Bill White, former film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, recounts his years growing up in Seattle's movie theaters. Beginning in 1958, when the seven year old boy began sneaking downtown to watch 25-cent triple features in all-night dives, to his break with reality during the 2011 International Film Festival, "Cinema Penitentiary" is a hilarious and devastating journey through fifty years of American movies and social history. Illuminating the zeitgeist of the times, from the beat years of cold war greasers to the flowering of the summer of love, the book reads more like a coming of age novel ala Salinger than a film critic's memoir.