Brokedown Palace (1999) is an American film directed by Jonathan Kaplan, and starring Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale. It deals with two American friends imprisoned in Thailand for drug smuggling. Because it presents a critical view of the Thai legal system, most scenes were filmed in the Philippines; however, some panoramas and views were filmed in Bangkok. Its title is taken from a Grateful Dead song written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter from their 1970 album American Beauty.

Lifelong best friends Alice Marano (Danes) and Darlene Davis (Beckinsale) are like night and day. Alice is bold and daring, while Darlene is more quiet and reserved. The future looks bright for both of them as they graduate from high school and make plans to attend college in the fall.

Unbeknown to their parents, they change their pre-college summer vacation destination from Hawaii to Thailand at Alice's insistence. Alice claims that the American dollar is much stronger overseas and they should take advantage of the opportunity. While there, they meet a captivating Australian man, Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine), who befriends them and invites them along with him to Hong Kong. However, the girls are found to have large amounts of heroin at Bangkok International Airport while preparing to board their plane, and are quickly taken into custody for drug smuggling. As they are interrogated separately, Darlene is tricked into signing a confession in Thai, which she does not understand.

Phillip Chapman Lesh (born March 15, 1940 in Berkeley, California) is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career.

After the band's disbanding in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of Grateful Dead family music with side project Phil Lesh and Friends, which paid homage to the Dead's music by playing their originals, common covers, and the songs of the members of his band. Phil & Friends helped keep a legitimate entity for the band's music to continue but have been on hiatus since 2008. Recently, Lesh has opened a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads, and has been performing with Furthur alongside former Grateful Dead bandmate Bob Weir.

Lesh started out as a violin player. In high school he switched to trumpet (A snippet of tape of Lesh on trumpet in college can be heard on "Born Cross-Eyed" from the Grateful Dead's 1968 release Anthem of the Sun.). Studying under Bob Hansen, he had a keen interest in avant-garde classical music and free jazz; he also studied under the Italian modernist Luciano Berio at Mills College (classmates included minimalist composer Steve Reich, and future Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten). While still a college student he met then-bluegrass banjo player Jerry Garcia. Despite antipodal musical interests, they formed a friendship and eventually Lesh was talked into becoming the bass guitarist for Garcia's new rock group, then known as the Warlocks. According to Lesh, the first song he rehearsed with the band was "I Know You Rider". He joined them for their third or fourth gig (memories vary) and stayed until the end. Lesh noticed that another group had made a record under the name Warlocks when he found their single on Columbia Records at a record store [Phil Lesh/Searching For The Sound, pg. 61]. That little-known band would later become The Velvet Underground.

Jackie Greene is an American singer-songwriter and musician.

Greene was born Chris Nelson in Salinas, California, and developed an interest in music at an early age, starting with the piano. At 14, he began to play guitar and within a short time, was able to sit in with local bar bands. As he got older, he began composing his own songs. He recorded in a makeshift garage studio, burning his own CDs and selling them everywhere he could. Using the money he saved, Greene was eventually able to record and release his first full-length album, Rusty Nails, on his own.

After graduating from Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, California, Greene moved to Sacramento, where he began performing regularly. Marty DeAnda, owner of local label DIG Music, noticed Greene at an open-mic session in 2001 and signed him as the label's first artist. In late 2002, Greene released his first album with DIG, Gone Wanderin', which won the California Music Award for the Best Blues/Roots Album in 2003 and remained on the national Americana charts for over a year. In 2004, Greene released his third album, Sweet Somewhere Bound, and began receiving radio play for singles like "Honey I Been Thinking About You".

Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone.

Coming to prominence in the 1970s, Browne has written and recorded several notable songs throughout his career including "These Days", "The Pretender", "Running On Empty", "Lawyers in Love", "Doctor My Eyes", "Take It Easy", "For a Rocker", and "Somebody's Baby". In 2004, he was both inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, and bestowed an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.

Browne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, an American serviceman, was stationed. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda (née Dahl), was a Minnesota native of Norwegian ancestry. Browne has three siblings: Roberta "Berbie" Browne who was born in 1946 in Nuernberg, Germany (Nuremberg) and Edward Severin Browne who was born in 1949 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His younger sister, Gracie Browne, was born a number of years later. Browne moved to the Highland Park district of Los Angeles, California, at the age of 3 and in his teens began singing folk music in local venues like the Ash Grove and The Troubador Club. He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, graduating in 1966.

Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart (born September 13, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Apple met international acclaim for her 1996 debut album, Tidal, which was a critical and commercial success. At the age of nineteen she received a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single "Criminal" from that album in 1998.

After Tidal, Apple released the critically acclaimed, though less commercially successful albums, When the Pawn... (1999) and Extraordinary Machine (2005). A perceived shelving of Extraordinary Machine was met with vocal protests from her fans, who campaigned against her record label in 2005. Apple's musical style contains elements of jazz and alternative rock.

Born in New York City, Apple is the daughter of singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart. Her older sister, Amber, sings cabaret under the stage name Maude Maggart. Her half brother Spencer is a director and directed the video for her single "Parting Gift." Her half brother Garett Maggart starred in the TV series The Sentinel. In addition, her maternal grandparents were Millicent Green, a dancer with the George White's Scandals, a series of 1920s musical revues similar to the Ziegfeld Follies, and Johnny McAfee, a multireedist and vocalist of the big band era; her grandparents met while touring with Johnny Hamp and his orchestra. Apple was raped at the age of twelve, a trauma she would later allude to in songs such as "Sullen Girl."