DIRECTOR

Burt Kearns

Burt Kearns has been chronicling pop culture for thirty years in many diverse media. Back in the early Nineties, he was one of the most prominent and influential producers in tabloid television, running shows like A Current Affair and Hard Copy, with adventures that found him backstage at the Jerry Lewis Telethon, under a pile of security guards at Sammy Davis Jr.’s funeral, working a hidden camera at Princess Diana’s secret burial site-- and standing atop the Berlin Wall.  With a background as a newspaper editor and network television news producer, he had enough perspective on the genre to take that wild ride and turn it into a controversial 1999 memoir and mea culpa called Tabloid Baby.  By that time, he’d moved on to making documentary features and television series, showing his range by directing and producing Hollywood Animal Crusaders (starring John Travolta and Cher) for Animal Planet, while also producing and writing the notorious Fox Television special, When Good Pets Go Bad 2  (that’s “Two”), which featured video of Santa Claus being attacked by a reindeer. He’d explore many other issues after he was blacklisted for writing his book. He was co-producer of the HBO film, Panic, with Kim Basinger, producer of Boxing: A Different Look for Showtime; writer and producer of one-hour nonfiction Court TV specials like Mohammed Atta: Soldier of Terror and Sean Combs: Rapper Under Fire; and the nonfiction films Bin Laden’s Escape and Death of A Beatle.  It was during the Beatle production that he met Neil Innes and the idea for The Seventh Python was born.  Burt wrote and produced all the Frozen Pictures material with Brett Hudson.  He also directed Basketball Man.