Morris’s first film, Gates of Heaven was a major critical success and earned its maker high praise from Roger Ebert ("rich and thought-provoking") and a testimonial from German filmmaker Werner Herzog, who ate his own shoe after the film’s Berkeley premiere to fulfill a vow. Intrigued by a San Francisco Chronicle headline ("450 DEAD PETS GOING TO NAPA VALLEY"), Morris borrowed funds from his family and a grad-school classmate to make this singular portrait of the people and animals affected by the financial demise of a pet cemetery. Contrasting the visionary owner of the defunct operation with the entrepreneurial family behind the successful Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park, the film vividly captures what Ebert called the "dogged elusiveness of the American Dream."