Robert Maier
Robert Maier worked with filmmaker John Waters for fifteen years as a writer/producer/production manager on Waters' films Polyester, Hairspray, Desperate Living, Female Trouble, and Cry-Baby, and with a dozen other low-budget movie-makers in Baltimore and New York. Maier created the 30-minute underground film Love Letter to Edie, a documentary on the life and career of actress Edith Massey, and wrote the book Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters about the making of the movies of John Waters.
Maier was born on December 26, 1950 in Salisbury, Maryland. He moved to the Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland in 1954. In 1973, he moved to Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood, where he first connected with John Waters' Dreamland studios group. He lived for seven years in the 1970s and '80s in the New York City area, then returned to Baltimore for several years. In 1989, he moved to Davidson, North Carolina where he worked in Charlotte as a public TV production executive and independent producer. During that time, he traveled extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, including a stint in Afghanistan helping to launch an educational TV network in Kabul.
Maier has numerous feature film credits. For New Line Cinema in New York, he was line producer of the award-winning Alone in the Dark, and the original Hairspray. Other New York independent feature credits include The House on Sorority Row, Fastlane, The Fox Affair, and Downtown 81. He was also line producer of four feature-length world music documentaries for BMG Films by documentarian Robert Mugge.
Maier's first film was Love Letter to Edie (1975), the short biography of Edith Massey. It has played around the world for thirty years, been excerpted for programs on Channel 4, the Discovery Channel, The Criterion Collection, and New Line Cinema's John Waters boxed set. A remastered DVD version includes his "expanded director's cut".
Maier is a multimedia producer, writer, and director with a wide range of documentary, corporate and instructional TV experience. His broadcast credits include the one-hour documentary, Trappist, which appeared on PBS, ABC and NBC networks, and a six-hour series for PBS, Seapower: A Global Journey. His half-hour documentary Nativity aired as a Christmas special on PBS and the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
In non-broadcast production, Maier was the co-writer/producer of a 15-hour teacher development series, Creating the Learning Centered School, and 8 hours of productions for the Skylink Family and School Network. He has produced dozens of instructional videos, TV spots, marketing films, and two PBS how-to series, The Spirit of Cross Stitch and Homestretch.
Maier is the author of two textbooks: Handbook of Location Scouting and Management (Focal Press) and Guide to Essential Audio and Video Production (Full Page Publishing). He has taught graduate-level production courses at The American University's Summer Film and Video Institute and presented production workshops at the University of Maryland, Florida State University, Johns Hopkins University, Towson State University, and Davidson College.
Maier earned a BA (Literature) from The American University and an MA in English (Professional Communications) from East Carolina University. He is an instructor and program coordinator in the Broadcasting Production program at Gaston College.
In May of 2015 he created a small, part-time art house theater,'Studio C Cinema' in Cornelius, North Carolina, which shows independent, documentary, foreign and classic films, as well as film appreciation classes.