Last summer, my boyfriend Bryce, and I went to see the film, A Prairie Home Companion. I had always loved Garrison Keillor’s simple Midwestern sarcasm from NPR on Sunday mornings and figured the all-star cast would keep our attention. Within twenty minutes, Bryce and I turned to each other and decided to slip into the next theater that was playing, You, Me and Dupree. We walked in just in time for the scene when Kate Hudson catches Owen Wilson masturbating and I remember how good it felt, with Bryce and me sitting on the floor in the back of the crowded theater, in hysterics over Wilson’s constant ability to crack our shit up. Until that moment, the laughter had stopped, because Bryce’s depression had taken its place.
I think Wilson is as good as it gets when it comes to the cute and funny comedic hero. He did it for me in The Royal Tenenbaums, allowing many of us to laugh at our own families’ bouts with divorce, manipulation, and substance abuse. Then again, with his mystical speak while smoking hash in his love den before a three-way and his strut down the catwalk, both in Zoolander. Before that, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, which will always be two of my all-time favorite comedies. But in wake of Wilson’s attempt to take his own life this week, I’m left to ponder why it takes a celebrity for people to talk about what is really happening out there in life.
Wilson has done some of his greatest work to date, many would agree, and he’s slated to release more films with his brilliant buddy, Wes Anderson. But we question why, with his obvious talent and success, would he slit his wrists and take some pills? (And, oh, how people want those details.) I wondered the same thing while I watched Bryce design his most treasured timberframe design on AutoCAD last summer. It was an arched roof with highly complicated joinery and beams that required intricate engineering. The house was an extension of the dream he said he wanted to build for us someday, but we had stopped looking for land when his anger took over our afternoons. A month after we laughed at Owen Wilson on the big screen, Bryce was slitting his own wrists, telling me it was an accident, that his chisel had slipped. And since it seemed logical, I believed him. I was also completely scared to death, in over my head, encouraging him to get help as long as I could remember, and living in a culture that didn’t hold a place for confusion such as this.
I read one story that attributed Wilson’s suicide attempt to his break-up with Kate Hudson. After I read that, my first reaction was to find a way to reach out to her to remind her that it’s not her fault. If we are going to blame anyone, we should be blaming society for ignoring depression. We should be blaming a culture that reveres superficiality, money, status, and the chance to get a photograph of a celebrity when they’re just trying to do something as simple as picking up their own daughter from school. We should be blaming a government that continues to stamp ‘Denied’ on the insurance applications of anyone who has seen a therapist at one point in time. We should be blaming those who spent years also whispering about cancer and later AIDS. We should be blaming those people who are angered by other people’s suicides, because suicide is their last loud cry for help.
I hope Owen Wilson knows that there is an active community of organizations, professionals, and suicide survivors who are here to help him. It may be hard for him to see through the thicket of rumors and gossip, but if he takes his time, allows others in, and sees that life is worth living on the other side of his pain, then I’ll have faith again that our country is starting to get back on track.