As a director Nell Cox is known for her award winning PBS dramas, including “Ghostwriter” (pilot for Children’s Television Workshop series),“The Roommate,”“Konrad,” and a women’s western, “Liza’s Pioneer Diary,” (“Outstanding.” Los Angeles Times, “Beautifully lean and compelling.” New York Times) which she also produced and wrote. She lived in Los Angeles for a number of years where she directed many prime time dramas including “M*A*S*H,” “Lou Grant,” “The Waltons” and “L.A. Law.” While in Los Angeles she also wrote a number of feature film screenplays.
Nell Cox started her career in films in New York as a documentary film editor for Time-Life Broadcast which aired their documentaries on ABC television in prime time. She worked with now legendary documentary filmmakers Bob Drew, Richard Leacock, Al and David Maysles, Don Pennebaker, as they were re-inventing the documentary form with cinema verite. Subsequently she produced and directed numerous award winning documentaries for her own company, Nell Cox Films, Inc.
In the 1990s she returned from Los Angeles to New York to direct a feature film “Hudson River Blues,” a romantic comedy that takes place in and around New York. She now lives in Kentucky and New York and has returned to her non-fiction roots. She directed a “Great Performances” (PBS) about the Broadway musical “Jelly’s Last Jam,” a portrait of the jazz great Jelly Roll Morton, and a PBS biography of Pulitzer prizewinning Kentucky playwright Marsha Norman.
Recently she completed two documentaries in her home state of Kentucky: an historical documentary about one of Kentucky’s founding fathers, John Brown, a one-hour cinema verite, a fly on-the-wall documentary about the Kentucky Legislature, “Statecraft” and is in production on a film in Appalachia about children and medical care. Examines why Kentucky has the worst teeth in the U.S. She is also in production on a documentary about Expanded Consciousness including the scientific, legal and spiritual history of psychoactive plants.
