Bill Guttentag

Teaching Statement

Bill Guttentag has been teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2001. He teaches classes on the entertainment industry to MBA Students.

Bio

Bill Guttentag is a double Oscar-winning dramatic and documentary film writer-producer-director. His films have premiered at the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride, and Tribeca film festivals. He directed Nanking (THINKFilm/Fortissimo), a theatrical documentary which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and featured Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway, and was shortlisted for an Oscar. He also directed Soundtrack for a Revolution (Wild Bunch) which had its international premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was also shortlisted for an Oscar.

He wrote and directed the dramatic features Knife Fight (IFC, 2013) starring Rob Lowe, Julie Bowen, and Carrie-Ann Moss;  and LIVE! (The Weinstein Company, 2008) starring Eva Mendes and Andre Braugher, and produced by Chuck Roven. Both films premiered at Tribeca.

Bill Guttentag won an Academy Award for the documentary Twin Towers (Universal, 2003). He has also 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 Sundance three times, Tribeca four times, and have 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 Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the White House.

His film Only the Dead See the End of War, premiered theatrically at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, and premiered on HBO in March 2016. He won an AACTA Award (Australian Academy Award) for best directing for a documentary, and a Walkley Award (Australian Pulitzer) for the film. The film received an Emmy Award nomination in 2017.

He 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, and was made in partnership with Anonymous Content. Over the series’ run, nearly every show was in the Nielsen top 20.

His novel Boulevard was published by Pegasus Books/W.W. Norton in 2011, and the French edition was published by Éditions Gallimard (2013), where it was finalist for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. He co-wrote Masters of Disaster – The Ten Commandments of Damage Control (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2012). He has also written nonfiction pieces, including for The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times.

He has directed commercials and other work for a number of Silicon Valley companies, including Google, Yahoo, and MasterClass.

Nanking won awards at a number of US and international film festivals (including Sundance and Hong Kong), and after its theatrical release, played on Cinemax. Guttentag won a Peabody Award and Emmy Award and was nominated for a WGA award for the film. Nanking’s international release included China, where it became the highest grossing theatrical documentary in Chinese history.

Soundtrack for a Revolution was distributed internationally by Wild Bunch, released theatrically in the US by Area 23a, and later aired on PBS. Guttentag was nominated for WGA and Producer’s Guild awards, and a Humanitas Prize for the film, which also won audience and other awards at US and international film festivals.

He has directed films for HBO, ABC, CBS, Turner, and others. His films include The Cocaine War, an ABC 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.

Bill Guttentag has been a lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business since 2001. He also teaches at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (Stanford d.school).

He has shown his films and given lectures at many US and international universities including: Yale; Harvard; the University of Pennsylvania; University of California, Berkeley; USC; Peking University; Fudan University; Kyoto University; the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts; and Freie Universität Berlin. Other screenings include The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; The Paley Center for Media; The Council on Foreign Relations; and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Academic Degrees

• John S. Knight Fellow, Stanford University, 1999
• Fellow, American Film Institute, 1980
• BA, University of Pennsylvania, 1979

Academic Appointments

• At Stanford University since 2001

Professional Experience

• Director, Only the Dead See the End of War, HBO, 2016
• Director and writer, Knife Fight, IFC, 2013
• Director and writer, LIVE!, The Weinstein Company, 2009
• Director, writer and producer, Soundtrack for a Revolution, PBS, 2009
• Director, writer and producer, Nanking, THINKFilm, 2007
• Executive producer and director, Law & Order: Crime & Punishment, NBC, 2002-2004
• Executive producer and director, Twin Towers, Universal, 2003
• Executive producer and director, Assassinated: The Last Days of Kennedy and King, Turner Original Programming/CNN, 1998
• Executive producer and director, The Cocaine War: Lost in Bolivia, ABC News/Peter Jennings Reporting, 1992
• Executive producer and director, documentary films made for HBO, ABC, CBS, and others

Awards and Honors

• Academy Award, Twin Towers, 2003
• Peabody Award, Nanking, 2008
• Emmy Award, Nanking, 2008
• Nomination, Writers Guild of America, Soundtrack for a Revolution, 2010
• Nomination, Producers Guild of America Award, Soundtrack for a Revolution, 2010
• Nomination, Writers Guild of America Award, Nanking, 2008
• Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1998
• Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, 1998
• Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1996
• Academy Award, You Don't Have To Die, 1988

Teaching

Degree Courses

2017-18

GSBGEN 564: The Entertainment Industry - An Intersection of Art and Commerce

In this seminar we will explore the intersection of art and commerce in the entertainment industry. We will look at creating films and television programs that are artistically meaningful and/or have the potential for commercial success. Films...

OB 388: Leadership in the Entertainment Industry

The entertainment industry is one of the largest and most important industries in the world. It is an industry characterized by tremendous opportunities and great uncertainties. The industry is currently undergoing tremendous change as new...

2016-17

GSBGEN 564: The Entertainment Industry - An Intersection of Art and Commerce

In this seminar we will explore the intersection of art and commerce in the entertainment industry. We will look at creating films and television programs that are artistically meaningful and/or have the potential for commercial success. Films...

OB 388: Leadership in the Entertainment Industry

The entertainment industry is one of the largest and most important industries in the world. It is an industry characterized by tremendous opportunities and great uncertainties. The industry is currently undergoing tremendous change as new...

In the Media

Political Plotlines in Liberal Doses

New York Times, July 23, 2011

"Nanking" Documentary Honors Foreign Heroes

San Francisco Chronicle, February 9, 2008

Nanking

New Yorker, 12 24, 2007

Giving Testimony on the Horror That Was Nanking

New York Times, 12 12, 2007

Twin Towers

New York Times, January 2003

Cameras in Camera

Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2003

Prime Time Crime

Newsweek, July 23, 2002

Just the Reality, Your Honor, and Nothing but the Reality

New York Times, July 16, 2002

Documentarian Makes His Case for Reality TV

San Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 2002

Insights by Stanford Business

videoWhy Hollywood and Silicon Valley Need Each Other

January 31, 2017

Sophisticated audiences want good stories and new ways to watch.

writtenCrisis Management: The Art of Damage Control

November 1, 2012

In a new book, Stanford GSB lecturers share political survival tactics in a 24/7 news cycle.