Editing Errol Morris (section)

===First films===
Morris accepted $2,000 from Herzog and used it to take a trip to [[Vernon, Florida]]. Vernon was nicknamed "Nub City" because its residents supposedly participated in a particularly gruesome form of insurance fraud in which they deliberately amputated a limb to collect the insurance money. Morris's second documentary was about the town and bore its name, although it made no mention of Vernon as "Nub City", but instead explored other idiosyncrasies of the town's residents. Morris made this omission because he received death threats while doing research; the town's residents were afraid that Morris would reveal their secret.<ref name="singer1"/>

After spending two weeks in Vernon, Morris returned to Berkeley and began working on a script for a work of fiction that he called ''Nub City.'' After a few unproductive months, he happened upon a headline in the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' that read, "450 Dead Pets Going to Napa Valley." Morris left for Napa Valley and began working on the film that would become his first feature, ''[[Gates of Heaven]]'', which premiered in 1978. Herzog had said he would eat his shoe if Morris completed the documentary. After the film premiered, Herzog publicly followed through on the bet by cooking and eating his shoe, which was documented in the short film ''[[Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe]]'' by [[Les Blank]].<ref name="singer1"/>

''Gates of Heaven'' was given a limited release in the spring of 1981. [[Roger Ebert]] was a champion of the film, including it on his ballot in the 1992 ''[[Sight & Sound]]'' critics' poll.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=April 1, 1991 |title=Ten Greatest Films of All Time |work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/ten-greatest-films-of-all-time |access-date=July 30, 2022 |archive-date=June 5, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200605174332/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/ten-greatest-films-of-all-time |url-status=live }}</ref> Morris returned to Vernon in 1979 and again in 1980, renting a house in town and conducting interviews with the town's citizens. ''[[Vernon, Florida (film)|Vernon, Florida]]'' premiered at the 1981 [[New York Film Festival]]. ''[[Newsweek]]'' called it, "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable." The film, like ''Gates of Heaven'', suffered from poor distribution. It was released on video in 1987, and DVD in 2005.

After finishing ''Vernon, Florida'', Morris tried to get funding for a variety of projects. The ''Road'' story was about an interstate highway in Minnesota; one project was about Robert Golka, the creator of laser-induced fireballs in Utah; and another story was about [[Centralia, Pennsylvania]], the coal town in which an inextinguishable subterranean fire ignited in 1962. He eventually got funding in 1983 to write a script about John and Jim Pardue,  [[Missouri]] bank robbers who had killed their father and grandmother and robbed five banks. Morris's pitch went, "The great bank-robbery sprees always take place at a time when something is going wrong in the country. [[Bonnie and Clyde]] were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without [[the Depression]] as a backdrop. The Pardue brothers were apolitical, but it's impossible to imagine them without Vietnam."<ref name="singer1"/> Morris wanted [[Tom Waits]] and [[Mickey Rourke]] to play the brothers, and he wrote the script, but the project eventually failed. Morris worked on writing scripts for various other projects, including a pair of ill-fated [[Stephen King]] adaptations.

In 1984, Morris married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and other serial killers. He would later recall an early conversation with Julia: "I was talking to a mass murderer but I was thinking of you," he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: "I thought, really, that was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me. It was hard to go out with other guys after that."<ref name="singer1"/>