Article

For Author of 'Prozac Nation,' Delayed Film Is a Downer
www.nytimes.com, Published: November 9, 2003
By THOMAS V INCIGUERRA

In 1994, the writer Elizabeth Wurtzel, then 27, published "Prozac Nation," a memoir of clinical depression. While some reviewers praised the searingly candid portrait of an unhappy young life, others savaged it as narcissistic, overwrought and exasperating. Today that same debate is simmering over the $9 million movie version of "Prozac Nation." But while Ms. Wurtzel's autobiography was a best seller and continues to inspire a cultlike devotion, especially among young women, virtually no one has seen its film counterpart, finished in 2000.
More than two years after acquiring "Prozac Nation," and announcing and delaying its release several times, Miramax Films is keeping the project under wraps. "We're planning on a spring 2004 release," said Matthew Hiltzik, a studio spokesman, "but have just been waiting for a sign off from the producers."
Some people close to the production have cited another reason for the delay. "As you should have figured out by now, it's a horrible movie," Ms. Wurtzel said. "It's just awful. If they thought it was good, they'd have released it long ago." Studios routinely withhold films from theaters if they appear unlikely to justify the costs of advertising and distribution. But "Prozac Nation" isn't just another candidate for the direct-to-video bin. Besides the passionate fan base for Ms. Wurtzel's tale of adolescent pain and alienation - which is circulating an Internet petition to get the film released - the film stars Christina Ricci, in a reportedly powerful performance that includes her first big-screen topless scene.
What really distinguishes "Prozac Nation," however, is the way its fortunes have mirrored those of its real-life heroine's problematic personality. If "Prozac Nation" is, as Miramax had immodestly called it on an official Web site, "the most controversial film of the year, " that status reflects Ms. Wurtzel's reputation as one of her generation's most controversial writers.
"Elizabeth evokes her own press scrutiny," said Larry Gross, who shares credit for the screenplay with Frank Deasy. What Miramax fears more than losing money, he added, is "something they can't control - and Elizabeth is not controllable."
The memoir depicts Ms. Wurtzel's self-destructive behavior during her freshman year at Harvard: drug and alcohol abuse, intense gloom, fits of hysteria, self-mutilation and sexual promiscuity. Ultimately, after a suicide attempt, the antidepressant drug of the title afforded her a glimpse of a brighter life.
Some readers objected to the author's relentlessly self-pitying tone and accused her of cultivating a Sylvia Plath persona to sell her story. Newsweek called her "the famously depressed Elizabeth Wurtzel."
Nonetheless, Ms. Wurtzel's intense coming-of-age experiences resonated with many young people, among them Galt Niederhoffer, then a Harvard student and later a producer, who optioned the book for Millennium Films. The memoir was "bold, daring, flawed, brilliant and wild, but finally, totally new," Ms. Niederhoffer said.
In the film, Ms. Ricci faces crises and confrontations with her long-suffering mother (played by Jessica Lange), boyfriend (Jason Biggs) and therapist (Anne Heche). Production wrapped up in the summer of 2000, and Miramax acquired the movie after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001.
Festival critics were generally impressed by Ms. Ricci's performance, but many rejected the overall film. Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times wrote that "the movie seems finally to be about a pouty-lipped young solipsist - not so much a sufferer of depression as a carrier."
"It's a tough movie, not easy to like, about a very unsympathetic, self-involved character," recalled Jon Popick, who reviewed it for City Newspaper, an alternative weekly in Rochester, N.Y. "There was just one grating scene after another." He attended the screening with a friend, Dayna Papaleo, who said she and Mr. Popick referred to the star as "Christina Screechy."
Such reactions, said a former Miramax acquisitions executive, explain why "Prozac Nation" is now in a holding pattern. "A lot of distributors find themselves enamored of a movie, " he said. "Then when they get down to the marketing and have test audiences screen it, the response is not what they would have hoped."
Another factor in the film's delay seems to have been inflammatory comments Ms. Wurtzel made about the destruction of the World Trade Center five months after the attacks. While promoting her third book, "More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction," she told The Toronto Globe and Mail in February 2002: "I had not the slightest emotional reaction. I thought: `This is a really strange art project.' It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head." She added: "I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."
Following an outpouring of protest, Miramax announced that it was temporarily shelving the movie, which was to have opened in fall 2002. "We now have to distance ourselves as far as possible from the controversy," Ms. Ricci told The Calgary Sun at the time. "As a producer I know this is the right move, but as an actress I just want people to see it. "
Ms. Wurtzel now says that The Globe and Mail article misrepresented her. "Both me and my apartment were destroyed on Sept. 11," she said in a message left on the answering machine of this reporter. "I have the misfortune of living within 50 yards of the World Trade Center, and I was extremely upset about that even at the time that I did the interview."
She added that a co-producer, Paul Miller, told her that Miramax had decided to postpone "Prozac Nation" even before the Globe and Mail interview. Mr. Miller said he has no recollection of that exchange but does not question Ms. Wurtzel's memory. Mr. Hiltzik, the Miramax spokesman, said the studio's decision to delay the film last year was indeed prompted by Ms. Wurtzel's comments. "In dealing with any of our films that had a 9/11-related concern, we have consistently chosen to err on the side of sensitivity and allowed more time to pass," he said.
Although Ms. Wurtzel has been drug-free for several years, the unconventional persona she established with "Prozac Nation" has come to define her. She posed topless for the cover of her second book, "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women," raising her middle finger.
As "Prozac Nation" gathers dust on Miramax's shelves, the author's fans are voicing impatience on the Internet. One, Paulo Wandeck of Brazil, is circulating an online petition to coax Miramax to release the film.
"I want to see the movie pretty badly," said Sabrina Ialuna, a 23-year-old bank teller in Reading, Mass., who identifies with Ms. Wurtzel as a fellow victim of depression. "It's one of a handful that I would see in a year."
Will "Prozac Nation" appeal to anyone other than confirmed Wurtzelites? The filmmakers think so, believing that their work offers insight into the often misunderstood world of mental illness.
"It's not a Hollywood version of depression at all," Mr. Miller said. "The character that Christina plays is not very pleasant a lot of the time. It's a truthful look at depression, and depression isn't always pretty." But he emphasized that Ms. Ricci's strident portrayal is ultimately redemptive. "There's a person in there with a good heart who can't help herself. Eventually, you feel for her."
Ms. Ricci, who has appeared in several movies since "Prozac Nation," including Woody Allen's "Anything Else," has been approached by fans who are pressing her about a release date, even accosting her in restrooms for details.
"It's upsetting," Ms. Ricci said. "There's not that much that I can do, though. In some ways, you have to learn not to have an audience validate your work. But in some ways, you can't help it."
The movie's director, Erik Skjoldbjaerg, admits to being frustrated. The film has been released in his native Norway, to positive and negative reviews, but he hopes that Americans will not have to cross the Atlantic to see it. "I don't think waiting hurts it," he said. "I don't think it's a high-concept film that goes out of date very quickly. I have to trust Miramax because they've done well with similar types of movies."
As for Ms. Wurtzel, she said she wept when she first saw the movie, but now feels deep ambivalence about the project. "The performances are very strong, and the visuals are very good," she said. She is upset, though, that Ms. Ricci's voice-over narration is not drawn verbatim from her book. "You could argue that I'm a terrible writer," Ms. Wurtzel said, "but I'm the best version of me that there is." She also wishes the film had more "cool music in it."
The debacle has left Ms. Wurtzel with familiar feelings. "I'm miserable about it," she said. "If anybody had told me that something that meant so much to me as that book would lead me to this place, I'd have cried then as I'd cry now. I'll never get myself into a mess like this again."
"However," she added, "if it comes out and everyone thinks it's amazing, I'll say that it was amazing."

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Article

For Author of 'Prozac Nation,' Delayed Film Is a Downer www.nytimes.com, Published: November 9, 2003 By THOMAS V INCIGUERRA

For Author of 'Prozac Nation,' Delayed Film Is a Downer
www.nytimes.com, Published: November 9, 2003
By THOMAS V INCIGUERRA