PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE

Dir. Jonathan Lee (89min, USA, 2011) - Unrated

"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'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.