Ted Pedas

One of the West Memphis Three, Jason Baldwin was incarcerated for life without parole for a crime he did not commit. This film focuses on Jason’s writings which enabled him to get through his days at Grady Correctional in Arkansas.

Filled with humor and defining experiences in both his own life and in the lives of some of his closest friends, William Faulkner and Robert Aldrich, as well as on his late wife, screenwriter Silvia Richards, Mr. Bezzerides offers colorful reflections as to why he and his typewriter unabashedly need to keep creating honest characters, worlds, and stories. Through recently discovered boxes of photographs, film clips, the haunting music by Fugazi, interviews (including Jules Dassin, Mickey Spillane and Barry Gifford) and testaments to his progressive creativity from other writers, Fay Lellios' straight-ahead documentary gives us a start in discovering this 97-year-old proletariat storyteller, and the meaning of his favorite phrase by Carl Jung, "There can be no birth of consciousness without pain."

A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.