Jonah Hill has a few projects coming out. One is You People, a comedy Jonah co-wrote with Kenya Barris and also stars in that doesn’t have a release date yet. The other is Stutz, which Jonah directed and just finished filming. Stutz is much more personal to Jonah as it’s a documentary the chronicles Jonah and his therapist as they explore his worsening anxiety attacks. It seems the anxiety attacks stem from Jonah’s movie promotion, and he documented their discussions detailing that. It must have been a raw and difficult project for Jonah to work on. Jonah’s hope in releasing the film is to help people with anxiety to both recognize the signs and to feel more comfortable pursing the tools to aid in their own mental health journey.

Upon completing the film, Jonah released an open letter announcing that he would not be publicly promoting his films for the foreseeable future to protect his mental health. Jonah said that he would be being dishonest to himself and his fans if he continued to work red carpets after everything he laid bare in this documentary.

I have finished directing my second film, a documentary about me and my therapist which explores mental health in general called “Stutz.” The whole purpose of making this film is to give therapy and the tools I’ve learned in therapy to a wide audience for private use through an entertaining film.

Through this journey of self-discovery within the film, I have come to the understanding that I have spent nearly 20 years experiencing anxiety attacks, which are exacerbated by media appearances and public facing events.

I am so grateful that the film will make its world premiere at a prestigious film festival this fall, and I can’t wait to share it with audiences around the world in the hope that it will help those struggling. However, you won’t see me out there promoting this film, or any of my upcoming films, while I take this important step to protect myself. If I made myself sicker by going out there and promoting it, I wouldn’t be acting true to myself or to the film.

I usually cringe at letters or statements like this but I understand that I am of the privileged few who can afford to take time off. I won’t lose my job while working on my anxiety. With this letter and with “Stutz,” I’m hoping to make it more normal for people to talk and act on this stuff. So they can take steps towards feeling better and so that the people in their lives might understand their issues more clearly.

I hope the work will speak for itself and I’m grateful to my collaborators, my business partners and to all reading this for your understanding and support.

[From Variety]

I said red carpets above but Jonah sounds like he won’t be doing any promotional rounds. So no interviews, photoshoots or festivals either. And he’s disabled his social media. I know he wrote that he usually cringes at these types of letters, but I think this is not only interesting, it’s smart to let people know ahead of time. Outlets would be full of speculation if Jonah wasn’t doing promotion for projects he helmed. And future collaborators need to prepare for who will and won’t be available for promotion. It’s a good business decision. And even though I know this was possibly not intentional, it’s already good promotion for Stutz. I don’t know that I would’ve been invested in this project before but now I’m curious to see what they uncovered. Plus, mental well-being should always come first. I think that’s a message society has to get better at promoting. It was huge when Simone Biles did it, it was important when Tom Holland recently announced it and it’s important that Jonah is doing it. People who want to be d*cks about it can f**k off. I hope Stutz helps a lot of people understand signs of anxiety and I hope this break – permanent or not – helps Jonah find some peace. He’s done a lot of work on himself, and he deserves to continue down that road unabated.

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