Biography

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Bruce Merwin
St. Augustine, Florida
Director, Documentary Filmmaker
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Supplementary Information
Title/Occupation:  Director 
Services Provided:  None 
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian/White
Citizenship: USA
Languages Spoken: English, some Spanish

Brief Message to Members: 

ROOSEVELT AND RUFUS (Bruce Merwin, 2012) – Set in St. Augustine, our nation's oldest city, Roosevelt and Rufus is a real-life tale of man and beast working together in harmony. Meet Roosevelt, an entrepreneur at age 8 and carriage driver for over thirty years, and Rufus, a magnificent standardbred and Belgian horse, his partner. Join them on a trip around town and back through history to a simpler time.

Biography: 

Bruce Merwin
Director

Bruce Merwin is a man in motion – filmmaker, producer, cinematographer, editor, writer web publisher and DVD publisher. At an age when some men are wrestling with midlife crisis or contemplating early retirement, Merwin is filming his own documentaries. Merwin’s documentaries are low budget, independent docs set in Florida, being produced by Merwin Films, a documentary production company started in 1980.

An overachiever by nature, Merwin’s talents and skills began overlapping at the age of 13. While keeping up with his academic studies, he sang in a Miami garage band Victims. At Palmetto High School, he was the lead singer with a rock band called Slaves of Sound. He was a contract singer with John Kennly’s Broadway Musicals at the Plaza Hotel on Miami Beach. At the age of 22, he was awarded a drama scholarship to Flagler College in St. Augustine. He attended Flagler only a few months before enlisting in the U.S. Navy.

Merwin was born into a military family. His father was a Strategic Air Command pilot. From 1973-1977, Merwin served aboard the USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) where his duties included assembling air-to-air rockets and maintaining shipboard weapons. He was honored to be stationed on the famous aircraft carrier and sometimes liked activities at sea, the military was not a good career fit for the former liberal arts student.

When his four-year Navy hitch ended, Merwin returned to Flagler College. He also attended Florida School of the Arts in Palatka where he received a degree in technical theater. During this period he performed in more than a dozen area plays (among them “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “South Pacific,” “Cabaret,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cross and Sword” – the latter, depicting early St. Augustine history, was designated “Florida’s Official State Play”) before going to the West Coast in 1978.

In California, using his G.I. Bill benefits, Merwin attended Columbia College Hollywood where he received a BA degree in film making. He made the rounds of independent movies and student films, acting and singing in them whenever possible. He returned to Florida in 1980.

During the ‘80s, Merwin produced three (all at the same time) cable TV shows in Palatka, married the former Anne Buynitzky (a medical doctor), and eventually moved to Orlando where he worked as a cameraman, electrician and/or producer on hundreds of big-name industrial shows. Notable among these shows were McDonald’s, IBM, General Electric, Chrysler, Cadillac, Ford and Pfizer.

After five years of corporate shows, network television and motion pictures opened up to Merwin. He was an assistant editor on TV’s “In the Heat of the Night” (7th season), a gaffer on the feature film “Fire Birds” (Touchstone/Buena Vista – 1990), and an assistant cameraman on TV’s “The Old Man and the Sea” (Fuisz/Yorkshire – 1990). It was while working with Anthony Quinn on “The Old Man and the Sea” that Merwin’s commitment to multitasking was reinforced.

As the millennium unfolded, Merwin went back to California where he honed his film making skills at UCLA and learned the logistics of independent film marketing at the American Film Market Association. He produced, directed and photographed “Double Exposure: The Voice of the Camera,” a documentary featuring seven legendary cinematographers (www.firstlightvideo.com), and worked with the City of Beverly Hills as a cameraman on several video programs. He loved the energy of Los Angeles and the opportunities it offered, but his wife passionately missed Florida. Merwin, his wife, and their teen-age son made a move back to Florida in 2004.

Merwin lives in St. Augustine and works as a director on television and motion picture projects. He produces, directs and shoots projects such as: “Changing Faces” about special effects make-up used in the Hollywood movie business, “Fernstock III, IV and V” a rock documentary filmed in the Redlands, a documentary shoot for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Miami International Film Festival, “It’s Just A Dance” a documentary on choreographer Patricia Strauss, “Rob’s Redland Riot Tour” a fruity, tropical history tour down south, “The Journey; DER” a documentary on Bishop Richards highlighting his work in South, Central America with The Episcopal Church. Recently Merwin worked with the 20th Century Fox film “Marley & Me” documenting behind the scenes and filming a short subject documentary feature on dog training starring the dogs playing Marley.

Bruce is a storyteller, schooled and seasoned in documentary filmmaking.

Actors worked with include Audrey Hepburn, Nicholas Cage, Anthony Quinn, Gary Cole, Patricia Clarkson, Carroll O’Connor, Tommy Lee Jones, Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Sean Young, Alexis Cruz, Tony Dow, Milton Berle, Dustin Hoffman, Steven Bauer, Warren Beatty, Jerry Mathers, Barbara Billingsley, Hulk Hogan, Demi Moore, Danny Glover, Helen Hunt, Tai Lihua, Cheng Cheng, Adrian Alonso, Chris Cooper, Rick Moranis, Steve Allen, Bernadette Peters, Dana Carvey, Dolly Parton and Dan Marino.

Bruce's current projects revolve around people, places and things in our nation's oldest city, St. Augustine.