Latest / Brain Stories / Episode 14 - Brain Stories Connections: Inside Conversation About Gail Freedman's New Film on Mental Illness

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Episode 14 - Brain Stories Connections: Inside Conversation About Gail Freedman's New Film on Mental Illness · Brain Stories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Brain Stories Connections.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uncommon conversations about how we can all do so much better around mental health and serious mental illness.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because mental health is health.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Frank Cosa.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're back, and we're releasing episodes every two weeks.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe or follow us so you never miss a show.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we're sitting down with Gail Friedman.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Gail is the producer and director of a film just out on streaming called No One Cares About Crazy People.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a documentary inspired by a book that has the same title by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Powers.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: His two sons develop schizophrenia.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Gail has a decades-long career making documentaries.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is her first film about serious mental illness.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you can rent or buy it right now on Amazon Prime or Apple TV.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even need to count.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: We'll also put a link with all the latest info on where you can find it in our episode notes.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Today's interview is done by Sarah Haufrecht.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: She produced episode four of Brain Stories.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sarah is a writer and a mental health activist.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Her mom lived with borderline personality disorder.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this, check out the riveting true life profiles of previous Brain Stories episodes.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to binge, we'll allow it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now here's Sarah's interview with Gail.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Gail, you have made documentary films about so many different subjects.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Why did you make this particular film?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: There was kind of a three-headed motivation to this one.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: When I was a baby at CBS News many years ago, Ron Powers, who was already a well-established Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was working there doing cultural commentary.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And even though I was a complete newbie, we met and we became friends.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then over the years, we had our paths that diverged and we'd lost touch, and I didn't really know what had happened to his family.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Came across his book and read it and was riveted and could immediately see that there was kind of the spine of a film there.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the original motivation.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: I reached out to Ron and reconnected and we began to talk about this.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then the film sort of expanded from there.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I was also early in my career, I was a medical reporter for a while.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: So as I often say, I know just enough to be every doctor's nightmare.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that was kind of a factor.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then my own mother lived with borderline personality disorder, um, undiagnosed and or misdiagnosed and untreated most of her life.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: So those three things sort of combined to make this feel like, you know, I had to do it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna break down those three reasons in in separate questions, but starting with the first reason that you shared, um, I, when I first read Ron Power's book, I was, you know, incredibly moved myself.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I was watching your film, I was so moved by the way that you captured that essence by also using the skills of and your skills as a documentarian to whittle down what could be captured in a different medium, in, you know, in the medium of film, how you distilled his work.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that process of finding your own through lines and translating his work into the spine, as you say, that built your documentary.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's a really interesting comment because I don't think of the film as um being an adaptation of his book, uh, which is why we very purposely called it inspired by.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yet, obviously, I absorbed all the things you're describing, and they did influence me.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I there was never a conscious process of how am I going to turn this book into a film.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized that much of Ron's family story was in the past and that I really wanted to do something that was kind of unfolding in real time, which is something that I like to do with most of my films, is process and things that are happening.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know quite how where they're going to go or how they're going to turn out, and just kind of being with that process.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I also watched a lot of other films that had been done in this space, some of which are quite good, most of which left me um pretty depressed.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, and I didn't want to do that.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't, I mean, inevitably, you know, my film is not exactly what we would call cheery, but I didn't want to end on a doomy, gloomy note that didn't inject some kind of hope and sense of possibility.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so this family advocacy movement, which I learned about, uh, which was really starting to pick up ahead of steam, became of great interest to me.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that was, I mean, it's all over the country, obviously, but in perhaps at its greatest expression in uh in California.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so then I got introduced to the stories of Mark Rippy and his family, and I got introduced to Teresa Pasquini, who is this fierce family advocate.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: It grew organically.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there was there was a logic to it, but then I felt like I had to go off in these other directions.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so one thing just led to another to another, and that was also why this the storytelling as we we created the film was very much this weave back and forth.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Once I got really fascinated by the family dimension, some decisions were dictated by that.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: For example, following the Burgos family in Connecticut over the course of three years.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, so that sort of thing.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, with Mark Rippe, there was no way of knowing when we began what was going to happen to his story.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was so, so moving to see that story unfold, the compassion for um his struggle and how the whole community and his family was trying to help and trying to make sure that his humanity remained intact.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it seemed like the film operates with a sense of emotional logic that really you know builds so much in connecting your audience to this personal struggle that Mark and his family have have faced for so many years.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wanted to sort of ask you more personally, in terms of how your experience growing up with a parent who struggled with mental illness, you know, did making this film change your perspective on her lived experience and your own?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it changed my perspective on my own upbringing and on her, and and and also changed the way I look at people who are struggling with mental illness as well.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, if if, you know, what do people always say, what do you want people to take away?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I always say, look in, not away, look in, not away.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I that applied to me too.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I knew there was something wrong with my mother from the time I was a small child.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: I had no words for that.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't know that I even knew how to conceive of it, except that I mean, I remember being seven, eight, nine years old, and clearly knowing something was really off with my mother and that nobody was talking about it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: I disliked my mother intensely for most of my life.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think when I was really little, I I had affection for her.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and you will probably relate to this.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think when we were, my brother and I were really small, she was probably an okay mom because we were an extension of her, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that sort of narcissistic part of the personality was was dominant.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, once we became people, it was a different story.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: And my response was not one of one of empathy.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: My response was one of revulsion and that I wanted to be get away from her as much as I could and as soon as I could.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and it wasn't until quite late in her life, when she was also having cognitive issues, that a psychologist applied the borderline personality label.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the first uh revelation and change in perspective for me, because it was completely liberating.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, the proverbial light bulb going off in my brain.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, oh yeah, that makes total sense.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: That really fits.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it enabled me while she was still alive, not to forget, certainly, but to forgive and to let go, which was better for her and certainly better for me.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: All of those relationships that I came to know from one step removed while making the film obviously got filtered through my own experience growing up.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I mean, I developed a lot more empathy uh for my mother, who, I mean, the one thing the psychologist said when she applied that diagnosis was if it makes you feel any better, there's probably not a lot we could have done to treat your mother, which I gather today that that's starting to change.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but my mother was, even when the she had to go away for a couple week-long rests, refused to take medication when she came home.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, back in those days it would have been Librium or Valium or something like that.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: She refused, she refused to talk about it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't want to go to therapy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, you know, the classic thing: shut the door and leave it there.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I developed a lot more, um, a lot more kindness in my attitude towards her.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't forget, like I said, but I certainly was able to let go of the negativity that had that had lingered in me for so long.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and I think, you know, it wasn't a conscious thought, well, I'm gonna make this film and it's gonna heal me.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but I think.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I think, you know, we there are no accidents, right?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So much of that compassion that you're talking about for her experience, I see that um so palpably in the film with the families that you follow.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Would you say that that the Burgos family, the Rippey family, um Miles' family, do you feel like they are exceptions to the rule for what you saw?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you feel like they really are emblematic of so many families in America that are experiencing these similar struggles?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think the latter.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, every story is unique, and the Burgos family is extraordinary in their kindness and love and devotion.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're fully flawed, they're human.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, Kendra is often at the end of her rope, but they they're an amazing family.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: So is the Hall family, um, the Rupee family.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I but yes, I would say that that is more the norm than the exception.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think obviously not everybody has a loving, supportive family.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: We were we were in San Francisco last week screening, and a young woman got up from the audience who lives with her own diagnosis and essentially um has been abandoned by her family.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so she was, she didn't have a really concrete question, but I think she just wanted to be heard.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, we we don't all have that.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Where do where do we go?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Where do we find that support?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Where do we find our community?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So have honoring that reality, I nonetheless think that the the public perception is often, where are the families?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: The families are missing in action.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Why didn't the family do more?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, why how could they let this person live this way?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and my sense of things, um, and you know, I spent over five years making this film and have obviously talked, as you allude to, to a lot of people who didn't make it into the film for various reasons.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: My sense is that more often than not, there is a loving family that has been trying, that just wants their family member to live their best possible life against inconceivable odds, things that most of us can't even imagine.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I don't know that I could possibly be as loving and kind and devoted um as some of these folks, most of these folks are.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think it is, I think they are not exceptions.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and nor would I have wanted them to be, you know.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that would have been a misrepresentation of what exists in the world.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I I mean, and again, we didn't, you know, none of this is staged, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's all it's playing out in real time.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, when we're in the house and Carmelo's in the middle of having a really manic day, Kendra's not being sweet and kind to him, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: She's kind of at the you created this problem and get out of my way, you know.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um That's real.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's that's life.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well and we asked them if they wanted us to leave that day.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: They were clearly having a very bad day.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we'd been scheduled to come, and yeah, it was good for the film, but it was certainly not a good day for them.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I you know, felt compelled to say, Do you want us to stop rolling?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want us to leave?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like, No.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're here, if you're up for it, we're in.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Which again, people have have asked, um, was it hard to convince the folks who you wanted to feature to be in the film?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh did they resist?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, why?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was not hard.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think it's all about relationships.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And once some kind of a bond of trust had been established, they all wanted to go on this journey, and I think saw it as a form of public service, which I think it is.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, sharing their stories, sharing their struggles, um, acknowledging the fullness of that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that was true of of all of the families in the film.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: That was from the the Powers family, the Hall family, the Pasquini family, the Rippy family.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, in the I think in many ways the Rippy story ended, in some ways ended up being the soul of the film, even though it it began with with Ron's work and his family's story.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: In many ways the Rippies, I think, were the through line, you know, because of the California dimension and and the way it it all played out.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the other thing that strikes me, and again, it's not true of all families, they've got more than a full-time job trying to help their loved one, but how many end up being powerful advocates and activists on behalf of other families like theirs, not only themselves.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I don't know that I I'd have it the wherewithal to do that.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it just they just blew me away.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still blown away by by all of these folks.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, and to be to live, it was very important to also try to not marginalize the individuals who live with these diagnoses, but to let them speak their own truths in their own voice in their own way and and be centered in their own story.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So this sort of juggle because the family dimension and these disorders are full family illnesses, as Kendra says in the film, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: It affects everybody in the household.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I didn't want, I didn't want anybody to be marginalized in that story.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: But there is you succeeded in capturing the full experience, that 360 degrees of what happens to a person and to their families and to their communities.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And also that you're able to work in so much about medical elements of anosygnosia, which is you know an issue that's so misunderstood about um how how so many people who have a mental health condition don't acknowledge it and are able to acknowledge the fact that they're experiencing a mental health condition and the compassion of understanding that.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that having a documentary both show that that is such an important element to so many different mental health conditions.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really the the weaving together of those elements is something that I hope um gives your audience a way of understanding, a way of having the the ability to um to look inward and to look at people with you know a lens of compassion as opposed to, you know, dismissal.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Judgment.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And judgment.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I wouldn't have realized that something like anasygnosia was as controversial a notion as it is either.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and because it's not it's not denial, it's it's a feature of what's happening in the brain.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's the it's literally the inability to have the insight that one has an illness.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that too has become very controversial.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And again, going into this, I wouldn't have thought that.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I've learned that in the process.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: So one person in the audience, when I came up at one screening, groaned.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, the word obviously offended them.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um but, you know, it makes sense, right?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Treatment is not a free ride.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Medications have side effects.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's a complicated equation.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: So if you don't know you have an illness, why would you go into treatment?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Mark Rippy sits there and tells me on camera, I don't have a mental illness.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have schizophrenia.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care what they say.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: And yet he had even Mark with his florid psychosis had to sign a release and had to get permission and had to know that this film was about mental illness.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he wanted to participate because he wanted to tell me that he was not mentally ill and he wanted to explain that.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, yeah, say your piece, you know, tell me, tell me your truth.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: And even with the brain damage he sustained in his motorcycle accident, and even with multiple bouts of untreated psychosis, which does further damage to the brain, Mark still was amazingly intact at times.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Mark knew he was unhoused.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Mark wanted a place to live, but Mark could not accept the notion of treatment.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I mean, as you saw in the film, his family had attempted to house him multiple times in multiple ways.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: And because I think that's something else that people don't grasp, and not that most people with serious mental illness are unhoused, but uh, you know, there's obviously overlap.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and they never abandoned him, even when he couldn't, it was no longer safe for him to live with them.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that last apartment that he had where he threatened to kill his mother if she came through the door, he set that place on fire, too.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's how he ended up on the streets.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: The self-selected audience will come to this.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge for me at this point is trying um to get it out to a more general audience and hoping that people will stick around for that hard watch.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, I think I sort of naively early on said, well, how much, you know, violent, difficult entertainment content do people take in all the time?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Lots, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: But when it's real, I guess it's it's harder, it's a harder challenge.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's that's where we are now is trying to, you know, reach out to that larger audience.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell What makes you hopeful about what's going on in California?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then also like what do you think we have to do to get more of this, you know, general audience?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you think we can do better?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell On good days I am hopeful.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um on good days.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I do think potentially we're at a tipping point.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think that uh I think COVID made the general public more aware of mental health struggles than anything has in in recent memory.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh potentially on good days, I do think we're at a tipping point.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think we see that there is a um an attempt to innovate and and and look, we're already seeing with 988.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you saw there was an article just reporting on this recent study, right?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: That 988 laws, even in the brief time since they've been implemented, are cutting the rate of suicide among young people in particular.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I that's amazing that they've already been able to document that.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: So again, all of the things are complicated.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Some people say, well, now the police won't go out on 988 calls because they say they shouldn't, and maybe sometimes they're needed.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: So nothing is perfect and nothing is simple.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I think all of this can potentially.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Add up to making a difference.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, as Margaret P.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sister says at one point near the end of the film, a change is coming.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: It has to.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how I feel on good days.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll say that that's how I felt after watching.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I felt very hopeful because of all the good work that is being done, that it's not easy, it's slow.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: But there is, you know, examples in each and every day of people who are, you know, working from a lot of different angles in a lot of different areas, more so than, you know, 50 years ago.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it's messy.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, social change is messy.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Movements are messy.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: There isn't a one size fits all answer.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: And all you have to do is get to know enough individuals and enough family members to see that it is more complicated than that.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that maybe we don't, and that we apply a different yardstick to mental illness than we do to somebody who's having a heart attack or a stroke or dementia.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's w we s we we, you know, we wouldn't abandon those others.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, under the heading of free choice, free will, civil rights, we're willing to do that with someone who is perhaps in the middle of a major schizophrenic episode.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not sure that that's compassion.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mental health care and experiencing a mental illness is something that is an equal opportunity experience.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: It affects everyone, um, people that are um from all different walks of life, up to high-profile individuals, um, that we we all should be um invested in having better care available and you know, bringing this, um, bringing these stories uh to the forefront.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I think Gen Z, young people now have a better sense of that than perhaps most of us did when we were growing up.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I that's something else I find hopeful.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think there is much more of an understanding and acceptance, and uh and I'm always really happy when when young people come to see the film, even though I think much of our audience skews older, uh, because first of all, that's when diagnosis happens most often.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and they are our hope for the future, and I think they are much more open.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, when we were kids, even college age, I mean, yeah, I think we all knew we were angsty and depressed sometimes, but that was different, right?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: But there wasn't this kind of um understanding that this is something that is like a real presence in our world.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that is different now, and I think that does bode well for for what comes next.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I wish that I'd had something like that.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that would have been really helpful instead of feeling like, you know, my family are the weird ones, right?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, along those lines, um, you know, when it comes to your own childhood and your upbringing and your experience with your mom, um, this is a twofold question.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, are there things that you were able to talk about and say towards the end of her life to her?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, once you had a better understanding of her condition?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, would she have responded to this this film in a way that you could predict?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or you know, what would what would she have said about about this the making of this movie?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um there were things I was able to talk to her about, but not about her her living with borderline personality disorder.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: That I think would have been off the table.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: She never did manage to apologize, um nor did I expect her to, uh, but you know, for the ways in which, frankly, she was a bad parent, uh, and and a mean person who was actually cruel on many occasions.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: As for what she would have thought of this film, I think it would have been really hard for her to watch.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um you'll relate to this, uh given your own parent.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think she would have loved seeing my name up there.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Proud mama, yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: But again, sort of narcissistic, right?
• 26:49
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the content would have been hard for her.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: On the one hand, she might have been very put off by this film, but on the other hand, maybe it would have connected some dots for her.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she it would I think for I think it would have been hard for her, though.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think it would have been hard for her to watch.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, even if she isn't around to experience the film and connect those dots, I think that you are paying it forward by enabling others, you know, to do that.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um all of us, all of us working towards, you know, trying to to give more voice to those who are, you know, facing the challenge of getting care, of being seen, um, of feeling like they're not alone.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's so important.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just, yeah, it's just, I I hope that so many people get a chance to experience this film.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I want to give you the opportunity to make sure in this, you know, discussion that you share how people can find your film.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um initially we're streaming on both Amazon Prime and Apple.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be on other platforms and channels as we move along.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it'll be widely available.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that everyone um, you know, who's listening to this has an opportunity to find the streaming, you know, service that they that they prefer um to get a chance to watch your film if they haven't done so already.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to my my own background, I'm just always really interested in seeing um, you know, how those who have experienced um having a parent with mental health conditions have have, you know, internalized that and and move about the world.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just um it's not a specific question, but I've always just it's like it's just something I do sort of naturally in taking stock because of my own lived experience.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I just find it so so so wonderful that you you use your gift as a filmmaker, you know, not just in in um highlighting stories about um, you know, serious mental health conditions, but about um others who don't have the kind of resources or the system has been unkind to them.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't cu wasn't sure if if you see the the overlap in all of that work.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell Some of that I think is conscious now.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that it it always was.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think, you know, I mean, years of therapy hopefully impart some kind of consciousness.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thank goodness for that, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right, exactly.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, I, you know, it it inevitably I think we do we we carry that with us.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: And whether we in intentionally take those lessons and and use them as in our toolkit or whether it just kind of informs what we do.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I I end up feeling always that I just uh wanting people to be seen and understood and and heard in ways that I think I felt like well certainly as a child, I felt like I wasn't.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: But you weren't, yeah, yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right to give that gift to others.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think is is a beautiful, is a beautiful thing.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:33
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it shaped us for better, for worse, and in between, right?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Gail's film, No One Cares About Crazy People, starting May 2026, is available on Apple and Amazon and many other streaming services.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you might not have experience with a serious mental health condition, this is a really amazing film.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I encourage anyone to watch it and perhaps understand that we can all be part of this larger effort to find better solutions for our mental health care system.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Gail, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great conversation.