Future of Teen Suicide Movie in Doubt : Producer Won’t Surrender State Film Officials Call Dangerous

After ordering the production of a $237,000 educational film on teen-age suicide, state officials have decided not to show it to students, saying that a suicide scene could provoke troubled teen-agers to take their own lives.

Department of Mental Health administrators have ordered the film’s producer, Jerry Naylor of Agoura, to surrender all prints of “Give Yourself a Chance for Life” so they can be destroyed. Naylor--a former singer for the 1950s rock ‘n’ roll group The Crickets--has refused to give up the 28-minute film, contending that “it can save lives” if shown in high schools across the state.

“It’s censorship, direct censorship,” Naylor said. “If I sincerely believed this film was ‘a lethal weapon,’ as they call it, or that it would cause one person to kill himself, I’d never want it shown. I’m not giving up.”

‘Matter of Medical Ethics’

But Dr. D. Michael O’Connor, director of the Department of Mental Health, said the film should not be shown.

“My mind will never change on that film,” O’Connor said. “This is a matter of medical ethics, not artistic content. Medical and clinical people I’ve shown the film to unanimously told me they thought the film was dangerous, that people might get the wrong idea when they see it.”

The Department of Mental Health hired Naylor in 1985 through a competitive bidding process to produce the film as a classroom teaching tool. The idea was to alert teen-agers and teachers to suicide signals and to let youngsters know that there are alternatives other than death to dealing with depression.

Naylor said the movie was made with a state-approved script under the scene-by-scene supervision of state mental health officials. He said he owns the film--not the state--because he has never been paid the final $34,000 called for in his contract.

State officials said they have not paid Naylor only because he refuses to send them his final bill.

The state attorney general’s office has repeatedly ordered Naylor to relinquish the film, scripts and videotape copies. The next step, officials said, is to take Naylor to court.

“I would not call it censorship,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Paula L. Gibson said. “The contract gives the state control of the film. The Department of Mental Health owns the film and should be allowed to do with it what it wants. There are plenty of films made in Hollywood that don’t get to the public screen. That’s the way it goes.”

At the center of the controversy is a dreamlike hanging scene involving the film’s main character. The scene originally showed actor Bill Allen tying a noose and tossing it over a rafter, but was later shortened and now depicts the action through shadows.

“Every step was done to the approval of the state,” Naylor said. “Even the music.”

In addition, the film was reviewed by several professional psychological groups, according to Naylor, who now has offered to buy back the film, remove all identification with the state, release the state from liability, then market the movie himself.

The state’s representative on the set was Dean R. Owen, chief of the Office of Public Communications for the Department of Mental Health, who served as executive producer.

Owen said the film was nearing completion in late 1986 when he and others working on it were rocked by reports in the New England Journal of Medicine that linked increases in teen-age suicides to television news reports and movies about suicide.

State officials initially stood by their film, although the studies prompted them to tone down the hanging scene and add an epilogue in which Allen steps out of character and tells of his own best friend’s suicide, Naylor said.

Later, however, “Dr. O’Connor said, ‘I’m not going to release this film,’ ” Naylor said. “‘I want it shredded. I want all evidence of it shredded--all footage, all scripts.’ Michael O’Connor had a group of psychiatrists and psychologists review it. Their conclusion was it was a lethal weapon, like handing a kid a gun.”

O’Connor acknowledged that a shredding machine may be in the film’s future. “Maybe that’s what I will do,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I won’t do: I won’t show it to anybody.”

O’Connor recalled that the New England Journal reports “sent a chill up my spine.”

Panel of Experts

“I brought together a panel of medical and clinical people. I put them in a room and let them watch it and said, ‘What do you think?’ They unanimously told me they thought the film was dangerous.”

“Give Yourself a Chance for Life” has divided suicide experts who have viewed it.

Charlotte P. Ross, executive director of the Youth Suicide National Center, which is based in San Mateo, said she has “strong concerns about the film,” ranking it second from the bottom of about 150 films on the subject that she has seen. “I would feel very unhappy and uncomfortable, personally, if that film goes out,” she said.

She said the revised hanging scene remains too suggestive.

But Michael L. Peck, a Westwood psychologist who also was a consultant on production of the film, said that labeling the movie as dangerous “is the biggest nonsense I’ve ever heard.” He rated it as being “in the upper range of excellence” of about 100 teen-age suicide films that he is familiar with.

Several of the film’s other consultants--who received review videotapes of the film from Naylor--scoffed at suggestions that the movie gives instructions on how to commit suicide.

“I’ve shown it (a review copy) to high school and college students, and no one has died yet,” said Rick Loya, who teaches health classes at Huntington Park High School and is executive secretary of the California Assn. of School Health Educators.