My filmmaking career, spanning five decades and many hundreds of films, has take me everywhere, thanks to ABC Sports, Anglia Television, Discovery, PBS (WNET/Thirteen and WGBH), the Walt Disney Company and National Geographic Television. My passions are many: nature, science, the brain, wildlife crime, biography, the American West, the Middle East, and, critically, Africa.
There have been countless highlights over the course of the several hundred films I have made. Two examples are these:
I was lucky working on both The Brain and The Mind series with the great Richard Hutton. We shared many outstanding moments. One instance was during the production of The Mind when I was producing and writing the show called “Aging.” In it, I assigned myself the task of internalizing aging’s inexorable progress, so all viewers, young and old, might understand and feel its reality. To do so, I turned to art.
Just as The Mind aired, I was tapped to be producer, director, writer and host of a new PBS series called “Travels.” It was to feature a rich array of writers, actors, chefs and celebrities introducing us to their favorite corners of the globe, as well as to places they aspired to visit. Over four seasons, with the support of Chelle Tutt Mason, I had the good fortune of being one of those travelers. So it was that in the second season of Travels, I journeyed to the most remote inhabited island in the world, Tristan da Cunha. This would be the first full-length film ever made on that storm-tossed sea mount. For me, this was kismet.