What I feel was missing from the movie.

When Jimmy Breslin commented (and presumably the essential idea of the film) that in all his 50 years he'd never seen such an obviously insane person, I thought Um yeah but what about HER?

I totally agree, I watched this last night and thought there would be more analysis of the two of them. Though maybe since they cooperated with the film, they wanted to be portrayed in a more positive light?

You could see the warning signs where Burt was way too possesive in the beginning- taking her to breakfast and lunch and dinner, not giving Linda any space to breathe. But I guess she was so flattered and/or screwed up herself that she didn't pick up on the bad vibes. I'm so glad that we have anti-stalking laws and restraining orders now, that was some scary stuff.

Because of their symbiotic relationship, they are both surviving, he out of prison, she economically. He is atoning. She is constantly punishing him, and receiving restitution. I think there is more than a psychological dimension explaining their marriage, there is also a material and moral dimension.

The movie was not only about this pair and romance gone awry, it was about the stages of life, of which romance is but a glimmer, and of relationships in the context of culture and mores (eg, sex in the 50s, sex commodified). I thought the filmmakers' context and juxtapositions were excellent here.

Informed psychiatric commentary would have been interesting, but, there may have been ethical prohibitions (confidentiality issues), and perhaps the filmmakers didn't want conflicting speculations. And the Pugachs certainly consented to the documentary only under certain conditions; perhaps those dictated no psychiatric commentary, or somesuch.

He seems to have been obsessive-compulsive, perhaps psychotically so.

I don't think Linda is crazy. I think she is pragmatic and was very very lonely. He ruined her. He took away any chance she had of a normal life. She couldn't kill him, couldn't destroy him, and when he came call yet again into her empty life she finally said, "eh, what the hell. It's better than nothin'." He is also the only man who could look her in the eyes and continue to love her. How many times did guys ditch her when she took the glasses off? Though he is a completely psycho sh*t, when they are together he treats her better than other men did. She got the best that she could out of life and has chosen to be happy with it, like so many of our parents and grandparents did.



I like him, he says okie dokie. - Dean Winchester, Supernatural

I'm not sure a lot of psychological analysis would have made this a better or more interesting film. I think part of the point of the film is that human behavior really is strange sometimes. It can be explained with one psychological theory or another, but you can never really know precisely how accurate those theories are. Sometimes a big anomaly in human behavior is just like watching an odd weather event, although really that's not such a good metaphor either, because if you had enough data you could explain exactly how that weather event happened. Not so much with human beings. Psychological descriptions and labels tend to run reductionistic very quickly, especially when you're talking about two entire lifespans like this. (And no, I'm not anti-field-of-psychology; in fact, I was in a graduate ed psych program and have done about as much independent reading on certain subfields of psychology as a lot of Ph.D.s might have.)

That's not to say there weren't things I thought could have been done with the interviews, and particularly with the order of presentation, that would have made it a better film. I just think psychological explanations also would have run flat.

I also think these are people who come from a time when people weren't quite as navel-gazing as they are today. People do weird things; you live in New York, you see it all; *beep* happens to you, you go on and make the best of it. I especially got the feeling from Linda that she was firmly rooted in that way of thinking, which I'm not so sure is all bad.

Yes, the doctor/client interviewed said that he wasn't a psychopath but the file said psychosis. Different terms.

But may have had a psychotic break at one time, but he definitely has some sort of personality disorder, like narcissism and/or borderline personality disorder.