THERAPY DADDY

PHIL STUTZ has made a career in Hollywood doing what most psychologists advise against: telling his patients exactly what to do.

- LILA SHAPIRO

A couple of years ago, the actor and filmmaker Jonah Hill made a documentary about his psychiatrist, Phil Stutz. In the film, titled Stutz, the two men do all sorts of things that therapists and their clients usually avoid. They say "I love you" to each other. They joke like immature schoolboys. Stutz makes a crack about banging Hill's mother. At one point, Hill says his previous therapists kept him at "a massive distance." What he always wanted, he says, was someone who would tell him what to do, but they would all just sit and listen or ask him how he felt. Stutz, charismatic and gruff, is different. As he puts it in the film, he tells patients, "Do what the fuck I tell you. Do exactly what I tell you. I guarantee you'll feel better."