Growing Up with Paul Goodman will be the first documentary about Paul Goodman, the late social critic, poet, philosopher of education, or, as he called himself, "man of letters in the old-fashioned sense." Growing Up with Paul Goodman will follow a biographical through-line and be structured around interviews with family, friends, peers, and activists from the peace, educational reform, and gay movements who today are found in Maine, Minnesota, Massachusetts, California, West Virginia, New York City, Vermont, Paris, and Catalonia, Spain. The interviews will be interwoven with archival footage of Goodman and major events in which he was involved and photos made available by his 85-year old widow Sally. Off-camera actors will read some of Paul Goodman's poems and anecdotes written by the late Harold Rosenberg, George Dennison, and Alfred Kazin. Growing Up with Paul Goodman will also include selections from Judith Malina's journals of 1947-1957 as recorded by Ms. Malina for the film.
PERSONS INTERVIEWED FOR THE FILM
Michael Bronski | writer on gay culture, politics, literature, veteran gay activist, teacher. |
Noam Chomsky | linguist and outspoken critic of US foreign policy. |
Morris Dickstein | distinguished professor of English, City University of New York, author of Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties. |
Jason Epstein | editor of Growing Up Absurd and many other PG books published while he was editorial director at Random House. |
Michael Fisher | graduate of University of California/Davis in 2006 who discovered Paul Goodman in his senior year of college and wrote his honor's thesis on Goodman. |
Richard Flacks | leader, Students for a Democratic Society, sociologist, University of California, Santa Barbara. |
Frieda Gardner | Goodman family friend, writer and former English professor. |
Daisy Goodman | Paul and Sally's youngest child. |
Naomi Goodman | widow of Percival Goodman, Paul's older brother. |
Sally Goodman | Paul Goodman's widow. |
Susan Goodman | Paul's first child. |
Jacqueline Gourevitch | painter and alumna of Black Mountain College. |
Allen Graubard | author of Free the Children: Radical Reform and the Free School Movement. |
Neil Heims | Goodman admirer, former boyfriend of Susan Goodman, writer/editor. |
Edmund Leites | former Goodman disciple, professor of philosophy, Queens College. |
Ambassador Philip Kaiser | former ambassador to Senegal, Mauritania, Austria, and Hungary and member of the Truman Administration. Bunkmate and friend of Paul Goodman at Jewish summer camp in the early 1930s. |
Judith Malina | co-founder of the Living Theatre and former therapy patient of Goodman's. |
Michael Vincent Miller | gestalt therapist and writer. |
Grace Paley | writer and peace activist. |
Lura Rand Orthwein | (pen name, Laura X) was active in the Berkley Free Speech Movement in 1964 and founded and directed the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape in Berkeley, California. |
Marcus Raskin | co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., author and teacher. |
Tom Rodd | law clerk to Supreme Court justice in West Virginia, convicted draft resister. |
Ned Rorem | composer and diarist who set many of Paul Goodman's poems to music. |
Michael Rossman | activist, Berkeley Free Speech Movement, writer, retired science teacher in Berkeley. |
Taylor Stoehr | Goodman literary executor and biographer, professor of English, U/Mass, Boston. |
Jerl Surratt | Goodman admirer, development consultant, New York City. |
Lee Swenson | peace and community organizer, Berkeley, CA. |
Michael Walzer | political philosopher, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. |
Burton Weiss | best friend of Mathew Goodman, Paul's only son, at Cornell, draft resister. |
Gordon Wheeler | gestalt therapist, writer, president, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA. |
Vera Williams | former student at Black Mountain College and children's book illustrator and author. |
