Summary: I AM DIVINE filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz (VITO) is the guest on this special Filmwax Radio dispatch at the SxSW film festival. End track: "You Think You're A Man" from the album, The Essential Divine. Jeffrey Schwarz is President & CEO of Automat Pictures, a leading producer of studio EPKs (electronic press kit), Blu-ray and DVD content, original television programming, and documentary feature films. Since the company’s founding in 2000, he has produced content for major studio releases for directors such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Sam Mendes, Wes Craven, Rob Reiner, Joe Dante, Barry Sonnenfeld, Adam Shankman, Paul Verhoeven, John Carpenter, Chris Columbus, Sidney Lumet, and the Coen Brothers. Television productions include Starz’s Sex and the Cinema, In the Gutter, Hitchcocked! and Shooting the Police: Cops on Film, IFC’s Reservoir Dogs Revisited and Still Swingin’, and multiple episodes of HBO First Look. In 2010, Automat Pictures provided exclusive backstage content for the Academy Awards produced by Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic. In 2008, Jeffrey premiered the GayVN award winning feature documentary Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, a portrait of adult film star Jack Wrangler. It is distributed by TLA Releasing and had its television debut on the LOGO network. Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, about the legendary Hollywood showman, won the 2007 AFI Fest Documentary Audience Award among many other festival honors. It was released in 2009 by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and has aired on both Turner Classic Movies and The Documentary Channel. His latest documentary feature is HBO Documentary Films’ Vito, about the beloved gay activist and author of The Celluloid Closet. It premiered at the 2011 New York Film Festival, and made its television debut on HBO in July, 2012. He is currently in production on Tab Hunter Confidential, based on the 1950s screen heartthrob's New York Times bestseller. SYNOPSIS: Harris Glenn Milstead, aka DIVINE (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.
