THE TRAVELING YEARS, A MEMOIR OF PUPPETS, PORNO & PENURY follows the travels and adventures of respected American documentary filmmaker Leo Eaton between 1964 and 1980, prior to his settling in America. After escaping from a childhood spent in English boarding schools, Leo joined the British film industry at eighteen on Roger Moore's THE SAINT and within five years was directing iconic 1960s puppet series' produced by Gerry Anderson, including CAPTAIN SCARLET & THE MYSTERONS, JOE 90 and THE SECRET SERVICE. At the time, he was one of the youngest directors in British television. But after a passionate but ultimately disastrous love affair with a Hollywood starlet that resulted in his dismissal from UFO, Britain's answer to STAR TREK, he sailed by cargo ship to Mexico where he lived until his money ran out. Leo then hitchhiked to Canada where he worked as a boat builder and railroad baggage handler before taking to the road again and hitchhiking to Los Angeles where he wrote for a Mafia-run pornography publishing house and shared an office with cult filmmaker Ed Wood Jr. (played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s biopic of the same name). Returning to Mexico as an aspiring novelist and promptly falling in love, Leo followed his future wife Jeri back to the University of Texas in Austin where he persuaded them to take him on as an adjunct professor, teaching script writing and film to the same graduate students who made TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. When after two years the University discovered he had no degree, Leo and his wife returned briefly to England before settling in a small Cretan village as the only foreigners. For three years they were part of the village, making their own wine and raki (the fiery local spirit) and helping fellow villagers with everyday tasks like dynamiting septic tanks and shearing sheep. Only when tourism began to intrude on the village did Leo and Jeri, along with their two Cretan dogs, move on to a mountainside in Portugal where they lived through a bitter winter in an old peasant farmhouse with dirt floors and no bathroom, power, running water or glass in the windows. This was the final chapter in the Traveling Years before the desire to return to some semblance of comfort brought Leo and his wife back to America, where he has been making award-winning documentary films ever since.