Produced byAcademy Award® Winner Ira Wohl
and Katie Cadigan
Ira Wohl
Producer
Los Angeles, California
Ira Wohl emerged as a groundbreaking documentary director and producer with Best Boy, an Academy Award winning film which follows his mentally retarded cousin Philly, and Philly's struggles to achieve a happy and fulfilling life independent of his family. Best Boy is considered a landmark documentary film. It won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and is hailed by critics as one of the best documentaries ever made.
Ira has a master's degree in social work from the University of Southern California, and is a licensed and practicing clinical social worker and psychotherapist in Lost Angeles. He is active at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Hospital & Institute, and he has a private practice where he sees both children and adults.
Ira brought his considerable producing experience to People Say I'm Crazy after finishing work on Best Man, a follow-up to Best Boy in which Philly is shown leading an active and independent life twenty years after the events of Best Boy. More recently, Ira directed and produced Best Sister, a film focusing on Philly's sister Frances, which completes the Best Boy trilogy of documentaries.
Until People Say I'm Crazy, I had never produced a film except those I had also written, directed and edited. As a filmmaker, I had never been interested in doing that—until I heard about People Say I'm Crazy and what John and Katie Cadigan were trying to do.
I was intrigued. I had produced a series of short films on psychiatric diagnosis a few years earlier, filming real interviews with real psychiatric patients in St. Louis, so I knew firsthand how powerful it could if someone with a mental illness could describe it themselves.
I asked Katie and John if they would allow me to see their rough footage. Right from the first minute, I recognized this film as "the real thing".
Dramatic, exciting, frightening, but above all honest--in a way no film I've ever seen on a subject such as this has ever been.
I am proud to have been a part of bringing John's story to film and making his story available to bring hope and encouragement to so many people.
Speaking as a psychotherapist and social worker, what is so stunning about this film is how very unsentimentally truthful it is about schizophrenia.
Every single stereotype you've ever conjured up about what it's like to have schizophrenia is blown completely out the water and is replaced by a much deeper understanding of the complexity of this illness.
In addition, the film transmits vital information about how to work with, not only the person with the disorder, but with their family, their support system and within the context of their entire environment.
I work every day with mental illness and see firsthand the devastating effects it can have on individuals and their loved ones. We need more films like People Say I'm Crazy!
- Ira Wohl
