Robert Meyer Burnett

Robert Meyer Burnett (born May 15, 1967) is an American filmmaker, DVD producer, online film pundit and YouTuber. Burnett directed ''Free Enterprise'' and the short film ''The Sacred Fire''. He has also edited over ten feature films, and worked as a ''Star Trek'' consultant for Viacom Interactive and Paramount Parks' '' Star Trek: The Experience'' located at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Burnett has twice been a guest of honor at the science, science fiction, and fantasy convention, CONvergence.

Career

Burnett has worked in Hollywood since the summer of 1989, working his way up in the industry, producing diverse content, including online classes, physical media special features, television and motion pictures.

Producer

Beginning in the late 1990s, he began working as a "predator," a producer-editor, for television promotions. Beginning working with Star Wars fan film producer Kevin Rubio, Burnett created dozens of promos for the Kids WB programming block. Beginning in December 1999, he was hired full-time by NBC, creating over 100 spots for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Dubbed "The Complete Olympics," it was the first time NBC broadcast the games over three platforms, NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. After the Olympics were aired, he continued on, creating spots for the 2000-2001 Prime Time season, including conceiving and even voicing the notorious XFL Cheerleader spots. In December 2000, he left NBC to join high-end content producers Kurtti-Pellerin, which exclusively created documentary special features for DVDs. Burnett produced extras for titles including The Walt Disney Company's '' The Fantasia Anthology'' and ''Snow White'', and New Line Cinema's Extended Editions of '' Fellowship of the Ring'' and ''The Two Towers''. He directed and edited the feature-length Making of Tron, which was nominated for the DVD Premiere Award for Original Retrospective Documentary at the 2003 DVD Exclusive Awards. While still working at Kurtti-Pellerin, Burnett formed his own production company, Ludovico Technique LLC. Ludovico worked on the DVD Special Editions for Oscar-winning ''The Usual Suspects'', ''Valley Girl'', ''Superman Returns'', ''Spider-Man'', '' X-Men 1.5'', '' X2'', and ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe''. He edited, wrote and produced all the special features for the Blu-ray release of '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' Complete Series box set released on June 7, 2016; he also contributed to the Blu-ray of all four seasons of ''Star Trek: Enterprise'', with season four being released on April 1, 2014. Most recently, he, along with director Dave Parker, completed 6.5 hours of special features for the Blu-ray release of their film, The Hills Run Red, released by Scream Factory on June 16, 2020. As a feature film producer, he co-produced Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's ''Agent Cody Banks'' and its sequel, '' Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London'', and developed and produced the 2009 Warner Premiere and Dark Castle's '' The Hills Run Red''. In 2021, Burnett completed producing and editing ''Tango Shalom'', the last appearance of actor Joseph Bologna. After debuting in Jaipur, India, the film was theatrically released in the United States on September 3, 2021.

Writer/director

Burnett made his feature writing and directing debut with the 1999 award-winning film ''Free Enterprise'', starring Eric McCormack and William Shatner, which he also edited. Beginning in 2010, Burnett has directed and edited five episodes of the TV series '' Femme Fatales''.

Media critic

Burnett began his professional writing career as the "Critic at Large" for the Larry Flynt-published ''Sci-Fi Universe'' magazine in the mid-90s. He recently wrote an essay for a ''Blade Runner'' anthology, ''The Cyberpunk Nexus: Exploring the Blade Runner Universe'', published by Sequart Organization, on July 10, 2018. He currently runs a successful YouTube channel and website both entitled The Burnettwork and presents his own show titled ''Robservations'' which provides in-depth online video analysis of new and classic TV and film content for the film fan community and aspiring filmmakers. Three episodes of ''Robservations'' that garnered widespread attention, in particular, were those focusing on an alternative script for the final film in the ''Star Wars'' sequel trilogy (which Meyer Burnett has been highly critical of). The draft script entitled "Duel of the Fates" had radically different (and, in Robert's view, superior) ideas to the ones shown on screen in '' Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker''.

Burnett contributes regularly to the YouTube show of his good friend and fellow filmmaker John Campea, titled ''The John Campea Show''. During an appearance on ''The John Campea Show'', Burnett notably gave a scathing assessment of the Disney+ Star Wars television series ''The Book of Boba Fett'' Season One finale titled "In The Name Of Honor" with Burnett saying he was smarter in second grade than the writing of the episode with Burnett also disappointed by the series overall.

2020 Twitter controversy

Until June 2020, Burnett was a manager on the Schmoedown Entertainment Network's ''Movie Trivia Schmoedown'' show. But he was removed from this role due to one retweet and attached commentary over the shooting of retired police captain David Dorn. Appalled at a video of the former police captain laying dead on a sidewalk, Burnett angrily mused about the absence of a second amendment advocate to apply deadly force to save Dorn's life. Former Schmoedown personality Robert Butler III took offense to Burnett's commentary and retweeted Burnett's words without the accompanying video. This led to several Schmoedown fans and personalities also voicing their displeasure with Burnett's comments, including Schmoedown host and co-creator Kristian Harloff, which resulted in his release from the trivia league. Although Burnett issued an apology video on his YouTube channel and spoke with Butler privately to apologize (an apology which Butler accepted), he was not reinstated to the Movie Trivia Schmoedown.

References

External links

Burnett's ''Free Enterprise'' at Aintitcool.com
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Burnett, Robert
Living people
1967 births
American film producers
American film directors
American male screenwriters
American television directors
Science fiction fans
American people of Scottish descent
American people of Jewish descent