Aaron Brookner directs this documentary ode to creativity with its positive portrait of his uncle, the late filmmaker Howard Brookner, and his friends. It pays tribute to a band of wild and crazy artists who played the game of life by their own rules.

At the outset, the director is trying to gain access to an apartment the writer William S. Burroughs called "The Bunker." Here is an archive — hidden away for 30 years — of his uncle Howard's outtakes, rushes, and footage of interviews with the notorious author and others. The elder Brookner won the trust of the writer whose life he charted in Burroughs: The Movie. Jim Jarmusch, who serves as producer of this documentary, joins with Tom DiCillo to comment on the outtakes.

Howard's other two films were Robert Wilson and The Civil Wars about the theatrical avant-gardist and Bloodhounds of Broadway, a roaring 20s narrative feature with a large cast including Matt Dillon, Madonna, Jennifer Grey, Randy Quaid, and others.

Besides being an ardent defender of film preservation, Howard Brookner was a playful and imaginative soul in his own right. He was not pleased with his mother's disappointment that he did not go on to a career in law as she and his father suggested. And she was against his homosexuality, although she was taken aback by the handsome charm of his boyfriend and lover, the gifted writer Brad Gooch; Brookner and Gooch were together for ten years.

Brookner, like so many others from this era, contracted HIV and died of AIDS in 1989. He wrote a loving letter to his parents about his satisfaction with living a life of no regrets and a whole-hearted delight in his creative projects.