Les Guthman is an American film director and producer, who has the distinction of both having produced three of the 20 Top Adventure DVDs of All Time,[1] according to Men’s Journal magazine, and having won the National Academy of Science’s (U.S) nationwide competition to find the best new idea in science television. For the past three years, he has been extensively involved in 3D production and research, while making two feature documentaries, Skiing Everest and “Saturn’s Embrace,” along with building the XPLR Channel for webcasting adventure, expedition and environmental documentaries in partnership with SnagFilms.com.
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As founding Executive Vice President and Executive Producer of Outside Television,[2] Les Guthman produced 28 feature-length expedition, adventure and environmental documentaries, including Michael Brown’s Farther Than the Eye Can See, which was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 2004,[3] the awards for Best Sports Documentary and Best Sports Cinematography. Farther Than the Eye Can See,[4] the film of blind climber Erik Weihenmayer’s renowned ascent of Everest, won 18 international film festival awards.[5] Altogether, there have been 202 film festival screenings of Guthman’s films since 2002 and they have won 31 film festival awards.
Guthman produced Outside Television’s expedition and expedition film, Into the Tsangpo Gorge,[6] which he also co-wrote with director Scott Lindgren. The expedition achieved the epic first whitewater descent of the “Everest of rivers," through the 18,000-ft.-deep Tsangpo Gorge (Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon) in Tibet and was recognized by the Explorers Club as one of the most accomplished expeditions of recent times.[7] Into the Tsangpo Gorge aired on NBC Sports in May 2002.
Into the Tsangpo Gorge and Farther Than the Eye Can See, along with his production, Into the Thunder Dragon,[8] by filmmaker Sean White, were honored by Men’s Journal magazine in 2005 as three of the 20 Top Adventure DVDs of All Time.
His Outside Television production, In the Shadow of the Condor[9] won the 2001 Teddy Award[10] for Best Conservation Film, named in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt. His production The Teachings of Moises Chavez[11] was runner-up for the same award in 2002.
Guthman has also written, produced and directed 12 films, including Messner[12] (2002), the first documentary about Reinhold Messner, world’s greatest mountain climber, since Werner Herzog’s The Dark Glow of the Mountains in 1984. Messner was an Opening Night selection of the Mountainfilm in Telluride Festival in 2004. He also made two highly regarded environmental films with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The Hudson Riverkeepers[13][14] (1998) and The Waterkeepers[15] (2000). The two films have been re-edited and re-released on iTunes as one feature-length documentary under the title, The Waterkeepers, With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Churning the Sea of Time: A Journey Up the Mekong to Angkor, [16] premiered at Lincoln Center in April 2006. It was an official selection of the Museum of Modern Art's "Directors Fortnight Expanded"[17] in 2007 and was shown at the Royal Geographic Society in London, the Smithsonian in Washington, DC; and the Asia Society in New York, among other featured screenings.
Guthman's 2009 feature documentary, Skiing Everest (film), [18] features the handful of skiers worldwide who climb Mt. Everest and other 8,000-meter peaks alpine style (without using supplemental oxygen, or hiring porters and guides), and click into their skis. Filmed around the world, it includes skiers Mike Marolt, who was also director of photography, Steve Marolt, Hans Kammerlander, Chris Davenport, Laura Bokas, Mark Newcomb and Fredrik Ericsson.[19] Skiing Everest was sold to ESPN is July 2011 for broadcast in the United States and Europe. It debuted on ESPN Classic in November 2011 with six primetime broadcasts over the weekend of November 18-20.[20]
His 2011 documentary Saturn's Embrace [21] brings to the screen the Cassini-Huygens mission's exploration of Saturn and its moons through Cassini's unsurpassed photographs and radar images; and explores the stunning discovery of salt water, with its possibility of primitive life, on the moon Enceladus. The film features, and is written and co-produced by, Dr. Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini-Huygens digital imaging team, and includes commentary by evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins.
In 1996, Les Guthman made Corwin,[22] a feature-length documentary about Norman Corwin, the legendary writer, producer and director during the Golden Age of Radio. Corwin aired on PBS between 1996-99.[23] Actor Charles Laughton, in the early 1940s, is quoted in the film as saying, "There is no actor in Hollywood or on Broadway, who would not drop what he is doing to be in one of Norman Corwin's radio plays. We all look up to him as a writer of the highest caliber and one of the most important writers in America today."
In 1999, Guthman won the National Academy of Sciences nationwide competition to select the best new series concept in science television, which resulted in his film, Three Nights at the Keck, hosted by actor John Lithgow.
In 1991, he created and produced the Discover Magazine (TV series) television series at the Walt Disney Company, based on Discover Magazine. He produced Discover Magazine (TV series) for two seasons on The Disney Channel, and then, working with Disney President and CEO Frank Wells, moved the series to the Discovery Channel, where it became a signature series. At the same time, he developed an unproduced series with HBO based on a comedian’s view of science.
In 1989, Guthman brought the annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award ceremony to PBS in a primetime broadcast [24] hosted by Tom Brokaw and featuring a welcoming address by Sen. Ted Kennedy and a keynote speech by Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa. The ceremony honored the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall the same year. The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award was given to Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi, who was being protected inside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at the time of the broadcast.
Guthman also co-created and produced the CableAce Award-nominated series 21st Century, which included the last interview with Dr. Jonas Salk, discoverer of the polio vaccine. 21st Century was co-created and hosted by NPR and KCRW host Warren Olney.
His credits include almost a decade at NBC News in New York, where he was a producer and writer for Tom Brokaw, as well as senior political writer and Manager of Election Analysis.
He was Story Editor and Story Consultant on Visions, the Peabody Award-winning landmark PBS series, which commissioned 80 scripts and produced 40 feature-length independent films and television stage productions over four seasons at KCET in Los Angeles.[25] One of its films, Alambrista,[26] won the Camera d'Or award at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.[27] He was a producer and writer for Norman Lear’s Tandem Productions, where he developed two feature film projects.
Guthman's other films are Paragliding Across America (2001), [28] the expedition of world-record-holding paraglider Will Gadd to become the first to paraglide across the United States; Marathon of the Sands (2000),[29] the world’s most grueling ultra-marathon competition in the Moroccan Sahara; Eco-Sanctuary Belize (2001)[30] and Ten Adventures of a Lifetime (2004).[31]
In 2004, he created XPLR Productions, based in New York. XPLR Productions has partnered with Snagfilms to create the webcasting channel XPLR for environmental and adventure documentaries, including many of the films listed above. Selected XPLR-distributed films also stream on Hulu,[32] Roku, EPIX and Comcast Xfinity.
Guthman edited three books by three-time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad: The King and Us, Pro and Conrad and Paul Conrad: Drawing the Line.
He is a member of the Explorers Club[2] in New York and was head of the Explorers Club Film Festival in 2008.[33]
| Year | Film | Functioned as | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Producer | Writer | Editor | |||
| 1989 | The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award on PBS | Yes | ||||
| 1993 | The Ten Great Unanswered Questions of Science | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1995 | 21st Century: Jonas Salk | Yes | ||||
| 21st Century: Ed Stone | Yes | |||||
| 21st Century: Bran Ferren | Yes | |||||
| 1996 | Corwin | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Krakauer and Brokaw | Yes | |||||
| 1998 | The Hudson Riverkeepers | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Three Nights At the Keck | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Three Great American Adventures | Yes | |||||
| 1999 | The Bihac, Bosnia Kayak Club | Yes | ||||
| A Life of My Choice | Yes | |||||
| Marathon of the Sands | Yes | |||||
| Liquid Off the Throne of Shiva | Yes | |||||
| High Mountain Wilderness | Yes | |||||
| 2000 | The Waterkeepers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Marathon of the Sands 2000 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Rivers Into the Unknown | Yes | |||||
| Conquering the Turrialba Volcano | Yes | |||||
| Eco-Sanctuary Belize | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| 2001 | The Rain Forest Teachings of Moises Chavez | Yes | ||||
| On the White Nile: Trouble on the River That Roars | Yes | |||||
| Liquid Cubed: Spawning Grounds | Yes | |||||
| Paragliding Across America | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| 2002 | Into the Tsangpo Gorge | Yes | Yes | |||
| Messner | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Ice Challenger | Yes | |||||
| In the Shadow of the Condor | Yes | |||||
| Fire on Ice | Yes | |||||
| 2003 | Yunnan Great Rivers Expedition | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Farther Than the Eye Can See | Yes | |||||
| Into the Thunder Dragon | Yes | |||||
| Elements of Adrenaline (Burning Time) | Yes | |||||
| 2004 | Never Ending Thermal | Yes | ||||
| Ten Adventures of a Lifetime | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| 2006 | Churning the Sea of Time: A Journey Up the Mekong to Angkor | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2007 | Explore: China | Yes | ||||
| 2008 | The Wave 3D | Yes | ||||
| 2009 | Skiing Everest | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2010 | The Waterkeepers, With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2011 | Saturn’s Embrace | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |