A Brief History of Time is a 1991 biographical documentary film about the physicist Stephen Hawking, directed by Errol Morris. The title derives from Hawking's bestselling 1988 book A Brief History of Time, but, whereas the book is solely an explanation of cosmology, the film is also a biography of Hawking, featuring interviews with some of his family members and colleagues. The music is by frequent Morris collaborator Philip Glass. Production This film project originated with executive producer Gordon Freedman, who brought the project to Anglia Television as a co-producer. After acquiring the property, Freedman met with director Steven Spielberg for advice on how to make the project into an important documentary film. Spielberg suggested Errol Morris as director. Morris had studied the history and philosophy of science at Princeton and later Berkeley, so was familiar with many of the topics in Hawking's book. Freedman's production company partnered with Anglia Television and Tokyo Broadcasting. David Hickman, of Anglia, became the film's producer. Morris only had a few days of access to film and interview Hawking. Because of Hawking's ALS, a disease that progressively affects nerve cells within the spine and brain, Morris filmed various static shots of Hawking, his wheelchair, and the tools he used to communicate, such as his battery-powered computer-based communication system with an electronic voicebox (which was sponsored and provided by Intel Corporation), to later edit together for the video component of Hawking's interview segments in the film. Although Hawking had an aversion to featuring his personal life in the film, Morris saw A Brief History of Time as being as much a biography as a science text, and much of his directing and editing work was dedicated to finding ways to depict ideas from theoretical physics and cosmology and then connect those ideas with details from the life of Hawking. He employed stylized interview sequences, graphic illustrations, and music written by Philip Glass. Morris also included clips from Disney's The Black Hole (1979). Instead of Morris traveling around and filming the various interview subjects in their native surroundings, all of the interviews for this film were shot on specially built sets on a sound stage in England. Morris said he was "very moved by Hawking as a man", calling him "immensely likable, perverse, funny...and yes, he's a genius."[1] He remembers that Hawking had posters of Marilyn Monroe in his office, and one of them fell down