The body and mind — filmmaker Mitch McCabe tackled the former in her excellent HBO documentary, Youth Knows No Pain, which looked at the plastic surgery industry and America’s fixation on staying young. Now, she says, she’s “pointing the camera in the opposite direction, at our internal selves.” Make Me Normal is her film about the mental health industry. From her website: Make Me Normal is a feature-length documentary film exploring recent controversies in the psychiatry field, the rise of diagnosed mental illness, psychopharmacology and our new definition of “normal”— all set against the backdrop of the filmmaker’s own roll-coaster …...
- 6/21/2013
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
By Lita Robinson - September 28, 2010
To what lengths would you go to recapture youth, or, at least, the appearance of youth? That is the question posed by Mitch McCabe’s film “Make Me Young: Youth Knows No Pain,” which was produced in collaboration with HBO and broadcast last fall. It’s now out on DVD from Cinema Libre Studios, and provides an insider’s view of the fascinating and perverse world of plastic surgery.
McCabe’s father was a prominent plastic surgeon who entered the profession after serving as a trauma surgeon in Vietnam. Though he developed a reputation as an expert in reconstructive surgery he also performed many cosmetic surgeries, some of which McCabe herself got to sit in on when she was as young as ten years-old. Her love for her late father, who died tragically in a car accident, and her lifelong fascination with his odd profession are what propel the film.
To what lengths would you go to recapture youth, or, at least, the appearance of youth? That is the question posed by Mitch McCabe’s film “Make Me Young: Youth Knows No Pain,” which was produced in collaboration with HBO and broadcast last fall. It’s now out on DVD from Cinema Libre Studios, and provides an insider’s view of the fascinating and perverse world of plastic surgery.
McCabe’s father was a prominent plastic surgeon who entered the profession after serving as a trauma surgeon in Vietnam. Though he developed a reputation as an expert in reconstructive surgery he also performed many cosmetic surgeries, some of which McCabe herself got to sit in on when she was as young as ten years-old. Her love for her late father, who died tragically in a car accident, and her lifelong fascination with his odd profession are what propel the film.
- 9/28/2010
- by Screen Comment
- Screen Comment
As part of her series “Documentaries in Bloom” at the Maysles Center, curator, critic, and Filmmaker contributor Livia Bloom has assembled a fascinating program this week comprised of three rarely shown films all dealing with plastic surgery and the construction of beauty. The centerpiece is Mitch McCabe’s feature Youth Knows No Pain, in which the filmmaker (and daughter of a plastic surgeon) examines America’s “culture of anti-aging,” juxtaposing her research with an examination of not only her own face but her own attitudes towards her body as a result of being her father’s daughter. I saw the film when it screened on HBO last year, and its commentary is witty, engaging and non-didactic. ...
- 7/14/2010
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Just so we're clear, Mitch McCabe's gripping, grotesque plastic surgery documentary Youth Knows No Pain (premiering tonight on HBO) is not quite about plastic surgery. Nor is it really about the "anti-aging industry," the designated euphemism for the $60 billion subculture comprising said surgeries, wrinkle creams, injectables, implanatables and numerous other treatments used to preserve Americans' illusion of freshness, fitness and vigor. Rather, Youth is about the dynamics of vanity -- particularly that of its filmmaker, who, along with so many of her subjects, seems too preoccupied with fending off age to contemplate that she's old enough to know better.
- 8/31/2009
- Movieline
The Twitters were abuzz a few nights ago, when the CineVegas Film Festival hosted an event at the Sapphire Gentlemen's Club and people saw Jack Nicholson there. It seemed reasonable. Nicholson's old pal Dennis Hopper is the fest's honorary chair, so it was plausible that Jack would be in town. No one had a problem believing he'd turn up at a strip club, either.
But it wasn't him. It was a guy who looks a lot like him, a guy whose shtick seems to be dressing and grooming himself to look like Nicholson and hanging around CineVegas. He's been everywhere: at festival headquarters, at the post-screening parties, in the theater lobby, everywhere. He really does bear a striking resemblance to Nicholson, at least until you look closely. Then you realize the suit is kind of shabby, the hair is unkempt, and the general air is that of Homeless Guy, not Jack Nicholson.
But it wasn't him. It was a guy who looks a lot like him, a guy whose shtick seems to be dressing and grooming himself to look like Nicholson and hanging around CineVegas. He's been everywhere: at festival headquarters, at the post-screening parties, in the theater lobby, everywhere. He really does bear a striking resemblance to Nicholson, at least until you look closely. Then you realize the suit is kind of shabby, the hair is unkempt, and the general air is that of Homeless Guy, not Jack Nicholson.
- 6/15/2009
- by Eric D. Snider
- Cinematical
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