Based on the biography "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga" by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the film Pollock tells the story of this artist, a leader of abstract expressionist painting whose work is one of the cornerstones of the modern art movement. Pollock's technique - of throwing, drizzling, and splattering strings of paint from the brush to the canvas - had almost nothing to do with the effect he created. His painting was instead about the process itself, a form of performance art. A serious alcoholic who was married to Lee Krasner, another influential artist in the modern movement (Marcia Gay Harden in an Oscar-winning performance), Pollack's rise to art world fame over the last 15 years of his life is illustrated in an insightful, detailed fashion in this film.