Willie

Danny Lyon
Bleak Beauty Video

1985 New Mexico, color, b&w, 82 minutes. Willie is a realistic film made in Bernalillo, home of Willie Jaramillo and filmmakers Danny and Nancy Lyon. Defiantly individual and implacable in the face of authority, Willie is repeatedly thrown into jail for relatively minor offenses. The filmmakers gain access to jail cells, day rooms, lunatic wards, and the worst cellblock in the penitentiary where Willie is locked up next to his childhood friend and convicted murderer, Michael Guzman.

“Lyon deftly blends footage of Jaramillo as an adult with scenes of his more carefree youth. The effect is powerful. One gets the sense of the ravages of time, coupled with a feel for the devastation wrought by a life wasted.”
Jon Bowman, The New Mexican

“Extraordinary footage of inmates in the penitentiary is compelling, but it is the ordinary in the film that is frightening.”
Roy Durfee, The Alburquerque Journal

“Willie” was funded by grants from the New Mexico Arts Division and The National Endowment for the Arts.

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