Paul Goodman Changed My Life

Synopsis

PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE is the first documentary about Paul Goodman, the late social critic, poet, philosopher of education, or, as he called himself, "man of letters in the old-fashioned sense." His ideas helped lay the foundation for the student activists and anti war movements, gestalt therapy, gay rights, and early environmental urban planning.  A film about the most important man you never heard of.

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Credits

JSL Films

Director/Producer Jonathan Lee

Producer/Editor Kimberly Reed

Distributed by Zeitgeist

Screenings & Highlights

Premiered NYC Film Forum October 19, 2011

Screened at various film festivals including OUTFEST, San Francisco Film Society, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art/Washington DC, and more.

Reviews

“Paul Goodman Changed My Life pays tribute to a man — poet, teacher, social critic, guru without portfolio — whose name was once a household word and whose books were talismans of intellectual seriousness and social concern. His current obscurity is something this documentary, directed by Jonathan Lee and including eloquent testimony from friends, family and admirers, is determined to overcome... I suspect that he would have approved of Mr. Lee’s film, and not only because it approves so unreservedly of him. Paul Goodman Changed My Life may not have that effect on every viewer, but it has a passionate, almost prophetic sense of the impact that a writer and thinker can have on his times and the future. ~ A.O. Scott, New York Times

“Paul Goodman Changed My Life is a documentary about a man who changed mine. Now Largely forgotten, Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was an omnipresent influence on young people in the 1960s. His book, Growing Up Absurd (1960) a radical critique of how America raises its young men, was an improbable best-seller from the day it was published, predicting and influencing the Sixties Generation.” ~ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times