Within the walls of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary there occurs an annual summer event, the prison rodeo, an extraordinary spectacle largely unknown outside the area, and unfilmed until British documentarist Jo Menell shot Nothing to Lose in August 1980. The convicts, egged on by rowdies from all over the area, perform (“voluntarily”) what Menell describes as “acts of suicidal lunacy - competing for a $10 prize,” or, in a highlight verging on the Roman, a $100 prize, placed between the horns of a bull let loose in the arena, which is any man's for the taking - of the bull. With this rodeo as a central metaphor, Menell's film investigates the lives of four Oklahoma State Penitentiary inmates, “hard convicts doing hard time,” who talk about their attitudes toward respect, and toward survival.
Nothing to Lose was made for the BBC, and is set to air in June in Britain. A pioneer in investigative television documentaries in Great Britain, Jo Menell has been researching, writing, producing, and directing films since the Sixties, including four hour-long documentaries on Vietnam made for the BBC program “Panorama.”
Mr. Menell will discuss Nothing to Lose following the film.