It’s funny how the catchphrase “Stop the insanity!” means something so different now than when anyone of age in the 90s first heard it. Now it feels like my mantra in response to the horror show of the daily news cycle, whereas during the grunge/dot-com decade, the phrase only referred to a ubiquitous infomercial exercise guru named Susan Powter. Fit, loud, and with her trademark spiky blond hairdo, she led the pack in all things nutrition and fitness. But like so much of pop culture, out of sight and out of mind has relegated her to the “Whatever Happened To?” dustbin of history. Until now.
Call it 90s nostalgia, because who doesn’t miss the pre-COVID, pre-political divide, pre-September 11th era? Or call it a way for executive producer Jamie Lee Curtis to secure life rights to a person she’s clearly born to portray? Perhaps it’s all of the above along with the fact that with Stop The Insanity! Finding Susan Powter, we have an astonishingly raw, empathetic, open wound of a documentary which couldn’t feel more relevant if it tried.
In her heyday, Powter seemed to crop up everywhere from talk shows to ads with her big, loud, and admittedly annoying presence. She raked in millions for her business but sadly didn’t reap the benefits due to a bad contract and money mismanagement. When we catch up to her, she’s living in a welfare funded apartment building in the shadow of the Las Vegas Strip. Barely making ends meet by driving for Uber Eats and stashing a small amount of cash in her closet, she’s one dental emergency or car breakdown away from losing it all again.
Filmmaker Zeberiah Newman’s 2021 short documentary Right To Try about Jeffrey Drew, a long term HIV survivor and his daily struggles, impressed me with his ability to get his subjects to open up and work their way into our hearts. With this new film, he delivers that tenfold. Most of us may not relate to the “got rich and lost everything” part of Powter’s story, but anyone who has struggled with finances, lack of health insurance, food insecurity, and feelings of invisibility due to ageism will surely see themselves in Susan.
A proud lesbian, Powter doesn’t discuss her relationship status, but her life seems very solitary as we observe her mostly at work or depressed at home in an unpleasant and potentially dangerous environment. As the mother of three sons, who declined to participate in the filming, she may have more human interaction than what we see, but her sadness feels so visceral nonetheless. A prolonged outburst late in the film appeared at first like self-sabotage until I realized the situation we find her in felt inauthentic to her. You get the sense that being her true self means more to her than money.
Stop The Insanity stops at nothing to excavate Susan’s emotional state. Without a safety net, the littlest things, like not being able to locate a delivery address or an unexpected rattle in her car, seem insurmountable. My cynical side thought that because she has had so much experience in front of cameras, she could be “acting”, but I didn’t get that sense. Susan’s present situation has a “No F’s Left To Give” vibe. It makes for a fantastic documentary subject.
We get additional perspective on Susan through an old friend who clearly will drop everything to help her. Television host Ross Matthews joyfully fills us in that Susan may have the best of intentions, but she’s also a little extra and a lotta nutty. Jamie Lee Curtis smooths out those edges by reminding us that Susan’s an iconoclast who deserves compassion if not our respect. It all adds up to a beautifully touching, harsh but hopeful film. Newman has a great knack for his vérité style of directing, relying more on scenes as they play out rather than forcing the talking heads to tell all of the story. His style and this wonderful film evoke Sean Baker’s The Florida Project meets Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, only so much more vividly real. At 68, Susan may seem defeated and aged out of any chance at renewed success, but if we’re going by Vegas betting odds, counting her out seems like a fool’s errand. Susan’s no-quit-attitude stands to inspire a whole new generation, and I, for one, am rooting hard for her.
By Glenn Gaylord, Senior Film Critic
Stop The Insanity! Finding Susan Powter is available on VOD now.
For more film reviews by Glenn Gaylord subscribe to his new YouTube channel here ——> GLENN HATES EVERYTHING
Leave a Reply