Director Esther Robinson's personal inquiry into the truth behind her Uncle Danny Williams' mysterious 1966 disappearance. Virtually unknown today, Danny was Andy Warhol's lover, and a promising young filmmaker. The discovery of 20 never-before-seen films William's made during his time at the Factory and whose many subjects include Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Paul Morrissey, Brigid Berlin, Billy Name and what may be the earliest known footage of the Velvet Underground reveals a luminous talent and a stark gap in the historical record. Combined with Robinson's intimate interviews of surviving Factory members, the film gets beyond the icons and quietly dismantles the Warhol myth-making machine, allowing a deeper examination of the human fragility on which Andy Warhol's empire was built.

Wagstaff’s story is one of personal transformation from conservative, starchy, Yale-educated preppy to downtown habitué, hipster and experimenter. Both he and Mapplethorpe enabled each other to discover different parts of themselves both men encouraged the other to mine new territory in the arts and in their personal lives as well. Wagstaff’s death from AIDS, in 1987, and later Mapplethorpe’s, in 1989, marked the end of an era. Black White + Gray reveals the powerful troika these two men formed with Patti Smith, and the influence their collective work continues to have over present-day art and culture.