As founding Executive Vice President and Executive Producer of
Outside Television, 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 primetime
Emmy Awards in 2004, the awards for Outstanding Sports Documentary and Outstanding Sports Cinematography.
Farther Than the Eye Can See, the film of blind climber
Erik Weihenmayer’s renowned ascent of
Mount Everest, won 18 international film festival awards. Altogether, there have been 223 film festival screenings of Guthman's films since 2002 and they have won 41 film festival awards.
Outside was the second major American magazine that Guthman brought to national television. In 1991, he created and produced the
Discover Magazine series at the
Walt Disney Company, based on
Discover magazine. He produced the
Discover Magazine TV series for two seasons on
The Disney Channel, and then, working with Disney President and CEO
Frank Wells, moved it 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. One of the other highlights of Guthman's leadership of Outside Television was the expedition and expedition film,
Into the Tsangpo Gorge, which he produced and 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 modern times.
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, by filmmaker Sean White, were honored by
Men’s Journal magazine as three of the
20 Top Adventure Films of All Time. His Outside Television production,
In the Shadow of the Condor won the 2001 Teddy Award for Best Conservation Film, named in honor of President
Theodore Roosevelt. His production
The Teachings of Moises Chavez was runner-up for the same award in 2002. He co-created and produced the
CableAce Award-nominated science 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. Guthman has directed 13 documentaries, including
Messner (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:
The Hudson Riverkeepers (1998) and
The Waterkeepers (2000). In 2008, on the tenth anniversary of
The Hudson Riverkeepers, Guthman re-edited the two films into one feature-length documentary under the title,
The Waterkeepers. It premiered at the
Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital and was released on
iTunes and
Amazon Video. He has written 15 documentaries and edited 12.
Churning the Sea of Time: A Journey Up the Mekong to Angkor, premiered at
Lincoln Center in April 2006. It was an official selection of the
Museum of Modern Art's "Directors Fortnight Expanded" in 2007 and was shown at the
Royal Geographical 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), features the handful of skiers worldwide who climb
Mount 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.
Skiing Everest was licensed by
ESPN in 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.
Skiing Everest (film) was converted from 2D to 3D in 2012 by Blue Hemisphere 3D. His 2011 documentary ''Saturn's Embrace'' 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, a feature-length documentary about
Norman Corwin, the legendary writer, producer and director during the Golden Age of Radio.
Corwin aired on
PBS, having been licensed by PBS stations
WNET in 1996 and then by
KCET in 1999. 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."
KCET in Los Angeles re-broadcast "Corwin" in October 2011 as a memorial tribute when Mr. Corwin died at the age of 101. 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 1989, Guthman brought the annual
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award ceremony to
PBS in a primetime broadcast hosted by
Tom Brokaw and featuring a human rights 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. Les Guthman's 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. One of its films,
Alambrista, won the
Camera d'Or award at the 1978
Cannes Film Festival. Michael Arlen, the television critic for
The New Yorker, wrote in his review of
Visions, "One might say that, halfway through its first year,
Visions is already the most interesting and original regular American dramatic program that can be found anywhere on American television."
Visions lasted four seasons, after which Les Guthman joined
Norman Lear’s Tandem Productions, where he produced and co-wrote two feature film projects that he had developed during the final year of
Visions. One was a collaboration with director
St. Clair Bourne and playwright
Ron Milner for a feature film about the civil rights era confrontation between young black voting rights activists and the
Ku Klux Klan in
Bogalusa, Louisiana. Guthman's other films are
Paragliding Across America (2001), the expedition of world-record-holding paraglider
Will Gadd to become the first to paraglide across the United States;
Marathon of the Sands (2000), the world's most grueling ultra-marathon competition in the Moroccan Sahara;
Eco-Sanctuary Belize (2001) and
Ten Adventures of a Lifetime (2004). ==XPLR Online==