The film opens on a montage that shows the spirit of the early 60s in New York City. The creative boom in advertising design… the artists’ hang outs like the Cedar Bar, where they would go to find warmth on cold nights. They were all there … Jack Kerouac, Dennis Hopper, Jackson Pollock.... a rampant stream of creativity that recalls Paris in the first half of the century. A community of artists.

Henry Geldzahler, an art historian fresh out of Yale and Harvard, enters the New York scene in 1960, the year JFK was elected. These were optimistic and exciting times. Artists, living in cheap downtown lofts, were breaking from the influence of Europe and Abstract Expressionism. Something entirely new was happening. Something purely American.