Noted documentary filmmaker Errol Morris utilizes an unmoving camera during his interviews and in so doing, gets his subjects to reveal the most amazing things about themselves. He first used his innovative technique in Gates of Heaven, the darkly satirical saga of two pet cemeteries, one successful and the other a bust. He made the film in 1977 with his family and a wealthy friend putting up 120,000 dollars to sponsor the film. Morris took a winding road toward becoming a filmmaker. His mother was a graduate of Juilliard and taught music in public schools. His father, a doctor, died when Morris was an infant. After studying cello for a time at Vermont's Putney School, Morris began studying history at the University of Wisconsin. He graduated in 1969 and moved about performing odd jobs until 1972 when he began pursuing graduate studies at first Princeton and then the University of California at Berkeley where he obtained a master's in philosophy and began to get involved with the Pacific Film Archives. It was there he fell in love with filmmaking and decided to become a filmmaker. Gates of Heaven provided Morris with considerable acclaim and, using the same technique, he made Vernon, Florida to expose the eccentricity of the seemingly average residents of the title town. Morris gained an international reputation in 1988 with the release of his powerful documentary of a hitchhiker who may have been falsely convicted of killing a police officer in Dallas, The Thin Blue Line. This film had a great effect on the case of the convicted Randall Adams, and eventually led to his being exonerated and released. Other notable Morris documentaries include his filmed chronicle of Stephen Hawking's life in A Brief History of Time (1990).