One of the most prolific documentary filmmakers of the past two decades, Nick Broomfield has explored such topics as urban blight, marriage counseling, unconventional sexual practices and the changing world of South Africa in over two dozen films. A graduate of Britain's National Film School, he first won notice with "Who Cares" (1978), a documentary on urban redevelopment in Liverpool which was eventually used by the British government in a reassessment of policy. Also that year, Broomfield exposed his more ribald side, with "Proud to Be British", a send-up of the British peerage. He again explored socio-political issues in "Behind the Rent Strike" (1979), an examination of life in a lower-class housing project that aired on the BBC. Broomfield first collaborated with producer-director Joan Churchill on "Juvenile Liaisons" (1975), a study of police work with youthful offenders that was also used as the basis of a British government study. (A decade later, in 1990, they revisited the same milieu in "Juvenile Liaisons II".) Working for Granada TV, Broomfield made "Whittingham" (1980) about life in a mental hospital, and "Fort Augustus" (1981), focusing on a monastery. He explored relationships with "Marriage Guidance" (1981) and in "Tattooed Tears" (1982) examined the California Youth Authority Prison in Chino. Broomfield received much publicity for a foray into sexual mores with "Chicken Ranch" (1984), a humorous and thought-provoking study of legal prostitution in Nevada. Co-directed with Sandi Sissel, it won the Grand Jury Prize as Best Documentary at the 1984 United States (Sundance) Film Festival.
Broomfield and Churchill found themselves embroiled in unwanted publicity in 1987 when Lily Tomlin sued them to block release of a documentary the pair had filmed about Tomlin's Broadway show "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe". Broomfield and Churchill were to have creative control of the project, begun in 1983. Tomlin and writer-director Jane Wagner requested changes after seeing a rough cut of the documentary. Despite making twenty cuts, the actress remained dissatisfied with the end result and demanded more changes. When Broomfield and Churchill refused, Tomlin and Wagner sued to block the film's release. (It was later concluded that Tomlin and Wagner feared the documentary would inhibit their ability to sell the film rights of the show.) After a Superior Court ruling in favor of the documentarians was handed down, "Lily Tomlin" was released in 1987.
Perhaps as a result of the difficulties with his last non-fiction film, Broomfield took a stab at feature filmmaking with "Dark Obsession/Diamond Skulls" (1989; released in the USA in 1991), a murky thriller starring Gabriel Byrne and Amanda Donohue that examined both class distinctions and fate and which failed at the box office. (Although Broomfield and Donohue became romantically involved.) The director fared somewhat better with his screen adaptation of Spalding Gray's monologue, "Monster in a Box" (1991), which detailed Gray's attempt at novel writing.
Returning to non-fiction, Broomfield won plaudits for what became termed "ambush journalism" with his "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer" (1992), a portrait of America's first female serial murderer, which won the British Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. As with many of Broomfield's films, it reached its widest audience when it aired on cable TV (Cinemax) in the USA. He was one of the first to tackle the saga of "Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam" (1995), which also aired on Cinemax. By now, the director had established a friendly, non-threatening, yet persistent, persona that established a love-hate relationship with the interview subjects, who, in turn, opened up in surprising ways. His "Fetishes: Mistresses and Domination at Pandora's Box" (HBO, 1996) profiled a New York S&M sex club. It garnered controversy when it was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival and when a re-edited version was released theatrically in 1997. Some found certain segments staged and unreal, while others praised its detached depiction of its subject matter.
More controversial was "Kurt & Courtney" (1998), a look at the lives of grunge rockers Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. The latter particularly comes of negatively in the documentary (which raises--and then rejects--the notion that Love may have hand in her husband's 1992 suicide). Scheduled to premiere at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary was pulled at the last minute after threats of legal action by Love, Cobain's estate, the BBC (which claims ownership as it is scheduled to air it in December) and EMI Music Publishing (over the rights to include two songs on the soundtrack). "Kurt & Courtney" received a hurried screening at the rival Slamdunk Film Festival where it met with a mixed critical reception. were raised.
Profession(s):
documentarian, producer, director, screenwriter, sound technician
Sometimes Credited As:
Nicholas Broomfield
