Shoot-outs, robberies, gas-huffing , drug dealing, pill popping, murders, and tap dancing - what do these all have in common? These are just a few of the parts of being a member of the Wild and Wonderful White Family. The legendary family is as known for their wild, excessive criminal ways as they are for their famous mountain dancing members, including Jesco White, the star of director Julien Nitzberg’ s cult classic documentary Dancing Outlaw. Exploring both the comic and tragic sides of life on the other side of the law, this stylish, fast-paced family portrait exposes the powerful forces of corruption, poverty, and West Virginia's environmentally and culturally devastating coal mining culture that helped shape the White family, a dying breed of outlaws preserving a dying form of dance.

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Like Grandmaster Flash, Stanley Kubrick and David Berkowitz, Julien Nitzberg was raised in the Bronx. At age 16, he became a founding member of the notorious and much despised Lower East Side hardcore punk band Artless.  After college, Nitzberg moved to the Appalachian Mountains, where he directed The Wild World of Hasil Adkins, One Man Band And Inventor of the Hunch a documentary about Boone County’s infamous punk progenitor and rockabilly pioneer. This film featured the first footage of Mamie White who broke up a three-way catfight between female fans of Hasil Adkins during a concert sequence. This auspicious meeting led to Nitzberg’s friendship with the White family and his shooting the first video footage of Jesco White in 1989. This footage became the basis for Dancing Outlaw on which he served as Associate Producer.

After moving to California, Nitzberg directed the feature film Bury Me in Kern County.  As a screenwriter, Nitzberg has written for HBO, SHOWTIME, TNT, VH1 and NBC.  In 2006, Nitzberg wrote and directed the controversial operetta The Beastly Bombing or A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love, which won the LA Weekly Theater Critics’ Musical of the Year Award and was dubbed by the Huffington Post- “the first great work of comedy to emerge from the post-9/11 little planet of horrors.”  After playing over a year in Los Angeles, The Beastly Bombing went on to be staged in New York, Chicago and Amsterdam.  He is currently writing a script for HBO Films based on the strange life of the civil rights activist and professional wrestler Sputnik Monroe.