It was a magical evening.  My documentary, which I wrote, co-produced, and directed --  Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada -- premiered to a sold out crowd at the famed Los Angeles Pacific Design Center (the “Blue Whale”): there were so many people that we had an impromptu second screening at the 294 seat theatre.  Everyone was there:  Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Jack Nicholson, Stephen Stills, and many more celebrities.  After the screening in the jammed reception room where I was surrounded by people, there was a tap on my shoulder.   “I LOVED your film!” was the clear, feminine voice behind me.

I turned around, and there, beautiful, statuesque and straight out of The Birds, was… Tippi Hedron.  I was floored.  I couldn’t help but do a double take, and we spoke for some time about Beatrice, her own love for documentaries.   Now that’s high cotton…

I have been fortunate to have directed many extremely talented actors:  Gregory Peck, Ned Beatty, Hal Holbrook, Kris Kristofferson, Ashley Judd, Lloyd Bridges, and have interviewed many others, ranging from Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Lauren Bacall, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, to name just a few. 

I founded Tennessee’s first feature film production company, raised my first $1million and directed my first feature film by the time I was 32, and have raised well over $12 million in my career for film projects.  I have films in every medium from super 8 to 16mm to 35mm to IMAX , and I founded the nation’s first national cable network, Documentary Channel, which aired to over 25 million subscribers, and am working on relaunching it as a streaming network. 

I have been Oscar nominated, and Emmy winning and nominated, been fortunate to win many awards.  My films have shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Jazz Center, the Smithsonian, the Director’s Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Pictures, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the NYC Paley Center and other.  I have been a panelist, guest speaker, or given master classes at Sundance, Hot Docs, Lincoln Jazz Center, Chicago Art Institute SAIS, Real Screen, Hollywood Black Film Festival, International Documentary Association, USC, NYU, Hot Springs Documentary Festival, Westdoc, National Educational Media Network, and many others.  I am a member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, and have been nominated for the Academy’s Board of Governors to represent the Documentary Branch, of which I am a member.

My classes are highly practical, goal oriented and include a sense of the particular as well as the industry as a whole in which I remain very active. 

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A pioneer in High Definition production, I produced, co-wrote, and directed the nation’s first HDTV art documentary production with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Japanese broadcaster NHK, Frederic Remington: The Truth of Other Days with Gregory Peck and Ned Beatty.  My documentaries include the seminal 6 hours TBS series on country music, America’s Music: The Roots of Country, narrated by Kris Kristofferson.  My feature-length documentary, Chances: The Women of Magdalene, on struggling and recovered prostitutes, won the Audience Award at the Nashville Film Festival, the Tennessee Spirit Award for the best film of the year by a Tennessean, the Governor’s Award, and a Prism Award Nomination. 

Other works have included writing and directing the feature film Running Mates; distributed world-wide by New World Pictures, the Emmy winning documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire;  TVA: Built for the People; Oscar nominated Red Grooms: Sunflower in a Hothouse; the IMAX film, Our Country, narrated by Hal Holbrook; Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada; Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light, featuring Lauren Bacall; Herb Alpert: Music For Your Eyes; which screened at Lincoln Center; Johnny Berlin 2; the 4-hour jazz series Icons Among Us which screened at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York; the shorter EmPOWered for the EPA, and Speed Dreams for Exxon, and many others.

An expert in archival processes, I worked with the Academy of Motion Pictures in restoration, helping to restore three lost, previously banned, signature John Huston WWII documentaries which debuted at a special Academy screening event, as well as the seminal 1968 documentary on race relations, A Time For Burning.

My recent documentary Mr. Temple and the Tigerbelles features the famed African American female track team of the early 1960s coached by Ed Temple which dominated the Olympics with runners such as Wilma Rudolph.  The documentary has enjoyed considerable national exposure.  It aired in primetime on CBS Sports Network in February 2018 for Black History Month.  I arranged a special presentation airing of Mr. Temple and the Tigerbelles on Nashville’s PBS WNPT in primetime in May, 2019, and August, 2019 for another special presentation, where the network used it for fundraising.   The documentary was shortlisted by the International Documentary Association (IDA) as one of the top short documentaries of 2018; it has been selected for competition in the HollyShorts Film Festival, the Cleveland International Film Festival, where it won Honorable Mention for Best Short Documentary.  The film was one of only three HBO Documentary Finalists at the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, the most prestigious African American festival in the country, sponsored by Michelle Obama and Spike Lee, among others.

I produced, co-wrote, and directed a short film with students in my Producing the Narrative Film class, The Contradictory Couple, which won first place for Best Short Film in the Louisville International Film Festival, and has won garlands in other festivals.

I am currently finishing my documentary Clemmie G: Unfiltered, on black activist Clemmie Greenlee, whom I have been filming for over 20 years. 

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