Film Review: ‘Stutz’: Movie Star Honors Therapist’s Life Lessons by Making Them Available to All

R | 1h 36m | Documentary | November 14, 2022

Actor Jonah Hill (“Superbad,” “Money Ball”) has made a documentary (more or less) about his therapist and friend Phil Stutz, who happens to be one of the world’s leading psychiatrists.

“Stutz” ticks a few boxes: It’s a loving homage, an on-screen therapy session, and a presentation to the world of Dr. Stutz’s life’s work, in hopes that putting his doctor’s distinct therapy tools on display might help others as they clearly helped Hill himself navigate life.

Director-actor Jonah Hill in "Stutz," the documentary he made to celebrate his psychiatrist. Netflix

After watching Phil Stutz talk for a couple of minutes, I knew exactly what motivated Jonah Hill. He’s telling the story of the Great Teacher who, due to humility, won’t tell his own story. Stutz, age 75, is roughly the age of my former coach—the reclusive, unsung, world-class New York acting teacher Allen Savage—another New York Jewish man of that no-nonsense generation who curse up a storm while slam-dunking hard-to-nail-down ephemeral concepts with mind-blowing common sense and side-splitting humor.

Phil Stutz has helped innumerable patients in a career spanning 40 years. Allen Savage has taught for close to 60 years, and the students and patients of these two men love them like a second father. There was forever someone in acting class talking about how somebody should take notes and write a book, because we all knew that every word out of the man’s mouth was pure gold. Someone asked, “Allen, when are you gonna write a book?” He’d demur. But often, in the middle of some excruciatingly bad acting scene, Allen would roll his eyes and exclaim, “I swear to God I’m gonna write a book and I’m gonna call it “Acting Is Not Crying!!” 

World-class psychiatrist Dr. Phil Stutz tells a joke in "Stutz." Netflix

And so I’m very happy to see Jonah Hill paying tribute to his particular genius-level, influential, life-changing New York Jewish man who’s possessed of a savant-level understanding of what makes humans tick. I say “savant” in Stutz’s case because, while he went on to get a Ph.D., he relates how his Ph.D. just provided a change of venue. Grown-ups had been spewing their problems to him from the age of 10. He’s a born healer.

Stutz

The film explores Stutz’s life and walks the viewer through his signature visualization exercises: The Tools. Hill films Stutz in an unorthodox session that flips their classic doctor-patient setup, and the two of them bring The Tools to life in a vulnerable, funny, and ultimately therapeutic experience.

Filmed in black and white, Hill’s film is too rooted in the present to be considered a true bio-doc, but it reveals Dr. Stutz’s past via archival material: photos of him playing basketball in a 1970s Jew-fro hairdo and minimized Frank Zappa ’stache, with illustrating stories about the psychiatrist’s childhood, family, romantic encounters, and Parkinson’s disease.

Throughout the film, we’re aware of how the degenerative disorder impacts Stutz physically but never mentally. That functions to remind us that part of Hill’s impetus to shoot this film was because of the limited amount of time left in which Stutz could explain his therapy style.

Director-actor Jonah Hill (L) and therapist Phil Stutz discuss the tools of self-improvement in the documentary "Stutz." Netflix

Raised by atheist parents, Stutz explains how his father’s lack of faith was replaced by a deep need to see his son succeed as a doctor. Each story that Hill elicits from Stutz leads to an explanation of the various tools one can avail oneself of, in order to better deal with similar situations.

We see him draw various diagrams in shaky Parkinson’s calligraphy, on notecards, to explain concepts like “Part X” (the resistance that manifests wherever we try to make positive changes in our lives), and “The Shadow” (the embodiment of all our negative qualities, known in other systems as “the doppelganger”). Others follow, such as  “Life Force,” “The Snapshot,” and “The Grateful Flow.”

These eyes-closed visualizing techniques are filled with enlightening pathways by which to navigate sadness, anxiety, and so on. When Stutz walks us through how they work, like I mentioned, it’s got that priceless, layman friendly, common-sense wisdom that has one wondering why one didn’t think of such things oneself, a long time ago. This makes the whole experience feel like a personal therapy session. And so, instead of putting them all into a book, we have Hill’s transformational documentary.

The Artifice

Approximately 25 minutes in, Hill lets us see behind the film’s artifice. We’re shown that we’ve been watching a movie-set facsimile of Stutz’s office that utilizes a green screen background in order to depict a chronologically edited shoot that’s not actually one session but a process that’s taken place over many months. Even Hill’s blond-frosted, avid-surfer-dude longish hair is a wig hiding a much shorter hairstyle that he wanted to nix for consistency.

This revelation is all done in service to being ultra-truthful, letting it all hang out, and removing all pretenses instead of lying to the audience, in order to better shine a healing spotlight on anything hidden, repressed, and denied. While clearly uncomfortable with the challenge he’s given himself, Jonah Hill admirably shares the reasons he initially sought therapy, which include a death in the family as well as his having been subjected to the ubiquitous onslaught of raving tabloid comment-section trolls and haters regarding his struggle with being overweight since he became famous. At one point, Hill places a larger-than-life cardboard cutout of his obese 14-year-old self next to him, which he’s dubbed “Undesirable to the World.”

Upshot

Leading psychiatrist Dr. Phil Stutz dispenses life wisdom in "Stutz." Netflix

Throughout the film, Phil Stutz—who’s got the quiet, magnetic screen presence of someone capable of deep inner silence, along with a laidback confidence—is a humble and willing participant. He consistently shares that life is challenging, and that despite utilizing the Stutz psychiatric tools, you’ll still encounter pain, uncertainty, and the need to work at the issues for the rest of your life. The tools are not solutions but rather methods for getting through obstacles and around setbacks.

That said, there are quite a few sections in “Stutz” that you can easily rewind to, after your initial viewing, in order to use the tools as a self-help movie. And while “Stutz” is, of course, not a replacement for actual therapy, it is a great introduction to seeing what kinds of things a world-class therapist can bring to the table.

In closing, here’s a nice tribute I copied from actor Josh Brolin on Instagram regarding the film:

“I commend Jonah Hill so much for making a film about the great (and so human) Dr. Phil Stutz. … At the urging of a good friend of mine I saw Phil, and only a handful of times, and without trying to, I still think about the intimate volley we had during those “sessions.” I still to this day use those tools. … See this film if only to experience what it looks like when people actually care, as opposed to posturing through this life to make a few bucks off some else’s confusions.”

“Stutz” began streaming on Netflix on Nov. 14, 2022.

Movie poster for "Stutz." Netflix

‘Stutz’ Director: Jonah Hill Starring: Documentary MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 1 hour, 36 minutes Release Date: Nov. 14, 2022 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars