During the Depression years of the 1930s, Clifford Odets was one of the lead dramatists in the theater of social protest. In one fruitful year alone, the legendary Group Theatre premiered three of his plays, \”Waiting for Lefty,\” \”Awake and Sing\” and \”Paradise Lost.\”
When filmmaker Jessie Nelson was growing up in North Hollywood in the 1950s, she was frightened of the mentally disabled. \”I had the fear a lot of children have when they are not exposed to people with disabilities,\” says Nelson, whose wrenching new film, \”I Am Sam,\” tells of an intellectually disabled father (Sean Penn) struggling to keep custody of his daughter.
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