After attempting to develop a screenplay about a bizarre form of insurance fraud that involved non-accidental dismemberment of limbs by residents of a small Florida community ("Nub City"), Morris opted instead to record several of the town’s more interesting citizens. The resulting work gently presents rural America in all its genuine strangeness as locals discuss their passions for turkey hunting, radioactive sand, and stargazing.

Slaughterhouse designer Temple Grandin has always found humans to be inscrutable. Not so with cattle. Not only does she feel her emotional background has helped her to understand animals, but her personal struggle with overcoming fear has drawn her closer to the bovine world than to the human. At turns humorous and deeply affecting, Stairway to Heaven is at once a portrait and a meditation on what it means to be human, as well as another look at one of Morris’s favorite themes: the connections between ourselves and the animal world.