Paul Goodman Changed My Life (2011)

95% of critics liked it
(19 reviews)
46% of users liked it
(212 ratings)

Paul Goodman's 1960 best-seller, Growing Up Absurd, became a cornerstone of countercultural thinking, alongside books like The Medium Is The Message, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and The Feminine Mystique. Goodman was a polymath: a poet, essayist, playwright, and psychotherapist. He was candid… More Paul Goodman's 1960 best-seller, Growing Up Absurd, became a cornerstone of countercultural thinking, alongside books like The Medium Is The Message, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and The Feminine Mystique. Goodman was a polymath: a poet, essayist, playwright, and psychotherapist. He was candid about his bisexuality while maintaining a marriage and raising two children. Jonathan Lee weaves together old and new footage of those who extol Goodman's virtues, as well as his adamant detractors (often one and the same), including Grace Paley, Ned Rorem, Deborah Meier, William F. Buckley, Susan Sontag, and Judith Malina. An abrasive and contradictory figure, Goodman's influence was nonetheless immense. Today, much of what passes as common knowledge in the fields of education, politics, psychology, urban planning, civil rights, and sexual politics was first posited by him nearly half a century ago. -- (C) Zeitgeist Films

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 29 min.
Directed By: Jonathan Lee
Genres: Documentary

In Theaters: Oct 19, 2011 Limited
On DVD: Apr 17, 2012
Studio: Zeitgeist Films

Critic Reviews

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader
In this heady documentary, TV footage of left-wing social critic Paul Goodman being interviewed by conservative host William F. Buckley Jr. in 1966 makes one realize how low public discourse in America has sunk since then.
Ty Burr, Boston Globe
As documentaries go, it's an able introduction that doesn't make its subject nearly as relevant to our current discontents as it could.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Paul Goodman Changed My Life" is a documentary about a man who changed mine.
Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star Tribune
The movie effectively uses Goodman's poems to illustrate his life.
Guy Dixon, Globe and Mail
What makes him such an interesting biographic sketch for a film, however, is the way Goodman undercut his own successes.
Linda Barnard, Toronto Star
Quietly effective...
Sarah Boslaugh, Playback:stl
Paul Goodman Changed My Life, a new documentary by Jonathan Lee, captures Goodman's ubiquitousness, as well as the fashionable intellectual bohemianism of the period...
Jim Slotek, Jam! Movies
But more remarkable than the accolades of his admirers is the (sometimes grudging) respect shown by his opponents and antagonists.
Norman Wilner, NOW Toronto
Lee aims to revive Goodman's legacy, using archival footage and thoughtful interviews with surviving friends and relations to create a portrait of a man who was quite literally too complicated for his times.
Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters
Paul Goodman Changed My Life offers memories of the poet and essayist, novelist and philosopher, practicing lay psychiatrist and a founder of Gestalt Therapy. As interviewees recall, he took these roles seriously.
David Noh, Film Journal International
Intensely watchable and informative documentary about visionary New York intellectual Paul Goodman.
Sam Adams, AV Club
Perhaps it's a tribute to the breadth of Goodman's life that even after 90 minutes, it feels as if we've just scratched the surface.
Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
For the choir only.
Bill Weber, Slant Magazine
Jonathan Lee's talking-head interviewees successfully bear the burden of making the iconoclast's dogged and prickly personality nearly tangible.
Dan Callahan, House Next Door
I sometimes feel like I like the idea of Paul Goodman more than the reality of most of his writing, but it is this cheering idea of him as utopian sexual and societal prophet that Lee's film brings back most seductively.