Robert Mandel Filmography

Occupation:: Director

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Lost: Deus Ex Machina

Crew: Director

Actors: Swoosie Kurtz, Kevin Tighe, Tyler Burns Laudowicz, George O'Hanlon Jr., Lawrence Mandley

Synopsis: As any college theater student will tell you, the title of this episode translates as "god from the machine," a theatrical device whereby everyone's problems are solved by a single, miraculous and highly unlikely climactic act of divine intervention. In this case, the deus ex machina is Read More

2005
Secret Life of Zoey

Crew: Director

Actors: Mia Farrow, Cliff De Young, Julia Whelan, Andrew McCarthy, Caroline Aaron

Synopsis: Originally titled On the Edge, this Lifetime cable network feature film is the story of Zoey Carter (Julia Whelan), the superachieving "perfect" daughter of professional couple Marcia and Larry Carter (Mia Farrow and Cliff De Young). Traumatized by her parents' divorce, Zoey begins experimenting Read More

2002
A Season on the Brink

Crew: Director

Actors: Brian Dennehy, Duane Murray, Benz Antoinee, Gary Hudson, James Lafferty

Synopsis: One of the most unabashedly profane (albeit honest) TV movies ever produced for "basic" cable, A Season on the Brink is based on John Feinstein's book about the 1985-1986 Indiana Hoosiers' basketball season. Brian Dennehy heads the cast as the controversial, combative, chair-tossing Hoosiers coach Bobby Knight Read More

2002
Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story

Crew: Director

Actors: Karl Geary, Orlando Seale, Adam MacDonald, Esteban Powell, Tat Whalley

Synopsis: The saga of pop metal superstars Def Leppard is told in this biopic, produced by cable television music channel VH1. The film traces the band's history from their origins as a teenage hard rock act in the English industrial town of Sheffield to the massive success they enjoyed worldwide as Read More

2001
Thin Air: A Spenser Mystery

Crew: Director

Actors: Joe Mantegna, Marcia Gay Harden, Yancy Butler, Luis Guzman, Jon Seda

Synopsis: Robert Mantegna stars as tough Boston private eye Spencer in this made-for-cable adaptation of the Robert B. Parker novel Thin Air. It all begins when Lila St. Claire (Yancy Butler, the new bride of police detective Frank Belson (David Ferry), is kidnapped by Latino ganglord Luis DeLeon (Jon Read More

2000
The King and I

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Miranda Richardson, Christiane Noll, Martin Vidnovic, Ian Richardson, Darrell Hammond, Adam Wylie

Synopsis: In this animated adaptation of the popular musical, British widow Anna Leonowens (voiced by Miranda Richardson, with singing by Christiane Noll) and her ten-year-old son Louis (Adam Wylie) travel from London to Siam in 1863. The King of Siam (Martin Vidnovic) has requested a proper English Read More

3/19/99
The Substitute

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Berenger, Ernie Hudson, Diane Venora, Marc Anthony, Glenn Plummer

Synopsis: An ex-mercenary (Tom Berenger) becomes a take-no-prisoners teacher in a drug-ridden, gang-infested Miami high school in this campy morality tale about restoring lost American virtues to the inner city. Berenger's character, Shale, has no first name, a shadowy past as a patriotic gun-for-hire, and Read More

1996
Special Report: Journey to Mars

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This made-for-TV movie is staged in the form of an ongoing news report, unfolding in "real time." The year is 2014, and the men and women of the Global News Network are covering the final two hours of the first manned space mission to Mars. Suddenly, before an audience of billions, things begin to Read More

1996
The X-Files: Pilot Episode

Crew: Director

Synopsis: A small town in the Pacific Northwest has been plagued by a series of mysterious deaths. The victims are all local high-school graduates of the class of 1989. Assigned to investigate this phenomenon are FBI agent Fox Mulder, whose recent job performance has been compromised by his ever-growing Read More

1993
School Ties

Crew: Director

Actors: Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, Chris O'Donnell, Randall Batinkoff, Andrew Lowery

Synopsis: An assemblage of young Hollywood actors poised for stardom marked this tale of anti-Semitism at a 1950s prep school. Brendan Fraser stars as David Greene, a working-class Jewish quarterback from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who is offered a senior year scholarship to a prestigious New England academy. Read More

9/18/92
The Haunted

Crew: Director

Actors: Sally Kirkland

Synopsis: The Haunted is a Fox Network TV-movie purportedly based on eyewitness testimony. The story goes that in the mid-1980s, the Smurl family of Pittston, Pennsylvania began noticing something askew in their four-bedroom Victorian home. Apparently there are agents of Satan at work, bedeviling the family Read More

1991
Perfect Witness

Crew: Director

Actors: Brian Dennehy, Aidan Quinn, Stockard Channing, Laura Harrington, Joe Grifasi

Synopsis: The Perfect Witness is New York restaurant owner Aidan Quinn. After witnessing a mob murder, Quinn does his civic duty by reporting the incident to the authorities. This plunks Quinn into the middle of a power play between the DA and ambitious US attorney Brian Dennehy, who won't let up on the Read More

1989
Big Shots

Crew: Director

Actors: Ricky Busker, Darius McCrary, Robert Joy, Robert Prosky, Jerzy Skolimowski

Synopsis: Consumed by grief when his father is felled by a heart attack, 11-year-old Obie (Ricky Busker) runs away from his white, upper-class surroundings. He ends up in a particularly dismal Chicago ghetto neighborhood where, after enduring a beating administered by gang members, he is befriended by Read More

10/2/87
Touch and Go

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Keaton, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ajay Naidu, Maria Tucci, Max Wright

Synopsis: Michael Keaton plays a famous Chicago-based hockey player who befriends trouble-prone teenager Ajay Naidu (after Naidu's gang has tried to mug him!) He also extends the hand of friendship to Naidu's mother Maria Conchita Alonso, a friendship that blossoms into a physical relationship. Too Read More

8/22/86
F/X

Crew: Director

Actors: Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Diane Venora, Cliff De Young, Mason Adams

Synopsis: A man who simulates death for a living finds himself unwittingly tied into the real thing in this New York-based suspense drama. Special effects man Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) makes his living simulating gory mayhem and photogenic violence for movies such as "I Dismember Mama." Tyler is given a Read More

2/7/86
Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy

Crew: Director

Actors: Michele Greene, Moosie Drier, Carrie Snodgress, Matt Clark, Robert DoQui

Synopsis: The dangers facing teenaged hitchhikers are forcefully brought home in this uncompromising ABC Afterschool Special. Though she has been warned never to hitch a ride, Andrea Cranston (Michele Greene) feels that she has no choice when she and her boyfriend are stranded in the middle of nowhere. Read More

1983
Independence Day

Crew: Director

Actors: Kathleen Quinlan, David Keith, Frances Sternhagen, Cliff De Young, Dianne Wiest

Synopsis: In this run-of-the-mill romantic drama, the title Independence Day refers to the usual Fourth of July fireworks festival in the U.S. but also to the dilemma of Mary Ann Taylor (Kathleen Quinlan) who lives in a small town but has a big ambition to go to the city and study photography for a Read More

1983
Sunshine's on the Way

Crew: Director

1981
Nights At O'Rear's

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Craig Wasson, Linda Gillin, Louise Hoven

Synopsis: Mildred (Linda Gillin) is a young woman caught in the vise of a gender conflict, made worse by the fact that she has bought into all the female stereotypes against her own nature. Mildred fantasizes about "true love" and is sure that she has found it in the person of Max (Craig Wasson), a Read More

1981