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WORK TITLE: You Don’t Look Your Age
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 4/6/1939
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Nevins * http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0627521/ * https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/sheila-nevins-hbo-you-dont-look-your-age
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no 00003269
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no00003269
HEADING: Nevins, Sheila
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670 __ |a Southern justice, c1994: |b credits (Sheila Nevins, executive producer)
670 __ |a IMDb, January 17, 2016 |b (Sheila Nevins; producer, writer; born: Sheila J. Nevins April 6, 1939 in Manhattan, New York; President of Documentary and Family Programming for HBO and Cinemax. She earned a bachelor of the arts degree from Barnard College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University. Nevins produced documentaries before joining HBO in 1979. Nevins has overseen production of nearly 500 documentaries)
PERSONAL
Born April 6, 1939, in New York, NY; daughter of Stella and Benjamin Nevins; married Sidney Koch (an investment banker), 1972; children: David Koch.
EDUCATION:Barnard College, B.A., 1960; Yale University, M.F.A., 1963.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and producer. United States Information Agency, former actress; ABC News, former field producer, 1973; Time-Life Films, writer, 1973-75; Children’s Television Workshop, former writer and producer, 1975; Scribner, former audiobook recorder; National Educational Television, former researcher and associate producer; CBS, producer, 1978-79; HBO, director of documentary programming, 1979-82, vice president of documentary programming, 1986, senior vice president of original programming, 1995, executive vice president of original programming, 1999-2003, president of documentary and family programming, 2004—. Also founder and owner of Spinning Reels production, 1983-85.
AWARDS:Lifetime Achievement Award, International Documentary Association, 1998; inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, 2000; News and Documentary Emmy for Lifetime Achievement, 2005; Directors Guild of America citation, 2011; Woman of Achievement Award, Women’s Project Theater, 2013; Visionary Leadership Award, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, 2013. Documentaries and work produced under Nevins have garnered thirty-five News and Documentary Emmy Awards, forty-two Peabody Awards, and twenty-six Academy Awards.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Shiela Nevins has produced over 500 documentaries while working for HBO, and she is also the author of You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales. Nevins’s collection of personal essays was released when the author was already in her late seventies, and many section in the book comment on the challenges of aging. Nevins details her decision to get a face-lift and eye-lift in her late fifties, and she explains that her industry often put her in competition with young, beautiful women. While Nevins hoped the procedure would help her love her looks again, she found the opposite to be true. Instead, she became obsessed with every perceived flaw. Other essays in the book comment on Viagra, menopause, and even conversations overheard on a train. The author additionally offers reflections on her relationship with her chronically ill mother. M. Bijman offered an ambivalent assessment of Nevins’s efforts, remarking in her Seven Circumstances Website review that, “as a woman who has worked most of my life in male-dominated industries . . . some of what she [Nevins] wrote about the role of women in the workplace, and the glass ceiling, resonated with me. Advice to Women in a Male-Dominated Workplace and From Cosmo to Ms. were witty chapters, and I suppose, true to life.” Yet, Bijman went on to state: “Even so, this is not a light version of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In—or any other handbook for professional women, current or historical. It is the well-disguised, very select, very held-in thoughts and ideas of Sheila Nevins whose particular problem in her career has been that she is very beautiful and also extremely smart, educated and accomplished.”
Nevins, as her comments in a Vanity Fair Online interview with Elize Taylor might indicate, was purposefully aiming for “well-disguised,” and she explained: “I would call it a dark memoir, depending on what you think is me and what you think is not me. It’s a mystery. It’s a game. You have to figure out who all these women are. The only way you would know is to live with me, so you’d have to move in for how many years I have left . . . and follow my every move. Only I know the truth.” The author added that the essays in You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales are “based on the truth of my experiences, whether they’re my own or whether they’re someone else’s. I think, in fact, there is perhaps imagining, but there’s no real untruth.” Thus, as a Kirkus Reviews critic put it, Nevins offers “a miscellany of musings about aging, love, work, and wisdom.” The critic then advised: “As in many collections, some of the pieces are disposable, but the best ones are honest, opinionated, and spirited.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2017, review of review of You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales.
ONLINE
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (February 5, 2018), author profile.
Seven Circumstances, https://sevencircumstances.com/ (May 5, 2017), M. Bijman, review of You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales.
Vanity Fair Online, https://www.vanityfair.com/ (May 2, 2017), Elise Taylor, author interview.
Being an ‘Old Lady’ Role Model in Hollywood? Not Easy
By BROOKS BARNESMAY 5, 2017
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Sheila Nevins Credit Larry Busacca/Getty Images
LOS ANGELES — My first encounter with Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, was in 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival. Her greeting involved an unprintable rant about thin motel walls and oversexed festivalgoers. I won’t lie: It knocked the wind out of me.
“I don’t talk like that anymore,” she said last week in her signature rasp. “I’m trying to get into heaven. I’m a sweet little old lady now.”
What a pity that would be. Ms. Nevins, 78, stands out for her track record — she has overseen more than 1,000 documentaries over four decades, personally winning 31 Emmys in the process — but she also is that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a plain-spoken executive.
For the first time, Ms. Nevins has turned her gaze inward. On Tuesday, Flatiron Books published “You Don’t Look Your Age … And Other Fairy Tales.” It’s a collection of short stories, essays and poems that sketch her life story and reflect on what it’s like to be a female executive in show business, in particular an older one.
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She does not discuss her films. (“What am I going to say, ‘We used this lens here and that one there?’’’ she told me. “Boring!”) But she does write about her childhood, the cosmetic indignities of aging and the travails of motherhood, including accidentally ripping the tail off her son’s hamster and subsequent Neosporin applications to its “anal cavity” with a Q-tip.
Below is a condensed version of my conversation with her about the book.
How often does your lack of a filter get you into trouble?
SHEILA NEVINS Very often. A boss once said to me, “Do you ever have an unexpressed thought?” Probably not. But there was a point in my career when I did have to learn to lean back. My candor now depends on who is in the room. How high up the ladder those men are.
Men. Interesting. I think your frankness makes the book. I’m not sure I needed to know the details of your gallstone removal, though.
NEVINS The hospital gave them to me afterward, and I brought them to the office in a little cup. I made people guess what they were. No one got it right. (Howl of laughter.) I think I might not be normal. Do you want them? I still have them somewhere.
Photo
I think I’ll pass.
NEVINS I think you are really rude.
You write that you felt it was necessary at HBO to hide your age. Really?
NEVINS Oh, so true. Older women are terrified they will be disregarded or discounted. Older men get to be called “distinguished.” There is no equivalent word for women. Nobody wants to listen to an old broad.
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How do you know?
NEVINS I work in media! All people talk about is wanting a young audience — young, young, young — and you read the writing on the wall. It’s not like you pipe up in a meeting and say, “Actually, older brains can think smart and young too.” You go and get Botox.
Why are you talking about your age now?
NEVINS It’s time to be old out loud. I’m trying to own it. I’m trying to be a role model. There aren’t many old lady role models. But it’s not easy. In fact, even saying that I start to feel a little weepy. I don’t seem to be able to embrace being in my late 70s. I just can’t tolerate it on some level.
Toward the end of the book you have a punch-in-the-gut line: “I’m angry that it’s almost over, just when I understand I’ve just begun.” Was that hard to confront?
NEVINS It was much harder to write about my son, who has Tourette’s, although he told me I could. The next hardest was the story about my mother. I really didn’t want to go back there. In fact, that was the one I almost didn’t write. And that one — that one! — was the one Meryl Streep most connected with and wanted to read for the audiobook. What a dope I am.
Audio
Play
'The Wrong Kind of Hot' 3:19
Meryl Streep reads from an essay by Sheila Nevins. Macmillan Audio
You got an incredible group of celebrities to read chapters — Kathy Bates, Martha Stewart, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lily Tomlin, RuPaul. How did you manage that?
NEVINS And I didn’t pay anyone. Hah! I don’t really know how I did it. It’s impossible to think that Meryl Streep might agree to read your story. So you don’t think. You just do. With her, I knew someone who has an office next to hers, and we got it to her assistant. Suddenly I’m opening a letter from Meryl Streep saying she wants to do it. I almost passed out.
You know you’re one of the true originals, right?
NEVINS No, I don’t. I don’t like that. I think you pay an enormous price for being “an original.” I think I’m empathetic. I catch rising stars. I catch falling stars.
I don’t know what that means.
NEVINS It’s not my fault you’re not smart enough to figure it out.
A version of this article appears in print on May 14, 2017, on Page ST10 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘It’s Time to Be Old Out Loud’. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Documentary Filmmaker On The Personal Essays In 'You Don't Look Your Age'
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April 29, 20177:57 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
NPR's Scott Simon talks with award-winning documentary filmmaker Sheila Nevins about her new book, You Don't Look Your Age...And Other Fairy Tales.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Sheila Nevins has spent a long career making documentary films, hiding behind the people in documentaries, as she puts it. She's the president of HBO Documentary Films and has won over 65 Primetime Emmy Awards and 26 Academy Awards for being part of the production teams of films that include "Baghdad ER," "Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib" and "When The Levees Broke." Now Sheila Nevins has written a book of personal essays that include anecdotes and ruminations on age, death, success, strain, overeating, plastic surgery, insufferable houseguests, insomnia and the aching loss of a beloved pet. Or are the essays personal? Sheila Nevins' book - "You Don't Look Your Age And Other Fairy Tales." She joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
SHEILA NEVINS: My pleasure.
SIMON: And is this you you're writing about?
NEVINS: That's for you to tell me.
SIMON: Oh, come on now.
(LAUGHTER)
NEVINS: Well, you know what...
SIMON: I'm in no position to say that. Yeah?
NEVINS: I would say it's a sly memoir, S-L-Y.
SIMON: Oh, OK. All right. Well, why keep out the I?
NEVINS: It's easier.
SIMON: You see yourself differently?
NEVINS: No, I think it's easier when you hide behind somebody else if that is what you're doing.
SIMON: Yeah.
NEVINS: I think it's more fun to let that person go all the way in the way that you might not if it was an I story, whereas if it's somebody else, you're not protecting anybody. It's slightly imaginary. Can't you be slightly imaginary? Do you have - always have to be true true?
SIMON: No. No, certainly not. No. I mean, not in a literary work, no.
NEVINS: OK.
SIMON: But it does help me phrase the questions. I mean - and you know about that, right?
NEVINS: Yes, I do know about questions.
SIMON: Because it's the difference between, you know, being able to ask, are you the person you write about in the facelift story or is it a friend or someone else?
NEVINS: Well, if it's about me, I say me. The doctor refers to me as Sheila. If it's about a Melissa, the person in the story will refer to that person as Melissa. So when it's me it's very upfront. So I'm pretty honest to the me stories and I'm somewhat camouflaged in the Melissa-type stories.
SIMON: Well, let me ask about the facelift story, all right?
NEVINS: Sure.
SIMON: A gentleman doesn't ask a woman - or a man, for that matter - if they've had one. But what does the woman in this story discover about cosmetic surgery?
NEVINS: She discovers, fortunately and unfortunately, that being in media it may be a necessity. And it may be one of the sad parts of wanting to be young forever, which is impossible, but which has created a business of lifting and poking and fixing. I can see two sides of it. I am the woman in that story. I did have a facelift. I am vain and somewhat superficial. But I'm also complex and deep and wide. But I fall for it. I fall for that young crap. And I'm guilty and I'm innocent in the sense that I want to stay afloat. It's hard to float with a walker.
SIMON: (Laughter).
NEVINS: Well, maybe they have walkers that float.
SIMON: I was about to say, I think they - I think they do now.
NEVINS: They - I think they have to. We're getting older and older.
SIMON: Yeah. How have you gotten people over the years to open their lives to you?
NEVINS: I'm interested in their answers. I'm truly interested in people. I'm interested in people, regular people, all people, not necessarily famous or the elite. I have this peculiar fascination with how people survive in this world, all kinds of people.
SIMON: You have had a lot to do with very admirable people. And you've also told the stories of people that are hard to like, much less admire. Do you make adjustments or bring the same kind of respect?
NEVINS: Good question. I don't think I do that many horrible people. I mean, I did have a - we did do many shows with the Iceman who had killed so many people. He was a hired killer for the Mafia. We did something called "The Iceman Stories (ph)" I had a peculiar, interesting relationship with Richard Kuklinski. I only met him once. But I wanted to know what made him work or tick.
SIMON: This was the killer. This was the assassin.
NEVINS: Yeah. I only met him once at Trenton State. And it was terrifying because he was, like, 6-foot-5 and he weighed about 350 pounds. And he was in isolation because he was such a terrifying - and I went with a producer named Gabby (ph) who's no longer alive. But we were terrified. I mean, the smell of a prison is unlike anything. You know, and then they brought out the Iceman, and he was chained, you know, hands and feet and all that kind of stuff. He was so elegant to us. He was the only one who offered us coffee and water and thought it might be too hot there for us. I mean, it was so peculiar. I mean, evil and good, they're like flip, you know?
SIMON: Yeah.
NEVINS: And then I've done good. But, I mean, did I love Richard Kuklinski? Did I want to spend time with him? No. Was he interesting? Yes.
SIMON: Yeah.
NEVINS: Yes, like ISIS is interesting, like horror and evil and terror is interesting. Where does it come from? We're all - I mean, ask Darwin. We all evolved into this thing called human, and yet some of us are completely inhuman. It just interests me. I can't figure it out. I don't know where we came from. I don't know where we're - well, I know I came from a fish, but I don't really know where I'm going. Do you know where you're going? I don't believe in heaven or hell. So...
SIMON: No. I know what I tell myself, but do I know that for sure?
NEVINS: What do you tell - what do you say?
SIMON: Oh, I - you know, I believe in a heaven and I'll be reunited...
NEVINS: You think that?
SIMON: I'll be reunited with my parents and with my lost sister and with, you know, every pet I've ever had and loved. And I'll be up there waiting for my wife and children. Is that for real? Of course not. But that's what I tell myself to get through the day.
NEVINS: OK. So my interest in people is how they get through the day with their evil and with their good. It's a terrifying thing to be alive and human and not know why you're here, who put you here, don't you think?
SIMON: Well, I sure feel that way now (laughter). I was OK a few minutes ago (laughter).
NEVINS: I didn't mean to scare you. But come on, you've got to face it.
SIMON: Yeah.
NEVINS: This is a terrifying thing. It's a terrifying thing to be alive. I don't understand life. So I wrote all these stories. So what can I tell you?
SIMON: Toward the end, you've got a story about a woman who discovers her eyesight is flagging with age, but she decides it actually might improve what she can see. That's happened?
NEVINS: I want it to happen. I hope she coaxes me to let it happen and she sees for the first time, because she can't see it close up, she can see the forest for the trees. She can see the universe. She can see the sky and the stars. And so I'm looking for her. I'm really trying to find value and meaning and beauty and the universe.
SIMON: Well, let us know (laughter).
NEVINS: I'll call you, OK?
SIMON: Please, email, whatever. I'd like to find the universe. Sheila Nevins, the distinguished producer and filmmaker. Her book, "You Don't Look Your Age And Other Fairy Tales." Thanks so much for being with us.
NEVINS: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
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Sheila Nevins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sheila Nevins
Sheila Nevins Headshot 2016-Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe.jpg
Nevins in 2014
Born April 6, 1939 (age 78)
Manhattan, New York
Nationality American
Occupation Television producer, documentary filmmaker, author
Known for President of HBO Documentary Films
Spouse(s) Sidney Koch (married 1972)
Children 1
Awards 32 Primetime Emmy Awards
Sheila Nevins (born April 6, 1939) is an American television producer and the President of HBO Documentary Films. She has produced over one thousand documentary films for HBO and is one of the most influential people in documentary filmmaking.[1] She has worked on productions that have been recognized with 35 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, 42 Peabody Awards, and 26 Academy Awards. Nevins has won 32 individual Primetime Emmy Awards, more than any other person.[2][3][4]
Contents [hide]
1 Life and career
2 Accolades
2.1 Primetime Emmy Awards
2.2 Peabody Awards
2.3 Gotham Awards
2.4 Cable Ace Awards
3 Personal life
4 References
5 External links
Life and career[edit]
Nevins was born to a Jewish family[5] on April 6, 1939 in Manhattan, New York to Stella, a chemist, and Benjamin Nevins, a Russian immigrant post office worker and bookmaker. Her mother suffered from Raynaud's disease and scleroderma. Her uncle was a wealthy inventor and helped pay for her schooling.[6] She didn't have a television growing up until she was in high school. She attended Little Red School House and the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. She received a BA in English from Barnard College in 1960. In 1963 she received an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.[7] She married a Yale lawyer in the 1960s. Though she wanted to pursue a theater career, her husband wanted her to be home evenings and weekends, forcing her to find a daytime job.
Nevins began her career at the United States Information Agency as an actress in Adventures in English. In 1975 she began working as a writer and producer for the Children's Television Workshop. She also worked at Scribner making recordings of books for blind people. Nevins was a researcher then associate producer for The Great American Dream Machine on National Educational Television. She worked under Alvin H. Perlmutter from 1971 to 1973 and did "man on the street" interviews. Inspired by the film Salesman, she hired Albert and David Maysles to direct parts of the show.[6] Nevins was a Field Producer for The Reasoner Report on ABC News in 1973. She wrote for Time-Life Films from 1973 to 1975 and worked briefly for 20/20. Nevins was a producer for the CBS news magazine Who's Who in 1978 and 1979. Nevins declined Don Hewitt's invitation to be a producer for 60 Minutes.
In 1979, Nevins was hired by HBO as Director of Documentary Programming on a 13-week contract.[7] She continued in that position until 1982.
From 1983 to 1985, Nevins had a production company called Spinning Reels and created the animated educational program Braingames.[6]
In 1986, Nevins returned to HBO as Vice President of Documentary Programming. In 1995, she became the Senior Vice President of Original Programming. Nevin's tenure at HBO saw the rise of sexually-themed programming in the America Undercover documentary series.[8]
In 2000, Nevins was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame. She was the Executive Vice President of Original Programming from 1999 to 2003. She has been HBO's President of Documentary and Family Programming since 2004.
In 2007, Nevins wrote the introduction for the book Addiction: Why Can't They Just Stop?[9]
In 2011, Nevins was honored by the Directors Guild of America for her "unwavering commitment to documentary filmmakers and the advancement of the documentary genre."[10]
In 2013, Nevins received the Woman of Achievement Award from the Women's Project Theater.[11] and a Visionary Leadership Award from the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
Accolades[edit]
Primetime Emmy Awards[edit]
1993: Outstanding Children's Program for "Beethoven Lives Upstairs"
1995: Outstanding Informational Special for One Survivor Remembers
1995: Outstanding Informational Special for Taxicab Confessions
1995: Outstanding Children's Program for Going, Going, Almost Gone! Animals in Danger
1997: Outstanding Informational Special for Without Pity: A Film About Abilities
1997: Outstanding Children's Program for How Do You Spell God?
1999: Outstanding Nonfiction Special for Thug Life in D.C.
2000: Outstanding Nonfiction Special for Children in War
2000: Outstanding Children's Program for Goodnight Moon & Other Sleepytime Tales
2003: Outstanding Children's Program for Through a Child's Eyes: September 11, 2001
2004: Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special for Elaine Stritch at Liberty
2004: Outstanding Children's Program for Happy to Be Nappy and Other Stories of Me
2005: Lifetime Achievement Award
2005: Outstanding Children's Program for Classical Baby
2005: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for Death in Gaza
2006: Outstanding Children's Program for I Have Tourette's but Tourette's Doesn't Have Me
2006: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for Baghdad ER
2007: Outstanding Nonfiction Special for Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
2007: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
2008: Outstanding Children's Program for Classical Baby (I'm Grown Up Now): The Poetry Show
2008: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
2009: Governor's Award for the Creative Arts Emmy Awards
2009: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for The Alzheimer's Project: The Memory Loss Tapes
2009: Outstanding Children's Nonfiction Program for The Alzheimer's Project: Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? with Maria Shriver
2010: Outstanding Nonfiction Special for Teddy: In His Own Words
2011: Outstanding Children's Program for A Child's Garden of Poetry
2013: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special for Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden
2013: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
2014: Outstanding Children's Program for One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp
2014: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for Life According to Sam
2015: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series for The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
2015: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special for Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
2015: Outstanding Picture Editing For Nonfiction Programming for The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
2016: Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking for Jim: The James Foley Story
Peabody Awards[edit]
1999: Peabody Award – Personal Award[12]
2006: Peabody Award for Baghdad ER[13]
2013: Peabody Award for Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God[14] and for Life According to Sam[15]
Gotham Awards[edit]
2008: Tribute Award (shared with Penélope Cruz, Melvin Van Peebles, and Gus Van Sant)
Cable Ace Awards[edit]
1995: Documentary Special for "Gang War: Bangin' In Little Rock"
1997: Documentary Special for "Heart of a Child"
Personal life[edit]
Nevins married investment banker Sidney Koch in 1972. The pair have a home in Litchfield, Connecticut and an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They have one son, David Koch (born 1980). Nevins has a younger sister (born 1946) who is a doctor. Nevins enjoys theater and is an admirer of Gloria Steinem, who she has deemed "next to my mother, the most important woman I’ve ever met."[16]
Sheila Nevins
Biography
Showing all 11 items
Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (4) | Personal Quotes (3)
Overview (2)
Born April 6, 1939 in Manhattan, New York, USA
Birth Name Sheila J. Nevins
Mini Bio (1)
Nevins is President of Documentary and Family Programming for HBO and Cinemax. She earned a bachelor of the arts degree from Barnard College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University. Nevins produced documentaries before joining HBO in 1979. Nevins has overseen production of nearly 500 documentaries, earning eleven Oscars, 31 Primetime Emmys, 19 Academy Awards, 22 News and Documentary Emmys and 18 George Foster Peabody awards for HBO and one personal George Foster Peabody award. She also received a 2005 News and Documentary Emmy for Lifetime Achievement. She received the 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association. Nevins was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame in 2000. She began her career with the United States Information Service in Washington, DC, which produced and distributed documentary programs around the world. Nevins was a producer for National Education Television's Great Dream Machine, a field producer for an ABC television documentary unit, a writer for Time-Life Films, a producer-writer for the Children's Television Workshop, a producer for CBS-TV's Who's Who program, and president of Spinning Reels, a production company. She joined HBO in 1979 as director of documentary programming. Nevins was named executive vice president, original programming, for HBO and Cinemax in 1999 and President of Documentary and Family in 2005.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
HBO Vet Sheila Nevins Won’t Tell Nothing But the Truth
The woman who greenlit The Jinx and Going Clear is telling her own story, with a few minor tweaks.
by ELISE TAYLOR
MAY 2, 2017 3:07 PM
Sheila-Nevins
By Desiree Navarro/WireImage (Nevins), from Flatiron Books (Cover).
As president of HBO Documentary Films, Sheila Nevins has greenlit more than three decades worth of movies, including The Jinx and Going Clear. She’s masterminded the technique of telling other people’s truths—but this May, with her new collection of personal essays You Don’t Look Your Age and Other Fairy Tales, the 65-time Emmy Award winner finally decides to tell her own.
Unburdened by the restraints of facts and figures, Nevins plays with the traditional definition of truth by writing a book that, she says, is “based on the truth of my experiences, whether they’re my own or whether they’re someone else’s . . . but in fact, they’re fact.” Translation: the book is part her story, and part the story of her female comrades (whom she writes about pseudonymously). The result is not only a colorful portrait but a social critique of women, aging, aging women, and Nevins herself.
Ahead of the publication of You Don’t Look Your Age, Nevins sat down to talk about Robert Durst, wunder-oldies, and the thin line between getting a face-lift and going through a windshield.
VF.com: I just finished your book last night, so it’s fresh in my mind.
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Sheila Nevins: Oh, good. You’re one of the few reporters that read the whole book.
I always read the whole book.
I know, because you’re a girl person. Girl persons do a better job than boy persons.
Someone actually described this book to me as your memoir—but I don’t really think that’s true. There are chapters about your life—but then there’s these other stories about these other [anonymous or pseudonymous] women. Like Melissa Van Holdenvas, who sleeps with her boss, Mr. Pennybroth, to get ahead. Or Trudy Foodie, who struggles with being overweight. So I wouldn’t quite call it a memoir . . .
I would call it a dark memoir, depending on what you think is me and what you think is not me. It’s a mystery. It’s a game. You have to figure out who all these women are. The only way you would know is to live with me, so you’d have to move in for how many years I have left . . . and follow my every move. Only I know the truth.
These stories, about other women, are they based on your own experiences? Or are they more fictionalized stories that represent an idea?
They’re based on the truth of my experiences, whether they’re my own or whether they’re someone else’s. I think, in fact, there is perhaps imagining, but there’s no real untruth.
Where they go with the facts may be slightly different. But in fact, they’re fact. Isn’t that weird? That’s like talking out of two sides of your mouth at the same time.
For instance, take Melissa Van Holdenvas. I never met anybody named Melissa Van Holdenvas, and I never met a Mr. Pennybroth. But I have met Melissa Van Holdenvases and I have met Mr. Pennybroths. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does.
There’s sort of a dichotomy invention and experience. It’s nothing that Melissa Van Holdenvas wouldn’t have done had she been a real person, and it’s nothing that Mr. Pennybroth wouldn’t have done if he had been a real person. Yet at the same time, they are real.
You think maybe I’m bipolar, or insane, or schizophrenic?
I’ve read books like yours. They are more like a series of vignettes.
I think that’s accurate. They’re almost playlets, like actors playing parts.
Your work on documentaries for HBO focuses so much on finding the truth and telling a true story, and your story is a “true story” in a way, but it’s not exactly based on solid facts.
It’s like having a box of Crayolas with, like, 12 colors. For 30 years of your life, you color with those colors. But then there’s the after hours when you really want to color with more Crayolas, so you fill the box with more colors. I’ve been trapped by truth for so long—or should I say, I’ve enjoyed truth for so long—that I thought I’d play with it a little bit. My own, and other people's. Someone has the right to do that, right?
Why not?
I might be insane. I might be actually totally insane.
You write a lot about motherhood and women late in life. Why did you decide to shine a spotlight on those parts of life, and not say, childhood?
I don’t know why some stories never came to the forefront. The ones that came to the forefront were the ones I wasn’t able to shake. The sick kid you never shake. The sick mother you never shake. And you never shake the face-lift.
I met somebody this weekend who had staples in their forehead, and I looked at them, and I said “Are you O.K.?” You know, because I thought they had a terrible automobile accident. And she said, "No, I had a forehead lift." And I thought, there’s a very thin line between going through a windshield and having a forehead lift. I’m capable of both.
Of these stories you couldn’t shake—which one was the hardest to write about?
Probably the one about my son. I told him I was going to write it . . . and then I read him the completed story. He was quite unfazed. I thought it was going to be one of those dramatic Eugene O’Neil experiences, but it wasn’t.
I also read the story of my old boyfriend, to my old boyfriend.
What did the old boyfriend think?
He said it was true.
When I picked up your book, I thought it’d be a lot about your career—you’ve won so many Peabodys and Emmys and received much critical acclaim. But there was not a lot about that.
I know, isn’t it odd? I don’t find writing about my career interesting. People imagining things are more interesting to me. What am I going to write about my career?
I was kind of expecting a Robert Durst tell-all.
Well, maybe I thought that was better told by him himself in the actual documentary. Everything happens in its own form of expression. What I felt about him, who cares? You don’t ask someone to tell how they painted a picture. The picture is the telling.
Is there anything you want people to take away from your book?
No. I don’t have any lofty ambitions. It was a woman advanced in years who thought she left a lot of things on the table, and she thought, you know what, why not? I don’t care whether it sells. I didn’t want to leave any dessert. I wanted to devour it. This is the dessert. And there might be another one. I’m not dead yet.
The “I’m not dead yet . . .” that reminds me of this recent article in The New York Times about the 94-year-old scientist, who may have invented a cheap, eco-friendly car battery. Did you read it?
Did I read it? I read it twice! I love him! He was 94, and he’s invented something that’s millennial and X-generation appropriate. I think it’s time for the whole aging thing . . . I don’t know the percentage of people that lose it [during old age], but I certainly hang out with the people who haven’t. I may not know where my glasses are, but I think clearly about what’s wrong and what’s honest and what’s right.
And in society, we so often focus on wunderkinds.
How about wunder-oldies? I’ll be a wunder-oldie. I don’t mind. I think coming out old, you know I’ve moved on. I’ve tried to find the domain. I looked for the domain “coming out old,” and I took it. It was free!
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Nevins, Sheila: YOU DON'T LOOK YOUR
AGE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Nevins, Sheila YOU DON'T LOOK YOUR AGE Flatiron Books (Adult Nonfiction) $24.99 5, 2 ISBN:
978-1-250-11130-2
A miscellany of musings about aging, love, work, and wisdom.Nevins (b. 1939), an acclaimed producer of
TV documentaries who has won numerous Emmy, Peabody, and other awards, makes her literary debut
with a collection of essays, poetry, and stories, often entertaining and, as she admits, "sometimes silly."
Frequently, her theme is the assault of aging, beginning with her decision to get a face- and eye-lift, at the
age of 56. At the surgeon's office, examining her face in a magnifying mirror, she was horrified: "I saw a
wrinkled, witchlike, scrunched up, squashed face," she recalls. Working in media, she believed she had to
hide her age. "Nobody wanted advice from an old broad," she writes. Her surgery, though, intensified her
obsession with her looks. "I heard a metronome ticking in my head" that made her focus on every wrinkle,
rushing to her dermatologist for every "new fix." Nevins also spent huge amounts of money on her teeth.
She wishes she could face aging gracefully, but being surrounded by pretty, bright, and slender young
women makes her angry. Besides aging, dieting, Viagra, and menopause, the author records a conversation
overheard on a train between two women, one of whom, it turns out, was having an affair with the other's
husband. "I wished John Updike was around to hear them," Nevins remarks. Other pieces focus on family:
her demanding, impatient mother, who had a form of Reynaud's disease so severe that her forearm needed
to be amputated; and her son, who slowly developed Tourette's syndrome when he was 3. "Tourette's,"
Nevins writes, "would crush and stomp on all dreams of normalcy." Nevins reflects candidly about her
encounter with the anti-Semitic mother of a college boyfriend. "This mother deemed me unworthy," she
writes, but that woman became her "mentor" as she earned accolades and awards. "Every yes to me was a
slap in her face." As in many collections, some of the pieces are disposable, but the best ones are honest,
opinionated, and spirited.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Nevins, Sheila: YOU DON'T LOOK YOUR AGE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A485105325/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=430d97bc.
Accessed 14 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105325
Not much of a mirror – You Don’t Look Your Age, by Sheila Nevins
BY M.BIJMAN
MAY 5, 2017
You Don’t Look Your Age…and Other Fairy Tales, by Sheila Nevins. (Hardcover, publisher: Flatiron Books, a division of US Macmillan Publishers, New York, US, 2 May 2017, 255 pages. ebook: Flatiron Books, 250 pp.)
Update: On Dec. 18, 2017, the New York Times reported that Sheila Nevins is exiting HBO after 38 years. The publication of her biography was therefore well-timed, positioning her – as with many famous people and industry leaders – for a new career in literature. “HBO is in my DNA and I will always consider it to be my alma mater,” said Nevins. Earlier, on Dec. 15, 2017, HBO had confirmed that Nevins is leaving, but noted that she is not retiring. Nevins (78 years old) stated to the New York Times, “There’s something exciting about leaving a job. I can’t explain it. I have deprived my life of a life. All I did was work. […]I was, like, born at HBO and I don’t have to die there. If I stayed any longer, I probably would have died at my desk. I just regret that there’s so little time left.”
Review of You Don’t Look Your Age
(Go here to read Nevins’s comments on my review of her book.)
With reference to the title of her new biography, Sheila Nevins does not look her age, which is 78 years. When I saw her interview with Charlie Rose last Friday on PBS, I was struck by how beautiful she is, in the same class of timeless good looks as Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk (69), and Carmen Dell’Orefice (85) who are both (still) models. She was also funny, self-deprecating, and sharp as a blade, so I immediately ordered her new book, You Don’t Look Your Age…And Other Fairy Tales, published two days ago. It is a very short, slight production and, contrary to Nevins’ stated intent, reveals only the well-disguised, carefully curated thoughts and back-stories that Nevins, who has spent her career behind the scenes as a producer of documentaries for HBO, wants to reveal. The chapters stop on p. 235 of 250 (e-book version) but the Acknowledgements go on for another seven pages, with names arranged alphabetically, there are that many people to thank. I read the whole thing in two hours, since many chapters are “poems” of a few pages long (the quote marks are intentional since they are in free verse or spaced prose form and so very close to prose as to be virtually indistinguishable). There is only one illustration, in a chapter about Nevins’ Great-Aunt Celia who died in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. The subjects that she does introduce are what one could expect from a woman of her age and with her career. It is not a tell-all emotional outpouring or gut-spilling disclosure. It is not a complete biography or autobiography (it’s classified as “Women’s Biography” on Amazon and I’d call it a memoir) and on the Copyright page it has a Fiction Disclaimer. Yet, in the Foreword, Why She Wrote When She Wrote, Nevins states:
“Why a book of true and sad and sometimes silly essays?…All of these years, the subjects in my films have given me their stories. Now it’s my turn. I am now at that age where I feel as if I can say what I want; I have no reason to hold back. So, finally, here are my stories.”
The very next line reads “Is this what it feels like to spill it all out?”, and, contrary to her guarded assertion, the book is a contradiction of her stated intent. I came to the conclusion that the format and writing style, as well as the “Fairy Tales” in the title, are purposely used as distancing techniques and to prevent a “spilling of the guts”. Many of the chapters are written as 3rd person short anecdotes, brief and with a sharp ending, like Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults. And then there is the free verse, which I found more prosaic than poetic, even though some are about subjects that she is passionate about, like her friend Larry Kramer. And there are not many chapters where she writes as “I” and that are truly revealing, without hiding behind humour. So, “true”, mostly/probably; “sad”, sometimes; and “silly”, a bit. But “no holding back”? I don’t think so.
SN1 SN2 SN4
(Above: What bone structure – what a profile! I’d give anything to look like her when I get to my seventies! I don’t want to keep harping on her good looks, but she brings it up a few times in the book.)
Two chapters that are quite revealing and seem closer to the bone are The Giant Named Tourette’s, which is about the Tourette’s Syndrome with which her son, David, was diagnosed, and another is Mentor Not, in which she describes in free verse how her hatred of her boyfriend’s mother, who rejected her, drove her to succeed.
“Every trophy was for her.
Every yes to me was a slap in her face.
It said, “I was worthy of your son.”
I would win for her.
I received my prizes in retribution.
Die, lady, die,
Stick your finger in your eye,
Tell your son that it was I
Feast your loss in my clear brown eyes.” (p.199)
Unfortunately, the last four lines is about as good as Nevins’ use of rhyme scheme or poetical metaphor gets. The only way I knew this chapter is more significant than the others is because she and Charlie Rose discussed it. The only reason that I know the chapter about her son is significant is because she ends it with, “David let me write this. I asked him if I could. Thanks, David.” (p.63), and because it is more serious in tone than most of the other chapters – and of course, it is in the 1st person.
As a woman who has worked most of my life in male-dominated industries, Mining and IT, some of what she wrote about the role of women in the workplace, and the glass ceiling, resonated with me. Advice to Women in a Male-Dominated Workplace and From Cosmo to Ms. were witty chapters, and I suppose, true to life. Even so, this is not a light version of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In – or any other handbook for professional women, current or historical. It is the well-disguised, very select, very held-in thoughts and ideas of Sheila Nevins whose particular problem in her career has been that she is very beautiful and also extremely smart, educated and accomplished.
I can think of tens of biographies and autobiographies of famous women that have given more insight into the minds of their subjects than this book. But I guess she is famous and beautiful enough, especially in the rarefied worlds of New York politics and entertainment, that any morsel of self-expression is highly valued. Or perhaps this sort of “misdirection” is a New York thing. Perhaps they call it “being discreet”. Or perhaps she intended the reader to reread it often and give it much more thought – as indicated by the broken, and hence inscrutable, mirror on the cover of the book.
A few times in the book I had to smile, but mostly I was bothered that it is just not very deep writing. This book could have been so much more, in every respect, from the bland cover design to the poetry, and the editing. The editors should have picked up on her repeated use of the word “mothy” (a surprisingly obscure word) and the typo “No matter how many dime-store pairs of glasses I’ve bought lo [sic] these many years…” (on p.223) – etc., etc. If she had been anyone else, would Macmillan US have published this? I have my doubts.
About the author
Sheila Nevins on the Charlie Rose show, Friday 28 April 2017.
Sheila Nevins, born April 6, 1939, is the woman behind such documentaries as The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, both of which are startlingly revealing and deep – like most of the other documentaries she has produced. She is the President of HBO Documentary Films. She has produced over one thousand documentary films for HBO and is one of the most influential people in documentary filmmaking. She has worked on productions that have been recognized with over 65 Primetime Emmy Awards, 46 Peabody Awards, and 26 Academy Awards. Nevins has won 32 individual Primetime Emmy Awards, more than any other person.