Paul Goodman Changed My Life - A Film by Jonathan Lee

Paul Goodman was a public figure who did not shrink from taking action in support of his beliefs. In the biopic PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE you'll see him alongside draft resisters; speaking out at peace rallies; going before the Board of Ed with radical reform proposals for New York City schools; advocating the banning of cars from Manhattan; and telling elite defense contractors they're the world's most dangerous men. Goodman's formal career in politics advanced no further than a school board position on Manhattan's west side.

When you see the documentary biopic PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE, you can expect to learn a good amount about Paul Goodman and absorb a variety of impressions of his life. That's what you'd expect from any documentary biopic. The format of the genre imposes certain norms: an ample selection of snippets of vintage film footage and interviews, edited with adherence to standard narrative and cinema conventions, designed to hold your attention for a reasonable running time, entertain you, and provoke at least a little thought and/or feeling.

One of the virtues of the documentary PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE is that it offers an answer to the question, how do you make a movie about an intellectual that isn't boring? Or even better, one that's neither boring nor shallow?

One of the vibrant streams coursing through the documentary PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE is Goodman's poetry. Goodman used verse all through his writing life. In his youth he concentrated on poems, stories, and novels, but in his later years when he left prose fiction behind, the poetry kept coming. He churned out little stanzas like some people would write diary entries. His informal, ingenuous, on-the-fly style had a notable influence on other New York artists of the time, such as Frank O'Hara, to name one.

What a breathtaking range of 20th-century experience is embodied in the life and writing of Paul Goodman. The upcoming biopic PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE provides a splendid introduction to Goodman for we 21st-century folk who can learn so much from his example. The film admirably captures the astonishing diversity of fields on which he had an impact—poetry, psychology, politics, planning, education, and the theory and practice of queer sexuality.

The year 2011—a half century from the innocence of the early 1960s—will mark the release of the documentary film Paul Goodman Changed My Life, a movie whose project is to revive the memory of, and introduce to a new generation, a nearly forgotten sixties figure who profoundly influenced that decade's countercultural and political awakening.

The doc market's a little crowded just now. Another biopic with the same mission just had its New York opening.

One very interesting segment of the upcoming movie Paul Goodman Changed My Life discusses Goodman's role in the origination of Gestalt therapy and his association with Friedrich (Fritz) Perls. Perls, along with his wife Laura, conceived and popularized the technique of Gestalt therapy, which remains a relatively popular product in the mental health marketplace.

Fritz and Laura Perls emigrated from Germany in the early years of the Third Reich and spent the war years in South Africa.

The documentary biopic can be a very politically potent medium. The 1984 film The Times of Harvey Milk, for example, did as much as any of that decade's films or books to advance mainstream understanding and sympathy for the gay liberation movement.