One of the greatest jazz documentaries ever made, about one of the greatest players and most amazing characters the jazz world has ever seen. Saxophonist Art Pepper (1925-1982) lived the kind of jazz life only found in Hollywood movies. His prodigious talent led him to top gigs as a teenager, but drugs and attendant criminal activity knocked him out of commission for virtually all of the 1960s and early 1970s. This documentary, shot shortly after his searing memoir “Straight Life” was published in 1979, shows Pepper in the full flower of a remarkable comeback. In candid interviews, Art Pepper recounts his troubled marriages, dependence on drugs, prison terms, and luck in meeting his last wife Laurie, an articulate, compassionate defender of her errant husband. Through her devotion he was able to channel his immense reservoirs of pain, anger and frustration back into the lyric poetry of his playing. This funny and tragic film also features Art and his terrific trio playing a selection of his most famous tracks.