Rodman Flender

Rodman Flender is an American filmmaker, director, and actor born on June 9, 1962, in New York City. He is the son of Enid Flender (née Rodman; 1927–2022), a former Broadway dancer, and Harold Flender (1924–1975), a writer and screenwriter whose 1957 novel Paris Blues was adapted into the 1961 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman. Flender is of half Russian Jewish descent on his mother's side and half Austrian Jewish on his father's side. He grew up on Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side with his older sister Nicole. Following their father's death in 1975, the family relocated with their mother to Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized artists' building in Hell's Kitchen operating under the Mitchell–Lama program, among the first families to move there.

Flender's early work in the performing arts included stage and television roles during the mid-1970s. Between 1973 and 1976, he appeared on Broadway in two productions: Zalmen or the Madness of God, in which he played Mischa, and Finishing Touches. During the same period he appeared as Charles Francis Adams in the PBS series The Adams Chronicles. He trained at the drama department of New York's High School of Performing Arts and later studied acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Flender attended Harvard University, where he majored in visual and environmental studies and studied documentary filmmaking under Ed Pincus and Ross McElwee. He also wrote for The Harvard Lampoon, where he met Conan O'Brien, and graduated in 1984. After university, independent filmmaker Roger Corman hired him to run the advertising department at Concorde-New Horizons Films. Flender subsequently moved into production, serving as Corman's Vice President of Production for two years and producing or co-producing titles including Body Chemistry, Streets, and Full Fathom Five. He made his feature directing debut with the Corman-produced thriller The Unborn in 1991, which received favorable reviews, and followed it by writing and directing In the Heat of Passion, also for Corman.

Over the following decade, Flender directed Leprechaun 2 for Trimark in 1994 and the Columbia Pictures release Idle Hands in 1999. As a writer, his credits include Tales from the Crypt and the feature film Roger Corman's Dracula Rising. He also directed the Dawson's Creek episode "The Scare," a parody of Scream, in 1998; footage from that episode was later incorporated into the 2022 film Scream directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Flender's television directing credits expanded to include multiple episodes of The Office and Ugly Betty, as well as episodes of Chicago Hope, Gilmore Girls, The O.C., and HBO's Tales from the Crypt.

In 1998, Flender began filming a documentary about the Boston-based rock band The Upper Crust, continuing to shoot on and off for approximately five years. The resulting film, Let Them Eat Rock, screened at film festivals in 2005 and 2006 to largely positive notices. Following the 2010 Tonight Show conflict, Flender accompanied Conan O'Brien on the Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, filming behind-the-scenes, onstage, and between shows. The documentary Conan O'Brien Can't Stop was released in select theaters on June 24, 2011, and Roger Ebert included it on his list of the best documentaries of that year.

Flender continued directing television through the 2010s, with credits including Suburgatory and Super Fun Night in 2014, Finding Carter and multiple episodes of Scream in 2015 and 2016, two episodes of the science fiction series People of Earth in 2016 and 2017, and episodes of the Showtime original series On Becoming a God in Central Florida in 2019, on which he directed Kirsten Dunst. That same year, he completed Eat, Brains, Love, a film combining romantic comedy, horror, and road movie elements. It premiered at the FrightFest film festival in London to positive reviews and won Best Picture at the 2019 Screamfest Horror Film Festival.

Flender lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer and producer Amy Lippman, and they also own a home in Carpinteria, California. Their son, Haskell, attended Harvard University and was a member of The Harvard Lampoon; he was named after cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Flender is the uncle of actors Timothée and Pauline Chalamet.