Robert Meyer Burnett - Producer, Writer and Director

Robert Meyer Burnett earned his first screen credit as the art department assistant on New Line Cinema's 1990 release Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, before moving on to a management trainee position in the Warner Brothers feature production department for Senior V.P. Bill Young. There, he participated in the production of such notable films as Nothing But Trouble, The Rookie, The Bonfire of the Vanities and Free Willy. From there, he moved on to stints as a story analyst for Silver Pictures, CAA, William Morris and Pierre David's The Image Organization before settling on a Creative Executive position with director Robin Armstrong's ("Pastime") Open Road Productions.

After a year, fed up with story development, the most useless position in Hollywood, Burnett moved back into production, working as assistant makeup-effects coordinator for Tony Gardner's Alterian Studios on Cast a Deadly Spell, Sleepwalkers, Super Mario Brothers, Army of Darkness and the Swamp Thing television series. From there, he joined Full Moon Entertainment as a staff editor and segment producer and later earned his first feature editorial assignment, the complete recut of Albert Pyun's Arcade, afterwards nominated for Best Independent Direct to Video release of 1993 by the VSDA.

Moving off on his own, Burnett directed a number of music videos and shorts, including the award-winning short The Sacred Fire. He also edited segments of the CableACE award-winning Jody Horowitz Presents for Showtime. He's edited over 10 feature films, including James Boyd's The New Gods, which played as part of Slamdance's 1998 Cannes You Dig it? program at the Cannes Film Festival.

After working as a freelance Star Trek consultant for Viacom Interactive, Burnett went on to edit the multi-media film displays for Landmark Entertainment and Paramount Parks' $80 million themed attraction, Star Trek: The Experience, which opened in January of 1998 at the Las Vegas Hilton.

In addition, he was Critic-At-Large for Sci-Fi Universe Magazine, published by Larry Flynt, as well as a frequent on-air guest commentator on the defunct Sci-Fi Channel series, SF Vortex, the Politically Incorrect for the Sci-Fi world.

Burnett marked his feature writing/directing debut with Regent Entertainment's multiple-award winning 1999 theatrical release Free Enterprise, which took Best Film and Best New Writer honors from the 1998 AFI Film Festival. He then went on to associate-produce Mindfire Entertainment's The Specials, a Fall 2000 release also from Regent Entertainment. Burnett then completed editing Dean Quixote, the new feature from Swingers producer Victor Simpkins.

Burnett also spent a year as a promo writer/producer/editor (Predator) for NBC, creating over 100 spots for the Summer 2000 Olympics and such memorable launch campaigns as 2000-2001 Prime Time Season, the XFL Cheerleaders (which he also voiced) and the failed Prime-Time soap Titans.

For the past 18 months, Burnett fills his time producing documentary materials for special edition DVDs. He's worked for MGM, Disney, Columbia-Tristar and Fox. His most recent work includes The Usual Suspects, Snow White, and the feature-length Making of Tron documentary on the 20th Anniversary DVD of that first computer-animated feature. He's also hard at work on the X-Men 1.5 DVD, X2 and the four-disc Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD for New Line Cinema, to be released in November of 2002.

Most recently, Burnett finished the screen adaptation of Mark Lindquist's novel, Never Mind Nirvana, which he hopes will be his sophomore feature directing effort. Peter Buck from REM will score the film. Finally, he's also the co-producer of MGM's 2003 release Cody Banks, starring Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz, which began filming in May, 2002.