We made a documentary movie about Jean Morrison because it’s obvious that his "life and times" contained not only all the elements of a great modern tragedy, but also a tragedy in which genuine redemption occurs.

Morrison was an extraordinary figure. Raised in Chicago, the son of an artist/custodian and a wild one-legged French woman, he left to Mississippi when he was 15, and ended up in the lower east side in the 1960’s.  A  poet/novelist, philosopher, photographer (he’d been taught photography by William Eggleston in Memphis), social activist, ex-marine, German professor, linguist, musician and father of 6 children. Living in an apartment on 10th Street and Avenue C (a building he shared with Tuli Kupferberg) Morrison was a recognizable lower east side character, a wild erratic genius who couldn’t reckon consequences. Remarkably intelligent, he was also deeply troubled - a man addicted to speed, sex, poetry and to the repetitive nightmare of his war experiences. In 1970 his novel, Joseph Dogboy, was being seriously considered for publication by Random House when the editor, David Segal, dropped dead of a heart attack. A week later Morrison was practically beaten to death by the husband of the woman with whom he was having an affair. His body was found on Avenue C by a cop, who, breaking the rules, threw Morrison into the back of his patrol car and rushed him to Bellevue. Morrison survived, but not quite intact. His memory was effected, his whole network of remembrance, and he slipped into an angry depression which lasted for years

The film  not only covers these years - Morrison’s life, his brief triumphs and lasting effects - but also the lives of his children who, necessarily, had to develop survival strategies living as white minority citizens in a Puerto Rican neighborhood and in the home of their half-crazy brilliant father and their loving and protective mother. These children - now in their 30’s and 40’s - remember (on film) the terror and glory of being raised on 10th Street. They remember their father as he terrorized them in their childhood. They remember how they learned to fend for themselves, and how they learned to stand together. They remember their years in "recovery" and the complexities of their own survival .They had become true Lower East Side warriors and are extremely proud of where they are from. The director/producer of the documentary, Amy Morrison Williams, the second to youngest child, tells the story of how she reached out to her father in his mid-sixties and brought him into the heart of her own family (where he now lives), thus putting an end to this long narrative of grief. It’s a story of pain and recovery. The mode of presentation  consists of words and monologues (Morrison’s and others), of photographs, of music, and digital tape. John Rosenthal, and old friend of Morrisons and a Chapel Hill writer, photographer and commentator on NPR also plays a large part in the film. His narration, photographs and writing help tell this great story.

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Watch the trailer below

The Morrison Project is 94 minutes long.