FILMMAKER MAGAZINE | Spring 1997: PRODUCTION UPDATE

PRODUCTION UPDATE

Jonathan Berman's doc My Friend Paul blends wit, style and sorrow for a searing celluloid portrait of a talented childhood friend's long battle with manic depression. Berman, Paul and a third friend featured in the film grew up on Long Island in the '50s before manic depression was as readily diagnosed as it is today. Paul robbed 11 banks for fun and drugs in 1986 and spent ten years in prison before appealing to the filmmaker for shelter upon his release last year.

"As kids we pretended we were bank robbers," says Berman. "Be careful who you pretend you are because that's who you'll become." Although Berman's out to balance pathos with humor, he makes room for a surprisingly serious examination of the forces that govern the cycles of Paul's disease. Paul's childhood girlfriend, now a research scientist, describes the chemical components of normal brain function and the imbalances researchers believe lie behind behavior like Paul's.

"During his more lucid periods, Paul is really able to talk about his illness, says Berman." Berman's rich trove of material includes high school footage of the clearly talented Paul playing the flute in imitation of Jethro Tull hero Ian Anderson, Paul while in prison, and Paul holding down a motorcycle messenger job after his release. We see real bank videotapes of one of Paul's robberies as well as a recreation staged by Berman, who's also indulged Paul by filming his Lincoln assassination fantasy. "Paul's life is like a master performance that owes a lot to shock theater," says Berman.

Berman's first feature doc, The Schvitz, was a lighthearted history of New York's last remaining Russian bathhouse that opened the 1993 Margaret Mead and San Francisco Jewish festivals. A documentary he produced on the downtown New York jazz scene for German television last year, Sabbath in Paradise, airs in '97. He started My Friend Paul with a rented Sony digital camera, the DV 1000, in the fall of '94 on $28,000 worth of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, and presold a 20-minute version to Swiss t.v. for another $18,000. Berman's big break - and move on to 16mm (which will be blown up to 35mm) - came a year and a half ago when he was searching the web for resource materials and happened on a link to a new private foundation looking for documentaries to fund. Paul was in, pushing Berman well past the halfway mark on his estimated $260,000 budget. Former Lounge Lizard Marc Ribot, who's worked on albums for Elvis Costello and Tom Waits, is doing the score and Berman plans a soundtrack.

Crew: Producer/Writer/Director, Jonathan Berman; Cinematographers, David Leitner, Arlene Sandler; Editor, David Tedeschi; Composer, Marc Ribot. Contact: Jonathan Berman, Jonathan Berman Productions, 396 Third Avenue, #2S, New York, NY 10016. Tel/Fax: (212) 685-7166.