Doc Feature From Oscar^® Winning Director To Premiere on SHOWTIME Later This Year

Photo: Nafis Azad

LOS ANGELES – May 26, 2020 – Showtime Documentary Films today announced a new feature documentary from Oscar^® winning director Errol Morris (Wormwood, The Fog of War) about Timothy Leary that will premiere on SHOWTIME later this year. A FILM BY ERROL MORRIS (w/t) asks the question why Leary, the High Priest of LSD, became a narc in 1974 and seemingly abandoned the millions he urged to turn on, tune in and drop out. Was his “perfect love” Joanna Harcourt-Smith a government pawn, as suggested by Allen Ginsberg? Or was she simply a rich, beautiful, young woman out for the adventure of a lifetime? Morris and Harcourt-Smith will reexamine this chaotic period of her life and explore the mystery of the Leary saga: his period of exile, reimprisonment and subsequent cooperation with the authorities. Devotion or selfishness? Perfect love or outright betrayal? Destiny or manipulation? The film is inspired by Harcourt-Smith’s memoir, Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story.

In a first-look clip from the forthcoming feature, Harcourt-Smith details an early encounter with Leary, previewing an impassioned affair. To watch or share the clip, go to: https://youtu.be/q8kmZYIbw3s.

“This is a dream project,” Morris said. “I’m always looking for alternative ways into a story. You never want to go through the front door. Or even the back door. Much better to find an attic window that has been left ajar. Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who had a love affair with Timothy Leary, wrote a book detailing how they met, how they fell in love, how they took drugs together, how he ended up in prison. And then something surprising happened. I found Joanna as interesting as Timothy Leary, perhaps even more so. It was a way to tell a story about the ’70s in a powerful and unexpected way. I’m excited to be working with SHOWTIME and I can’t believe my good fortune.”

Morris is an Oscar and Emmy^® winning director whose documentary canon includes The Fog of War, A Brief History of Time, Standard Operating Procedure, The Thin Blue Line and Gates of Heaven. In addition to his illustrious film career, Morris has directed over 1,000 television commercials, is a New York Times bestselling author and a regular contributor to the New York Times opinion pages and Op-Docs series. In addition to honors for his individual films, Morris has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

A FILM BY ERROL MORRIS (w/t) is being produced for SHOWTIME by Fourth Floor Productions & Moxie Pictures. Morris is executive producer, and Robert Fernandez and Steven Hathaway are producers.

Showtime Networks Inc. (SNI), a wholly owned subsidiary of ViacomCBS Inc., owns and operates the premium television networks SHOWTIME^®, THE MOVIE CHANNEL^™ and FLIX^®, and also offers SHOWTIME ON DEMAND^®, THE MOVIE CHANNEL^™ ON DEMAND and FLIX ON DEMAND^®, and the network's authentication service SHOWTIME ANYTIME^®. Showtime Digital Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SNI, operates the stand-alone streaming service SHOWTIME^®. SHOWTIME is currently available to subscribers via cable, DBS, and telco providers, and as a stand-alone streaming service through Amazon, Apple^®, Google, LG Smart TVs, Oculus Go, Roku^®, Samsung Smart TVs and Xbox One. Consumers can also subscribe to SHOWTIME via Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, Apple TV Channels, AT&T TV Now, FuboTV, Hulu, The Roku Channel, Sling TV and YouTube TV. Viewers can also watch on computers at Showtime.com. SNI markets and distributes sports and entertainment events for exhibition to subscribers on a pay-per-view basis through SHOWTIME PPV^®. For more information, go to www.SHO.com. 

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