Julie Checkoway's remarkable, tightly focused documentary Waiting for Hockney stars Billy Pappas, a Maryland art school graduate who was making ends meet tending bar when, prodded and in part funded by a makeshift support group of family, friends, and boosters, he decided to concentrate on trying to perfect his skill and create a masterpiece that he hoped would enable him to launch a self-supporting career as an artist. After discussing it with Larry Link, an architect who took it upon himself to help him focus his energies (in part by loaning him thousands of dollars over the years), Pappas decided to gamble everything on a pencil drawing--a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Determined to capture the face in as much naturalistic detail as possible, down to the last pore and follicle, Pappas re-taught himself how to draw, and then spent more than eight years on the portrait until he was satisfied that he'd created the most precisely detailed, "realistic" depiction of the iconic face that a human hand could produce. Then, after giving some thought to how best to capitalize on this achievement, he set about trying to attract the attention of David Hockney. He convinced himself that if he could show Hockney his work, and the established artist embraced it as he hoped he would, that would be that: his career would flow from that moment.

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