In a dramatic, contradictory story, the man who is synonymous with the American wilderness and conservation movement emerges as the man who probably killed more birds than anyone else in history. Energetic, gifted and vain, Audubon was self-taught and self-made, the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and Haitian servant girl. From the Caribbean and the French countryside, he eventually settled in the American south at age 19 and, after failed business efforts and bankruptcy, pursued his true passion - finding, shooting and drawing birds - ultimately realizing his dream of publishing The Birds of America, the monumental collection of 435 life-size prints, some fetching more than $100,000 at auction. The National Audubon Society has more than a half-million members today and his legacy is ever relevant.

More information about the AMERICAN MASTERS series and John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature can be found at www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/.

Biography

Lawrence R. Hott has been producing documentary films since 1978, when he left the practice of law to join Florentine Films.  His awards include an Emmy, two Academy Award nominations, a George Foster Peabody Award, five American Film Festival Blue Ribbons, twelve CINE Golden Eagles, screenings at Telluride, and first-place awards from the San Francisco, Chicago, National Educational, and New England Film Festivals.

Hott was a Fulbright Fellow in Film and Television in the United Kingdom.  He  has received a Humanities Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities; a Massachusetts Cultural Council/Boston Film and Video Foundation Fellowship; and a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.  He has been on the board of non-fiction writers at Smith College and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Massachusetts Cultural Commission, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.   He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America.

Hott has made twenty-two films for national PBS broadcast. In recent years he has completed: the one-hour Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival, the two-hour The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced and the one-hour OHIO:200 YEARS. In 2006 he completed Niagara Falls for WNED-TV, Buffalo and PBS; Through Deaf Eyes for WETA-TV, Washington, D.C.; and American Masters John James Audubon: Drawn From Nature for Thirteen/WNET, New York.