Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn Directed
by
Ivy Meeropol USA / 2019 / 95 minutes
Screening
Times and Venues:
RHINEBECK Upstate Films II
10/4/2019, 3:30PM
$10
WOODSTOCK Playhouse
10/5/2019, 10:15AM
$12
SYNOPSIS: Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn reveals the full, richly controversial character of Roy Cohn, American lawyer, cultural icon and early proponent of a national Republican revolution that began with Ronald Reagan and lead directly to the presidency of Donald Trump.
Roy Cohn is a name synonymous with ruthless social division, demagoguery and the politics of paranoia, but for director Ivy Meeropol (granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg), he is the moral cypher who argued relentlessly for the execution of her grandparents.
Stark contradictions formed the core of Roy Cohn’s personality. A bellicose public figure, he was a closeted homosexual who persecuted gays until he met his death from AIDS in 1986 following a wide ranging, sexually active, club hopping lifestyle; he was a Jewish Democrat who mentored a young Donald Trump on the ways of hypocritically managing the world as one wishes as opposed to how one should–proof again that the past is mere prologue.
BIO: Ivy Meeropol directed and produced the HBO documentary Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, which had its world premiere at the 2019 New York Film Festival. She was senior story producer for the 2017 CNNFilms feature-length documentary The End: The Final Days Inside the Obama White House; directed and produced the documentary Indian Point, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, won Best Documentary at the Key West Film Festival, and received the 2016 Frontline award for Journalism in a Documentary Film; produced and directed two short films for the Emmy Award-winning climate change documentary series Years of Living Dangerously, airing on The National Geographic Channel; directed and produced an hour-long episode for CNN’s docu-series Death Row Stories; received an IDA nomination for best series for The Hill, which aired on The Sundance Channel; and produced and directed the documentary Heir To An Execution, exploring the legacy of her grandparents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and screened on HBO. In 2013, Ivy was a Sundance Institute Fellow.
MAIN CREDITS:
Cast/Featuring: Cindy Adams, Alan Dershowitz, Tony Kushner, Nathan Lane, John Waters
Executive Producer(s): Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
Producer(s): Ivy Meeropol, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Carolyn Hepburn
The
Woodstock Film Festival
is a not-for-profit 501c3 organization with a mission to present an annual program and year-round schedule of film, music, and art-related activities that promote artists, culture, inspired learning, and diversity. The
Hudson Valley Film Commission
promotes sustainable economic development by attracting and supporting film, video and media production.