Jerome DuVivier Gary – 50th Reunion Essay

Jerome DuVivier Gary

191 King’s Point Road

East Hampton

New York, NY 11937

Jerome@visionairemedia.com

323-683-0593

Spouse(s): Mary Lambert (2018)

Child(ren): Jordan Lambert Gary (1992)

Education: Yale ‘69

Career: Filmmaker, teacher, production executive 40 years. Other: strategic Director USC Institute for Creative Technologies 2000-2007

Avocations: Travel, hunting, fishing, teaching, biking, yoga, wine.

College: Branford

“Doesn’t play well with others,” were a teacher’s comments early on. By 1969, I was a spoiled, rich kid, and it was expected that I would run the family businesses. But nothing beckoned. My parents were otherwise engaged. I could not find one role model from among my family and friends whose lives seemed boring, and the prospect of a “straight” career was nauseating, as I felt then, as now, the country was run by gangsters.

And so, I fled from whence I came and headed for wilder shores in search of adventure, initially in California. After much wandering and some success in start-up businesses, I migrated to film and enjoyed modest success with Pumping Iron. Since then I have produced or directed more than a hundred hours of, for the most part, commendable and occasionally award-winning films and television, largely about the people we most misunderstand: bodybuilders, strippers, Russians and, in the past 15 years, Arabs. I have also been the head of production at an independent studio, chairman of a television production company, a screenwriter, director and have taught for many years on the graduate faculties at USC and the AFI.

Filmmaking, which I considered an art, morphed into a business and I lost interest. In 2000, I became the strategic director of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies. While there, we expanded considerably and I ran more than a hundred week-long think tanks in which people with a problem mixed it up with the “best and brightest” from the entertainment industry. Clients were largely federal: CIA, State, DIA, FBI and a few corporate. It was heady stuff and great fun.

In 2006, I segued back into documentaries largely in the public diplomacy area. I also taught all over the world: led teams of 10 teachers for two weeks each year from 2006–2008 into Kandahar to build their media capacity and taught similar programs in Tunisia, Pakistan and Lebanon.

Currently I am developing Who Are We, a documentary series about America now, working on a scripted series about the history of CIA covert operations, running a development fund for Arab media and writing a book called A Liar’s Life. That’s a lot and it won’t all happen but such is my business.

I am most proud of my collaborations with others, Mary Lambert, my wife of 26 years, who is genuinely talented, and my son Jordan, who graduated at the top of his college and law school classes and is a young associate at Sullivan and Cromwell.

I sometimes yearn for my son’s legitimacy. If I had the father that I have become, I might have stayed the course in 1969 and had a more conventional life. I would have been richer, but I have no regrets. I became an outlier when it was lonely and before it was fashionable. But I have had a life of high adventure and of late, purpose, and I have seen the vast beauty of the world and its peoples.