“Follow Hill and his therapist as he has candid discussions of mental health and the progressively worsening anxiety attacks related to movie promotion that have turned his dream job into a nightmare.” – IMDb
Stutz (2022)
Starring
Phil Stutz, Jonah Hill
Directed by
Jonah Hill
Review
I didn’t know what to expect from Stutz. Have I watched Superbad more times than a human should ever watch it? Yes. That doesn’t mean that I know anything about Jonah Hill. Especially, since I haven’t heard much about him in recent years, (with the exception of his weight loss, thanks to typical ). When I heard the premise of the film, however, I was intrigued. A documentary discussing mental health? Count me in, always.
I believe being able to discuss mental health, and all of the associated illnesses deserve and need to be discussed. It shouldn’t be seen as something that stays “hush hush”, or is seen as a stigma; we’re all humans who are feeling human emotions and are trying to get through life events relatively unscathed. Perhaps, some of us are able to live life without any deep cuts. However, even tiny papercuts can be extremely painful. They too, can add up to create one larger gash that has a harder time healing.
With that being said, let’s take a look at Stutz.
It begins with Jonah Hill and Phil Stutz sitting in what seems to be a typical therapist’s office….
“S: Okay, entertain me.
J: That’s actually what you say when I sit down.
S: Yeah. It’s what I say to everybody.”
Stutz says that it is imperative for patients to feel like there is an action that they can take, a “next step”. He makes it clear that it isn’t his job to factor in how quickly he can help his patients. It’s not about the need for it to be about the “speed to cure somebody in a week. That’s impossible. But I want for them to feel some change, some forward motion. It gives them hope. It’s like, “Oh sh**, that’s actually possible”.
So, what are the tools that people can use? According to Stutz, “A tool is something that can change your state, your inner state, immediately, in real time. It takes an experience that’s normally unpleasant, then it turns it into an opportunity.” To this, Hill says, “Tools change your mood and then just give you a sense of hope that that won’t be your mood forever.” “That’s correct”, responds Stutz. “[…] In that sense, I am a teacher. I’m teaching the person how to use it and also teach them when to do it.”
At this point, Hill points out that Stutz uses note cards. They’re drawings of the tools that Stutz uses in the sessions and the patient takes them home to keep. Stutz explains that he tends to think in visual terms, so he started to draw the cards for himself but in the end, they help the patients tremendously. “The power of the cards is that they turn big ideas into simple images. It was a way of communicating with the patient that I actually felt was more powerful than using words. The moment they take out a card, there’s a connection between the two of us. There’s a bond.”
“Part X”
Stutz explains that “Part X is an invisible force that keeps you from changing.” Basically, imagine that Part X is the villain on the journey of your evolution as a human. It’s the factor in each of us that makes growth and change feel impossible in the face of adversity; something we see in ourselves that acts as a fixed limitation.
When Hill asks Stutz how we can get rid of Part X, he replies with a very easy, “You can’t. You can defeat him temporarily, but he’s always gonna keep coming back. That’s why you have three aspects of reality that nobody gets to avoid. Pain, uncertainty, and constant work. So those you’ll just have to live with no matter what. If it did work like that, if you could banish Part X, then there’d be no future progress.” He goes on to say that you have to learn how to love the process. I love this.
“Because the highest creative expression for a human being is to be able to create something new right in the face of adversity, and the worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.”
Stutz continues to talk about his life, and how losing his 3 year old brother made an immense impact on the rest of his life. His parents were different, he was different and his upbringing from that point on was different… it’s an emotional part of the film and it is only 21 minutes into it. You wonder how much more you will learn in the following 75 minutes.
Then, Hill tells Stutz during the next filmed session/interview that he sometimes wonders if making the film was a terrible idea. He says that making it is causing him to have so much to talk about but it’s not about him, it’s about Stutz. JH: “Why am I hiding behind perfection? Why am I hiding behind a facade instead of letting you in on it? Which felt like the only choice to me.” S: “It is.“
Hill then says, “We’ve been shooting for two years […] wearing the same clothes for each shoot, it’s a green screen, we’re not in your office. And, I’m literally wearing a wig right now to make it look like it was eight months ago when I had this haircut, and I literally have, like, a shaved head. I, like… I don’t know. It just feels… weird and false. I want to let the audience in on the filmmaking process, and you, so they don’t feel like we’re just lying to them about sh**. And I’m lying to you and lying to everyone else that it’s going well, and that sucks. We’re probably going to be watching this scene and there’s gonna be stuff we shot eight months ago, 14 months ago. Like, [scoffs] It’s just hard to know what is what at this point. But ultimately, I just came to the truth, which is just letting you in on it. Does that feel f***ed up?”
S: “It feels like the only choice you have, to be honest…
… If you want to stay with the truth of me and what we’re trying to do, then you have to let yourself f*** it up. If you could do it perfectly, it would contradict everything that we’re doing here. So I’m thrilled that you– I kind of suspected this anyway, because we’re getting– First of all, we’re getting so many days, you know, so I said– [both laugh]
— I said, “This is probably the greatest documentary ever made or the worst,” and it’s probably both. But listen, it has to eventually get intimate, and once things get intimate, you don’t know what the f*** is gonna happen. If I’ve trained you properly, you can just see that is not something to avoid. The failure would be not rolling with it and not using it to go deeper. The driving force in this whole thing, to me, is your vulnerability.”
Having all of this truth come out, and hearing Stutz’s response to it all, is beautiful. It truly makes you believe that Stutz wouldn’t have an unwise thing to say in any given situation. Hill even asks him, “Where do we go from here?” To which he says, “It feels to me like we have to stay very grounded and, at the same time, reach for the stars. I’m not sure how to do both of those at the same time. But anything that’s real and that’s profound has to have two, not one, because it’s a vibratory thing. Two people can create a field, and a field is invisible, but that’s the force in the universe that makes things happen […]”
The Shadow
Stutz: Everybody has a Shadow. Everybody’s Shadow is a bit different, but on the other hand, everybody’s Shadow is the same, because it’s the part of themselves they’re ashamed of. The first thing you want to do is find your Shadow. You have to be able to see this thing to focus on it and to know how to work with it. You need a visual. So close your eyes. Now visualize a time in your life when you felt inferior, embarrassed, rejected, despondent, that you’re ashamed of it. It’s the part of you that you wish you were not, but you are, and not only that, you can’t get rid of it. […]
Okay. The question is, “What do you do with that image in the present?” That’s something from the past, right? Talk to your Shadow and ask him how does he feel about you. How you’ve dealt with him, how you’ve treated him. And see what he answers. […] Ask him how he feels about that. […] Now, listen very carefully. The Shadow needs attention, but he needs the attention not from the world. He doesn’t need an Academy Award. The only being whose attention matters to your Shadow is you. I want you to ask your Shadow, what can you do to make up for the fact that you didn’t pay attention to him for such a long time?
JH: He says to include him in my life and share my life with him and celebrate him. And be proud of me. Meaning in, like, a social setting or a work setting or a romantic setting, where you’re not acknowledging this person, and it’s not only okay that they exist, but they are a beautiful part of you.
Stutz: Okay, open your eyes…
…This is a tool that will hopefully make your relationship with your Shadow better. This is good for shyness. It’s good if you have to make a public presentation. It’s even good if you have to confront your spouse. It really doesn’t matter. […] Our goal is not to give a good performance. Our goal is to use this tool and then tolerate whatever happens. […] It’s the process of constantly relating to it that matters. If you don’t pay him respect, or attention is the best word for it, he’ll make you do things that are actually destructive. So it’s both a tool that will make you feel better in the moment, and it’s also a philosophy about, “Where am I going as a human being?” And the idea of being in sync with the Shadow, it’s a sense of wholeness. Wholeness means I don’t need anything else. “I’m whole the way I am.” And that’s very freeing.”
The Snapshot (A.K.A. The Realm of Illusion)
“It means that you are looking for a perfect experience. Perfect wife, perfect amount of money in the bank, the perfect movie, it doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t really exist. It’s just an image in your own mind. Think about this. What is the nature of a snapshot? It has no movement, right? It’s still. And it has no depth. But in this case, you’ve taken this Snapshot, and you’ve crippled yourself with it. You fantasize. People tell themselves, if they can enter that perfect world, then magic will happen. But you can’t forget there are three aspects of reality:
- The pain will never go away.
- Uncertainty will never go away.
- And there’s no getting away from the need for constant work.”
The Maze
The Maze always involves other people. It’s the product of Part X, because Part X wants fairness. A classic example is when a person only wants to think and talk about another person. What they’re telling themselves is, ‘I’ll move past this once they make up for whatever it is, being angry at me, cheating. It doesn’t matter what.’ You feel they’ve mistreated you, and your quest for fairness puts your life on hold. Time is fleeting and we don’t have time for that bullsh*t.”
Active Love
“It’s a world that is just dense with loving energy. Grasp it and put it all into your heart. See the person you hate and send all of this concentrated love towards that person. You hold nothing back, you give everything. You feel the love enter the other person’s body. If you can feel that, in the person you hate the most, you free yourself from the maze.”
“I think in some way I was linking a relationship with a woman to being cured. JH: But there’s no cure for Parkinson’s… S: Yes. That’s correct. Most people haven’t been sick like that. And I’ve been sick for a long, uh, time.”
Radical Acceptance
“1) Every event has something in it that you can learn from. You’re not allowed to make judgements. You’re not allowed to tell yourself anything negative. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It doesn’t mean there isn’t something negative there. You’re not allowed to go through that. It goes against what we’re doing.
2) You want to find something positive about it. It’s not only about being able to do something. It’s about knowing that there’s something there that’s valuable. And what happens is everything starts to become more meaningful. You don’t get to the world of meaning through big things; you get it through small things. You need to look at all events as having value. If you can do that, then you’re in a zone of tremendous opportunity.”
The Grateful Flow
Part X wants you to have the negative thoughts. How do you penetrate the dark clouds? By knowing there is something above it that’s positive, even if you can’t see it at all. But you have to have a mechanism. That’s where the tool comes in. The Grateful Flow is not the things you’re grateful for. The Grateful Flow is the process of creating these things.
Close your eyes. Now, what you want to do is say two or three, at most four, things you’re grateful for. The smaller the thing, the better, because it forces you to concentrate gratefulness. You wanna do it nice and slow. You want to feel the gratefulness. Just keep naming things, keep feeling the gratefulness. Now, you feel like you’re about to create another thing to be grateful for. Don’t, You block it. So all you feel is the force that would create a grateful thought, and as it gets stronger and stronger, you feel taken over by it.
It’s not about repeating the same few things, it’s about needing to work to find several different things, small things.
The classic time to use it is when your thoughts are out of control. The worst thing to do is argue with them. ‘Cause its effect on you is terrible, and it does nothing for you. But gratefulness is not just, ‘I’m lucky somebody helped me”, or whatever. Gratefulness is the state you want to be in as often as you possibly can be in it, because it’s the state that connects you… it’s the state the breaks through the cloud. And once you’re up there, you’re in a different world. What Part X does is to say you shouldn’t be grateful.”
Hill then discusses about losing his brother, and how it was one of his worst days. He went to see Stutz that day, and he had requested for Hill to give his his phone so that he could take a photo of him that day. Hill wonders why he did that. Stutz explains, “It is very rare in life that you get a chance to record something at the climactic, you know, most important moment. And then you come back to it. Whether it’s in a week or a year, it doesn’t matter. In that time gap, you actually experience the forces of healing, of recovery.”
Loss Processing
“Most people are very bad at processing loss. But before there’s a loss, there’s the worry of a loss.”
The Sun World. Death is not a permanent position.
These are truthfully the only notes I have from this portion of the video. Whether it is due to me focusing on the content and absorbing it, or simply not having too much I wish to divulge, I am not sure. Handling death and loss is different for everyone. I will say, that hearing him speak about it is quite therapeutic.
Review
In all honestly, I could begin to write out the entire film, line by line. It is interesting in many ways, but the reasons behind why I find it interesting and how every other individual finds it interesting will be different. Similar to every other film, how one person relates to it and what they will take from it depends on several factors. Life experiences, their current mental state and surroundings, etc.
For this reason, it is hard for me to say that this film will resonate with everyone who watches it. However, if you’re interested in psychology, or about self-growth, I would recommend watching it. Not only that, but perhaps watch it more than once, with the viewings being a bit more spaced out. Personally, I’ve watched it three times throughout the course of wanting to write this review. At first, this was so I could fully absorb everything I was watching. Then, I wanted to see how my perception of the film changed over the course of a couple of months.
Frankly, it didn’t change that much. I felt like I was having a talk among my friends, learning from them and relating to them.
Related:
How to be a Mental Health Advocate: A Complete Guide
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