“My belief is that prisoners are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.”
–Former warden of Florida State Prison Ron McAndrew
Your father provided intelligence training to you. You’re so crafty you may as well be the love child of the CIA and Green Berets. Your mother may have inflicted Shaken Baby Syndrome on you. You used to frustrate her, and she was known for shaking it out of you. You’re 19. Your father dies. You pick up his tools he bequeathed to you, only, you have no idea what probate law is, and your stepmother calls the police. You’re arrested, because your father’s will has not been legally processed. Probate law is when a court accepts and validates a will. You never understand and register this concept. Local authorities are not concerned with your level of understanding and you’re arrested. All you know is that you don’t like jail and you want to get out. You begin a “war of irritation” to break out, and early on this includes LSD, a coffeepot, and a redhead. A psychologist comes into assess you. He doesn’t really like you because you’re a pain in the ass and people find your personality unpalatable. Several inmates and prison guards provide accounts of how crazy you are, but you’re so clever the psychologist Dr. Berland says you are faking it, and you can stay in jail. And so you plot. You might have brain damage, so you have no idea what is beyond the walls, or what you will do when you’re out.
Using fragments of animation to manifest the frenetic energy of what director Gabriel London calls a “comic book style size of life,” THE MIND OF MARK DEFRIEST surpasses every possible threshold of pain that has a conceivable expression within the human condition. The film is the culmination of a 14-year process that began when director Gabriel London started researching the nationwide issue of prison rape. After connecting with the organization “Stop Prison Rape,” London poured through 15 years of letters from escape artist Mark DeFriest. Known as Houdini for his escape attempts and jailbreaks, DeFriest was thrown into solitary confinement for 26 out of his 30 years (and counting) in prison. DeFriest has been tortured, brutally gang-raped, and denied sunlight for years at a time. To survive in prison, heterosexual DeFriest created an alterego, “Wendy,” and dressed the part for protection. He witnessed the brutal murder by correctional officers of Frank Valdez and was transferred to a new prison for protection. Time and time again, the Florida Commissioners reviewing his parole of near perfect behavior after decades of escapes hemmed and hawed because his punishment wasn’t enough. Former Florida State Prison Warden Ron McAndrew says in the film, “We turned a low level non-violent offender into what Mark has become. We failed Mark DeFriest.”