Andrea Nevins, a documentary filmmaker who brought sensitivity and depth to seemingly lighthearted stories about underdogs and unlikely heroes, including punk-rock dads and Barbie dolls, died on April 12 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 63.
Her daughter, Clara, said the cause was breast cancer.
Ms. Nevins received an Academy Award nomination in 1998 for her first independent project as a producer, the short film “Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies,” about a cabaret group made up of retirees in the Southern California desert city.
The film bears all the hallmarks of her later work: offbeat characters in unconventional circumstances who, through their struggles, say something meaningful about life and how to live it.
Her first full-length project, “The Other F Word” (2011), was based on the 2007 memoir “Punk Rock Dad: No Rules, Just Real Life,” by Jim Lindberg, the lead singer of the band Pennywise.
In some ways the opposite of the performers in Palm Springs, Mr. Lindberg was known for his aggressive stage presence and profane lyrics, even as he navigated the everyday challenges of raising three daughters.
Working with a lean film crew, Ms. Nevins was able to get deep into the lives of Mr. Lindberg and other punk dads, producing a touching portrait that went far beyond its fish-out-of-water premise.
“What I discovered was that a lot of these guys were really devastated by their own fathers,” she told NPR in 2011. “And when handed a child, suddenly that all came rushing to the forefront, and they felt like they had to truly be there in a way that their parents weren’t.”
The film was jointly acquired by Showtime Networks and Oscilloscope Laboratories, a company founded by Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.
“When I first heard about this film about musician fathers, I thought, ‘Oh no, not another film that everyone thinks I’m going to like,’” Mr. Yauch said in a statement at the time. “But I was actually very moved by it, pleasantly surprised, and glad I didn’t go with my first instinct. It’s a beautiful and touching film.”
Ms. Nevins was also known for her 2018 documentary “Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie,” a searching study of the famous doll that provided source material for Greta Gerwig as she and Noah Baumbach wrote the script for the 2023 film “Barbie.”
The germ of the project came from an offhand remark by a friend who worked at Mattel, which makes Barbie: Inside the company, she told Ms. Nevins, there was an ongoing conversation about the doll’s place in the culture — and how to adjust her image as the culture changed.
Ms. Nevins and her team spent seven months persuading Mattel to let them film inside its offices. The documentary was primarily shot in 2016, at a time when many people thought America was about to elect its first female president; it was released in 2018, as the country grappled with #MeToo scandals.
“I knew, no matter what, Barbie was going to be an interesting way to look at where we are now,” Ms. Nevins told The Los Angeles Times in 2018. “I’d seen the progress that allowed my mom to have a full-time career, but also the images in society that were setting us back as women. I could see those waves, and that Barbie had been riding every one of them.”
Andrea Blaugrund was born on March 15, 1962, in Manhattan. Her father, Stanley Blaugrund, was an otolaryngologist, and her mother, Annette (Weintraub) Blaugrund, was a museum curator.
After graduating from Harvard with a degree in social studies in 1984, she worked as a newspaper reporter in North Carolina and Florida, and then as a producer for “All Things Considered,” the NPR program, in Washington.
She also worked for the ABC News documentary series “Peter Jennings Reporting,” and was part of the team that won an Emmy in 1991 for a story on gun control.
In 1996, she married David Nevins, who went on to become the chairman and chief executive of Showtime. Along with their daughter, he survives her, as do their sons, Charlie and Jesse; her brothers, James and Jonathan; and her mother.
Ms. Nevins made several other films, bringing her trademark sensitivity to surprising characters at critical life moments.
Both the 2015 feature “Play It Forward” and “Happiness,” a 2014 episode of the sports series “State of Play,” looked at professional athletes contemplating how to move on from their sports careers.
“Hysterical,” which debuted at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, tracked the stories of several female comics in an exploration of the role of gender in standup comedy.
And her most recent film, “The Cowboy and the Queen” (2023), examined the unlikely friendship that blossomed between a Texas cowboy and Queen Elizabeth II after she learned of his unconventional approach to rearing horses.
“I loved capturing stories visually,” she told the website Women and Hollywood in 2021. “In college, I saw Barbara Kopple’s ‘Harlan County U.S.A.,’ and I knew that’s what I wanted to do — tell stories on film that move people, maybe motivate them, maybe reveal a world they might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
The post Andrea Nevins, Who Turned Offbeat Subjects Into Moving Films, Dies at 63 appeared first on New York Times.
