''Personal Problems'' is a 1980 film described as a "meta

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

" directed by Bill Gunn and written by Ishmael Reed that depicts the life and personal relationships of an African American nurse (played by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor) living in

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...

. The film was originally intended to be broadcast on television, but the public television network

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

and others did not pick up the soap opera. It was shown across the United States at smaller screenings throughout the 1980s until it found renewed popularity after a screening in the late 2000s at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The film was restored in 2018 by

Kino Lorber Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, ...

and re-released at the

Metrograph The Metrograph is an independent two-screen movie theater at 7 Ludlow Street in the Dimes Square neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It opened in 2016 with two theatres, a bookstore, a "curated" concession stand, and a restaurant. ...

theater in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The original soundtrack by composer Carman Moore was released for the first time in 2020 by Reading Group.

Cast

* Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor as Johnnie Mae Brown * Walter Cotton as Charles Brown * Sam Waymon as Raymon * Jim Wright as Father Brown

Production

Some of the characters in ''Personal Problems'' were initially developed to be featured in a radio soap opera, but this later evolved into a 30 minute video soap opera directed by Gunn and written by Ishmael. The only scene from this original 30 minute version to appear in the 1980 version was a monologue by the character played by Sam Waymon. The scenes in ''Personal Problems'' were shot using a

videocassette recorder A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the reco ...

which was a new technology at the time (previously most films were shot using film stock). Gunn was known for his improvisational style of directing and was known to let actors improvise during filming, with director of photography and cameraman Robert Polidori stating: "Bill was interested in improvisation, which made it a little harder to shoot" and "Bill would set up scenes as an experiment. He'd set up tensions and see how the tensions turned out".

Reception

Glenn Kenny Glenn Kenny (born August 8, 1959) is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for ''The New York Times'' and '' RogerEbert.com''. Biography Kenny attended William Paterson University, where he majored in English literature.New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said of the film: "For all its rough edges, ''Personal Problems'' retains a vitality and an integrity that practically bounds off the screen." He also praised the film for its intimate depiction of African American life in New York, stating, "it's intimate to the point of awkwardness." K. Austin Collins, writing for '' Vanity Fair'', praised the movie as a "textually incomplete but spiritually overflowing accomplishment" and described it as "more than a clean narrative" which provided windows into a woman's life; "windows broad and intelligent enough to encompass a wide swathe of Black life generally, but free of neat narrative conclusions." Chuck Bowen of '' Slant Magazine'' gave the film four stars and applauded Gunn and Reed's intimate portrayal of the characters, stating: "Gunn and Reed collapse conventional notions of reality, providing simultaneous glimpses into the minds of dozens of characters, lingering on scenes and informing them with confessional intensity."

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 0285891 1980s English-language films