Paul Bowles, who was born in 1910, is a multi-talented American artist-a poet, writer of fiction, translator, and composer of music. In this candid and wide-ranging documentary filmed on location at his home in Tangiers, Morocco, he talks about his life and work. Bowles wrote a good deal of music for theatre and film. Gertrude Stein convinced him to give up poetry. He then turned to his true love-writing fiction comprised of "good sentences."
Bowles has savored his experiences as an outsider in society for much of his life. His marriage to writer Jane Bowles was filled with tension and controversy given her lesbian proclivities and his attraction to men. This documentary directed and produced by Catherine Warnow and Regina Weinreich contains interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Ned Rorem, and other friends who shed light on his use of drugs as a creative catalyst, his view of Tangiers as a dream city, and his response to the Beat Generation. The filmmakers include excerpts from The Sheltering Sky to illustrate some of the major themes in Bowles's life as traveler, outsider, and man of solitude.