One Picture Is Worth a Thousand Sessions

Does the road to Wellville lead through the local video store?

Gary Solomon, a psychotherapist who calls himself the “Movie Doctor,” has been prescribing films to his clients as mental health aids for years. He decided to write a book about his unusual technique and the result is the recently published “The Motion Picture Prescription: Watch This Movie and Call Me in the Morning.”

Solomon’s book contains “essays” (he doesn’t consider them reviews) on 200 movies. Each begins with a list of the film’s healing themes, so you’ll know which of your emotional buttons will be pushed if you watch it. For example, he advises watching “Fatal Attraction” if you’re wondering about the repercussions of an affair or if you’re worried that you’re obsessed.

He has also indexed the movies, which date from 1935 to 1994, according to 17 categories, from abandonment to sex/sexuality. “The Big Chill,” for example, falls under death/dying, friends, relationships and sex/sexuality.

Solomon, 48, says he’s seen too many breakthroughs caused by video viewing to make light of his cinematic approach to mental health. Movies, he says, are “natural therapeutic tools.”

By recommending specific titles to clients, he says he is able to help them quickly cut through denial and see themselves as they truly are. Without the help of movies, he claims, progress of conventional therapy is much slower.

“I can do more with ‘Clean and Sober,’ ‘Sid and Nancy’ and ‘The Lost Weekend’ than all the 12-step meetings all over the country in one day,” Solomon says.

He cautions that he never intended his video viewing guide to replace crisis therapy. But, he says, watching movies is “more affordable and can help with non-crisis issues.”

*

Raised in Inglewood, Solomon says his home life was so chaotic that he failed to function in school. He says that until he was 12 he was illiterate and that his only refuge was watching old movies on television. From those movies, he says, he got an inkling of what normal life was supposed to be.

“I learned to feel from those movies,” he says.

Solomon now holds two master’s degrees and two PhDs. Until he and his wife, Robin, moved to Portland recently, he was the director of Arizona Family Counseling and Education in Phoenix, and an instructor of social work at Arizona State University.

He says he can’t recall which movie he first prescribed, only that his decision to do so came as an “epiphany.”

Solomon recalls: “I was listening to a woman tell her story. I flashed back to my childhood and watching a movie about her story, just as she was telling it to me. I suggested she see the movie.”

His second prescription he does recall. He recommended “The Boost,” a James Woods drama from 1988 about a cocaine addict, to a man who was in denial about his own habit. Watching the movie, Solomon says, was what it took to turn the man’s life around.

Although his book is geared toward self-helpers, Solomon also had his colleagues in mind. At the end of the book there is a motion picture prescription form (“Watch the movies listed below by your next appointment”) that can be copied and made into a pad.

Later this year he’ll put out a second volume of “The Motion Picture Prescription,” with another set of 200 movie reviews. The second volume will include more recent films, including “Waiting to Exhale” and “Nobody’s Fool,” as well as a number of made-for-television movies.

Solomon has a list of personal favorites and the films he believes hold the greatest therapeutic worth. They are “The Wizard of Oz,” “Drop Dead Fred,” “Jungle Fever,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” “The Basketball Diaries” and “Wildflower,” a 1991 film about an illiterate child.

He steers away from judging films on anything but their therapeutic value.

“I’m not a critic,” he says. “I never say a movie’s good or bad or right or wrong. My only criteria is if it gives a realistic message.”