By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Jeffrey Schwarz, who helmed Boulevard! A Hollywood Story, The Fabulous Allan Carr, Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine, Vito, Wrangler: Anatomy Of An Icon and Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story.
Just before Mardi Gras Weekend in Sydney, there couldn’t be a better entry in the Unsung Auteurs column than Jeffrey Schwarz, an under-celebrated gay producer/director who has not only crafted a series of exceptional documentary films on under-appreciated gay Hollywood figures, but who has also for many years worked in the field of DVD and Blu-ray bonus content creation.
For those film buffs who still enjoy, and even reminisce, about the heady days of physical media and the reams of added making-of material that accompanied their favourite movies when they were released on disc, filmmakers like Jeffrey Schwarz are essential, but wholly unheralded, figures. You know that excellent making-of doco on the DVD for The Silence Of The Lambs? Jeffrey Schwarz. The behind-the-scenes belter on The Howling? Jeffrey Schwarz. The track back through The Princess Bride? Jeffrey Schwarz.
Jeffrey Schwarz was born in New York City in 1969, and is a graduate of The SUNY Purchase Film Department. The aspiring director made a splash almost immediately via his fascinating senior thesis documentary Al Lewis In The Flesh, a short film profiling actor Al Lewis aka Grampa on the classic television series The Munsters. Far different from most thesis projects, the film takes audiences into a peculiar and very particular world, following Lewis as he interacts with fans at his New York restaurant, Grampa’s Bella Gente.
Schwarz’s entry into the film industry proper was even more auspicious, however, with the young aspiring filmmaker scoring a job in the editing department on 1996’s The Celluloid Closet, landmark filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s exceptional doco adaptation of Vito Russo’s seminal book about gay and lesbian representation in Hollywood. Schwarz’s involvement on such an important film about homosexuality and Hollywood is truly prescient considering his eventual directing career.
Schwarz’s work on The Celluloid Closet gave him a leg-up into the world of independent filmmaking, where he edited movies and trailers for low-budget, fringe directors like Gary Graver, Fred Olen Ray and David DeCoteau. In 1998, Schwarz was tapped to edit a documentary about the making of director Gus Van Sant’s much-debated remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Included on a DVD special edition release of Psycho, the making-of was Schwarz’s first foray into the then-near-nascent world of DVD bonus features, and it shifted his career in a surprising new direction.
As the DVD format boomed and became increasingly popular, the very savvy Schwarz capitalised on the need for bonus material and founded the Los Angeles-based production company, Automat Pictures. Along with a crew of skilled editors, producers and directors, Schwarz created content for over 100 major DVD and Blu-ray studio releases, and also expanded sideways into the production of electronic press kits for theatrical releases, along with original television programming. Nightmare On Elm Street, Footloose, Resident Evil, Raging Bull, After Hours, Philadelphia…all these (and many, many more) DVDs boasted high-quality bonus material produced by Jeffrey Schwarz.
“No matter what DVD you’re doing, it’s the studio’s product,” Schwarz told IGN of the wholly under-celebrated nature of creating DVD bonus content. “Our first priority is to elevate the studio’s product and to help them sell as many DVDs as they possibly can. That is our number one priority. It’s not about us, it’s really about MGM, or New Line or Sony, or whoever it may be. I’m under no illusions about that, but at the same time, I think there is a consistency to our work regardless of which studio we’re working for. The studios determine how much they want to spend on something, and I have to work within those parameters. I’d love to do a massive DVD on anything, but you just have to be realistic. You want to give consumers good product. I’m a fan, so the first thing that I think of is: what would I want to see, what would be cool, what do I want to see on this thing that would make people feel like they’re getting their money’s worth?”
With these kinds of strictures in mind, it was only natural that Schwarz would eventually move into non-client-based filmmaking, making his feature directorial debut in 2007 with the wonderfully entertaining Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, a tribute to the notorious independent film producer famed for his gimmicks and huckster-like zeal when it came to selling his movies. Utilising the skills he’d developed while making DVD bonus content, Schwarz was also able to really kick loose here, injecting the film with humour and a true sense of visual style. Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story is juiced by the undeniable enthusiasm and excitement of a fan, but also boasts the beats and compelling narrative of a true storyteller. And yes, Schwarz created the bonus content when the film came out on DVD!
Schwarz continued his tour through the less trodden reaches of the American movie scene with 2008’s Wrangler: Anatomy Of An Icon, which matched Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story for both entertainment and informational value. Schwarz’s storytelling gifts were again front and centre for the story of Jack Wrangler, a big, blonde, handsome, even Redford-esque, macho AF gay porn star of the 1970s who actually crossed over into hetero stroke flicks too. A truly unconventional figure (he would later retire from porn, take up teaching, and enter into a romantic relationship with a woman twenty years his senior), Jack Wrangler is brilliantly captured by Schwarz in this entertaining doco.
This time working for cable network HBO, Schwarz chose a far more serious subject for his 2011 documentary Vito, which tells the story of Vito Russo, one of the founding fathers of the gay liberation movement, an impassioned and highly vocal AIDS activist in the 1980s, and the author of the essential tome The Celluloid Closet, the film adaptation of which represented Schwarz’s move into documentary filmmaking. “He’s someone that I felt had been marginalized over the years and I wanted to reinvigorate his memory,” Schwarz told Movie Maker in 2013. “That’s the main motivation – helping to secure the legacy of people I feel have been neglected or unappreciated by the mainstream culture.”
Schwarz has stayed true to his mission statement through his subsequent films, all of which boast his trademark mix of entertainment and information, with a particular focus on gay figures in the entertainment industry. Schwarz crafted superb cinematic portraits of transvestite singer and performer Divine (2013’s I Am Divine), closeted gay Hollywood pin-up star Tab Hunter (2025’s Tab Hunter Confidential), flamboyant Grease and Can’t Stop The Music producer Allan Carr (2017’s The Fabulous Allan Carr), and little known gay songwriters Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley, who were hired to write a musical version of Sunset Boulevard (Boulevard! A Hollywood Story). In 2023, Schwarz tracked the Hollywood response to the AIDS crisis in his documentary Commitment To Life, arguably his most ambitious and expansive project to date.
A highly skilled and richly inventive documentary filmmaker, Jeffrey Schwarz is important not just as a successful gay director and producer but also for the gay-themed stories and figures that he so expertly and emotively documents. “I started making films to celebrate iconic, larger-than-life individuals with a great story to tell,” Schwarz told Movie Maker in 2013. “The people I choose to make movies about are all rebels and outsiders who created a finely-tuned persona that helped cover up any insecurities they may have had. People like horror movie maestro William Castle, ’70s porn icon Jack Wrangler and, of course, Divine fit into that category. I fall in love with these people, warts and all, and want to illustrate their journeys on film and take an audience for a ride.”
For more on Jeffrey Schwarz, click here.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs George Sidney, Philip Dunne, Zak Hilditch, Luke Sparke, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Morgan Matthews, Tom Laughlin, Diane Keaton, Ed Hunt, Nancy Savoca, Robert Vincent O’Neil, Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
