Jay Curlee is a Hawaii-based filmmaker. He is the director of the musical documentary Rocking the Boat: A Musical Conversation and Journey,[1] a feature that includes interviews and performances by Delbert McClinton, Marcia Ball, Rodney Crowell, Stephen Bruton, Wayne Toups, Jimmy Hall, Paul Thorn, Jeffrey Steele and Teresa James. Sometime author, musician, sheriff and Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman also stars. In 2007, the film was selected by the 37th USA Film Festival, 27th Breckenridge Festival of Film, and the 16th Woods Hole Film Festival.
Curlee has been in the video production and film production business since 1975. He made more than 2000 commercials and hundreds of programs. In 1992 he completed work on the PBS series and tele course, "Growing Old in a New Age." This series was funded by the Annenberg/CPB Project. From 2000-2010, Curlee completed more than 150 settlement documentaries, which tell the stories of people who have been catastrophically injured.