Mt. Lebanon native Jeff Stimmel has won an Emmy for his documentary on a hell-raising painter from Pittsburgh.
Stimmel, now living in Los Angeles, won a News and Documentary Emmy on Monday night for "The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale."
"Oh my gosh. I called everybody in the world last night," said his mother, Jeannine Stimmel, who said her son left a message on her answering machine Monday at her Mt. Lebanon home.
Stimmel received the award at Lincoln Center in New York, a day after the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony in North Hollywood on the West Coast. The News and Documentary Awards are presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, an East Coast sister organization.
Stimmel produced his documentary through his company, Divided Eye Films. It premiered July 7, 2008, on HBO. He was nominated in July as producer and director in the category of Outstanding Arts & Culture Programming.
"The Art of Failure" chronicles the tempestuous career of Chuck Connelly, a gifted, but self-sabotaging, artist. He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Pleasant Hills and attended art school in Philadelphia before making a name for himself in the New York art boom of the '80s. His brilliant and belligerent persona served as the basis for the character of a hard-drinking painter played by Nick Nolte in Martin Scorcese's film "New York Stories: Life Lessons."
Stimmel graduated from the Film Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. He scouted locations for Pittsburgh-made films like "Wonder Boys" and "Dogma." He met Connelly in 2002 when he was working as a line producer and production manager for the New York Times Television and Discovery Communications.
Stimmel was flying back to Los Angeles Tuesday and was not available for comment, his mother said.
She said his biggest concern was how to get the Emmy statuette past airport security in New York.
"It quite large, and it's quite heavy," she said. "He's not going to part with that Emmy. I can't imagine security would let him take that on an airplane."
