Robert Heath

TV director.

Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time (1992) -- This documentary is produced by David Lynch and Mark Frost during their TV heyday as part of the American Chronicles series, and the director emulated the Twin Peaks style with an Angelo Badalamenti-sounding soundtrack and some dreamy images. However, this documentary isn't for Lynch fans beyond that. Instead, it's an actually-very-good chronicling of Hugh Hefner's life, loves, scandals, and -- most interesting to me -- philosophies on sex that allowed at least a few Americans to be a little more relaxed and more healthy in their attitudes toward that taboo subject. Unlike Al Goldstein or Larry Flint (who, God bless 'em, just wanted to make dirty porn), Hef had a very solid smart and solid foundation (combining social awareness, healthy fantasy, the art world, and more) that he built his magazine on and expanded from, and this documentary (in spite of its production limitations) shows that.