Bud Clayman Free-Associates About His Film "OC87"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 01 June 2012 14:10

Written by Laura Blum

Bud Clayman is a filmmaker with Obsessive Compulsive disorder, among other syndromes indexed in the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- and in his documentary's subtitle: The Obsessive Compulsive Major Depression Bipolar Asperger's Movie.

Three decades ago he had hoped to get his career underway, but these dysfunctions headsmacked him sidewise. Now with OC87 his dream has come true, even if the autobiographical story it tells is hardly anyone's fantasy.

The "87" of the title refers to the year when Clayman first succombed to mental illness.

We see the bedroom doorknob behind which he retreated for an incomprehensibly long stretch of life dedicated to dark thoughts and fears. And we meet the man whose inadvertant words sent Clayman to his private hell, where even the pace of sidewalk pedestrians could touch off external paralysis and internal frenzy.

Judging by the repetition of the word "talented" in the touts he drew from classmates, Clayman had every reason to approach his future with confidence. Yet interviews with fellow OCD sufferers, dramatizations of what it's like to live with anxiety disorders and Clayman's own narration of his shambolic behavior and apartment give a glimpse into the vulnerabilities that got the upper hand and shut him out of his universe.

Clayman's parents played a strategic role in that universe and in the film. His mother, Lila, applies her interior decorating skills and doting ways to making over his apartment, and his entrepreneur father, Mort, still dismisses his son's diagnosis as an alibi for laziness (yet funds the production).

And OC87 itself provided Clayman a way to mark his ground. He had help. Anxious about making decisions, he brought on psychologist Scott Johnston and documentary-maker Glenn Holsten (Saint of 9/11) to co-direct.

The 40-something obsessive compulsive got an immersive course in being flexible and letting go, which stood him in good stead when surprised with a digital recorder upon entering the Manhattan plex showing his film on a recent Sunday afternoon.

Q: How did you give yourself permission to make the film after all these decades?

BC: Basically, I wanted to educate people about mental illness in society since it's not talked about. I've always felt that my life was an open book. And I've always loved the media.

Q: Was it hard to mine memories from so many years ago?

BC: No, since I´ve been in Freudian analysis for a long time and they teach you to analyze your thoughts, look back and be very retrospective about things.

Q: To what extent do viewers relate to your obsessive-compulsive thoughts?

BC: One of the things we learn in OCD treatment is that people without OCD have these same normal thoughts, but the difference is that a person with OCD will over-ideate these thoughts. They just want to drive them home, ram them into the ground and go crazy with them. Other people just let them go. They let the thoughts be there.

Q: So it's a continuum -- a droplet to a tidal wave.

BC: Yeah. But I'm doing better, because the thoughts are just being there right now. As you see in the movie, [therapist] John Grayson talks about thoughts being there. A lot of thoughts are just flowing now and I don't try to snatch them out of the river and look them and hold them and analyze them.

Q: To what extent was the film therapy for you?

BC: It was very much therapy. Because with OC87 in 1987, as you know in the film, I wanted to control my whole world. With film you can't do that because it's a very collaborative medium. So I had to give up control to others. That was sometimes very hard, but it was also very rewarding.

Q: How nervous are you right now?

BC: I'm a little nervous, cause I didn't expect it, but I'm doing alright I think. I´m trying. (Laughs.)

Q: How nervous were you on opening night?

BC: I was a little nervous, yeah. I was nervous during the day, but once my family was here and we got the show going, I was feeling good.

Q: You end your movie by stating that your father approved. In acknowledging your need for parental approval despite your progress, were you being ironic?

BC: We put that in there out of respect to him since we were at times critical of him in the film. We wanted the audience to know that he saw the rough cut with the scenes he was in, and saw that my mother was critical of his denying my mental illness.

Q: Do you think he had a touch of Asperger's himself, or was he just from that generation and culture?

BC: No, I think he was just of that generation.

Q: I wanted you ultimately not to give a damn what he says.

BC: (Laughs.) I'm glad that I showed him the rough cut. I wanted him to see the film before it went out there.

Q: How much was your illness affected by the psychodynamic with your parents, that your father withheld approval and your mother enabled?

BC: Of course you can't divorce personality from human experience. It's part of human nature. I was coddled a lot. But I know my mother realizes that I need my space. I´ve also had to assert that control, but I think she's respectful of that.

Q: Your apartment is beautiful. Earlier it seemed to be a physical representation of the chaos in your mind, and now it reflects order and harmony. Can beauty (or ugliness) also touch off your mental state?

BC: I don't really think one has to be organized totally to have a happy life. I think that's overdone. I do keep it as clean as I can, but I'm actually living a better life because of therapy. It's not physical manifestation or anything. I woudn't want to go back to what I was living before and it's certainly nice that it is kept nice. I will say there is a little clutter again.

Q: So you're backsliding a bit?

BC: A little, yeah. But I have some people come in and clean up every couple weeks. One of the reasons it's a little cluttered now, I'll tell you, is that I lost someone's script and had ito empty out the filing cabinet in the dining room and transfer that to the bedroom. So the bedroom's a little cluttered.

Q: What's next for you?

BC: Right now I´m working on an offshoot of OC87 called Recovery Diaries. It's a multimedia website. There are articles and audio recordings and films, and I'm directing two subjects for that.

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