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DANBURY, Conn. -- Fans of "The Sopranos" and film buffs saw a different side of Joe "Joey Pants" Pantoliano on June 3 at the Palace Theater.
Pantoliano is the founder and president of No Kidding, Me Too!, a nonprofit organization dedicated to removing the stigma surrounding mental disorders through education.
About 100 people came to see the movie he directed, "No Kidding, Me 2!," the majority of whom wanted to learn more about mental illness.
It cost $35 to see the film, $100 to see the film and attend a 90-minute meet-and-greet session with Pantoliano.
"I'm here to learn about mental illness," said Anna Withers of Fairfield. "I heard him speak about it on television and the documentary interested me."
"No Kidding, Me 2!" is about seven people with mental illness. Each one talks about when he or she realized something was wrong and the ways they tried to cope.
"This is a movie to show you how to deal with pain," Pantoliano said.
His 10-year-old daughter, Izze, was supportive at the event, following him around and filling in his sentences when he couldn't think of a word.
"I've only seen it once, but I'm in it," Izze said before the film. "It's really good -- you should like it."
"How many people know someone personally, have someone they love, or are themselves going through mental illness?" Pantoliano asked the audience.
Almost everyone raised a hand.
"This movie happened to me," he said. "We didn't know I was sick -- sick like I had the flu or I had asthma. Mental illness is a disease like a heart condition or diabetes."
Pantoliano said depression feels like living with a paralyzed heart. He said it is important that people admit and are not ashamed of having a mental illness.
"I thought the answer was success, but it wasn't. I got my success, but I was still depressed. My life is full, but I couldn't feel anything. But I'm living now -- good, bad, indifferent."
He said the documentary and the film "Canvas,"of which he was selling autographed DVDs, are tools people can use to teach others about mental illness.
"Canvas" is a movie based on a true story of a woman with paranoid schizophrenia, told through the eyes of her 11-year-old son. Pantoliano plays the woman's husband.
"It's a very good cause. We bought the tickets, we're here supporting what (Joey's) interested in," said John Sullivan of Wilton.
"Advocacy, getting rid of the stigma of mental illness, that's what he does -- that's what he's good at."
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From the News Times. You can see the documentary trailer here.
