Following up my review of Andrea Gibson in Come See Me In The Good Light, I now have the Susan Powter documentary. I swear i didn’t grow up in an underground cave. I do know people and things, and I pretty consistently kill pop culture references. Yet, I had to privilege to learn who Andrea Gibson was, and now I have the same to learn who Susan Powter is. Based on the clips, I should know who she is. Even though I was a kid for the 80’s and 90’s, and wasn’t into infomercials, I still recognized certain people whose programs I had never seen. I never sweated to the oldies, but I was acutely aware of Richard Simmons. I’ve never watched an episode of Ricki Lake or Jerry Springer, yet somehow I feel like I have just through little blurbs. So how did Susan get away from me, or more importantly, from everyone?

Once a fitness and health influencer, appearing across various programs to promote exercise and eating real food, Susan is now an Uber eats driver in Las Vegas. Despite being the face of a brand that raked in millions, she lives paycheck to paycheck, and has a negligible life savings.

Stop The Insanity allows Susan the freedom to tell her story, which is effective whether or not you know her. She’s aware of why she is where she is, and it had nothing to do with the typical celebrity killer stuff like drugs, tax evasion, bad investments, or the inability to stop purchasing unnecessary shit. She is poor because when she was just getting started, she didn’t read her first contract. She believed it to be what she was told, and signed it. Instead, she basically signed away her name, and her initial investor and her manager were the ones making out like gangbusters. In an era of instant overnight fame of content creators and reality show stars, Susan’s story is perhaps essential viewing, as it reminds those believing they are just lucky to be even offered a contract, to actually read the thing. You may think people are acting in your best interest, but in an age of terms and conditions, I think more and more people are less likely to read a legal document or ask a lawyer. For wealth and fame, sign on the dotted line? Maybe not.

I wanted to give Susan a hug after this. If this film does nothing for awards season, I hope it does well enough that someone fixes her life so she can earn money again for being who se is. She’s working on a book in the film, but it is insane to think with all the podcasts out there, and all the reality shows, that Susan can’t be making a little more money supporting herself, and not being an UberEats driver.We are still a health obsessed people, and her message is still resonant.

My only qualm, and damn the movie for making me even write this, is Jamie Lee Curtis. I had a similar issue with the Diane warren doc earlier this year, which was doing just fine, before it turned into a for Your consideration campaign. In the oddest meta reference, the film reaches a point where Susan has to talk about the thing she’s in, and how Jamie Lee Curtis jumped on board as a producer. There are more organic ways of featuring Jamie, earlier, and her thoughts on Susan. It is so oddly placed, that I wish it had been cut altogether. It doesn’t work, and it isn’t Susan’s story. it sucks, because Jamie is my favorite actress. If I could be best friends with any actress right now, I’d pick her, because she always feels like the bees knees. So it takes a lot for me to not want her in a project.

But, yes, it is time to stop the insanity since we now know where Susan is and get her back in the spotlight. The doc is mostly just her speaking, so the lack of audio description wasn’t a real barrier. A few other people did chime in, and maybe it would have helped to know who they were, as well as the clips from her past. I recognized David Letterman and jay Leno, but perhaps not everyone would.

The true insanity that needs to be stopped are the reasons that we haven’t heard from Susan in a long time, and if nothing else, hopefully this documentary will correct that injustice. We found her, now we need to keep her sanity alive.

Fresh: Final Grade: 8.6/10