"Looking at Art Pepper's face, there seems nothing left there that's instinctual or joyful or even ordinarily pleasurable. It seems a face that's long past illusion, long past waiting to hear or receive some news or message or information which would matter. But then Pepper picks up his alto sax, and then finally there's exhilaration and faith. I won't attempt to describe his music, except to say that it reveals those qualities which must be least indispensable to his artistry and most destructive to his personality: a kind of submission to freedom and violence and the courage to go where the two take him. But the film's title says this man is a survivor and so he is. He has survived heroin and prison and a self-loathing so hostile it still seems to haunt him.... This movie hangs on and expands in the mind. The wisdom here is that wisdom has to be learned all over again every day. That's a thoroughly good piece of advice and this is a thoroughly good piece of work." --GV, Los Angeles Weekly.
Art Pepper: Notes from a Jazz Survivor has shown at Los Angeles' Filmex and the London Film Festival to rave reviews. Director Don McGlynn is at work on a documentary on Sam Fuller as well as a film on jazz saxophonist Warren Marsh for the BBC's 4th Channel.