John Basinger

Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.

Boomer is a rookie cop based in the urban hellhole that is downtown Chicago. After his involvement in a drug bust operation which results in the death of Carlos, his mentor and father figure, Boomer becomes disillusioned with the brutal and inhumane nature of his job. Consequently, he decides to hand in his resignation to the Chicago Police Department and return to his home town of Joliet, where his fiancé, Kelly, awaits. While en route back to Joliet, however, Boomer makes a grievous error in judgment when he stops for, and assists, an unfortunate motorist whose vehicle appears to have broken down; the naive ex-cop is swiftly attacked and rendered unconscious. Boomer awakes to find that his car and wallet have been stolen, and that he has become involved in a dangerous game of mistaken identity.

In 1993, retired theater professor John Basinger began memorizing all twelve books of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Eight and a half years later, he performed the entire epic poem in a staged, one-man show. This short documentary uses intimate interviews and rehearsal footage to explore how and why he achieved this extraordinary feat of human memory.

In a monumental three-day marathon performance beautifully captured by director and cinematographer Andreas Burgess, John Basinger brings the dramatic majesty, tonal range, and power of John Milton's verse to life by reciting all 12 books of the 60,000-word epic poem entirely from memory. This release also features the mini-documentary Thus Spake John exploring Basinger's decade-long memorization process, alongside the short film The Golden Smile and the monody performance Forsake Me Not Thus, Adam.