I’ve been writing about The Invisible War, Kirby Dick’s documentary about the sexual assault epidemic in the military, since I saw it at Sundance last year. And now that it’s been nominated for an Academy Award, Dick and I sat down to discuss the movie’s impact, which Dick said had been a surprise:

Even before Hagel’s promise, The Invisible War was getting traction within the military itself, where it’s become a training tool and an agent of cultural change. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh screened The Invisible War for a meeting of wing commanders in November. And the rank and file are seeing the movie as well. Dick says that a distributor he works with who sells movies to the military and other institutions estimates that 235,000 service members—or nearly 10 percent of the 2.9 million members of the active and reserve armed forces—saw The Invisible War in 2012.

“The military itself is using the film for sexual-assault training, in part because, of course, they have no tools,” Dick said. “Eighty-five percent of those [viewers] are men. I think men seeing this is the real game changer, too. I think the film, not only on a policy level but on a cultural level, [is changing] the military. What people would joke about, you see this film and you don’t joke about it anymore.”

For all Dick is shocked by the failures of legislators and the military to act sooner, and by the Washington press corps for failing to investigate sexual assaults at Marine Barracks Washington—“There are documents, there is a lot of stuff there,” he said—he remains hopeful that the military can change, and that the rest of society can as well.

“The military’s done this before with racism. They could do it with this issue. And they could actually become a leader on the issue of sexual assault for the entire society,” he said. “There’s such divisiveness within this country, and especially around the military. There are a lot of issues with the military. But I think it’s a wonderful thought to think that civilians in society will look to the military as having been a leader in helping to reduce sexual assault across the country.”

It’s true that it’s easier—and probably better—for this to happen with documentaries than with feature films, television shows, or novels. But The Invisible War is one of the reasons I write about popular culture. You need narratives to push policy ideas forward. You need characters, be they human or fictional, to embody the impact of policies, or the lack thereof. And sometimes, people who have been deaf to the stories told by real people in their lives can hear those stories more clearly from the remove of a movie screen.

David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, nominated for eight Oscars, is hardly the first movie to find critical acclaim with a searing portrait of the impact of mental illness. But unlike many films, which portray people who suffer from mental health issues as either saintly or pitiable, Silver Linings Playbook, about Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a former high school teacher who is returning home from eight months at a mental hospital after he beat his wife’s lover and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, is savagely funny and often disarmingly sweet. It’s also a subtle vehicle for larger ideas about mental health care in America, ranging from the damage done by late-in-life diagnoses of mental illnesses, to the fact that for some people, treatment comes only after they come into contact with the criminal justice system, to training about mental health that could help everyone from teachers to cops do their jobs better.

I spoke with Bradley Cooper, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, the president of Give An Hour, which coordinates with volunteer mental health providers to get free treatment to American veterans, about the stigma around mental illness, the intersection of mental health care and law enforcement, and what kinds of conversations they hope Silver Linings Playbook can start. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length:

I wanted to ask you about the structural story of the movie, because the real tragedy of Silver Linings Playbook is that Pat’s biploar disorder doesn’t get diagnosed until it’s completely unmanageable. It’s awful that it gets to this point, but it’s also a way that he finally gets care, and that’s not a story we see very often.

Cooper: But reflective of what’s happening. I mean, that’s the whole point. Patrick Kennedy, he likens it to a diagnosis which happens at stage four of cancer. When that’s occurring, it’s a bleak horizon. The whole idea is to have it be diagnosed before he makes a plea bargain with the courts after he beat the hell out of a guy. That’s the only reason he even went to a hospital in the first place and was diagnosed there. But, if somebody recognized, or he had a venue when he was a teenager, to talk about the fact that his brain is working in such a way that make him feel like an outsider, like he’s not belonging, then maybe that would have been prevented, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to serve time and had a 500-yard restraining order out against him, and have no job.

At the same time, the movie treats the ongoing law enforcement involvement in Pat’s life—a local police officer is assigned to check up on him and respond to calls about him—as a good thing in Pat’s life. He doesn’t have a case worker, he has his therapist appointment once or twice a week, but the cops are actually doing a fairly good job of dealing with him.

Van Dahlen: That’s an unusual situation. The issue is having people in someone’s life who are consistent, who care. The police officer in this story was somebody who actually was willing to try when he could to be helpful, rather than just “Okay, I’m taking you back in.” And unfortunately, that’s not often the case in communities, nor is it the case that we’ve got teacher who have the knowledge, even though they care about the kids, they may not understand. So they’re not going to be the one that says “Maybe something else is going on here.” It’s educating all the way down the line in our communities so these folks are identified and have access and it’s part of our normal conversation. It should not be the case that someone has to keep feeling like “I’m going to try to keep it together, I’m going to try to keep it together.” We see this obviously with the service members, that whole culture, trying to keep it together when they can’t. Our society, unfortunately, puts a tremendous amount of pressure on people, and sometimes, they blow.

Cooper: The police officer for our story in the movie, he serves the same way that his friend Ronnie serves, his brother Jake and his parents, who say “You look great. Just adhere to the rules and you’ll be fine.” There’s no investigation into what’s going on. The cop doesn’t pull him aside at the movie theater and say “Explain to me what happens.” He goes “The restraining order. You want to go back to Baltimore?” Those aren’t ways of actually understanding the situation. And that’s the device we use in the movie to then introduce Tiffany Maxwell, who is Jennifer [Lawrence], and that’s the whole idea of somebody understanding him. And that’s where we can then use this movie in terms of spreading an awareness of people actually needing to investigate, and to inquire in what’s going on, so people feel free to share, instead of adhering to a set of rules, and that’s the way it is.
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Word comes from the New York Times that, a year after Iran won its first Academy Award for Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, Iran will boycott the Academy Awards in protest of “Innocence of Muslims,” a crude film about the prophet Muhammad that may not even exist as a feature film:

The boycott appears straightforward: Mohammad Hosseini, Iran’s culture minister, on Tuesday confirmed that his country would not submit a film for consideration at next year’s Oscars in protest of “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Islam YouTube video that has sparked deadly riots. He specifically cited the “failure” of Oscar organizers to take an official position on the incendiary “film.”

But Iran’s move left Hollywood scratching its head. Iran, which won the Academy Award for best foreign language film earlier this year, was seriously going to boycott moviedom’s biggest prize because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hadn’t denounced a crude YouTube video made by a former gas station owner? (The academy had no comment.)

It’s hard to know what Iran thinks it will accomplish with this move. Is it to shame an industry that, by all accounts, is deeply embarrassed by the incident? It’s not as if Paramount, which built the old JAG set Innocence of Muslims was shot on, needs Iran’s boycot to think more carefully about where its sets end up and what that means for their brand. It’s not as if the actors involved in the movie, one of whom has already sued over the deceptive use of her image and work, aren’t horrified by how their performances were dubbed and distorted to produce a crude project that didn’t resemble what they’d signed on for. It’s not as if the highest authorities in the United States haven’t condemned the man who made it for his provocations, while still defending his right to free speech. And if Iran thinks it’s going to challenge the American focus on free speech, muzzling itself and its own filmmakers seems like a poor way of making that argument, one that perhaps overestimates Iran’s influence on the Academy and American consumers.

But this actually strikes me as a move that’s aimed more internally than externally. Farhadi and the members of his crew who accompanied him to the Academy Awards, wore neckties, which were banned as a symbol of Western decadence after the Iranian Revolution, to the ceremony. He used his acceptance speech to draw a rather careful distinction between the Iranian people and their government, saying that he knew Iranians would celebrate his win “because at the time when talk of war, intimidation and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country Iran is spoken here through her glorious culture. A rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics. I proudly offer this award to the people of my country. A people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.” Iran may not have been particularly eager to have another director take the stage again, perhaps emboldened by Farhadi’s reception.
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I’m not sure I agree with everything Russell Simmons has to say about the dullness and whiteness of this year’s Academy Awards, but I think he makes a good point about the fact that in music, singers are judged more by their genre and less by their race:

It’s a telling statistic that this year’s Grammy Awards drew in almost 40 million viewers, eclipsing the Oscar ratings for the first time in history. Why? Because music executives couldn’t segregate artists if they tried! The music industry gets it because they have no choice. My nephew Diggy and Justin Bieber may look different, but they are cut from the same cultural fabric and sell their records to the same fans. Katy Perry and Rihanna may appear dissimilar but have much more similarities than differences in the eyes of pop culture. Between the artists’ friendships/collaborations and basic consumer demand, the music industry has all the research it needs to know that segregating artists is not the way to sell records. Post-racial America has a face in the music of today, and thank God for that.

Obviously this is not entirely true—some genres, like hip-hop, are considered racially bounded, while others, like pop, are more permeable, both in terms of the race of the performers who can succeed within it and their absorption of elements from other genres. And I also think that hip-hop just has more black men in talent development positions, and they’ve been able to bring up a generation of both black and non-black performers behind them. Whether it’s Simmons vouching for Brett Ratner, Diddy’s long record as a producer, or Usher bringing up Justin Bieber, that’s a lot of black executives with greenlight power and undeniable track records. Until those same conditions in Hollywood (preferably in the form of someone other than Tyler Perry, who doesn’t seem interested in bringing up another generation of directors behind him), Hollywood’s unlikely to get more comfortable with people of color, or to start seeing actors in terms of their specialties rather than their race.

Whatever I’ve thought of the last couple of movies that George Clooney’s made, his response to rumors that he’s gay is amazing—particularly given how Hollywood used to handle that kind of gossip. He told The Advocate:

I think it’s funny, but the last thing you’ll ever see me do is jump up and down, saying, “These are lies!” That would be unfair and unkind to my good friends in the gay community. I’m not going to let anyone make it seem like being gay is a bad thing. My private life is private, and I’m very happy in it. Who does it hurt if someone thinks I’m gay? I’ll be long dead and there will still be people who say I was gay. I don’t give a shit.

That kind of pure confidence, or the ability to buss Billy Crystal in the Academy Awards’ opening skit without making it a joke that relies on a “gross! Two dudes kissing” reaction:

is welcome, and something we could use a lot more of. We think of Hollywood as this bastion of liberalism, but we’re not that far removed from a time when Rock Hudson was revealed to be gay only after he died of AIDS-related complications. And we’re still in a time when movies and television shows starring gay people are events. Given comments and actions like these, it’d be awfully nice to see Clooney extend his auteur project, break out of his pattern of Tortured But Honorable Heterosexual Dudes and insist that you can both be America’s Favorite Bachelor and play gay.

In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob, Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Shirley on NBC’s Community explains what she and her fellow black female actor friends do when someone asks them to play “sassy”:

As a black actor, it’s refreshing that I’m not playing the “sassy black woman.” It’s something that Dan Harmon was cognizant of from the beginning. It is something that I’m always cognizant of. Every woman on the planet has sass and smart-ass qualities in them, but it seems sometimes only black women are defined by it. Shirley is a fully formed woman that had a sassy moment. Her natural set point, if anything, is rage. That’s her natural set point, suppressed rage, which comes out as kindness and trying to keep everything tight…Female friends that are in my tribe, black girls, we all have stories about that. We find interesting ways to make [directors] tell us to be sassy because they know that it’s racist. I say, “Can you show me how to do that?” They don’t want to do a black version of sassy, so then they move on.

I can’t even imagine how much pressure there must be to go along to get along when you’re trying to get a job or keep one, so the folks who are pushing back at all get kudos. And I think, just rhetorically, there’s something smart about playing uninformed in this sort of situation. It lets the person giving awful instructions know that what they want isn’t just an accepted default for everyone. And it forces them to acknowledge they’re asking folks to do something they’d find embarrassing and artificial to carry out themselves—if they’ve got a whit of shame or smarts.

I also think Brown’s discussion of Shirley’s anger is really important—and it’s what’s the key to what made Octavia Spencer’s Oscar-winning performance as Minnie Jackson so good in The Help. Minny is full of justifiable rage, whether it’s at the husband who abuses her and their children, the employer who treats her dreadfully, or even sometimes at the white lady who thinks she has the presumption to tell Minny’s story honestly. The pursed lips and sarcastic remarks that make the character funny aren’t really for anyone else’s gratification. They’re an escape valve for the anger it would be so dangerous for Minny to express directly.

The bridge is yours.

-Downton Abbey and Luther will move from the miniseries category to the drama category at the Emmys next year—and the category may expand as a result.

-Inspector Spacetime, to tide you over until the return of Community on March 15.

-How Oscar voters made their decisions.

-Kid Rock turns out to support the Detroit Symphony.

-Estelle’s back! Summer’s here!

The bridge is yours.

-Drama at the Oscars afterparties!

-And what do we want from the Academy Awards, anyway?

-Is Kickstarter on a path to outpace the National Endowment for the Arts?

-A photoessay on addiction.

-Bill Pullman will be your president again!