Jack Smith And The Destruction Of Atlantis

Given the number of books, films and exhibitions devoted to Andy Warhol, it's remarkable how little attention has been accorded filmmaker Jack Smith, a lynchpin of the American Underground and the only person Warhol claimed he would ever try to copy. Thank heavens, then, for Mary Jordan's vibrant, funny and tragic documentary, an entertaining hodgepodge of artifacts and impressions of a "creature" whose influence on photography, drama, film and art is still felt today.

Jordan traces Smith's story back to the unhappy, Depression-era childhood he spent in a series of Texas towns with his sister and thrice-married, often-neglectful mother. Smith moved t...