He is a Director, Editor, Executive Producer, Cinematographer, Producer, Sound/Sound Designer, & Screenwriter.From the beginning of his career, Oscar winner-Robert Epstein has sought to explore issues of homosexuality onscreen. At 19 years old, he responded to an ad looking for a director to contribute to the nonfiction film Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977). The finished film is a compilation of gay lives that shatter common stereotypes. The film was an impressive debut from such a very young man. Epsteins’ next work was the hugely successful The Times of Harvey Milk (1983), Epstein’s heroic homage to our hero, Harvey Milk, the gay city supervisor & assassination victim. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary & a host of other honors. The film was screened at festivals & in mainstream theaters.
In 1987, Epstein teamed up with filmmaker Jeffrey Friedman to form Telling Pictures Production in San Francisco, California. Their first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on the Mall in Washington DC. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Common Threads tells the dramatic story of the first decade of HIV/AIDS in America through stories of 5 individuals featured in the Quilt. Epstein won his second Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads.
Next was The Celluloid Closet (1995), another collaboration by Epstein & Friedman. It took 9 years to finance, produce, & release; started in 1986, it finally had a theatrical release with the help of HBO Films. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, this star-studded film offered one of the first serious, in-depth explorations of Hollywood's onscreen treatment of homosexuality.
In 2000, Epstein & Friedman directed & produced Paragraph 175, a film about the experiences of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett, & filmed in Germany, France & Spain, Paragraph 175 was awarded the documentary Grand Jury Prize for Directing at Sundance in 2000, with European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival where it was won the International Film Critics Association Award.
Epstein moved to a fiction film scripting & producing 2010's Howl, a dramatization of the 1957 obscenity trial surrounding beat poet Allen Ginsberg, played in the film by my boyfriend- James Franco, & my occasional lover- Jon Hamm.
Rob Epstein lives & works in San Fransisco. He turns 56 years old today.
In 1987, Epstein teamed up with filmmaker Jeffrey Friedman to form Telling Pictures Production in San Francisco, California. Their first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on the Mall in Washington DC. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Common Threads tells the dramatic story of the first decade of HIV/AIDS in America through stories of 5 individuals featured in the Quilt. Epstein won his second Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads.
Next was The Celluloid Closet (1995), another collaboration by Epstein & Friedman. It took 9 years to finance, produce, & release; started in 1986, it finally had a theatrical release with the help of HBO Films. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, this star-studded film offered one of the first serious, in-depth explorations of Hollywood's onscreen treatment of homosexuality.
In 2000, Epstein & Friedman directed & produced Paragraph 175, a film about the experiences of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett, & filmed in Germany, France & Spain, Paragraph 175 was awarded the documentary Grand Jury Prize for Directing at Sundance in 2000, with European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival where it was won the International Film Critics Association Award.
Epstein moved to a fiction film scripting & producing 2010's Howl, a dramatization of the 1957 obscenity trial surrounding beat poet Allen Ginsberg, played in the film by my boyfriend- James Franco, & my occasional lover- Jon Hamm.
Rob Epstein lives & works in San Fransisco. He turns 56 years old today.
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