A dead-end motel at the Pacific’s edge provides the windswept setting for this intriguing literary triptych (plus prologue) of California dreamers and schemers, all either looking back at their lives or merely wanting to change them. A Hunter S. Thompson–like faux gangster/poet, a suicidal woman, a cheery comic, and more all pass through the doors, their stories a window into a distinctly American melancholy. Shot on weekends with friends, Jerry Ross Barrish’s debut was, against all odds, accepted into the New Directors/New Films Festival. Perhaps attracted to its forlorn seaside-hotel setting, similar to his The State of Things, it found a fan in Wim Wenders, who later cast Barrish in Wings of Desire.