Jerry Brown

Acting

Jerry Brown

Born 1938-04-07 · San Francisco, California, USA

Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected secretary of state of California in 1970; Brown later served as mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007 and attorney general of California from 2007 to 2011. He was both the oldest and sixth-youngest governor of California due to the 28-year gap between his second and third terms. Upon completing his fourth term in office, Brown became the fourth longest-serving governor in U.S. history, serving 16 years and 5 days in office. Born in San Francisco, he is the son of Bernice Layne Brown and Pat Brown, who was the 32nd governor of California (1959–1967). After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley and Yale Law School, he practiced law and began his political career as a member of the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees (1969–1971). He was elected to serve as the 23rd secretary of state of California from 1971 to 1975. At 36, Brown was elected to his first term as governor in 1974, making him the youngest California governor in 111 years. In 1978, he won his second term. During his governorship, Brown ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 and 1980. He declined to pursue a third term as governor in 1982, instead making an unsuccessful run for the United States Senate that same year, losing to San Diego mayor and future governor Pete Wilson. After traveling abroad, Brown returned to California and served as the sixth Chairman of the California Democratic Party (1989–1991), attempting to run for U.S. president once more in 1992 but losing the Democratic primary to Bill Clinton. He then moved to Oakland, where he hosted a talk radio show; Brown soon returned to public life, serving as mayor of Oakland (1999–2007) and attorney general of California (2007–2011). He ran for his third and fourth terms as governor in 2010 and 2014, his eligibility to do so having stemmed from California's constitutional grandfather clause. On October 7, 2013, he became the longest-serving governor in the history of California, surpassing Earl Warren.

Acting credits

Milk poster
7.2

The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.

Milk

2008

Miracle poster
7.1

When college coach Herb Brooks is hired to helm the 1980 U.S. men's Olympic hockey team, he brings a unique and brash style to the ice. After assembling a team of hot-headed college all-stars, who are humiliated in an early match, Brooks unites his squad against a common foe: the heavily-favored Soviet team.

Miracle

2004

The Times of Harvey Milk poster
7.3

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

The Times of Harvey Milk

1984

The Last Party poster
5.2

A youthful perspective on the 1992 presidential campaign with a witty, cautionary message to young Americans to start participating in democracy or get the kind of government they deserve.

The Last Party

1993

Ivory Tower poster
7.1

As tuition spirals upward and student debt passes a trillion dollars, students and parents ask, "Is college worth it?" From the halls of Harvard to public and private colleges in financial crisis to education startups in Silicon Valley, an urgent portrait emerges of a great American institution at the breaking point.

Ivory Tower

2014

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia poster
7.6

Anchored by intimate, one-on-one interviews with the man himself, Nicholas Wrathall’s new documentary is a fascinating and wholly entertaining tribute to the iconic Gore Vidal. Commentary by those who knew him best—including filmmaker/nephew Burr Steers and the late Christopher Hitchens—blends with footage from Vidal’s legendary on-air career to remind us why he will forever stand as one of the most brilliant and fearless critics of our time.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia

2013

The Black Godfather poster
6.6

Follows the life of Clarence Avant, the ultimate, uncensored mentor and behind-the-scenes rainmaker in music, film, TV and politics.

The Black Godfather

2019

The War Room poster
6.8

A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.

The War Room

1993

Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President poster
6.9

This rockumentary-style presidential portrait shows how Jimmy Carter reinvigorated a post-Watergate America—with the music of the counterculture, including the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Jimmy Buffett.

Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President

2020

Feed poster
5.3

This is a documentary about the 1992 New Hampshire primaries. It includes much footage of candidates as they meet people, and just before they go "on-air".

Feed

1992

Artifishal poster
7.3

Narratives of ecologists and conservationists are pitted against the human tendency to engineer and control in this probing documentary on the lucrative salmon-hatchery industry.

Artifishal

2019

Commercial Entertainment Product poster
8.7

The video debut of experimental musicians and culture jamming artists Emergency Broadcast Network.

Commercial Entertainment Product

1992

Workers Con poster
10.0

Workers Compensation, is the Worker's Con, a process flawed, buried in bureaucracy, adding insult to injury.

Workers Con

2017

Time to Choose poster
6.9

Academy Award® winning director Charles Ferguson's new film investigates global climate change villains and heroes, and reveals practical solutions to act on.

Time to Choose

2015

Spin poster
7.0

Pirated satellite feeds revealing U.S. media personalities’ contempt for their viewers come full circle in Spin. TV out-takes appropriated from network satellite feeds unravel the tightly-spun fabric of television—a system that silences public debate and enforces the exclusion of anyone outside the pack of journalists, politicians, spin doctors, and televangelists who manufacture the news. Spin moves through the L.A. riots and the floating TV talk-show called the 1992 U.S. presidential election.

Spin

1995

A Good Day to Die poster
6.5

Interviews and archival footage profile the life of Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement leader who looks back at his early life and the rise of the Movement.

A Good Day to Die

2010

Jerry Brown: The Disrupter poster
NR

Governor Jerry Brown has had a storied political life, and Marina Zenovich’s tremendous portrait of him captures the highs and lows, augmented by present-day interviews with her protagonist. Ahead of his time in many ways, especially as an environmentalist, he is the longest-serving governor in the history of California, who eliminated the state’s billion-dollar deficit and enacted historic environmental and criminal justice reforms. From his early days in San Francisco as the son of Governor Pat Brown to his current work around climate change and nuclear threats, Zenovich’s timely film proposes a hopeful alternative to the current political morass.

Jerry Brown: The Disrupter

2022

Who Bombed Judi Bari? poster
NR

Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were falsely arrested for car-bombing themselves on May 24, 1990 while on an Earth First! musical organizing tour for Redwood Summer. They sued the FBI for violations of the First Amendment, claiming the FBI knew they were innocent but arrested them to try to silence them. Having survived the bomb but now stricken by cancer, Judi Bari, a leader of the movement to save California's old growth redwoods, gives her on-camera, deathbed testimony about the attempt on her life and her colorful organizing history with the radical environmental movement Earth First.

Who Bombed Judi Bari?

2012

Jerry Brown: The Shape of Things to Come poster
NR

A live, half-hour campaign broadcast for Governor Jerry Brown during the 1980 Democratic primaries—produced by Francis Ford Coppola and staged in Madison, Wisconsin—experimenting with real-time video effects. The production was plagued by technical mishaps (audio failure, on-screen typos, and misfiring composites), earning the tongue-in-cheek nickname “Apocalypse Brown.”

Jerry Brown: The Shape of Things to Come

1980

The Road to Mass Incarceration poster
NR

This video, The Road to Mass Incarceration, by Greenhouse Media summarizes criminal justice policy decisions dating back to the 1960s. Although the effects often took decades to manifest, each of these policy shifts increased the rate of incarceration in the U.S. The video ends with many of the architects of these changes, Democrats and Republicans alike, admitting the failure of these policies and suggesting that it is time for real change.

The Road to Mass Incarceration

2018

Rogues In Robes poster
9.0

A clinical review of judicial corruption, the good and the bad guys showcased. The need for complete, federal and state judicial reform, term limits, with no immunities.

Rogues In Robes

2016

The Fight In The Fields poster
9.0

This documentary traces the history of the United Farmworkers Union and the life of its founder, Cesar Chavez, from his birth in Arizona, his education into organizing and non-violence, his formation of the union, to his death in 1993. It includes newsreel footage of the Delano grape boycott, Senate hearings conducted by Robert F. Kennedy, Chavez's fasts, encounters with growers and rival Teamsters. Recent interviews with Chavez family members, Ethyl Kennedy, Roger Cardinal Mahony, Governor Jerry Brown, and current and past UFW leaders round out the history and assessment of Chavez and the Union.

The Fight In The Fields

1997

The Syndrome poster
8.8

An explosive documentary focused on a team of doctors who expose the junk science behind an unprecedented criminal justice crisis.

The Syndrome

2014

The First Angry Man poster
NR

“The First Angry Man” unpacks the dramatic campaign that slashed property taxes in California, leading to the collapse of the great public ambitions of postwar America and launched a nationwide tax revolt that continues unabated today.

The First Angry Man

2019