You're gonna miss me, baby... when I'm gone

Roky Erickson endured a lot at the mental hospital he was sent to. Electric shock therapy, countless 'legal' experimental drugs, and the kind of four-white-walls atmosphere that is created to contain madness, not cure it. When Roky was finally released, he wasn't the same guy, but he was functioning. Moreso, he was functioning enough to restart his musical career in an entirely new direction, with a sound that once again broke all the rules. Sure, the words were all about demons in his head, but the records sold and the people paid to watch. For a while.

Fast forward a few years and we meet Rocky's future self; a schizophrenic individual in a house filled with clutter, with radio antennaes hanging off every piece of table space, and everysingle appliance in the house on at the same time. Sitting peacefully among the high-volume din, Rocky seems content among the racket, as if the collective sounds from three strereos, two TV's, kitchen appliances and even a video camera had blocked out the voices in his head at last. His aging mother, showing ample signs of delirium herserlf, works hard to look after her son, but ultimately just doesn't see that she's enabling his sickness, rather than fighting it. Rocky degenerates, and his mother isn't far behind him when the youngest son of the Erickson family decides enough is enough.

Read More

• Share

Revolution #9

Tim McCann's "Revolution #9" is a taut, intelligent psychological drama that effectively plays one nightmare against the other: the first being a Manhattan freelance writer's (Michael Risley) descent into schizophrenia and the other being the ordeal his fiancée (Adrienne Shelly) plunges into when she tackles the woefully inadequate mental health bureaucracy in her desperate attempt to get him some help. In regard to the second element, McCann exposes rather than preaches, and his film is the very model of the forceful, no-frills low-budget New York independent production.

Read More

• Share

Heath Ledger’s Joker 'exacerbates stereotypes about mental health'

Hollywood shows schizophrenics and those with other mental illnesses only as either stupid or evil, according to a new report for the Time to Change Campaign, which is backed by the Mind and Rethink charities.
The latest Batman film, for which Ledger won a posthumous Oscar, is criticised for pandering to a false stereotype of schizophrenics, that they have split personalities.
. . . .

A survey of 1989 people, commissioned for the report, found that 49 per cent had seen people with a mental illness acting violently on screen.
In total, 44 per cent of those asked believe that people with mental illnesses are more prone to violence.
Sue Baker, Director for Time to Change, said: “This report highlights that movies are the main source of information that reinforces negative stereotypes of mental illness above and beyond any other form of media.
“We need to make it clear to directors and producers that they can still break box office records without wrecking lives.”

Read More

• Share

People Say I'm Crazy

A rare look at mental illness from the point of view of the afflicted, ''People Say I'm Crazy'' is a diarylike documentary that records several years in the life of John Cadigan, a young man who, he says, experienced his first psychotic break with reality as a 21-year-old art student in Pittsburgh. The film . . . is made up of video clips, some shot by Mr. Cadigan and others by his older sister, Katie, who emerges as his strongest pillar of support during his prolonged illness. As Mr. Cadigan, in a voice-over narration, describes the ups and downs of his disease, he illustrates his points with scenes from his own life of quiet desperation. He moves from depression and paranoia to full-blown psychotic episodes, eventually somewhat softened by new medications that come on the market.

Read More

• Share