clicked. In 1987, the two formed Telling Pictures, a San Francisco-based production company and set about on their first collaboration which was the HBO documentary
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, inspired by the
AIDS Memorial QuiltThe NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt, is an enormous quilt made as a memorial to and celebration of the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes...
founded by
Cleve JonesCleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2009...
. Narrated by
Dustin HoffmanDustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
,
Common Threads tells the dramatic story of the first decade of
AIDS in America[[File:New HIV Cases 22 States 2006 CDC.svg|thumb|300px|Estimated Number of New HIV Cases—22 States 2006...
through five stories memorialized in the AIDS Quilt. Epstein won his second Academy Award for Documentary Feature with
Common Threads, as well as another Peabody.
Bobby McFerrinRobert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.-Life:...
receiving an Emmy for his all-vocal original score.
Epstein and Friedman's next film was a road-documentary titled
Where Are We?, part of the documentary competition line-up at the Sundance Film Festival (1991).
In 1995, Epstein and Friedman wrote and directed
The Celluloid ClosetThe Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...
, based on
Vito RussoVito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet ....
's landmark book of the same title. Released by
Sony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...
, narrated by
Lily TomlinMary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...
, the film depicts 100 years of gay and lesbian characters in Hollywood movies.
The Celluloid Closet premiered at the
Venice Film FestivalThe Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
and then went on to the
Toronto International Film FestivalThe Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
, the Sundance Film Festival (Grand Jury Freedom of Expression Award), and the Berlin Film Festival (
Teddy AwardThe Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival . Here, an "independent jury" implies that its members are not officially selected by the committee of the Berlinale...
, Best Documentary). For its HBO television presentation Epstein and Friedman won Emmys for directing, as well as a Peabody.
Epstein and Friedman's next feature documentary
Paragraph 175Paragraph 175 is a documentary film released in 2000, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film was produced by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman. The film chronicles the lives of several gay...
premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Directing, and at the Berlin Film Festival where it won the
FIPRESCIThe International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
(International Film Critics Association Award).
In preparing to segue into narrative feature directing, Rob Epstein was accepted into the
American Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
directing internship program where he was placed as a directing intern on
Martha CoolidgeMartha Coolidge is an American film director and former President of the Directors Guild of America. -Career:Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Ms. Coolidge first made her reputation by directing many award winning documentaries in New York before moving out to Hollywood in 1976. She spent several...
's film
Rambling RoseRambling Rose is a 1991 American film set in Georgia during the Great Depression starring Laura Dern, Diane Ladd and Robert Duvall, directed by Martha Coolidge....
.
Epstein and Friedman were invited to be fellows at the Sundance Film Institute Writer's Lab with their project
Howl about Allen Ginsberg's seminal 1955 poem of the same name.
Howl opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as part of the dramatic competition. Filmed in New York in 14 days,
Howl stars James Franco and features Jon Hamm,
David StrathairnDavid Russell Strathairn is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck...
,
Jeff DanielsJeffrey Warren "Jeff" Daniels is an American actor, musician and playwright. He founded a non-profit theatre company, the Purple Rose Theatre Company, in his home state of Michigan...
,
Mary-Louise ParkerMary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...
,
Treat WilliamsRichard Treat Williams is a Screen Actors Guild Award–nominated American actor and children's book author who has appeared on film, stage and television...
,
Alessandro NivolaAlessandro Antine Nivola is an American actor, perhaps best known for his roles in the films Best Laid Plans, Jurassic Park III, Face/Off, and the first two films of the Goal! trilogy.-Personal life:...
, and
Bob BalabanRobert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director.-Personal life:Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television...
.
Howl received the National Board of Review Freedom of Expression Award. It was also part of the official competition at the Berlin Film Festival.
Epstein's films have played in festivals, theaters, television, and museums throughout the world. Career retrospectives have been held at the
Institute of Contemporary ArtsThe Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
in London, the Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, and
CamerimageThe International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography CAMERIMAGE is a festival dedicated to cinematography and its creators cinematographers.The first seven events were held in Toruń, Poland. The next ten events were held in Łódź...
in Poland.
Rob Epstein is a member of the
Directors Guild of AmericaDirectors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
and the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
, where he currently serves on the Board of Governors. He has taught in the Graduate Film Program at
Tisch School of the ArtsTisch School of the Arts is one of the 15 schools that make up New York University ....
at NYU, and is currently a professor in film at
California College of the ArtsCalifornia College of the Arts , founded in 1907, is known for its broad, interdisciplinary programs in art, design, architecture, and writing. It has two campuses, one in Oakland and one in San Francisco, California, USA...
, in San Francisco.
Filmography
- Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives is a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women. It was directed by six people collectively known as the Mariposa Film Group. Peter Adair conceived and produced the film, and was one of the directors...
— Director (1978)
- The Times of Harvey Milk
The Times of Harvey Milk is an American documentary film that premiered at The Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco...
— Director, Producer, Editor (1984)
- The AIDS Show
The AIDS Show is a collaboratively written theater piece about AIDS, and a documentary video about the making of the stage show.-1984 production:...
— Director, Producer (1986)
- Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt,...
— Director, Producer, Writer (1989)
- Where Are We? Our Trip Through America — Director, Producer (1989)
- The Celluloid Closet
The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...
— Director, Producer, Writer (1995)
- Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 is a documentary film released in 2000, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film was produced by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman. The film chronicles the lives of several gay...
— Director, Producer (2000)
- Underground Zero (segment "Isaiah's Rap") — Director (2002)
- "Crime & Punishment" (TV Series) — Director, Producer (2002)
- An Evening with Eddie Gomez — Director (2005)
- Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: Gold Rush (TV series) — Director (2006)
- Howl
Howl is a 2010 American experimental film which explores both the Six Gallery debut and the 1957 obscenity trial of 20th century American poet Allen Ginsberg's noted poem Howl. The film is written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and stars James Franco as Ginsberg.-Plot:Howl...
— Director, Writer (2010)
External links