Telling Pictures is a media production company founded by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.  

Oscar-Emmy-Grammy winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have been creating movies and television for over 30 years. Their work as directors, writers, producers, and editors has been honored with two Academy Awards®, five Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards and a Grammy Award. They have had career retrospectives at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Film at Lincoln Center, the Taipei International Film Festival in Taiwan, the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal, the Pink Apple Film Festival in Zurich, as well as on TCM and The Criterion Channel.  Among the artists Epstein and Friedman have worked with over the years are actors Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Fierstein, Tom Hanks, Amanda Seyfried, Sharon Stone, Peter Sarsgaard, Juno Temple, James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, and Whoopi Goldberg, and musicians Linda Ronstadt, Bobby McFerrin, Mark Isham, Carter Burwell, Stephen Trask, and Jeff Beal. 

The backstory.

Rob Epstein began his career at the age of 20 on the landmark film Word Is Out:Stories of Some of Our Lives – one of the first documentaries about the LGBTQ experience – which he co-directed.  He went on to conceive, direct, and co-edit The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), for which he won the first of two Academy Awards® for Best Documentary Feature, as well as a Peabody and Emmy Awards and a special Sundance jury prize. The film won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Documentary and was inducted to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It is now part of the Criterion Collection.

Jeffrey Friedman started out working with some of the industry’s most respected filmmakers in the editing rooms of such films as Raging Bull and The Exorcist. His subsequent editing credits include two Oscar-nominated documentary shorts and the Oscar-winning documentary feature Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.

Epstein & Friedman are best known for their groundbreaking feature documentaries.

In 1987, Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman started Telling Pictures, a San Francisco-based production company. Their first film as a directing team was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), a feature documentary for HBO about the first decade of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. Common Threads won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature as well as a Peabody Award.

Their film The Celluloid Closet (1995), a hundred-year history of queer images in Hollywood movies, features interviews with Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Shirley MacLaine, Tony Curtis, Gore Vidal, Paul Rudnick, and many others. It premiered at Sundance (Freedom of Expression Award), the New York Film Festival, and the Berlin Film Festival (Teddy Award, Best Documentary). The film won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for Directing. It was released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics and premiered on HBO.

Paragraph 175 (2000) told the hidden history of Nazi persecution of homosexuals. It premiered at Sundance (Jury Prize for Directing) and the Berlin Film Festival (FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film from the International Federation of Film Critics).

Epstein & Friedman branched out into scripted narrative features.

In 2010, Jeffrey and Rob wrote and directed HOWL, a multi-layered genre-bending ride through Allen Ginsberg's prophetic poem. HOWL stars James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Jeff Daniels, and Mary-Louise Parker. It premiered as the opening night selection at Sundance, followed by a European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. It received the National Board of Review's Freedom of Expression Award.

Lovelace (2013) recreated the making of the first porn megahit "Deep Throat" – and the first porn superstar, Linda Lovelace. The film starred Amanda Seyfried as Linda and Peter Sarsgaard as her abusive husband/manager, with Sharon Stone, Juno Temple, Bobby Cannavale, Chris Noth, and James Franco. Lovelace premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals.

The team continues to produce documentaries for television and new media.

Rob and Jeffrey have produced content for HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, ABC, MSNBC, Discovery, The History Channel, and the Playboy Channel. They directed seven episodes of Crime & Punishment, Dick Wolf's nonfiction "Law & Order" spinoff (NBC, 2001-2003).

And the Oscar Goes To (TCM, 2014) – a documentary about the art and craft of moviemaking, told through a history of the Academy Awards – features interviews with Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Cher, and Liza Minnelli. 

End Game (Netflix, 2018) explores new ways of thinking about end-of-life care (Academy Award nomination, Best Documentary Short).

The documentary musical biography Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (CNN Films, 2019) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released theatrically by Greenwich Entertainment (Grammy Award, Best Music Film).

Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music (HBO Max, 2023) is a concert documentary in which MacArthur “genius” award-winning theater artist Taylor Mac reimagines U.S. history as an over-the-top queer-inflected counter-cultural musical extravaganza. 

Música! (2023, Telluride premiere) is about the potential of music and cross-cultural exchange to change lives. The film follows four outrageously gifted young students over the course of five years as they pursue their musical dreams at Cuba's premiere conservatory.

And they've written a book.

Friedman and Epstein and their long-time collaborator Sharon Wood co-authored The Art of Nonfiction Movie Making (Praeger Press, 2012), a how-to guide for students of documentary filmmaking, including case studies drawn from the team’s body of work.

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