Gizmo Films have announced that shooting will begin on their upcoming feature, R.D. Laing biopic Mad To Be Normal, on 1st February 2016. David Tennant stars in the new UK project, which was previously titled Metanoia, as the maverick Scottish psychiatrist who championed the anti-psychiatry method of treating mental illness, supporting patients instead at a unique community in East London.
Also starring Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon, Gabriel Byrne and David Bamber, the film will shoot on location in London and the North of England.
Mad To Be Normal
Writer & Director: Robert Mullan
Mad to be Normal is the story
of controversial Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing and the infamous
anti-psychiatry experiment he ran at Kingsley Hall - a medication-free sanctuary
which made headlines around the world. During the 1960s and 1970s Laing was an
international celebrity. In Santa Monica, 4,000 people turned out to see him
perform a lecture, a week after Bob Dylan had pulled in the same number. A
radio journalist confidently referred to him as the “white Martin Luther King.”
His books topped student reading lists the world over, as his language excited
and enthralled them: “a child born today stands a 10 times greater chance of
being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university….perhaps it is our
very way of educating them that is driving them mad… [and]…”so- called ‘normal
men’ have in the last 50 years killed perhaps 100 million of their fellow
normal men”. It was opinions like these which turned the psychiatric
establishment against him.
David Tennant said of the project, “I have long been fascinated by the life and work of RD
Laing. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and discover this important
man and I am honoured and thrilled to be involved in telling this story. Robert
Mullan’s passion for the subject is inspiring and the presence of the brilliant
Elisabeth Moss makes this something I cannot wait to start work on.”
Mad To Be Normal is a Gizmo Films production in partnership with Bad Penny Productions and GSP Studios. The film is expected to premiere later this year.
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