R. J. Cutler
American film director
R. J. Cutler (born 1962) is an American director and producer. His films and television projects include The War Room, A Perfect Candidate, American High, The September Issue, Listen to Me Marlon, Belushi, Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry, Martha, Elton John: Never Too Late, Fight for Glory: The 2024 World Series, Marc by Sofia and BTS: The Return.
Cutler's work has received two Academy Award nominations, numerous Emmy Award nominations and wins, a Writers Guild of America Award nomination, and has earned a Peabody Award, and the National Board of Review Award for Best Documentary. In 2009, the Museum of Television and Radio held a five-day retrospective of his work. In 2021, he received the D.A. Pennebaker Award at The Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Documentary Film. In 2026 he was officially inducted into the Silver Circle Honor Society by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Early life
Robert Jason Cutler (known as R. J. since birth) grew up in Great Neck, New York. As a 14-year-old, Cutler was commissioned to spend several days with the remaining leaders of the Yippie Party, and to write a story about their underground newspaper and their plans to disrupt the upcoming 1976 Democratic Convention. The resulting article, "Behind the Scenes at Yipster Times," was published in the May/June 1976 issue of Alternative Journalism Review.
Cutler graduated from Great Neck North Senior High School in 1979 and from Harvard University in 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “R. J. Cutler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.