Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles was an accomplished American composer who left for Paris, turned his hand to prose and never looked back, not least when he became fascinated by the freedom of North Africa and spent much of his life in Tangier. Director Baichwal built up a friendship with the author of The Sheltering Sky over a number of visits to his home in Morocco, securing the long interview with the 87-year-old which makes up the core of this intimate but never over-adulatory portrait. In person Bowles appears as incisive and laconic as his writing style, recalling the difficulties of marriage to ill-fated spouse Jane, and offering a final assessment on Bertolucci's film of his most famous novel. American composer Ned Rorem comments on Bowles' musical achievement, the Hon David Herbert dishes the dirt on wild Tangier nights gone by, and the most fascinating footage reunites Bowles, Ginsberg and Burroughs in a New York hotel room. It was the last time these three giants of the counter-culture ever saw each other.