R.J. Emery (R.J. Eastwood)

A conversation with writer, producer, director Robert J. Emery (AKA R. J. Eastwood), author of the novel ‘The Autopsy of Planet Earth.’
Robert J. Emery (AKA R. J. Eastwood) spent his entire adult career writing, producing and directing feature films and television documentaries, but his ambition was to write novels. Following his retirement from active film and TV production, he wrote four non-fiction books based on a TV series he had created before turning his daily attention to writing.
“Writing novels proved to be a bit more complicated than writing screenplays. The average screenplay runs around 120 to 130 pages and is lean on direction and motivation, which is mostly left up to the director. As a novelist, it was now my job to create scenes and sentences that would allow readers to ‘see’ what I was seeing. That’s not so easy, even for seasoned authors. I agonized over every sentence, every word. I spent five years researching and writing ‘Autopsy’ in my quest to make it believable to what the near future might be like, but also with an eye to what readers could relate to now. With mankind’s search for life beyond Earth heating up, I felt the story was timely and relevant to our current world, and so I began writing about what first contact between aliens and humans might be like. I’m pleased to report Autopsy has consistently received 5-star reviews.
Before retiring from production, Emery was known for such award-winning productions as Swimming Upstream, a Lifetime Movie Network feature film starring two-time EMMY © winner Michael Moriarty, Matt Czucry, Elizabeth Harnois, and Kelly Rutherford; the award-winning four-hour Public Broadcasting mini-series The Genocide Factor hosted by Academy Award © winner Jon Voight; KidHealth, a PBS series on Children’s health in America hosted by Olympic Gold Medal winner Peggy Fleming; and the award-winning MSNBC documentary For God & Country: A Marine Sniper’s Story hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt.
Nearest and dearest to his heart is ‘The Directors’, a TV series he created, produced and directed. It consisted of 91 one-hour episodes featuring the film careers of some of the all-time great greatest film directors. The series was produced on location in Los Angeles, New York, London, Canada and Australia. It ran continuously for five years on Starz/Encore and another five years on the Reelz Cable Channel, as well as in over 75 countries around the world.
“While we were in production on ‘The Directors’, I would be on the Universal Studios lot with Steven Spielberg one day, a few days later at Warner brothers with director Richard Donner, or on a 20th Century Fox soundstage with famed director Robert Wise, or at the Sky Walker Ranch with George Lucas, and then on to Barbra Streisand’s magnificent Malibu estate, or with James Cameron in his spacious office, or in Greenwich, Connecticut where Ron Howard makes his home, or on a soundstage in Toronto, Canada with director Norman Jewison and actress Whoopie Goldberg, or New York shooting and interview with the late Milos Forman. I never expected the show to go beyond the first 13 episodes. But Starz/Encore kept ordering new seasons and before I knew it, we had completed 91 episodes in all. It remains the most extensive series ever produced about film directors.”
Over 250 actors, writers, musicians, and producers participated to honor the film directors they had worked with. Tom Hanks was a frequent quest as was Harrison Ford, Brat Pitt, Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Mel Gibson, Johnny Depp, Burt Reynolds, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Morgan Freeman, Jodie Foster, Arnold Swartzenegger, and Nicole Kidman, to name just a few.
One particular story Emery remembers fondly is the late director Gary Marshall’s episode.
“Gary was a naturally funny guy. He kept us laughing so hard that we thought we’d never get the show in the can. Later we shot a segment featuring his sister Penny Marshall and we were able to cross-cut their comments about each other within their individual segments. It was truly hilarious. And then there was the interview with Jodie Foster and Tom Hanks in Los Angeles. Tom came to the LA Directors Guild building on Sunset Blvd., where we often shot interviews. When he walked in, he said as if an enthusiastic fan, “I just met Jodie Foster for the first time… in the elevator of all places.” The next day we were shooting an interview with Jodie in the same venue. She walks in and says. “You’ll never guess who I met for the first time in the elevator yesterday.” And I said without skipping a beat… “Let me guess, it was Tom Hanks.”
When production on the 91st episode was completed, ‘The Directors’, Mr. Emery donated over three-hundred and fifty hours of interviews with directors and guests to the American Film Institute’s archives where future filmmakers will be able to gain access to discover the secrets of some of the finest filmmakers of our time.
Today, Emery devotes 4 to 6 hours a day to his writing no

Reading.