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 and Andre Braugher was produced by Chuck Roven/Mosaic Media Group. The film was distributed domestically by The Weinstein Company and its international distribution included Lionsgate (2008). He also wrote and directed Nanking, a theatrical documentary which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and features Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, and Jürgen Prochnow. Nanking was distributed domestically by THINKFilm and internationally by Fortissimo Films.
He recently completed Knife Fight (Myriad Pictures), a film he wrote and directed, starring Rob Lowe, Jamie Chung, Julie Bowen, Carrie-Ann Moss, Eric McCormack, and Jennifer Morrison. The film will premiere at the 2012 Tribeca Film festival, and be released in fall, 2012.
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, Tribeca four 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.
Soundtrack for a Revolution (Wild Bunch) had its international premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. The film features musical performances by John Legend, The Roots, Joss Stone and Wyclef Jean. Soundtrack for a Revolution was released theatrically by Area 23a, and later aired on PBS. Guttentag was nominated for WGA and Producer’s Guild awards for the film, which also won awards at US and international film festivals, and was short-listed for an Academy Award.
Nanking won awards at a number of US and international film festivals (including Sundance and Hong Kong), had a national theatrical release, and later aired on Cinemax. Guttentag was nominated for a WGA award for the film, which was short-listed for an Academy Award, and won a Peabody Award and Emmy Award. Nanking was also released in China and became the highest grossing theatrical documentary in Chinese history.
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 2010 and the paperback version was published in May, 2011. The French edition will be published by Éditions Gallimard next year. He is currently writing the non fiction book, Masters of Disaster – The Ten Commandments of Damage Control with his Knife Fight partner Chris Lehane. The book will be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in fall, 2012.
Guttentag has directed films for HBO, ABC, CBS, Turner, 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.
