The Writer with No Hands
8.4 /10 1 Votes
Director William Westaway Initial release April 28, 2014 Music director Ian Kellett, Andy Nunn Country United Kingdom | 8.4/10 IMDb Genre Documentary, Crime, Mystery Producer Matthew Alford Duration | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cast Similar movies Sirius (2013), The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (2014), New World Order (2009), Get Bruce (1999), Seduced and Abandoned (2013) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Writer with No Hands is a British documentary feature film, which follows academic Matthew Alford as he tries to establish that the accidental death of Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore was actually an assassination by the US government. It premiered at Hot Docs in 2014 but was not distributed. A second version was released on Amazon and iTunes on 27 June 2017, the twentieth anniversary of Devore’s disappearance.
Contents
Official the writer with no hands 2017 trailer
Background
On Friday 27 June 1997, Gary Devore had been driving home after completing a new feature film script. He was last seen at a Denny's Diner in the Mohave Desert around 1am on the morning of the 28th. The subsequent manhunt remained unsuccessful until the following July when an amateur detective located fragments of Devore’s car next to the California Aqueduct near Palmdale.
The California Highway Patrol’s investigation concluded that Devore must have driven the wrong way along the highway, crashed into the water and drowned in his vehicle.
Production
The film title refers to reports that Devore’s hands were detached from the body and had initially lain undiscovered in his car.
In 2016, director William Westaway raised £4,769 through a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund completion of technical aspects to the final cut. The working title at the time was Follywood.
Alford discussed a range of difficulties in the filmmaking process and although he produced the original film his name did not appear as producer on the final cut. In 2012, Devore's publicist Michael Sands, who had been participating in the documentary, unexpectedly died after choking on a meat sample in a supermarket. Alford and Westaway’s differing reactions to Sands’ death fuelled their disagreements over the direction of the project and Sands appeared only briefly in the original film.
The films spawned an eponymous book on 1 April 2016.
Reception
The original film won The Tablet of Honor at the Ammar Popular Film Festival in December 2014. The final cut won Best Documentary at the Vienna Independent Film Festival and the Creation International Film Festival, following a series of screenings at independent venues around the world during June.
The original film had received criticism at Hot Docs over ethical concerns, including being called a "sour" and "dubious" product "that borders on unethical". Cinestyle said: "[Although] I wouldn’t want to be [director] Westaway’s friend (or enemy)... This documentary is riveting".
References
The Writer with No Hands WikipediaThe Writer with No Hands IMDbThe Writer with No Hands themoviedb.org