Bill Guttentag
Lecturer in Organizational Behavior
Bill Guttentag is a two-time Oscar-winning documentary and feature film writer-producer-director. Live!, a dramatic feature he wrote and directed starring Eva Mendes, Andre Braugher, David Krumholtz, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan was produced by Chuck Roven/Mosaic Media Group. The film was distributed domestically by The Weinstein Company, and its international distribution includes Lionsgate. He also wrote and directed Nanking, a documentary which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film includes a stage reading he wrote which features Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, and Jürgen Prochnow. Nanking had national theatrical distribution by THINKFilm.
In 2003 Bill Guttentag won an Oscar for the documentary Twin Towers (Universal). He has also has received a second Oscar, three additional Oscar nominations, a Peabody Award, three Emmy Awards, two additional Emmy nominations, two Writers Guild Award nominations, a Producers Guild Award nomination, and a Robert Kennedy Journalism Award.
His films have been selected for the Sundance Film Festival three times and have played and won awards at numerous American and international film festivals. They have also received a number of special screenings internationally and in the US, including at the White House.
His most recent film, Soundtrack for a Revolution (Wild Bunch) had its international premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and US premiere at Tribeca. The film features updated renditions of classic civil rights songs, and musicians performing in the film include John Legend, Joss Stone, The Roots, and Wyclef Jean. The film, which will be released theatrically this year, was nominated for WGA and Producers Guild awards, has won awards at a number of US and international film festivals, and was short-listed for the 2009 Academy Awards.
Bill Guttentag created and executive produced the NBC series Crime & Punishment, which ran for three seasons (2002-2004). The series was part of the Law & Order family of shows, and was created with Dick Wolf, who was also an executive producer. Over the series’ run, nearly every show was in the Nielsen top 20.
His first novel, Boulevard, was published by Pegasus Books/W.W. Norton in February 2010.
His recent film, Nanking won awards at a number of US and international film festivals (including Sundance), had a national theatrical release, and later aired on Cinemax. Guttentag was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for Nanking, the film was short-listed for an Oscar, and won a Peabody Award and Emmy Award. Nanking was also released in China and became the highest grossing theatrical documentary in Chinese history.
Guttentag has directed films for HBO, ABC, CBS, TNT, and others. His films include The Cocaine War, an ABC News/Peter Jennings Reporting special on the drug war in South America and You Don't Have to Die, a film he made for HBO, for which he also won an Oscar.
Since 2001 he has been teaching a class on the film and television business at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
