Managing Mental Illness and the Muse – a Filmmaker's Journey

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LINDSEY WELLS, HOST: From KVMR and in partnership with FREED, this is Disability Rap. 

PHILIP BRUBAKER: The way I look at it is when manic states come, I see them as a blessing in disguise or I see them as a visit from the muse. 

WELLS: Today, Philip Brubaker on his bipolar disorder and telling his story through film. 

BRUBAKER: When the muse visits me, I try to take full advantage of that because I get lots of creative ideas, I have the drive, and I'm able to get things done. 

WELLS: That's all coming up on Disability Rap, stay tuned. 

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CARL SIGMOND, HOST: Welcome to Disability Rap. I'm Carl Sigmond with Lindsay Wells. 

WELLS: Our guest today, Philip Brubaker, notes that there's unfortunately a real stigma around mental illness and that needs to change. Philip is an internationally known and recognized filmmaker and videographic essayist. He also has bipolar disorder. In his most recent film, How to Explain Your Mental Illness to Stanley Kubrick, Philip tackles head-on, often negative depictions of mental illness in 20th-century cinematography. 

In this deeply personal film, he juxtaposes his own journey with bipolar disorder with images from iconic films that show characters with mental illness as violent and suicidal. In the film, Philip challenges a manifestation of Stanley Kubrick to confront the way Kubrick portrayed mental illness and the effects those portrayals had on society. This is not Philip's first film on the subject of mental illness. His 2009 documentary, Brushes with Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness, won multiple awards and was aired on public television. His work has been featured in the Adelio Ferrero Film Festival, the Mental Filmness Festival in Chicago, and the Film Madrid Festival in Madrid, Spain. 

SIGMOND: Well, Philip Brubaker, welcome to Disability Rap. It's great to have you with us. We will get into your film and your journey in a minute, but I wanted you to set the stage for people who may not be familiar with Stanley Kubrick's work, who was he and why did you choose him as a character for your film? 

BRUBAKER: Stanley Kubrick, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a lot of other cinephiles and movie fans, is the greatest director who ever lived or who's ever lived so far or the greatest director of the 20th century. It's subjective really, but he was known to be a very exacting perfectionist. He was known to do sometimes over 100 takes of one shot in order to get what he perceived to be was the perfect version of that shot. 

He angered a lot of actors over the years because he would put them through his sometimes torturous methods of getting that beautiful image as perfect as it could be. I don't think he had a lot of room in his heart for human imperfection, or at least on the film set, he was like that. I've read that in his private life, he was an animal lover and he was a sensitive guy. He loved music, he loved his family, but he had this higher calling to make films and to make them better than anybody else. 

Maybe his most famous film is 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's my personal favorite of his. He also made The Shining and The Shining over the years I think has become maybe his most popular film, if not his most well-liked. He's made Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove, Paths of Glory, A Clockwork Orange. He's made many, many masterpieces and many people could say every film he made was a masterpiece after a certain point. 

He died in 1999 but he's still popular, and his legacy lives on, and he's still talked about on social media really all the time. Whether it's Reddit or Twitter or anything, people haven't forgotten him. I think that speaks well of him, because we live in an age where technology eclipses itself every five years or so, and people's attention spans get shorter, but his movies still live on. It's almost an arbitrary thing to say this, but I think he's the greatest director who ever lived. I admired him since I was a kid, and I first saw his movies on VHS. 

SIGMOND: Great. Then what you deal with in your most recent film is you're taking issue with the way Kubrick and other directors depict characters with mental illness. Again, for people who may not be familiar, can you just talk briefly about what you saw was problematic in those depictions? 

BRUBAKER: Eventually, after getting older and living with my bipolar disorder and living through crisis after crisis and seeing his films, and also seeing how the public consciousness was changing as well, I started to think that maybe it was worth it to reevaluate his films. I know that a lot of other artists in the past several years have had their work reevaluated to incorporate details about their life, whether they were a womanizer or a criminal or some unflattering characteristic, and so people were thinking like, "Well, is this person really someone that you want to put on a pedestal?" At least that's how I see that. 

With Kubrick, there were many different things that were all coming together that caused me to make the film. One of the most objective reasons to make it, which had nothing to do with my condition-- I guess it did in a way, but if you look at the characters of some of his films, he has characters who you would consider mentally ill, and in the film, I chose three in particular. 

I chose The Shining, I chose, I have to remember them all now, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket. Those films all have a character who is coded mentally ill. Basically, they all kill themselves in their films. The way they die is slightly different each time, but effectively, they end their own lives, and they have a very painful life, and they cause lots of problems. They ruin the lives of everybody in the films that they're in. 

In the case of Dr. Strangelove, the nuclear holocaust breaks out. In the case of The Shining, a family is torn to pieces. In Full Metal Jacket, you have an instance of an active shooter. I was thinking, "Well, rather than kind of maybe blindly idolizing this guy, maybe there's something that I can contribute to this conversation." My most singular personality trait, as far as I see it, is my bipolar disorder because I'm fortunate enough to be somebody who can manage it and be eloquent and speak for people who maybe can't do that themselves, who have my condition. 

As I say in the film, I wanted a character in a Kubrick film who had a mental illness but could manage it, somebody who could do what I think I did with my life, which is take my medication regularly. I support myself. I have a wife. I have hobbies. I have a normal life basically. I remember thinking, "Well, Kubrick was so smart and he was so sensitive. He didn't seem to think that way about people who were 'crazy.' He saw them as a real threat, something damaging, something that must be stopped, something that will not end well." 

That was the impetus for starting the film itself. I just want to tack onto that. When I had the most recent screening of this movie, which was in San Francisco last month, somebody in the audience said that she felt that I could not make the claim that I make in the film. I cannot claim Kubrick as being responsible for a pessimistic feeling about mental illness. At the time, I didn't really know what to say. I was just trying to listen to her opinion and not shut it down, but try and see if maybe she was right. 

The thing that I would say now is that the film itself, because it was made while I was manic, the film itself is a delusion. It operates on logic, but it's its own logic. It's definitely not an objective documentary. It's how I felt at the time. On top of that, there are certain aspects of the culture that I grew up with that does point to Kubrick as being an influence on that regard. 

Like, The Simpsons, years ago, there was a Halloween episode where they made fun of The Shining, and they had Homer Simpson playing the Jack Nicholson character and he was comically sadistic and psychotic and violent. I remember thinking, "Yes, I remember being a kid when that came out and friends were imitating him, and friends were talking about him." It's like, "That's crazy. That's what crazy is and that crazy means violent." I know that's not necessarily the case. That's one reason why I decided to make the film. 

WELLS: Speaking on your mania, do you feel that your episodes of mania have helped or hindered your creativity in helping you be a better artist? 

BRUBAKER: I feel like it's not PC to say that mania helps your art, but in some ways it really does. Really, it only does if you're able to control it. I'm definitely not advocating that people go off their meds to try and experiment with this, but there's been times-- I actually notice when-- I'm fully medicated now. I see a psychiatrist every so often. I take my meds. I take Lithium and Olanzapine every day. Then sometimes I'll look back on my past two weeks and I'll be like, "Wow, that was like a really intense period and I don't feel that way anymore." 

I think, "Well, maybe I just had a hypomanic or manic episode and I just came out of it naturally." Because my understanding is that sometimes they just run their course. They may last a few weeks and then they subside. The way I look at it is when manic states come, I see them as a blessing in disguise, or I see them as a visit from the muse. When the muse visits me, I try to take full advantage of that because I get lots of creative ideas, I have the drive and I'm able to get things done. 

You can't really court that muse if you're bipolar. Because what's going to happen is if you stop taking your meds so that you're more creative, you're going to go too far and you could get hospitalized again or you could get hurt or die. I'm able to recognize when those moments happen, when there's a blessing from the muse, and I'm able to use that as best I can, but I also know that I've built a life for myself that is pretty great and I don't want to risk throwing it all away for the potential of having another intense high. So I stick with the ones that I do get and just appreciate those. 

SIGMOND: Thank you. There are so many follow-up questions I could ask here, but can you talk a bit about your journey to get where you are today in terms of your acceptance and seeing, like you said, seeing those more manic episodes as a muse? 

BRUBAKER: When I was 20 years old, in 2000, so 24 years ago, that's when I had a psychotic episode for the first time and I was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for 10 days and I had to quit college. I had a very upsetting episode with my parents and my sister. On top of that, I was very scared and confused because, all of a sudden, my whole concept of what reality was was shattered. I had these strange thoughts. I thought that I was hearing voices but that was actually the culmination of a whole semester and probably longer of declining mental health. 

If you're asking about my journey, well, that's kind of where it started, I would say, 24 years ago. Now, over time, I got better and better and I could gradually take on more responsibility and be more independent and bring more good people into my life so that it all just builds up and up like on an incline. Some of those milestones were getting my first part-time job, getting my first full-time job, moving out of my parents' house and supporting myself, meeting my girlfriend, who became my wife, going to grad school, graduating from a top 10 university, moving across the country to California. It was all incremental. 

When I say that I have a great life, I think a big difference is turning 40. I don't know if either of you have gotten there. Probably not. You look too young. If you're turning 40, as they say, life begins at 40. I think what begins at 40 or what begins around 40 is more confidence, knowing yourself more, not putting up with shit that you used to put up with, and just feeling freer to take risks. 

Something happened in the past few years around when I turned 40 where I was almost like, "I'm just going to do the things I want to do and not worry about what people think or if I fail because I know that what really matters is that I at least tried it. I tried to do the things that I always wanted to do." 

That takes shape in many different things. Some of them have to do with filmmaking, some of them have to do with just extracurricular activities but it's helpful to have a supporting partner and staying on those damn meds. Seriously, don't stop taking your meds. Staying on your meds with your bipolar, that is the cornerstone of wellness. You really can't do anything if you don't do that first. Once your meds are in place, then you have your health and then you have enough to take care of the other stuff but it wasn't an overnight thing, as they say. 

WELLS: Thank you, Philip. I just wanted to thank you for the compliment of us looking young. That was wonderful. As a person over 40, I totally get what you're saying. My question is to you, and we can follow up questions if we have time, but what can the rest of the film industry do to uplift a positive portrayal of mental illness? 

BRUBAKER: Well, I think the best thing that the film industry can do to better represent the people in all their myriad forms is to allow them to tell their own stories and give them the platform to do that. I was thinking about this. I remember I watched the Oscars this year and Cord Jefferson, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, he said something to the theater which I think is a great idea. That is to make many small-budget films instead of just a few huge-budget films. Make some smaller-budget films and make 10 $1 million films or 20 $1 million films and give an opportunity for people who haven't directed a major film to do that and to tell their story and get their information out there. 

I remember when he said that at the theater, everybody was cheering like this was some brand-new solution. Well, this has been on the table for, I don't know, decades. The medium-budget and lower-budget studio film has gotten pushed out completely in Hollywood. They're really just making the big-budget tentpole pictures, like Marvel stuff and whatever else, DC or just IP-based films, intellectual property films. People have been paying tickets to see those. Well, I think people are also hungry for seeing a dream about something that is not so unsurprising because I feel like a lot of those superhero films are the same thing over and over again. That can be very unsurprising when it comes to having a movie-going experience. 

Imagine if they allowed a filmmaker who could handle making a film and they made it about bipolar disorder. I'm not just talking about myself here. I'm sure there's other people who could do this, but give them a million-dollar budget and let them try something different. I think that storytelling has changed over the years. I think streaming has changed the way we consume films. They don't have to all be a certain way anymore. I think people would be curious, but it's tough. I'm not going to sit here and say that that's going to cause people to come to the theater because I feel like theater attendance is already waning but I think if you're Hollywood, if you are The Dream Factory, and it's your job and mission in life to churn out these films, these dreams, I think it's time to look for other sources than just comic books. I think that everybody has different stories they can tell. 

I make kind of experimental movies. I think if it's done well, an experimental movie can be amazing for anyone to watch. It doesn't have to be the same old narrative every single time. Mental illness is such a rich and fertile topic for films and it's a fertile inspiration for stories and films as well. There's so much fuel that's running in my brain because of the chemicals that simulate my dopamine and my serotonin. 

There's all kinds of stories that somebody can tell. There's all kinds of dreams that people can put onto the screen. It's just a matter of, if Hollywood were to realize one day, wow, there is a market for this stuff, then they might start turning it around, but until then, I think smaller budget films that have less representation are harder to finance but that's too bad. 

WELLS: Thank you, Philip. I just wanted to say that sometimes when films are new at the box office too, they might not be an instant hit, but they could be a hit later on as more people go to see them as well. Do you think that is something that an experimental film has the capability to do? 

BRUBAKER: Yes. A lot of the movies that made money over time did it through home video and DVD sales. Now that's no longer happening. DVDs aren't selling like they used to. The industry is changing. It's in flux and I don't know how that's going to look. For a film to make its money over time now, I'm not sure how that's going to happen but I absolutely do think that a film can gain a reputation. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I always wanted to make a cult film. Some of my favorite movies are weird cult films that were ignored upon release and then later they developed a following. 

I thought, "That is really what I could hope for." So I'm taking my film, How to Explain Your Mental Illness to Stanley Kubrick, to different theaters when I travel, trying to get screenings, trying to build a following of people who know my work. Ideally, I would love for people to watch one of my films simply because of my name. They know my name, so they're going to see what I just did. That to me would be the kind of stuff that I dreamed about when I was a kid, wanting to be a filmmaker. 

Everybody wants to make films. Not everybody does, but everybody who wants to make films wants to make money. That may not be part of the actual result. It's possible to make your work and get it seen, get it on the internet, or whatever, but to do it professionally, that is a lot harder now than I think it used to be. Kubrick, the way he did it was a lot like how me or somebody else would do it now, which is he did it all by himself. He got money to make his first film from his uncle and then he operated-- he was a one-man film crew. He did everything by himself. 

He has a background as a still photographer, just like me. He did it from the bottom up and then he became the tip-top guy. Not everybody's going to get there. I would like to think maybe not everybody wants to get there but one surefire way to not get there is to give up. You have to decide, if you're going to give up, how much are you willing to put up with until you decide, I just don't want to do this. 

SIGMOND: Well, Philip, thank you so much. 

BRUBAKER: Thanks for having me. 

WELLS: That was our conversation with Philip Brubaker. He is the filmmaker of How to Explain Your Mental Illness to Stanley Kubrick. You can find his films on his YouTube and Vimeo channels. 

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And that does it for the show. Disability Rap is produced and edited by Carl Sigmond and Courtney Williams. You can go to our website, disabilityrap.org, to listen to past shows, read transcripts, and subscribe to the Disability Rap podcast. You can also subscribe to our podcast by searching Disability Rap on any of the major podcast platforms. We are brought to you by KVMR in partnership with FREED, and we're distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. I'm Lindsay Wells with Carl Sigmond for another edition of Disability Rap.