Art Chose Me: A Gift from an Old Friend

A couple of days after I discovered my brother Maury’s body in his house on Elm Drive, in the flats of Beverly Hills, I met two childhood friends for lunch at Factor’s Deli.

That was more than eight years ago.

I hadn’t seen Julie, one of my post-college roommates, or Ellyn, my best friend since seventh grade, in a long time. After years of navigating the troubled waters of Maury’s life - his deteriorating heart, his increasing paranoia, and the relentless challenges of serious mental illness - I welcomed the chance for a diversion. I wanted to hear about my old friends’ lives, their families, the ordinary ups and downs that seemed so far removed from the frightening, overwhelming, and often baffling ups and downs our family had experienced.

As I remember it, after we’d caught up for a while, I told them Maury had just died.

El burst into tears. I think Julie teared up, too. But they didn’t know what life had been like for Maury, or for our family, since he’d had a psychotic break in his early twenties. Back then, I didn’t share many details. I didn’t think people would understand. No one I knew seemed to be going through anything like it.

Our brother had schizoaffective disorder.

Ellyn had known Maury as an adorable little boy with long, curly eyelashes and dimples, and later as a star baseball player in high school. She knew my parents, my brother Mike, and my sister Cindy. She remembered our daily phone calls after school, planning to dress alike the next day in our black V-neck sweaters and saddle shoes.

Our friendship continued long after college. I was maid of honor at Ellyn and Erik’s wedding. We attended each other’s sons’ bar mitzvahs. They came to my wedding to Rick, and we were there for one another through the funerals of our parents. Over the years, our lives took different paths, and we saw each other less often, but we never lost touch.

And whenever we did get together, there was always one thing we could count on: laughter. Hysterical, gasping-for-breath, can’t-stop-laughing laughter.

After that lunch at Factor’s, Ellyn and I began meeting there more regularly. Rick and I were photographing the 1,400 paintings Maury had left behind, along with thousands of pages from his sketchbooks, filled with drawings and journal entries.

At one of our lunches, out of the blue, Ellyn offered to make a little movie about Maury on her laptop, using some of his paintings and excerpts from his journals that I shared with her. This was before Rick and I knew we were going to produce OUTSIDER, our 40-minute documentary.

I was touched and deeply grateful. Here was my old friend, someone who had known Maury long before mental illness changed the course of his life, offering to bring his work and his story to life. She believed that his art, and the life behind it, deserved a tribute.

At the time, I was immersed in his journals: sad, vulnerable, often heartbreaking accounts of a man longing to belong, to be part of a community, to have his art recognized and appreciated. He wanted people to see his creativity, his honest insights, and his humor. Maury, like Ellyn, loved to make people laugh.

In February 2019, we transformed Maury’s house into a gallery for Mo’s Show, exhibiting hundreds of his vibrant and whimsical paintings, and raising more than $80,000 for mental health and social service nonprofits. In one of the rooms, we screened Ellyn’s film about Maury.

Four minutes and twenty-two seconds long, it still makes me cry.

Recently, Ellyn gave the film a title inspired by a line in one of Maury’s journals: “Why am I an artist? Art chose me and I accepted.”

At my encouragement, she entered the film in several festivals. And now, more than eight years after my youngest brother died, something remarkable is happening. Thanks to the love, care, and creativity of my childhood friend, Maury’s inner life and his art are reaching people who never knew him.

I hope the film will foster compassion, conversation, and connection for those affected by mental illness. I hope it will offer a glimpse into a life that was often difficult to understand from the outside. And I hope it reminds us of the power of art to sustain a life, to express what words alone cannot, and to connect us to one another.

Ellyn and I may no longer be calling each other to plan what we’ll wear to school the next day. But we call each other regularly now, sharing laughter and tears, connected in a new and deeper way because of Maury.

I never could have imagined that his death would lead to this gift: a film made by a friend who has been part of my life since childhood, helping the world see and know my brother in a way that words alone never could.

I’d like to share Ellyn’s gift with you.

Watch Art Chose Me here.