Alan Poul is a distinguished producer and director of both film and television who over the past 30 years has received an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Producers Guild Award, three Peabody Awards and five GLAAD Awards, among others.

Poul recently executive produced and directed the HBO Max drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers, and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor.

He is probably best known for producing HBO’s groundbreaking series Six Feet Under (2001-2005), for which he was nominated for an Emmy and a DGA award for his directing work. In addition he produced and directed Netflix’s The Eddy (2020), which he developed with director Damien Chazelle, and for which he and Chazelle shared the French Television Critics Association award for best director. Poul also produced all four of the Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City miniseries, based on Maupin’s celebrated novels, including the 2019 Netflix version. Other credits include executive producing and directing Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom (2012-2014), and the CBS series Swingtown (2008). Poul also produced the beloved ABC series My So-Called Life (1994), the Peabody Award-winning Rock the Vote Special (1992), and the Emmy-winning PBS documentary series The Pacific Century (1990). Poul began his filmmaking career in Japan, as Associate Producer on Paul Schrader’s Mishima (1985) and Ridley Scott’s Black Rain (1989).

Poul graduated Summa Cum Laude from Yale University with a degree in Japanese Language and Literature. He has taught courses on Japanese cinema at Yale and The New School, and has had his writing published in The New York Times Book Review and Film Comment magazine. He sits on the boards of directors of Film Independent in L.A. and Playwrights Horizons in N.Y., and is a representative on the Director Guild of America’s LGBTQ+ Committee.