Numb
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Harris Goldberg's Director's Statement
Published on: April 06, 2007Harris Goldberg, writer and director of Numb, has released a statement about how his film came to fruition. Posted below, Harris goes into detail about his experience as a high concept studio comedy writer, his own encounter with depersonalization and how he felt coming out of the first test screening of the film. Director's Statement by Harris Goldberg I completed the screenplay for Numb� in the winter of 2006. A year later the film was completed. At first I was apprehensive due to the autobiographical nature of the story, fearful it may be seen as self indulgent or worse, too revealing. After our first test screening I found myself in an elevator going down to the parking garage with audience members who had no idea I had anything to do with the thing. I was amazed as they began quoting lines, how the ailment afflicting Hudson, the main character, tapped into their own feelings, fears and what was happening to them on some level. I couldn't believe it. I had written and directed something personal that had somehow, someway resonated with the general public. I felt like a hundred dollars. Before Numb� I was considered a high concept, studio comedy writer. Little did I know during those years of delivering broad films with big set pieces to score that high, double digit opening weekend, my mind was getting ready for something I never could have predicted. The prediction came true on the night of February 14, 1991 where I hit a wall so bizarre, so strange, so painful that I'd wonder if I'd ever make it out again. It took years of silent suffering before I had the wherewithal to write what was happening to me. I called it Numb� because that's exactly how I felt. Numb to everything around me. Including myself. No one ever knew. No one could ever tell. I bravely hide this mysterious malady through sheer will power as my world closed in on me. As Hudson describes in the film, the psychological definition of this condition was called Depersonalization:� The feeling that everything around me appeared unreal, as if living in some kind of hellish dreamlike state. I was convinced these symptoms were triggered by smoking a single joint on that fateful February evening. That the massive intake of THC had somehow altered my brain to a place it could never recover. If this were the case I would forever blame myself for permanently shifting my life through one act of stupidity. If it wasn't, then I hoped maybe there could be some way back to normal. It was also at this time that I met a girl. A great girl. I'm talking soul mate material. I hid my condition from her too. I knew, if I really wanted this to work, I would have to heal thyself and heal it fast. This took me on journey into the mental health profession to the tune of $150,000. I saw every psychiatrist, psychologist, cognitive behaviorist, researcher and college professor, leaving no stone unturned as doctor after doctor tried to explain my chronic, unending spacey nightmare on extreme anxiety, depression, genetics or a combination of all three. It was through these travels, and the writing of the screenplay, that I finally came to understand myself on a level I never would have reached before the event. As the script circulated around town, instead of people saying, Hey cool story, they would pull me aside, call me at night, send worried e-mails of their own secret experiences with detachment, anxiety and panic. What I thought was something that could only happen to me soon became a subject I realized was happening to more people than I could have imagined; people overwhelmed by the times we were living, fueled by their lack of security, fear of their future, feelings of being Numb. This is that movie.
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