People Say I’m Crazy : Review

By Eric Monder

Featuring: John Cadigan, Katie Cadigan

Credits:

Director(s) John Cadigan, Katie Cadigan

Producer(s) Katie Cadigan, Ira Wohl

Director(s) of photography John Cadigan, Katie Cadigan, Laura C. Murray

Edited by Laura C. Murray

Music by Evelyn Glennie

Review:

Most fiction films—most documentaries for that matter—cover mental illness from the outsider’s perspective, but People Say I’m Crazy is truly unique. In this remarkable piece of cinéma-vérité, the subject (a diagnosed schizophrenic) is the filmmaker!

Six years after his diagnosis, in 1997, John Cadigan learned how to document his experiences on film when his sister, Katie, a professional filmmaker, taught him how to use a camera. Thanks to John’s willingness to learn and Katie’s persistence, People Say I’m Crazy offers a “timeline of my daily life,” as John puts it.

Six years after his diagnosis, in 1997, John Cadigan learned how to document his experiences on film when his sister, Katie, a professional filmmaker, taught him how to use a camera. Thanks to John’s willingness to learn and Katie’s persistence, People Say I’m Crazy offers a “timeline of my daily life,” as John puts it.

Actually, we also learn about John’s past: that he experienced his first psychotic break in 1991 at the age of 21 when he was a senior at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied painting and printmaking. In 1994, John was officially diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder, but the medications his psychiatrist prescribed had debilitating side effects. New treatments in 1999 helped John manage his illness better.

John’s own filmic record after 1997 illustrates a “textbook case” of the challenges battling schizophrenia, but it also allows viewers an intimate view of one person’s story and proposes some unexpected ideas and conclusions about the “mad artist” stereotype. (John’s success as an artist is shown through his U.S. show tours.) The romanticized or overly dramatic presentation seen in fiction films as recently as A Beautiful Mind and Sylvia (and still patterned after epics like Lust for Life) do a disservice to people suffering from schizophrenia and other forms of mental illness. People Say I’m Crazy provides an alternate, “saner” depiction. (There are even moments of humor, such as when Katie accuses John of becoming paranoid about his paranoia!)

Some techniques (fast-motion photography during one of John’s printmaking sessions) and post-production work (added music, frequent traditional cutaway shots) make People Say I’m Crazy less of a cinéma-vérité work than it could have (and maybe should have) been. But the fact that the film is otherwise devoid of “art” itself (in terms of its filmmaking and style) actually comes as a relief. John’s true, heroic story is compelling enough not to need all the slick accoutrements.