Rob Gardner
Leaping wide moats in a single bound

Gardner

Originally published in Current, March 12, 2001
By Stephanie Lash

The first time independent producer Rob Gardner's Washington, D.C. office was robbed, the thieves took his computer. He started to back up the files on another machine, and was promptly robbed again, losing the files one more time. So he backed them up again. It wasn't until the fifth robbery that Gardner got the message and decided to head out of town, relocating his offices to a run-down mansion in Baltimore.

That's an example of the tenacity that has earned Gardner the reputation as one of the strongest documentarians working in nonfiction TV. Gardner points to that quality when asked what has made him successful, and allowed him to direct projects in locales from Antarctica to Egypt and most points in between. The globetrotting producer's experience on his most recent project, a three-part series on the history of Islam slated for PBS release in May, is further evidence of his determination.

In shooting Islam: Empire of Faith, Gardner became the first American filmmaker allowed to work in Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979. He didn't intend to be the groundbreaker, and didn't even know he would be until the shipping company he was using to transport materials to Iran asked to see his export license — something he didn't even know he needed. Just days before he and his crew were scheduled to leave, Gardner had to extract a license from the Commerce Department — a process that could have dragged on forever. Thanks to a call to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Gardner was able to secure the license over a holiday weekend and still make his flight to Iran, marking the first time such a license had been given.

"My strength has to do with tenacity as much as talent," Gardner says. "I don't like to be stopped." The proof: once shooting for Islam began, he had to battle an earthquake in Turkey and went in for complicated heart bypass surgery in the middle of shooting.

Gardner delights in staging historical reenactments that add visual drama to his films. Working with a crew in a faraway land is one of the best things about his job, he said, and commanding large groups of people have helped earn him a host of honors, from an Academy Award nomination to three Emmys.

"A lot of documentary filmmakers are born of a low-impact tradition," says longtime friend and colleague Greg Diefenbach, v.p. of program development for Devillier Donegan Enterprises, which co-produced Islam and other series with Gardner Films. "Rob Gardner is anything but low impact. He's not in any way intimidated by logistics. He sees, more so than any producer I've seen, documentary production like a military campaign. . . . I think that in many ways, Rob's insistence on big production values has altered the landscape of documentary television."

To attain those production values, Gardner worked extensively in Iran, where one misstep or hint of a slight could have terminated the entire project. The crew arrived on the anniversary of the American hostage crisis, as demonstrators gathered in the streets, shouting "Death to America!" Gardner and his wife of 30 years, co-producer Char Gardner, were two of the handful of Americans among the 50 Iranians, hundreds of extras and a dozen camels working on the film. Iranian movie company Hedayat Films handled most of the logistics, with three translators serving as the go-betweens for communication. The 40-day shoot was supplemented with filming in Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Spain, Syria and Turkey.

"This Islam thing is the biggest thing I ever did, and it's the hardest thing I ever did," Gardner says.

This was not Gardner's first production with religion at its center. In 1986, he produced and directed his first project for PBS — The Courage to Care, an Oscar-nominated film about people who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. The next year, he made the half-hour The Triumph of Memory, a documentary about four European resistance fighters sent to Nazi occupation camps during the war. And in 1989, Gardner produced and directed the PBS special Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, a two-hour film based on the book by David Shipler. The film explored the relationship between Arabs and Jews living in Israel, and received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award. Sandy Heberer, senior director of news and information programming at PBS, said the film was a "wonderfully nuanced film about one of the toughest subjects" and calls it one of the best things the network has done on the Middle East.

Gardner insists that while he has a fascination with the desert, the projects have picked him, not the reverse. He says having success in one area defines you as a certain type of director, and for a while he was known as a Jewish producer, even though he's not Jewish. Gardner returned to the desert for Desert Warrior and Search for the Lost Ark (both National Geographic Explorer specials), and Egypt, Quest for Immortality, an Emmy-winning Time-Life Television production in the Lost Civilizations series. Jason Williams, the series producer of Lost Civilizations, says Gardner is one of a rare breed of directors who understands how the different components — lights, cameras, costumes, makeup, and so forth — come together for an effective shot.

"He really has a cinematic sensibility that translates into some of the best-looking reenactments that you'll see anywhere in the documentary form today," Williams says.

Gardner's success at cultivating talent does not come at the expense of healthy business outcomes. He tries to keep low overheads, and former co-workers delight in recounting his favorite mantra: "It's called 'location,' not 'vacation.'" Gardner is highly aware that he has a reputation of being "loud," but colleagues insist that his drive and enthusiasm, as well as his genuine care for the safety of his crew, make him an inspiring and effective director.

Diefenbach, who worked as Gardner's associate producer on Lost Empire of Tiawanaku, says he saw Gardner enjoy the role of field commander during a location shoot in Bolivia. The crew was filming a ritual for the farming gods of the pre-Incan civilization on an elaborate network of fields, separated by moats of water six or seven feet deep. When the wind shifted and smoke from the noisy festivities threatened to ruin the shot, Gardner sprung into action.

"Over the booming, Rob starts yelling and we move to another location because he can't see, and the whole scene was really playing to what he loves," Diefenbach says. "It was just like some weird battle scene, and I looked at Rob and he was loving it. He said 'I've gotta go in there,' and before I know it, Rob had stood up, unclipped his camera from his battery belt and was running to the edge of the moat, ready to leap across. He goes flying across the moat and lands in the dirt on the other side. And as he's waving me across, the smoke lifts and we can see that there's a little bridge across the moat just five feet to the left. I love that story because it's so Rob. He jumped because he was that passionate at that moment, and he'd do whatever it takes just to get that shot."

Gardner is currently working on a handful of projects, including a First Person Singular documentary on Elie Wiesel for PBS and Lives and Legacies Films. Gardner met the Holocaust survivor while directing Wiesel's narration for The Courage to Care, and said working closely on his profile has been "intellectually stimulating" and far different than his experiences on location. His film company is also shopping around a project on the Crusades and a film based on a book about the history of illegal drugs.

But he calls his experience working with PBS a "privilege," noting the artistic and creative freedom it allows. He grew up with the system, taking his first job as a cameraman at public TV station WNVT in Falls Church, Va. Gardner gained experience at a handful of other local stations, producing children's shows and directing, until at age 40 he was fired from a production and decided to start his own company. Working as an independent within the public TV system, Gardner lauds PBS but cautions others against working with the larger producing stations.

"I cannot say enough bad things about the [big] stations," Gardner says. "I think they're just terrible, from the point of view of an independent producer. My advice is to stay away from the big stations, and find a smaller station where they'll have a lower overhead and are less inclined to eat you alive."

Williams notes that Gardner has a keen eye for the business aspect of production and understands the importance of not wasting money, while he's quite supportive of co-workers. "He's an old curmudgeon at one level, quite happy to berate fools when they're being fools, but he's also extremely good at cultivating talent when that's what is really required," Williams says.

Diefenbach adds that Gardner's effectiveness at wearing both the "producer" and "director" hat simultaneously is a feat many documentarians are unable to achieve. And with a production shop that includes only him and his wife, Gardner plays the business role as well, comparing their business to a Korean grocery store, "where you live over the store, and mom and pop stock the shelves."

When Gardner fled the high rent and crime in Washington, D.C., he experienced culture shock in quiet Harper's Ferry, W.Va., and moved again to a "derelict" Baltimore mansion, complete with rooms for editing and storing cameras. The space also leaves Gardner plenty of room to store the clippings of the New York Times and the New Yorker that he collects as fuel for ideas. The Gardners read avidly and spent $7,000 on books last year.

Gardner likes to say that there are two types of directors. Some come out of writing and producing. Others, such as himself, approach filmmaking as a craft, working their way through the various technical disciplines. Gardner says he has a special place in his heart for those directors. Colleagues note that the combination of skill and artistic integrity is what makes Gardner a success.

"A successful documentary director is a very interesting marriage between art and vision and simply the pure, almost military-like ability to marshal resources and overcome obstacles in remote parts of the world," Diefenbach says. "He has the former ability, the artistic vision, and he absolutely loves the latter."

	.	To Current's home page
	.	Earlier news: PBS and Devillier Donegan cook up Empires umbrella series, which will include Gardner's take on Islam.
	.	Others profiled in the "Forces to Reckon with" section, March 2001: Daniel Schorr, Ruth Seymour, Mark Plotkin.

Web page posted March 28, 2001
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