Amy Ellis Nutt: "We Must Tell Stories"

The first time Amy Ellis Nutt came across John Sarkin’s art, it was hanging on the wall of a neurologist’s office.

Amy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Newark’s Star-Ledger, was researching a story on the elusive wonders of science. Her investigation led to the office of Dr. Todd Feinberg, who authored a book on the mysterious human mind.

In the course of interviewing Dr. Feinberg, a nearby painting of 1950s Cadillac tail fins grabbed Amy’s attention. Being a curious reporter, she asked a question.

That’s what journalists do; they ask questions, and in doing so, they uncover the myriad moving parts of our spinning world, its characters and plots.

Through Dr. Feinberg’s introduction, Amy learned that Cadillac tail fins are a recurring theme in the work of Jon Sarkin, a chiropractor who, after suffering a massive stroke and spending two months in a coma, woke up with a compulsion to create art.

In The Accidental Artist, her celebrated profile of an artist born from a shifting cell in a chiropractor's brain, Amy uses Jon's extraordinary life to ask another question: Who are we?

Participant Media—TakePart's parent company—acquired "Page One: Inside The New York Times" at the Sundance Film Festival and is releasing the film theatrically with Magnolia Pictures.