Reel Life

A shrink looks at men, women, marriage, movies, and more.

by Frank Pittman, M.D.

Friends and Enemies in the Movies

The six movies contending for Best Picture Oscar confront us with what people go through in real life. Read More

Choose Your Poison

Short of driving drunk or driving stoned, the most dangerous sport may be football. A brain is far too valuable to use as disposable padding. Read More

Marriage Is Hard: Film Review—The Kids Are All Right

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is a new movie overflowing with wisdom and honesty. Marginalizing men into mere sperm donors does not completely detoxify them. A family can't be perfected, but when you are part of it, it can be understood and appreciated. Its OK if the family you grew up in did not approach normality. There is nothing wrong with a marriage like the one you grew up in. All families straight or gay, male or female, it's all more the same than otherwise. Read More

Say No Thank You To the Nice Lady

Everybody has a family story to tell that's full of wisdom. I grew up hearing about my Uncle Harry's discovery that there's no easy way for a man to say No to a predatory woman, especially one, like Tallulah Bankhead, clad in only a bottle a bourbon. Read More

We Are Who We Read

I come from the South, a land of storytellers. Fiction is necessary: Without it we don't know what it feels like to be anyone except yourself, and therefore we don't really know what we are like, what effect others have on us. We aren't whole and we aren't connected. Read More

Losing One's Senses

All of us, as we lose our senses, seek ways to accommodate unless we just decide to stop listening or stop the ongoing comment about the events transpiring around us. Read More

Lonely Hearts

Shared misery can be as exhilarating as a runaway roller coaster. It is the misery experienced alone that sucks us ever downward. One of the functions of movies is to bring us together and cue us to share the joint feelings. We denizens of the human condition are all in it together, whether it be in Haiti, Chile, or even Washington. We can find the human condition in the movies.

Tiger Woods has been our untarnished hero, the most reliable of athletes, and the most conscientious of sons, fathers, and husbands. He was the man we all aspired to be. But it seems cruel for Mother Nature to bestow those gifts without the sense and judgment to enable guys to use those gifts wisely. A sheltered boy hears the banter of guy talk. He may not know that the huffing and puffing is part of the game, the show of male bonding, not to be taken literally.< Read More

The Scorpion and the Frog

Are we treacherous scorpions by nature or guileless frogs? Unlike frogs and scorpions, whatever our nature, we are not at the mercy of it. Just because we feel lust, does not mean we just jump the bones of whoever tickles our fancy; just because we feel anger, does not mean we get a free shot at whoever offends us. We have to keep in mind that we are always making choices. Of that, and that alone, we have no choice. We are capable of just about anything, so in contrast to Malcolm Gladwell, we must always think before we blink.

Sometimes Leave 'Em Laughing

A few years ago, a rather self indulgent patient of mine collapsed into a fashionable psychiatric hospital from which the staff kept me regularly posted on his progress. An eager young therapist called me each week from the hospital recounting fancied or forgotten traumas from the patient's childhood, and how much the staff had cried over each incident and each therapy session. Read More

How I Became a Movie Reviewer: The Ghosts of Movies Past

Wisdom and enlightenment come from many experiences, even from growing up in a funeral home in a crumbling antebellum mansion in the Deep South. My father was off at The War, my grandmother stone deaf, my mother stone drunk. Read More