When it comes to documentaries, I think it's hard to beat the two-part one by Stephen Fry called "Stephen Fry - The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive". You can watch the whole thing for free online. Part 1 is at and Part 2 at . I also watched one called "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". I did so in preparation for a sleep-deprivation EEG. Gotta say that it was making me fall asleep.

When it comes to fictional movies featuring a person with bipolar, I've found few are really that great. I know most people love the "Silver Linings Playbook", but I would put it below a few others, unless you're a huge Bradley Cooper and J-Law fan. I'm more fond of the movie "Mr. Jones" starring Richard Gere, but it includes a taboo love story. Many seem to have to include a love story! Movie makers want to make money. Right? I'm a little less fond of "Infinitely Polar Bear", but still like it more than "S. L. Playbook", and Mark Ruffalo is an adorable guy, for sure. I wouldn't have exactly left my child with an actively manic father, but the movie still had some substance. Somewhere I managed to watch it, for free, on the internet, a while back. Also, when it comes to powerful depictions of psychotic mania, I think the actor Tom Wilkinson (great actor) nailed it well in the movie "Michael Clayton". That movie is not a "bipolar movie", though. It just includes a character with it, but is definitely worth watching!

I haven't found that many films with a bipolar character in the psych hospital. "Touched With Fire" didn't really rock my boat, but maybe it would others'. An older movie that was more interesting to me was "Manic" starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and a very young Zoey Deschanel.

I've always wondered if the plans to make movies based on Kay R-J's "Unquiet Mind" or Andy Behrman's "Electroboy" memoirs would ever pan out. Maybe not. I remember thinking that "Electroboy" would likely have more of a chance of being a money-maker type movie. "Unquiet Mind" doesn't seem workable, in my view, for cinema, unless they fictionalize some of the story. They said they were thinking about Reese Witherspoon for the role of Kay. Reese probably could have done a great job! For "Electroboy", they said the actor Tobey Maguire wanted to produce and star in a movie based on that book. It also never happened.