Filmmaker Spotlight Allen Coulter

Allen Coulter, the director of Remember Me, is a very accomplished and versatile director with a wide variety of experience in genres from light comedy to heavy drama. It has been said that he “works many small, telling details into the fabric of the multiple storylines”.

He was born in College Station Texas. He studied theater direction at the University of Texas, where he also acted in a few student productions. He eventually headed to New York City to find work in the film industry. Working a variety of jobs, Allen finally saved enough money to make his first short film, The Hobb’s Case. He describes his film as “a forty-minute dramatic film noir existential mystery.”

His first directorial credit came in 1988 and was for an episode of the TV series Tales from the Darkside. Having worked with the team of George Romero and Richard Rubinstein on Darkside, they asked him to write and direct 2 episodes of their new anthology series Monsters (1989). The next few years, he continued to direct episodes for TV series including Fox's two series Millennium (1997-98)and the X-Files (1998), New York Undercover (1997-98), and Prince Street (2000).

1999 was a big year for Allen. He directed his first episodes of two HBO series, the comedy Sex in the City and the drama The Sopranos. He received his first Emmy award nomination for Outstanding Drama Series for The Sopranos in 1999. In 2000, 2001 and 2004 he received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Directing in a Dramatic Series, all for his work with The Sopranos. He was also nominated for four Director’s Guild of America awards. Two were for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Dramatic Series for his work in The Sopranos (2000 and 2001). The other two were for Directorial Achievement in a Comedy Series for his work in Sex in the City (2001 and 2004).

He has continued to work in TV, directing episodes in a wide variety of series. These include the HBO series Six Feet Under (2001) and Rome (2005-2007), the NBC series Law and Order (2008) and mini series Kingpin (2003). He has also directed the pilots for two FX series Damages (2007), and Sons of Anarchy (2008), and for the Showtime series, Nurse Jackie (2009). Allen was again nominated for the 2008 Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Dramatic Series, for his work on Damages.

In 2006, he directed his first feature film, Hollywoodland which starred Adrien Brody, Diane Lane and Ben Affleck. The movie is a period biopic which revolves around a detective (Brody) who is trying to unravel the mystery that surrounded the death of George Reeves (Affleck), the actor who played the original TV Superman. While the film did only so-so at the box office, it received good reviews and was nominated for the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

Coulter has also done some commercial direction. In 2001, he directed three of the “Wassup” commercials for Budweiser. In 2007, he also directed a campaign commercial for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run.

He also has producer credits for the pilot of Damages and 20 episodes of The Sopranos.

Currently in production for Coulter is the pilot for Rubicon, an AMC channel series, and the feature film Remember Me.







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