<\/p>\n
Some movies are meant to be fun, and that’s not a bad thing, but there are also some movies that try to change the world, and there’s some great stuff in there.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one cares about crazy people\u201d is one of the latter, decidedly smaller groups. The film will be shown at Columbia University’s Film Row Cinema (1104 S. Wabash Ave.) on Saturday at 2:45 p.m. as part of an ongoing national tour. There will also be a panel discussion with director Gail Friedman after the screening.<\/p>\n
I’m sure she’ll talk about the film’s strong ties to Chicago. Its soundtrack is composed and performed by Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s lead vocalist and guitarist, who lives on the North Side. The voiceover voice you’ll hear is that of Bob Odenkirk, a suburbanite and busy star of shows like “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”<\/p>\n
The film’s focus is on this country’s shameful and destructive mental health system. There’s a chilling intimacy to this film. Because this film brings us closer to some of the people (and families) who are suffering. We met Mark Rippy, a blind man who has been battling schizophrenia for over 15 years. He manages to live homeless in a California town, even though his sisters try to help him by fighting the system and taking care of him the best they can.<\/p>\n
Carmelo and Kendra Burgos meet a loving couple desperately trying to find calm waters as Carmelo’s bipolar disorder shakes their family ties. We meet a young man who has been shot dead by the police. It’s a good (albeit depressing) look at the history of “treatment” for mental illness. There’s also a bit of politics involved, with California Governor Gavin Newsom trying to do the right thing.<\/p>\n
There is a glimmer of hope when you meet Kevin Powers. He was the youngest of Ron Powers and Honoree Fleming’s two sons. Ron Powers was a television critic for the Sun-Times who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973. He left town and wrote about 20 critically acclaimed and best-selling books, including several about Mark Twain (both were from Hannibal, Missouri) and “Flags of Our Fathers” (based on the Clint Eastwood film). He collaborated with Sen. Ted Kennedy on his memoir “True Compass.” He also coached commentary on \u201cCBS News Sunday Morning,\u201d for which he won an Emmy Award.<\/p>\n
He marries Fleming, a professor, and they live in Vermont, where they raise their sons Dean and Kevin. If you look at photos from your youth, you can imagine a happy family. But things didn’t go that way.<\/p>\n
Son Dean and younger Kevin were smart and creative. Kevin was a guitar genius. However, his behavior became increasingly erratic and bizarre, and he had trouble managing his medication. He died by suicide just short of his 21st birthday.<\/p>\n
In the end, nearly a decade after that suicide (and his troubles with Dean, which led to his diagnosis of schizophrenia), Powers did what he did best, and the result was a book called Nobody Cares about Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of America’s Mental Health (Grand Central Publishing).<\/p>\n
The book’s first sentence is “This is the book I swore I would never write,” and he later called it “a call to arms on behalf of these people against a society that dares call itself decent.”<\/p>\n
Director Friedman heard the call when the book was published in 2017. She and Powers knew each other through their work at CBS, and she credits him and his book with being the inspiration for the documentary.<\/p>\n
The book has been consistently praised, with Ron Susskind of the New York Times calling it “extraordinarily courageous…[Powers]writes with a fierce desire and fierce purpose to draw the world’s attention.”<\/p>\n Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) called it “a gripping and intensely personal story…[Powers’]compelling account helps shake us out of the bewilderment and apathy that has linked public discussion and enduring action to treat mental illness…[He]explains why we need to move beyond the stigma that makes progress difficult and sometimes impossible. The story he tells is not a comfortable one, but it is an important one.”<\/p>\n Mike Miner was equally impressed and moved. The late Chicago Reader columnist had known Powers since college and they were colleagues at the newspaper for a time. they remained friends. His review included the following pointed observations: \u201cMental illness can hide in plain sight because we don\u2019t want to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n But this powerful movie and equally powerful book should convince you. By the end of the film, we see that Powers’ son Dean is living a stable life. I think that makes you happy.<\/p>\n I knew Powers a little bit and had a lot of respect for him. He doesn’t ask for your sympathy, and if his life wasn’t all that tragic, he didn’t mention that his wife was shot and killed while walking near their home near Castleton, Vermont, in the fall of 2023. There were no suspects, the case remained unsolved, and, as Powers told a local newspaper, “She was a beloved woman on campus. She just had an outstanding intellect. She was caring, unassuming, and devoted to our family.”<\/p>\n I pray for peace for him and his son.<\/p>\n rkogan@chicagotribune.com<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Column #cares #crazy #people #documentary #shines #spotlight #mental #health #system<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some movies are meant to be fun, and that’s not a bad thing, but there are also some movies that try to change the world, and there’s some great stuff in there. \u201cNo one cares about crazy people\u201d is one of the latter, decidedly smaller groups. The film will be shown at Columbia University’s Film … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[2415,1014,2453,2454,2455,2451,36,2449,1495,35,2452,128,2456,2457,1076,2450],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-mental-health","tag-book","tag-cares","tag-column","tag-crazy","tag-documentary","tag-entertainment","tag-health","tag-kiwi","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mental","tag-movie","tag-people","tag-shines","tag-spotlight","tag-system","tag-what-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golliza.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}