Erik Nelson (filmmaker)

Last updated
Erik Nelson
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)filmmaker and television producer

Erik Nelson is an American documentary film director and television producer. [1] Nelson has produced and directed several films, television specials and television programs such as Ripley's Believe It or Not! , Mega Disasters , When Good Times Go Bad, What Were You Thinking?, Unsolved History , Prehistoric Predators and More than Human .

He has a production company called Creative Differences Productions (formerly known as Termite Art Productions), owned by Lionsgate from 1998 to 2004.

In 2008 he released a documentary he produced and directed, about prolific and controversial author Harlan Ellison, entitled Dreams with Sharp Teeth . [2] Nelson started working on this film in 1981. The film included interviews with many respected collaborators and admirers of Ellison.

Nelson collaborated with Werner Herzog on several films. [3] [4] [5] He produced Grizzly Man , a film Herzog directed about an eccentric naturalist who wanted to live with grizzly bears. In 2016, Herzog executive produced A Gray State , a film Nelson directed about an eccentric American veteran and aspiring film-maker, David Crowley, who was admired by fans of Alex Jones, whose death triggered conspiracy theories. [6] [7]

In 2017, Nelson uncovered and reversioned 15 hours of World War II footage, filmed by respected Hollywood director William Wyler, of the 8th Air Force to create a new documentary entitled The Cold Blue . [8] [9] This film premiered at the AFI Film Festival in June 2018, and was the first of the theatrical documentary genre Nelson has referred to as “Big Screen History”.[ citation needed ] Other films released later that year in this genre included Peter Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old" and Todd Miller's "Apollo 11".

In 2020, Nelson completed and theatrically released “Apocalypse '45.” Another example of "Big Screen History", this film documents the final year of the war in the Pacific in 1945, and was released on Discovery+ on May 27, 2021. On October 9th, 2024, Nelson's film, "Daytime Revolution", a feature documentary that revolves around the week in 1972 when John and Yoko Lennon took over the Mike Douglas Show was released in theaters across America. The film was released to coincide with Lennon's birthday. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Errol Morris</span> American film director

Errol Mark Morris is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of their subjects, and the invention of the Interrotron. In 2003, his The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film The Thin Blue Line placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris is known for making films about unusual subjects; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of an animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a naked mole-rat specialist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Werner Herzog</span> German director, producer, screenwriter (born 1942)

Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His style involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those in the film they are working on.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harmony Korine</span> American film director and screenwriter

Harmony Korine is an American filmmaker, actor, photographer, artist, and author. His methods feature an erratic, loose and transgressive aesthetic, exploring taboo themes and incorporating experimental techniques, and works with art, music, fashion and advertising.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Treadwell</span> American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, and documentary filmmaker (1957–2003)

Timothy Treadwell was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, documentary filmmaker, and founder of the bear-protection organization Grizzly People. He lived among coastal brown bears in Katmai National Park, Alaska, for 13 summers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Les Blank</span> American documentary filmmaker

Les Blank was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians.

<i>Grizzly Man</i> 2005 documentary film by Werner Herzog

Grizzly Man is a 2005 American documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. It chronicles the life and death of bear enthusiast and conservationist Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard at Katmai National Park, Alaska. The film includes some of Treadwell's own footage of his interactions with brown bears before 2003, and of interviews with people who knew or were involved with Treadwell, in addition to professionals who deal with wild bears.

<i>Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe</i> 1980 film

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a short documentary film directed by Les Blank in 1980, that depicts director Werner Herzog living up to his alleged vow to eat his shoe if Errol Morris ever completed the film Gates of Heaven.

<i>Encounters at the End of the World</i> 2007 American documentary film by Werner Herzog

Encounters at the End of the World is a 2007 American documentary film by Werner Herzog about Antarctica and the people who choose to spend time there. It was released in North America on June 11, 2008, and distributed by ThinkFilm. At the 81st Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Bini</span> American film editor

Joe Bini is an American film editor.

<i>Dreams with Sharp Teeth</i> 2008 American film

Dreams with Sharp Teeth is a 2008 biographical documentary film about writer Harlan Ellison. It is composed of original and archive footage of Ellison and talking head segments from colleagues and fans including Robin Williams, Peter David, and Neil Gaiman.

<i>Cave of Forgotten Dreams</i> 2010 documentary film by Werner Herzog

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a 2010 3D documentary film by Werner Herzog about the Chauvet Cave in Southern France, which contains some of the oldest human-painted images yet discovered—some of them were crafted around 32,000 years ago. It consists of footage from inside the cave, as well as of the nearby Pont d'Arc natural bridge, alongside interviews with various scientists and historians. The film premiered on 13 September 2010 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Marc H. Simon is an American filmmaker and entertainment attorney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Singer (producer)</span>

André Felix Vitus Singer is a British documentary film-maker and an anthropologist. He is currently Chief Creative Officer of Spring Films Ltd of London, a Professorial Research Associate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, and emeritus president of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland where he was president from 2014 to 2018.

<i>Into the Abyss</i> (film) 2011 documentary film

Into the Abyss is a 2011 documentary film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is about capital punishment, and focuses on a triple homicide that occurred in Montgomery County, Texas, in 2001. In the film, Herzog interviews the two young men convicted of the crime, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, as well as family members and acquaintances of the victims and criminals, and individuals who have taken part in executions in Texas. The primary focus of the film is not the details of the case or the question of Michael and Jason's guilt or innocence, and, although Herzog's voice can be heard as he conducts the interviews, there is a minimal amount of narration, and he never appears onscreen, unlike in many of his films.

<i>Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World</i> 2016 American film

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Werner Herzog. In it, Herzog ponders the existential impact of such things as the Internet, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of things on modern human life. The leaders in the field of technology who are interviewed in the film include Leonard Kleinrock, Bob Kahn, Ted Nelson, Sebastian Thrun, and Elon Musk. The film, which was sponsored by the company NetScout, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

<i>A Gray State</i> 2017 film

A Gray State is a 2017 documentary film directed by Erik Nelson and executive produced by Werner Herzog, first broadcast on the A&E Network. It explores the death of aspiring filmmaker David Crowley and the murders of his wife and child in 2014. The film tells the story of Crowley's military service in the Middle East, his efforts to fund and make a film, and explores the circumstances surrounding the deaths. Crowley had been working on a feature film he called Gray State. Herzog and Nelson had previously worked together on 2005's Grizzly Man, which Nelson produced, and Herzog directed.

<i>The Cold Blue</i> 2018 American film

The Cold Blue is a 2018 documentary composed from 90 hours of "lost" footage director William Wyler used for his 1944 documentary The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Werner Herzog filmography</span> Films by German filmmaker Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker whose films often feature ambitious or deranged protagonists with impossible dreams. Herzog's works span myriad genres and mediums, but he is particularly well known for his documentary films, which he typically narrates.

Maureen Gosling is an American documentary filmmaker, editor, and director. She is best known for her 20-year collaboration with the late director Les Blank.

Creative Differences Productions, Inc. is an American film and television production company that is headquartered in Pasadena, California and was founded in 1995 by Erik Nelson.

References

  1. Erik Nelson (2019-06-03). "Nostalgia Ain't What It Used to Be". Talkhouse . Retrieved 2020-03-30. Erik Nelson is the director of The Cold Blue, which airs on HBO on June 6, and the 2017 documentary A Gray State. He is the producer of Werner Herzog's award-winning documentaries Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, Into the Abyss and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. His previous work as a director includes the Harlan Ellison documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, which premiered at SXSW in 2008.
  2. David Loftus. "Dreams with Sharp Teeth". DocumentaryFilms.net . Retrieved 2018-09-24. Nelson shot his first footage of Ellison at the typewriter (always an Olympia manual propelled by two fingers – never an electric, let alone a computer) for a March 1981 PBS segment, when the filmmaker was just 24. At the time he had no plans to make a full-length film. Over subsequent decades Nelson continued to film Ellison only now and then, pretty much from the standpoint of a fan, while he pursued his own career.
  3. Pete Hammond (2011-10-07). "OSCARS: Werner Herzog's Controversial Toronto/Telluride Death Penalty Doc Being Rushed Into Release In November". Deadline . Retrieved 2012-08-02. Erik Nelson, the producer on both films, explains that there was a confluence of events. "Cave is still in theaters and we had no idea it would do as well as it has done," he said. "You're not really supposed to put two films out at the same time by the same director (tell that to Steven Spielberg). On the other hand, what Werner wants, Werner gets. Resistance is futile.
  4. Ken Eisner (2011-07-27). "Local filmmaker Erik Nelson shares Werner Herzog's grand Cave of Forgotten Dreams". Georgia Straight . Retrieved 2020-03-30. For Herzog, since he switched from crankily poetic fictions to crankily poetic documentaries, that someone is Erik Nelson. A veteran film producer and nonfiction-TV maven, Nelson is a transplanted Angeleno who moved to B.C. just over six years ago—or exactly when George W. Bush was reelected, as he puts it.
  5. Erik Nelson (2017-11-01). "Collaborating with Ghosts (and Werner Herzog)". Talkhouse . Retrieved 2020-03-30. Erik Nelson explains how his cinematic communing with the dead started with Grizzly Man, and continues with his new film, Gray State.
  6. Ben Kenigsberg (2017-11-02). "Review: 'A Gray State,' Behind a Filmmaker's Madness". The New York Times . p. C10. Retrieved 2020-03-29. The documentary's director, Erik Nelson (a producer on "Grizzly Man"), explores the disjunction between the charismatic filmmaker-to-be with a penchant for both self-promotion and self-documentation and a man who was, it eventually seems clear, descending into mental illness.
  7. Dennis Harvey (2017-11-02). "Film Review: 'A Gray State'". Variety magazine . Retrieved 2020-03-30. 'Grizzly Man' producer Nelson (this film is executive produced by that film's helmer, Werner Herzog) weighs the disturbing recent saga of a charismatic military veteran with libertarian leanings who industriously sought to make a 'dystopian future reality movie' portraying America's imminent conquest at the hands of the 'deep state' in service of the 'New World Order.'
  8. "The Cold Blue". HBO .
  9. Richard Thompson - 'The Cold Blue' (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Score). YouTube. 2019-05-22. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  10. Womack, Kenneth (2024-10-09). ""Daytime Revolution": How John and Yoko brought counterculture to America's living rooms". Salon. Retrieved 2024-11-04.