Jean-Michel Basquiat and his sister Lisane on his childhood car accident and how he became influenced by the famous book, Gray’s Anatomy.
Premieres Friday, September 14 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings)
Features
TRANSCRIPT
What's your earliest most vivid childhood memory?
Probably getting hit by a car I guess.
How did that happen?
I was playing on the street.
And how old were you?
I was seven... seven or eight years old.
We lived in Brooklyn. We lived in Flatbush.
And Jean-Michel was playing outside when he was seven.
With a group of friends they were playing stickball My mother asked me to go out and get him for dinner, which I did. He came running across the street Forgot something and turned around to go back As he was running across the street, a car came around the corner... He was in the hospital for a really, really long time One of the gifts that my mother brought to him was the book Gray's Anatomy She wanted him to have the opportunity to see his own body as it related to... The way it had to be reconstructed.
His spleen was removed.
It was a book that was highly influential for him.