What makes a rebel? This 78 minute documentary probes the psyche of bad-boy publisher and free speech warrior Barney Rosset, whose mid-century legal and cultural battles smashed sexual and political taboos in the United States — unleashing the counter-culture of the 1960s and introducing millions of young intellectuals to the most radical currents in literature, film, theater and politics.
“Without Barney Rosset, American culture as we now know it would not exist.” — LA Times
For over 100 years an act passed by Congress allowed the U.S. government to ban, seize, and condemn books, films, and plays it deemed “obscene,” as well as contraceptives, erotica, and sex toys. In 1959, Barney Rosset, a flamboyant and provocative young combat photographer turned publisher began a crusade: overturn repressive federal censorship laws.
In the early 1960’s, Rosset’s defiant publication of three notoriously banned books – D.H. Lawrence’s racy Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Henry Miller’s steamy Tropic of Cancer and William Burrough’s drug-drenched Naked Lunch — landed him in ferocious and costly First Amendment battles. His relentless three year legal crusade broke the back of the era’s stifling literary censorship laws, abolished in landmark decisions.
Barney’s Grove Press and its journal Evergreen Review became the Instagram, BuzzFeed, Facebook and Twitter of the era: where you went to know what was happening and what mattered.Barney never stopped seeking and publishing the heartbeat of the ‘now’, the new voices and truth-tellers.
(1) Barney Rosset’s life blazes like a neon sign across the wall of his East Village New York City loft, a portal to his memories and obsessions. (2) Each wall vignette is a clue.
In his late eighties, coming to terms with his life, Barney Rosset began to obsessively sculpt an autobiographical 15′ x 22′ surreal wall mural, embedded with jewel-like vignettes crafted out of found objects, each a clue to the conflicts and obsessions that drove the life of the radical, bad-boy publisher who defied censors and birthed the Sixties ‘underground’ counter-culture.
Vividly enhanced with rare archival footage and contemporary film clips, this timely bio-doc reminds us that it takes only one defiant visionary to marshal a passionate army of resistance against cultural repressiveness and over-reaching government powers.
DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY Sandy Gotham Meehan & Williams Cole
CO-PRODUCER Astrid Myers Rosset
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Lisa & Dick Cashin, Diana Taylor, Don Glascoff, Kausik Barua, Helen Brown Bechtel, Robert Douglas Gotham
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY David Leitner
EDITED BY Katarzyna Płazińska & Williams Cole | WRITTEN BY Sandy Gotham Meehan
78 min | © 2018 | foxhogproductions.com | barneyswall.com
Press Links for Barney’s Wall
Sneak Preview Screenings 2017 – 18
October 30, 2017 Irish Repertory Theatre, New York, NY
November 18, 2017 NYU’s Forum on Law, Culture, and Society
December 19, 2017 Roxie Theatre, San Francisco, CA, sponsored by City Lights
Feb 8, 2018 Francis W. Parker School, Diane and David B Heller Auditorium, Chicago, IL
April 3, 2018 Hôtel de Guénégaud, Musée de la Chasse, Paris, France
