No One Cares About Crazy People-A special screening event

Description

Town Hall Theater is proud to present Director Gail Freedman’s riveting No One Cares About Crazy People, followed by a discussion with Freedman and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author Ron Powers, along with other cast and crew. With narration by actor Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad) and original music by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, No One Cares About Crazy People goes deep inside the tragedy, chaos and crisis of severe mental illness in America. This documentary film was inspired by Vermont-based Ron Powers’s acclaimed book of the same name, a hybrid narrative of heartbreaking family memoir and searing social history. The film is intimate and immersive (filled with powerful verité scenes), but also tracks the emergence of a grassroots movement to reinvent our disastrous mental health “system.” It’s timely, poignant, powerful, intense – and also, ultimately, hopeful.

The documentary humanizes the face of mental illness with a small cast of memorable characters. Powers – a bestselling author & Pulitzer and Emmy award-winner – is father to two schizophrenic sons, the younger of whom, a musical prodigy, took his own life in the family’s Vermont basement a week before his 21st birthday. We also witness – in real time -- the almost inconceivable story of Mark Rippee, floridly psychotic, blind and, for almost 16 years, unhoused on the streets of Vacaville, California, despite his sisters’ fierce advocacy. That advocacy is part of a burgeoning crusade, spearheaded by family members – people like Taun Hall, whose son Miles, a young black man, was shot and killed by police in 2019 outside his Walnut Creek, CA home, in the midst of a mental health emergency.

The roots of this national crisis trace back over half a century, and today we live with the legacy of all those failed policies. California has emerged as an epicenter of reform action. No One Cares follows that action for three+ years, as a series of bold but controversial initiatives make their way through the halls of power. Governor Gavin Newsom weighs in on why he’s embraced this political hot potato issue. COVID brought mental health challenges to public attention more than ever. But the sickest and neediest were just as desperate before, and their complex plight still receives scant notice. This film changes that.

Director & Producer Gail Freedman is a veteran journalist (her resume includes stints at CBS 60 Minutes and ABC 20/20), and an award-winning filmmaker of films such as Hot to Trot; Making the 9/11 Memorial; Breaking the Silence Barrier; Where’s The Cure?; Generation Rx; Lessons for the Future; Giving While Living, and more. Freedman first met Powers at CBS News, where they became friends. He would later author No One Cares About Crazy People. For Freedman, this film is both a personal and professional passion project – drawing not only from Powers’s narrative, but also her own mother’s experience with borderline personality disorder