Giving Talk on Mental Illness Representations in Movies

Intrigued to be the keynote speaker of the opening night of the annual retreat of the NU Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences this Friday.

Growing Up in Front of the Locked Doors of My Psychoanalyst Father’s Home Office

I very much resonated to Jessica Lamb-Shapiro’s May 2, 2015 piece in the New York Times, I was Raised by Psychoanalysts. I too grew up with a psychoanalyst father, the Yale Professor of Psychiatry, Marshall Edelson, M.D who saw patients at home. Ironically, as a strict Freudian, he believed that his home life must be a blank slate upon which his patients could write whatever they desired. Therefore, he insisted that my mother, my brother, my sister, and I never see his patients and he warned they could never see us, hear us or have any indication of our existence.

This warning was made more anxiety producing by the fact that his home office was located right next to our front door, again similar to Lamb-Shapiro's situation. In fact, my father’s home office was supposed to be our living room, but when we moved into the house he commandeered it and had two thick perpetually locked double doors installed over what was supposed to be an airy, open archway. We had to arrange very precisely when we arrived or left (before or after 10 to the hour), we could only whisper to one another no matter where we were in the house, and we literally had to tiptoe past his office door when he was with a patient if we had to move from one part of the house to the next, which was definitely discouraged and only to be attempted if absolutely necessary.

But like Lamb-Shapiro, I too benefitted from my psychoanalytic upbringing. Not only did I learn, as she did, how to be quiet, but those mysterious locked double doors, the murmurings behind them from strange unseen visitors, and the fact our lives were organized by this clock of mental illness supplied me with ample material for my screenplays and plays (as I described to Penelope Green for her 2008 New York Times piece, What's in a Chair?). In an early script of mine, Reflections on a Teenage Antichrist, a teenager thinks his psychiatrist father may be transforming into some kind of demon, based on what he hears coming from within his father’s locked office. More recently, I wrote and co-produced the forthcoming film, The Coming of Age (directed by David Bradburn for Fork the Man Productions):  A woman who moves into a retirement home is both attracted to and repelled by a pair of centrally located locked doors, based on the look of fear from another resident at the mention of them, the warning from the nurse to stay away from them, and the strange sounds emanating from beyond them. 

Significantly, even when my father wasn’t seeing patients, his home office doors were kept locked. He said it was because there were patient records in that room, but even after he stopped seeing patients permanently, he still kept those doors locked. As a professor of screenwriting at Northwestern University, I now find myself teaching my students that many movies involve characters opening doors that should not be opened. I tell them you as the writer should also be trying to pry open doors that resist being opened, it is beyond these doors where the answer to your story lies. In terms of your career, you should be opening unexpected doors that lead to unexpected opportunities. And yes, one door closes but another door opens as long as you can recognize it as a door as sometimes doors don’t look like doors.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), I’ve met or heard about more than one child of a Yale Department of Psychiatry professor whose career similarly revolves around movies. Did our psychiatrist fathers' profession encourage a love of movies as unlocking the story of a patient's psyche is not so different from unlocking a cinematic story? Or did our experiences with our psychiatrist fathers encourage a need to work through our bizarre upbringing(s) via the stories we tell in movies? In my case, my psychiatrist father’s ever-present locked doors were a creative blessing, perhaps determining my career path and the content of some of my stories. And doors or no doors, for good and for bad, we children of psychoanalysts are forever members of the same club.  

David E. Tolchinsky

Davidetolchinsky.com 

PS For more about my experiences with my father, including his unusual obsession with locking everything in the house, read my essay, Where’s the Rest of Me?, in Paraphilia Magazine, or my play by the same name, recently performed at the Hudson Guild Theatre in New York City.

ORDERING SCENES IN A SCREENPLAY

Someone asked me recently,  "How do I order my scenes in my screenplay?" Well, for screenplays, plays and other stories, the answer is both simple and complex.

Most stories take place in a chronological order. So one scene follows another according to chronology.That’s one answer.

But stories often involve an interplay between one or more subplots or between the present and the past.

So a more general answer: You order your scenes according to rising tension/conflict/anxiety/rising stakes. So each scene should involve more conflict than the previous scene and so forth.

Of course if the scenes all have similar conflict/tension/stakes, then you have to ask: Why aren’t the stakes rising? Why isn’t there more conflict?

For a possible solution, consider this conception of four-act structure (yes four, not three):

In Act I, for the protagonist: A problem is created/a question is raised. By taking on this problem, conflict is created so scenes in Act II naturally have more conflict than scenes in Act I.

In Act II, investigation and trials leads to the correct solution/answer. As the protagonist gets closer to this answer, more anxiety/conflict is created as the antagonist (and helpers) tries to stop him/her  (or he/she tries to stop himself if the story is about an internal conflict).

At the end of Act II, this solution/answer is ignored or actively rejected by the protagonist because it's too disturbing (that’s the midpoint of the story).  A different case:  At the end of Act II, the protagonist (or someone close to the protagonist) accepts the answer or solution, or at least gains greater insight into the problem, which puts him/her into greater conflict with the antagonist(s) in Act III.  More confidence = more boldness = more conflict.

In Act III, there’s rising anxiety/misdirection due to this ignored solution/answer.  The protagonist will do ANYTHING to avoid what he/she knows to be the true path. The antagonist is allowed to get stronger. At the end of Act III the protagonist chooses the WRONG answer/WRONG solution and finds him/herself paralyzed. (I call this the dark moment.)

In Act IV: the protagonist’s hidden strength (established in Act I) leads to his/her recovery from this paralysis and very quick (and perilous!) movement towards the antagonist and the most difficult obstacles, which have all been allowed to get quite strong because of the protagonist's end of Act III paralysis.  The protagonist prevails, discovering the RIGHT SOLUTION/RIGHT ANSWER and CATHARSIS. 

So question to ignored answer to wrong answer to right answer.

And greater conflict in Act IV, because the protagonist is late due to his misdirection and paralysis in Act III.

So greater conflict in Act III than Act II because of his/her ignoring the answer.

So greater conflict in Act II than Act I because he/she has taken on a problem.

Another way to think about the ordering of scenes:

A story usually involves two diametrically opposed forces (paths, people, ideas, etc): Force A v. Force B. The question of the story is usually which force will prevail? (Or which answer? Or which idea. Etc.)

At the beginning of each scene or sequence, the arrow points to force A as the one that will prevail. At the end of the scene or sequence, the arrow points to force B.

Beginning scenes – that switch from A to B is very subtle. But at the end of the story that switch from A to B is drastic and sudden and seismic.  

Drop in on any action movie:  The beginning scenes – involve collecting clues that turn out to be right or wrong, so a slight movement from A to B.  The end scenes: Clashes of forces that switch violently from one possibility to the other.

And in all this there are predictable patterns:

One scene where one force is in control is followed by a scene where the other force is in control, again drastically at the end, subtly at the beginning.

One sequence ruled by Force A is followed by a sequence ruled by Force B is followed by a sequence ruled by Force A.  And so on.

If your story seems to go all in the same direction (be "ruled" by Force A), then that’s a clue that your scenes and sequences aren’t ordered in the most effective way. 

If your scenes with more conflict are at the beginning versus the end, that’s a clue that your scenes aren’t ordered in the most effective way.

A nuance to this answer:  Often stories start with an unbelievably tense scene or sequence. Fine. So drop back down to less tension after this scene or sequence, and remember you’re working back to tension/conflict/stakes that must be greater than this beginning scene/sequence. If not, your story will feel front heavy, will be disappointing at the end.

And as always, all of the above rules/ideas should be broken/played with whenever possible.   

Without An Ending to his Monologue, For Spalding Gray, Suicide Was Inevitable

I was moved to read in the April 27 issue of The New Yorker, The Catastrophe, Oliver Sacks' account of Spalding Gray’s demise including the likely medical causes of his suicide. I met Spalding during the time right after his accident and worked with him for three weeks as part of a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. The Spalding I knew was a brilliant teacher, but also quite distracted as Sacks describes — obsessed with his mother’s death, selling his house, and the idea of committing suicide. He was also afraid of odd things like recycling plants. And most memorable to me, he was obsessed with the idea that he could find no ending to his monologue about his accident and that’s another reason he was worried he would kill himself.  He had always been able to find both humor in the upsetting events of his life and an ending to stories about those events. Without an ending, there could be no closure and therefore no going on.

I agree that brain damage was likely, but I’m not sure that changes how I experienced him. The more I read about depression, the more I think there’s always a physical component. Regardless, I was a big fan of his work and am still sad that he’s gone and I wonder what if that accident hadn’t happened. What would the Spalding I knew have been like?  Would he still be here today, making himself and others laugh? Would he be watching his young son grow up (that’s the part I find the saddest)? Would he be finding many happy and humorous endings to would-be depressing events? Anyway, sad. 

Thanks to Olive Sacks for this piece.  I will be thinking about it. And of course thinking about it in the context of Sacks’ own medical condition.  

David E. Tolchinsky

PS I wrote about my experiences with Spalding in my essay, Where’s the Rest of Me?, published in Paraphilia Magazine, and in my play by the same name.  An aspect of both those works is my grappling with being told by Spalding that I could deliver monologues for a living, that “David, you could be me,” and then finding out he had killed himself.  

Fast Talk Now Available on GooglePlay

The award-winning feature documentary, Fast Talk, about the mile-a-minute world of college debate and our own accelerated lives, is now available on GooglePlay for rental and purchase. Directed by Debra Tolchinsky, edited by Ron Ward, produced by Debra, Ron and myself, with an original score by Mark Koval, it features Northwestern University's debate team (this year's champions) and legendary coach Scott Deatherage.https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Fast_Talk?id=tfT2fZDx91s