Telling Pictures

SEX in '69:
The Sexual Revolution in America

If 1967 was the Summer of Love, 1969 was the Year of Sex: from San Francisco's hippie crash pads to remote desert resorts for swingers to New York's gay bathhouses to the legendary Playboy Penthouse, from which Hugh Hefner broadcast his version of the sexual revolution to the nation with his late-night TV party-show Playboy After Dark.

Travel back to 1969 and rediscover some of the seductive trends, people, and events that forever changed the way Americans think about—and have—sex. 
 

GOLD RUSH

The original American Bubble. The rumor of gold in 1848 would lead to the largest migration of its kind in history—almost 90,000 gold-seekers—and to the astonishing growth, in just a few years, of a lawless "city of tents" into the metropolis of San Francisco. A unique look at a historical quirk that helped shape the culture, architecture, and character that we think of as "West Coast."

Rob and Jeffrey's hour is part of the 10-part History Channel mini-series “Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America.”

Emmy Award, Outstanding Nonfiction Series, 2006.

CRIME & PUNISHMENT

NBC prime-time one-hour series (2002-2004).

Real prosecutors, real trials, real victims, real accused: Dick Wolf's nonfiction courtroom drama spin-off of his Law & Order franchise. This is reality shaped like fiction—high drama!

Jeffrey and Rob produced and directed seven episodes.

XTREME:
Sports To Die For

A wild ride through the alternative culture of extreme sports, and the athletes who put their bodies and lives on the line for thrills and glory. Produced by Rob and Jeff for HBO's America Undercover series (1999).

 

Real Sex

Jeffrey and Rob had fun making hetero soft-core porn segments for HBO’s highly rated series: their subjects include a woman-owned-and-managed strip club / peep show; an annual swingers' ball; a re-creation of a Weimar Berlin nightclub in downtown San Francisco; and an erotic awards show in London (1996-98).

LIFE 360
with Michel Martin 

Rob and Jeffrey were brought on as Series Directors for the second season of this weekly PBS newsmagazine (2002). They re-conceived, redesigned, and directed the studio segments, and commissioned a new show-open from graphic designer Tom Bonauro.

 

 

 

WE THE PEOPLE: 
What Price Equality?
with Peter Jennings 

Produced and written by Rob Epstein
Edited by Jeffrey Friedman 

Rob followed a group of women suing to become firefighters in San Francisco, and an emotional, raucous court-ordered housing desegregation in Yonkers, New York.

Part of a four-part national PBS series commemorating the 200th anniversary of the US Constitution, produced for PBS by KQED-TV in association with the American Bar Association (1987).

CINE Golden Eagle.

 

FACES OF THE ENEMY

Directed by Bill Jersey and Jeffrey Friedman
Edited by Jeffrey Friedman 

A PBS hour-long special about propaganda and enemy-making, featuring newsreels from all sides of World War II, and conversations with a Vietnam veteran, a political cartoonist, psychologists and policy strategists, as well as a right-wing zealot who bludgeoned to death a family of four whom he (mistakenly) believed to be Communists.

The Seattle Tines called it "one of the most challenging and thoughtful documentaries you're likely to see this year." (1987)

 

THE AIDS SHOW:
Artists Involved with Death and Survival 

Produced and Directed by Peter Adair and Rob Epstein

A San Francisco theater group enacts their hopes and fears about AIDS in the very early days of the epidemic (1986).

Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival; Regional Emmy Award.

A national PBS one-hour special, re-broadcast on BRAVO. 

Edgewise
with John Hockenberry 

Rob and Jeffrey produced a segment about an early, radical, medical marijuana buyers' club in San Francisco, the visionary pot-head who started it, and the appealing diversity of its denizens (1997).

ABC News
with Forrest Sawyer
Executive Producer: Tom Yellin 

Jeff and Rob produced two segments for the ABC News magazine show: one about gay comedians breaking into the mainstream (before Ellen); and one about the first LGBT March on Washington in the wake of Bill Clinton's election (1993).