Screen star Joe Pantoliano spoke to an audience of 200 Mental Health Association supporters at the Vero Beach Museum of Art last Saturday evening, following a screening of his latest movie, Canvas, an emotional film about a family dealing with a mother’s schizophrenia.
Pathos, Pasta & Pantoliano was the organization’s first fundraiser since its major restructuring about three years ago, and was the brainchild of event chair and board member Kathie Pierce.
“I was at the MHA offices one day when I saw a DVD of the movie Canvas and I said ‘Hey I would go to an event if I could get Joey Pantoliano here,’” explained Pierce. “So we called the Speakers Bureau and the rest was history.”
The movie, set in Hollywood, FL, illustrates how mental disorders can affect family and friends as much, or more than, those afflicted. Pierce felt that the movie’s subject matter would resonate with the audience, adding, “I wanted it to be relevant to our organization and I thought the movie expressed a lot of what we do.”
“I think that the film highlighted a problem that a lot of us feel, about how you deal with a family member who has depression or a mental disease. It was very touching,” said Chet Kaletkowski.
Pantoliano slipped in unnoticed during the filming, watching its final 20 minutes before joining guests in the Holmes Great Hall for an Italian dinner.
“It’s hard watching yourself, you see yourself get old,” Pantoliano said wryly. “This movie has been embraced by the mental health community as a case study of what happens to a family when mental disease is introduced into the family and the levels of fear, denial, blame and how it even affects the neighborhood.”
He was surprised to encounter friends at the event that he had not seen in 35 years. Attilio Lavorgna, who now lives in Vero Beach with wife Janice, had been Pantoliano’s barber in New Jersey. The three became good friends before Pantoliano rose to fame as an actor in Risky Business, The Matrix, The Fugitive and The Sopranos.
Pantoliano said he first recognized his own issues with depression and his mother’s likely undiagnosed bipolar disorder after participating in the movie, despite friends in the neighborhood having noticed it. Pantoliano joked that he just thought his mother was being Italian-American.
He said that once he began to get treatment and talk to others about his own struggles with mental illness, the most consistent response he got was, “No kidding? Me too!” which became the name of his foundation.
The goal of No Kidding, Me Too! is to remove the stigma of mental illness in today’s culture and make it a part of normal conversation. It is a disease that has affected many in the film industry, including comedian Robin Williams, who committed suicide last August and ironically was on the foundation’s advisory board.
“I talked to Robin before he died. He would say that he never officially was diagnosed with mental disease or bi-polarism,” said Pantoliano. “But it is not about the diagnosis. It is about the life and the quality of life. If you are not enjoying life, tell someone.”
Taking a few questions after dinner, Pantoliano answered with funny quips but was quite serious about the fact that mental disease is not always forever.
“Once I replaced the chemical problem in my brain with exercise, proper diet and replacing the endorphins I needed in my brain, I was able to fix the problems. The line between madness and sober thinking is a very fine line. It is only when you have a crashing reality when we are sick that the healing begins.”
Noting that there is an 85 percent recovery rate for many mental illnesses, Pantoliano ended on a positive note saying, “I will take a disease with that recovery rate over any other.”
