Ebs Burnough is considering the best piece of advice he’s ever been given. The comment comes from an astonishingly star-studded rolodex — a mountain of industry names he has accrued over decades working in politics and film.
“Nora Ephron,” he lands on: “‘Consider the alternative.’ Because the alternative for a lot of things is, frankly, not being here. Whenever I’m disappointed or upset about something, I think, ‘God, consider the alternative.'”
Burnough, currently the chair of the Sundance Institute, is a former White House advisor-turned-filmmaker. After working as Michelle Obama‘s senior advisor and political director in the late ’00s, he was hand-picked by the then-First Lady to help head up some of the most iconic events ever held at America’s political home: state dinners and cultural affairs that would host the world’s leading politicians, artists and activists.
It is a job, he confesses, that kept at bay his passion for film and theater. In 2011, he had emerged on the other side of the Obama administration unscathed, and after a two-year stint working with Aerin Lauder (granddaughter of the late beauty icon Estée Lauder) to scale up her luxury lifestyle behemoth AERIN, Burnough found himself pursuing a lifelong dream. The Capote Tapes, a deep-dive into the explosive, never-finished final novel of Truman Capote, Answered Prayers — told through unheard audio archive and interviews with the writer’s friends and enemies — released in 2021, solidifying Burnough as a formidable documentarian.
