Rob Lyons
When choosing documentary projects to produce, Rob Lyons gravitates toward offbeat subjects and unusual protagonists. The real-life characters whose stories he’s brought to the screen are a quirky bunch: a dyslexic Kentucky farmboy who helped unlock RNA, a band of artists who secretly lived inside a mall for four years and the photographer behind the iconic Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
The Emmy-nominated Greenwich native’s subjects are diverse, but they share a common thread: quixotic ambition and stories Lyons believes deserved far more attention than they received.
The Wheelhouse crew on set at Jack Studios in Brooklyn
“If there’s a thread that connects all of the films I’ve worked on, it’s that they are about people who inspire me,” says Lyons, executive director of Wheelhouse Creative, a Manhattan-based company specializing in film production, promotion and acclaimed movie trailers. “A lot of these people are very ordinary humans, but there’s also something that drove them to do pretty extraordinary things. And I suppose that’s why I wanted to be part of telling their stories.”
The list of noteworthy projects Lyons has been part of include 2024’s critically acclaimed Secret Mall Apartment, the stranger-than-fiction story of eight Rhode Island artists who secretly built and furnished an apartment inside the Providence Place Mall. Spoiler alert: The artists eventually get caught, but their four years of living undetected make for surprisingly suspenseful viewing.
Jeremy Workman and Lyons at Jacob Burns Film Center
Greenwich friends Sarah Gallant, Cristin Marandino, Frederica (Peluso) McGannon, Kelly Moylan (Lyons’ wife), Radhika Jones, Martina Faulkner and Amanda (Carnell) Petz
Jeremy Workman, Michelle Zauner, Craig Hendrix, Michael Lisnet and Lyons at Electric Lady Studios
Carmen Delaney, Nelson Walker, Jill Campbell, Cheryl Tiegs, Lyons and Selina Lopez on the set of Beyond the Gaze
“One of things that made this movie great is that the artists filmed themselves living there,” says Lyons. “That footage is why the film works because it’s something you kind of had to see to believe.”
Like many of his documentary subjects, Lyons has a knack for taking risks and pursuing unlikely paths.
Case in point: the Brunswick alum’s youthful decision to quit the parent-pleasing New York City banking job he landed after his Boston College graduation to work on film sets in Portland.
Turns out the pivot to the Pacific Northwest was the first of several strategic career moves for Lyons. Portland’s thriving film scene proved more welcoming to newcomers than Hollywood.
Lyons was bitten by the creative bug long before heading west. “I was a kid who was always writing or drawing something,” he says. At Brunswick, where he was active in theater productions, that creative instinct deepened. “It was a really incredible place to be just in terms of the quality of productions we were able to turn out in a high school,” he says.
His parents, second-generation Irish Americans, encouraged more reliable career pursuits than the arts. “Banking was a good way to make a living, and film was a shitty one,” he says of their perspective. Ironically, one of Lyons’ banking clients was a film producer who gave him insight into the business side of filmmaking.
In Portland, Lyons side-hustled as a ski instructor and never left home without his pager. “I was so hungry, I wouldn’t miss a chance to get the next job,” he explains. “In the beginning, I worked for $1 a day just to get on a set.” Small jobs turned into bigger ones. He eventually got camera and grip work and made those all-important industry connections. That led to a long career at Sony Pictures, where he worked before launching Wheelhouse with creative director and business partner Jerry Workman.
Wheelhouse ventured into documentary production after the company was thriving. Its credits include promotional work on Academy Award-winning projects including Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Ed Harris’ Pollock and more.
Lyons on location in Santa Barbara
“I say yes too much in a whole industry that is built on saying no,” Lyons says with a laugh of his move into the documentary genre. “If I have a problem, it’s that everything that interests me draws me in. And I’m interested, I want to explore.”
Not that Lyons abandoned his workaday projects. The producer lives with his wife, Kelly, and teenage sons, Jay and Owen, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. “First and foremost, Wheelhouse is a marketing company and for many years our bread and butter has been doing film trailers” he says. “But our experience in the film business—spending all that time on other people’s movie sets—has given us a chance to be involved in some really exciting things.”
One recent project, Beyond the Gaze: Julie Campbell’s Swimsuit Issue, which made its PBS debut earlier this year, is a film Lyons says illustrates the real challenges of documentary producing today. “It’s such an interesting film about a really fascinating woman that hasn’t gotten some of the buzz it deserved,” he says.
Campbell, now in her 90s, was the photographer and driving force behind the first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She is also an enterprising feminist who insisted her models be credited by name, spawning a generation of supermodel moguls with her groundbreaking shoots of Kathy Ireland, Elle Macpherson, Tyra Banks and more.
Lyons had real hope for Beyond the Gaze to enjoy a longer theatrical release than the one that materialized. “But it’s just the landscape we are working in right now,” he says.
Producing documentaries in the post-Covid era remains a difficult business. Art-house theaters continue to struggle, distribution models have shifted, and even acclaimed festival films often face an uphill battle finding audiences.
This all sounds discouraging, but Lyons says it’s actually made the business more interesting and called on him and the team to be nimbler and more creative when they find a project they really want to get behind. In the case of Secret Mall Apartment, Lyons notes, “We released the film ourselves before doing the Netflix deal. It showed us how to navigate a different pathway.”
“The shift is hard, but it’s also exciting,” he adds. “The next wave of what I want to do is start a small investment fund that can help get some of these projects, things that deserve to be made, going.”
And because everything interests him, there are more cinematic moments to come. “I’ve got a horror movie project I really want to do and it’s time to get that going.” He chats about the plot line not sounding the least bit scared. So stay tuned.
Lyons at Doc NYC Film Festival
Gregory Gerhard, Lyons and Nelson Walker at Montclair Film Festival
ROB LYONS’ ESSENTIAL VIEWING
Lyons recommends these documentaries, all Wheelhouse Creative projects, for their compelling takes on ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
SECRET MALL APARTMENT
Lyons describes director Jerry Workman’s 2024 film about eight Rhode Island artists who took over an abandoned section of the Providence Place mall and lived there, undetected, for four years as “a fun and hard-to-believe true story.” He notes the real heart of this story is the artists’ work with trauma survivors on creative projects across the country. “To me, this is film is about creating art for art’s sake as much as it is about that secret apartment,” says Lyons. It’s currently on Netflix.
BEHIND THE GAZE: JULIE CAMPBELL’S SWIMSUIT ISSUE:
“A lot of people don’t realize that the person who made supermodels out of people like Elle Macpherson, Kathy Ireland and Tyra Banks—the list goes on—was a really creative woman,” says Lyons. The photographer behind the iconic Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Campbell is now in her 90s, and also directed this documentary, which explores the passion for female empowerment she brought to her work in a male-dominated world. The doc made its PBS premiere in March, and is streaming on Apple TV, Google TV and Amazon Prime.
CRACKING THE CODE: PHIL SHARP AND THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION
Bill Hainy directed this 2025 documentary about Sharp, who won the Nobel Prize for cracking the RNA code. “He was dyslexic and grew up on a dirt-floor shack in Kentucky,” says Lyons. “Through sheer grit and determination, he changed science. But he was also the most remarkably humble guy. It was always about the work, never him. He is just an incredible inspiration.”