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

Saturday, August 8: The Television Documentaries

Saturday, August 8, 2009
12:15 pm
Los Angeles

Coach K (2006) – 12:15 pm – World Premiere!
Executive Producer
This portrait of legendary Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzysewski is really meant to be the first in a series of films that explores the notion of leadership. When it was finished, I screened it for Coach K, and he asked if he could show it to the team that night. "If we win tomorrow's game," he said, "you can take credit." The game was at Madison Square Garden. Duke crushed. I am hereby taking credit. (44 minutes)

Making Dazed (2005) – 1:00 pm
Executive Producer
Long before Kahane Corn became the executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (and won a houseful of Emmys while helping to make television history), she shot a ton of documentary footage on the set of Richard Linklater's movie Dazed and Confused. One day she and I were having lunch and she started telling me all about it. The next week we started working together on this film. I love the way it explores the passage of time, as well as the fresh perspective it gives on one of the most beloved high school films ever made. (44 minutes)

Shays' Rebellion (2006) – 2:00 pm
Director/Producer
The History Channel decided to do a big event series called Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America, and they brought together a group of documentary filmmakers, each of whom got their own "day" to direct. Mine was January 25, 1787, the climactic day in the series of events that came to be known as Shays' Rebellion (the post–Revolutionary War uprising by farmers in western Massachusetts that led directly to the Constitutional Convention.) The biggest challenge for me was figuring out how to tell a 230-year-old story in a way that felt immediate to the audience. I solved it by calling upon the awesome talents of my old friend, Academy Award–winning animator Bill Plympton and, well, the rest was history. (44 minutes)

Thin (2006) – 3:00 pm
Executive Producer/Producer
I've long been a fan of the work of photographer Lauren Greenfield, whose books feature interviews with her subjects and are really like printed documentary films. When she showed me the galleys for her then-forthcoming work Girl Culture, I agreed with her that there were many great potential films within the collection, and knew that she was going to be a great filmmaker. We went to New York to meet with Sheila Nevins and Lisa Heller from HBO, and we all decided in that meeting to focus on the Renfrew Center eating disorder clinic for Lauren's first film. (96 minutes)

Photo: Actual Reality