Paul Goodman Changed My Life2011

Paul Goodman was once so ubiquitous in the American zeitgeist that he merited a cameo in Woody Allen's ANNIE HALL. Author of legendary bestseller "Growing Up Absurd" in 1960, Goodman was also a poet, 1940s out queer (and family man), pacifist, visionary, co-founder of Gestalt therapy and a moral compass for many in the burgeoning counterculture of the '60s. PAUL GOODMAN CHANGED MY LIFE immerses you in an era of high intellect (that heady, cocktail-glass juncture that MAD MEN has so effectively exploited) when New York was peaking culturally and artistically; when ideas, and the people who propounded them, seemed to punch in at a higher weight class than they do now. Using a treasure trove of archival multimedia, selections from Goodman's poetry (read by Garrison Keillor and Edmund White); quotes from Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Noam Chomsky; plentiful footage of Goodman himself; plus interviews with his family, peers and activists, director/producer Jonathan Lee and producer/editor Kimberly Reed have woven together a rich portrait of an intellectual heavyweight whose ideas are long overdue for rediscovery.