'How I wonder how they are'

I don’t mean to romanticize Richard in a way unintentionally encouraged by such narratives as this one. Human beings are a stereotyping species, so when a film presents us with a brilliant person who has schizophrenia, “brilliant” quickly becomes “what people with schizophrenia are.” In The Soloist Nathaniel Anthony Ayers is a classical musician so talented that in his youth he was accepted to Juilliard. The Richard Ruston of Unlisted wrote the draft of a novel so amazing I wish I could call him up to say, Please can I help you edit your book for publication? Each of these men just happened to come down with paranoid schizophrenia while attending one of America’s premier schools instead of while making widgets. Most people suffering from this disease are ordinary individuals.

However, they’re all someone’s son or daughter. Richard Ruston’s untreated illness separated him from his mother, his wife, a second wife, two daughters, a devoted sister, a loving nephew, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren — the family members we encounter in the film. If during all the years after Richard was diagnosed he had lived in special housing with on-site mental health services — social workers, psychiatrists, support groups — instead of here and there (and on the streets in between), his family might have been able to stay connected with him in a durable network of supportive relationships. He might have finished his book. He might have been able to manage gainful employment.

But lacking a support system, for more than 30 years Richard periodically stopped taking his meds because he hated their side effects of grogginess, tremors, and diminished libido and thought he didn’t need them anyway. Like half of the people with schizophrenia, he didn’t believe he had the disease. What kept him on his meds and in treatment during the last years of his life was supportive housing that let him develop stable, trusting relationships with his doctors and spend peaceful time with members of his family who weren’t too exhausted or traumatized by his symptoms during the years when he had no care.

In short, although someone with schizophrenia doesn’t have a “split personality,” something does get split up by this disease. It’s the schizophrenic’s family. Delaney’s half-sister, Bonnie, remembers writing a story called “I Want My Daddy” when she was little, but as she grew up his psychotic episodes were so distressing she cropped his image out of her wedding photos. Not until Delaney herself was almost 40 could she begin to relax into being her dad’s daughter. Richard says he often imagined his two faraway girls as stars in the night sky and chanted to himself, “How I wonder how they are.”

Then the father went farther away than the daughters ever went. I won't reveal the ending, but shortly after both of Richard’s healthcare providers at his housing complex left to take jobs elsewhere, he went off his meds and disappeared. Perhaps the simultaneous breaking off of two longstanding personal attachments in a life that had so few of them made him angry or prompted despair. But charming as ever, he smiled at the last person who saw him.

Unlisted won a STIFFY for Most Compelling Documentary. An affecting film, delightful despite the darkness of its subject, it has an unforgettable character at its center. The production’s homemade, slightly tentative quality only strengthens its authenticity. The next screening is 7 pm this Wednesday (June 10) at Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave. Tickets.