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Cursing at the Sun USC law professor Elyn Saks was skeptical back in 1998 when a student in her Mental Health Law
class – whom she knew only by her first name, Petra – proposed making a documentary in lieu of the customary final paper. Imagine Saks’ surprise, then, when the student – who turned out to be actor Marlon Brando’s daughter – actually produced a full-length documentary.
Petra Brando JD ’98, now an associate attorney at Edelstein, Laird and Sobel, a Los Angeles entertainment law firm, devoted more then 18 months to producing Cursing at the Sun, a 70-minute exploration of the plight of the mentally ill in the wake of deinstitutionalization.
Brando (right) with Saks: “Our main goal is to increase awareness of the importance of treating the mentally ill with dignity and respect.” |
What began as an assignment for a law school class has already gone considerably farther than Saks’ videocassette player. Last summer, Los Angeles’ Department on Disability screened Cursing at City Hall; in February, the film aired on Los Angeles’ public television station, KCET. Brando and her filmmaking team are currently seeking air time for the film nationwide on PBS and on cable networks.
“Our main goal is to reach the largest possible audience so we can increase awareness about the importance of treating the mentally ill with dignity and respect,” says Brando, whose late sister, Cheyenne, suffered from schizophrenia.
“I don’t think she got the treatment that would have benefitted her,” she says. The documentary was also partly inspired by Saks’ Mental Health Law class. “It raised some really important, very difficult questions and helped motivate me to look for some answers through people who are living it every day.”
TO ILLUSTRATE THE complexity of the problem Brando interviewed 10 people whose psychotic episodes resulted in incarceration, institutionalization or homelessness.
“They give harrowing descriptions of life without the right treatment for very real and debilitating illnesses that today are very treatable,” Brando says. “It’s tragic and unacceptable how many describe being ignored, arrested or sent to mental hospitals for the criminally insane in the absence of basic outpatient services.”
The documentary also features interviews with 10 mental health professionals, among them USC experts Saks, who is holder of the Orrin B. Evans Professorship in Law and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences; Stephen Hayes, a clinical professor of psychiatry at USC’s Keck School of Medicine; and Glenn Currier, the former director of emergency psychiatry at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center.
Regardless of its commercial fate, Brando’s film will have a long life, Saks promises. “On the first day of class, I’m going to show Cursing at the Sun from now on,” she says. “It really sets the stage for all the issues we’re dealing with.”
A videocassette of Cursing at the Sun is available through KCET’s Video Finders, (800) 343-4727.
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