Mel Lawrence was born and raised in
Brooklyn, New York. Lawrence attended
Lafayette High School and worked at Coney Island on the beach and at Ebbets Field, where he sold ice cream and soda and watched the Dodgers. In 1954, at age 18, he was drafted into the Army and served 2 years in the
82nd Airborne, after which he attended Long Island University on the GI Bill, graduating with a BS in speech pathology. In 1960 he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii to pursue a master's degree at the University of Hawaii, but soon left to work at
KPOI, the top rock radio station in the city, as the station's promotions director. In 1962, Lawrence became the Partner/Vice President of Arena Associates, Inc, a concert promotion company, where he produced over 50 major concerts in partnership with
KPOI over the next five years. In 1967, Lawrence became the Promotions director of
KFRC, in San Francisco, CA, where he co-created and co-produced The
Magic Mountain Music Festival and helped facilitate the
Monterey Pop Festival after the success of Magic Mountain Music Festival. The Magic Mountain and Monterey Pop festivals were the country's first pop festivals ever produced and two of the seminal moments of the “
Summer of Love.” Following the success of these festivals, Lawrence went on to co-produce the
Miami Pop Festival in 1968 and then became the Director of Operations for the historic
Woodstock Festival in 1969. In 1970 Lawrence moved to New Mexico, where he became the Director of Development for the
Wheelwright Museum of the Indian American, a museum dedicated to Native American art. He also continued to produce music festivals, including
Jamboree in the Hills, a country music festival in Wheeling, West Virginia, that became an annual festival that is still held today. In 1979 Lawrence turned his attention to documentary filmmaking when he became the Associate Producer of
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, a 1982 film directed by
Godfrey Reggio with music composed by
Philip Glass and cinematography by
Ron Fricke, which was presented by
Francis Ford Coppola, then worked with Island/Alive to market and promote the film. In 1984 he became a producer for the sequel film,
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation, traveling to 17 countries to scout locations and set up film crews. When the film was released he directed the film's marketing and distribution with the Santa Fe Institute for Regional Education (a non-profit production foundation). In 1989, Lawrence worked in Brazil as a line producer for
Ilé Aiyé, a PBS documentary about the
Candomble religion of Brazil's West African Yoruba immigrants directed by
David Byrne of Talking Heads and scouted locations in Brazil for the TBS documentary
Without Borders, which focused on the future of the Amazon. Following the success of this work, Lawrence went on to produce and direct a number of documentaries for HBO and TBS, including
The Amazon Warrior (1996), a film about the
Kayapo leader
Paiakan and his work to save the Brazilian rainforest by stopping the building of a dam that would have flooded the Amazon;
Biker Women (1996), about accomplished female motorcycle riders; and
Legends of the Bushmen (1997), about Namibia's indigenous people, the
Bushmen. Lawrence was also a partner at
Deep River Productions, and the company's vice president. Lawrence also executive produced
Soul in the Hole (1997), a documentary about Brooklyn street basketball that was released theatrically and won the
Independent Spirit: Truer Than Fiction Award. Lawrence's best-known film is
Paha Sapa: The Struggle for the Black Hills (1993), a documentary made for HBO that chronicles the 125-year land-claims conflict between the Lakota
Sioux Nation and the U.S. government by combining on-location footage, archival photos and first-person accounts. The film was nominated for an Emmy and Lawrence won Best Director by the American Indian Film Festival as well as a number of other awards in 1994. In 1997 Lawrence became Program Director for The Recovery Network, a start-up cable network designed specifically for addicts and their families and support community. Lawrence reprogrammed and produced over 100 hours of content for the network which was seen in over 15 million households in the U.S. In 1999, Lawrence directed special events for
Woodstock ’99, the music festival commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the original Woodstock Festival. From 2001 to 2003 he returned to his work on the
Qatsi Trilogy as a co-producer for
Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, the last film in the series, which was presented by
Steven Soderbergh and distributed by
Miramax. In 2004, he co-produced
Un Retrato de Diego, a documentary about Mexican artist
Diego Rivera made by his grandson. From 2008-2011 Lawrence worked as a story producer on several
Discovery Channel series, including
Iditarod, and the Emmy-winning
Deadliest Catch, and on NBC’s Shark U, and TruTV’s
Black Gold, and in 2012 he worked as the consulting producer of the film
Visitors, another film written and directed by
Godfrey Reggio and scored by
Philip Glass. When Lawrence died he was working on a number of documentaries, including a film about tequila (tentatively titled
The Ambassador of Tequila), a work chronicling the stories of multiple generations of a Chinese-American family known as
Bamboo Roots, and an update on the conflicts covered in his film
Paha Sapa. He is survived by his partner, the artist Nani Grenell and his beloved nephew Seth Lachs. == Music Festivals ==