ALAN POUL - Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Producer/Director - Tokyo Vice - Six Feet Under - Tales of the City - My So-Called Life

What does learning another language and living in another culture do for your humanity and creative process?

Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.

"I was always a film and theater kid. I just was completely starstruck and only wanted to have some kind of contact with showbiz. I didn't really understand in what creative shape that would take. It was when I was trying to work in theater. Stephen Sondheim was a close friend and advisor for the period. I was trying to work in theater, and he really changed how I think about art. And then before I went to do Mishima, I spent 3 years working with Robert Wilson, the great international stage director. Bob is a complete genius, and I adore him. Just being an apprentice to him and being one of his many producers working on his big international projects was a hugely formative and nurturing experience. And then finally Schrader [was an important mentor] because Schrader just sort of said, 'Here, you're going to work in movies. Come with me.'"

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/

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