Here Comes Every Body

At the Esalen Institute in California, group therapy sessions are held in the seventies, led by doctor William Schutz, who was also founder of the institute and author of the books Joy and Here Comes Everybody. The idea - then more revolutionary than now - was that people in group therapy could lose their stress and anxieties by confronting themselves and each other, guided by a psychologist, with their inhibitions and tensions. The heterogeneous group of fourteen people exposed their struggles with homosexuality, their marital fears and sexual frustrations. Director Whitmore compiled the documentary from more than sixty hours of film, shot in nine days; it took eight months to edit it. The filming was done behind glass walls, so the group wouldn't be disturbed by the presence of three cameras.