R.J. Cutler on Film & Television: A Retrospective

Friday, August 7: The Formatted Shows

Friday, August 7, 2009
1:00 pm
Los Angeles

30 Days: "Immigration" (2006) – 1:00 pm
Executive Producer
The first (perhaps only?) reality TV show based on a documentary film, 30 Days began where Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me left off. Every week, we'd explore hot-button issues in the news, but we'd do it in a way that defied the talking-heads-screaming-at-each-other approach that permeates contemporary media. The basic idea was to focus more on what people of differing points of view have in common than on what divides them, and every episode of this series seemed to have its finger on the pulse of what America most cared about. The eighteen hours in this series ran over three seasons (2005–08) on FX.  (44 minutes)

Black.White.: "Episode 1" (2006) – 2:00 pm
Executive Producer/Developed by
John Landgraf, the president of FX, asked me one day if I would be interested in exploring the issue of race relations in America through a reality television show. "And if you are interested," he said, "how might you do it?" A couple of weeks later I went back to him and proposed Black.White. A great example of how reality television has the ability to examine issues of importance to American society, the first episode of Black.White. became the most-watched premiere of a television series in cable television history. (44 minutes) 

American Candidate: "Episode 1" (2004) – 3:00 pm
Executive Producer/Created by
In the wake of the Bush-Gore election debacle of 2000, Jay Roach, Tom Lassally, and I started developing a television series that would examine what Americans really were looking for in their leaders. The show had many incarnations in its long life, and found a home at Showtime, where we used the format of the competition reality show to explore issues of leadership in America while drawing the curtain back on the campaign process. (44 minutes)

Bound for Glory: "Episode 1" (2005) – 4:00 pm
Executive Producer
When I was a kid I would fantasize that one day I'd show up at school and New York Knicks guard Walt Frazier would be our new substitute teacher. He'd be impressed by my math skills, but even more so by my outside jumper. It never happened, of course, but I had the chance to explore this notion through Bound For Glory. A continuation of my interest in high school as a landscape for telling stories, Bound for Glory asks the simple question: What would happen if a professional football legend became the coach of a once-proud high school football program that had fallen upon hard times? (44 minutes)

Photo: Actual Reality