It has just been announced by the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival that Dolphin Lover took the Best Short Documentary award. The 15-minute film, directed by Kareem Tabsch and produced by Joey Daoud, recounts the true story of writer Malcolm J. Brenner’s romantic and sexual love affair with a bottlenose dolphin at Floridaland, a low-rent amusement park, in the early 1970’s. Brenner’s experience became the basis for his 2010 novel Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover.
“Dolphin Lover” plays SF Indiefest
“Dolphin Lover” will be playing this week at the San Francisco Indiefest film festival at the Roxie Theater on June 6 and 9. Click here for more information and show times.
“Dolphin Lover” to play L.A. Film Festival
The short film “Dolphin Lover,” about Malcolm J. Brenner’s relationship with Dolly the dolphin, will play at the prestigious 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival. Screening time is 8:45 p.m. on Monday, June 15 at the Regal Cinemas Live as part of the Shorts Program 1. For information about future screenings, please return to this web site.
Sarasota unRavel.us Interview
Short interview with Malcolm J. Brenner by Kat Dow of unRavel.us, a web site of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune newspaper. Being where Brenner lived during the time, the early 1970’s, Sarasota is “ground zero” for the “Wet Goddess” story. “Dolphin Lover” screened twice at the recent 2015 Sarasota Film Festival. The film makes use of archival footage of Floridaland, the small theme park with a dolphin show in Nokomis which provided the setting for the book. The location is today occupied by a housing development.
Sarasota Film Festival appearance
Malcolm J. Brenner will be appearing at a showing of Dolphin Lover at the Sarasota Film Festival, 9:45 p.m. Sunday, April 12. The film will be shown as part of a package of short films being screened at the Hollywood Cinema in theater T12. Director Kareem Tabsch will also be there. Dolphin Lover will repeat as part of the same package on Thursday, April 16 at 10 p.m. in theater T10 with producer Joey Daoud in attendance.
Anarchy Radio interview
Link to Malcolm’s interview on the April 2 edition of Anarchy Radio featuring an interview with Malcolm J. Brenner. He comes on at about 15:00 and the interview lasts about 45 minutes. Definitely better than Mr. Stern!
The Howard Stern interview
Link to Malcolm J. Brenner’s appearance on the Howard Stern Show, March 18, 2015.
An interview with Brenner and the makers of “Dolphin Lover”
The Miami New Times’ published an extensive interview with Dolphin Lover director Kareem Tabsch, editor/producer Joey Daoud and Malcolm J. Brenner:
Meet the Men Behind the Provocative Short Film Dolphin Lover
“Dolphin Lover” official poster
The official Dolphin Lover poster at the Slamdance Film Festival.
“Orgone Box:” A tale of two brothers and therapy
PRESS RELEASE FROM EYES OPEN MEDIA
For immediate release, Nov. 21, 2014
“Orgone Box” book tells a tale of two brothers and therapy
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – The latest mind-bending book from “Wet Goddess” author Malcolm J. Brenner also involves his younger brother Hugh R. Brenner – on the opposite side of the issue.
“Growing Up In The Orgone Box: Secrets of a Reichian Childhood” is Malcolm’s memoir of his family’s involvement with Wilhelm Reich’s “orgone therapy” movement in the 1950’s and 60’s and his torturous treatment at the hands of one Dr. Albert Duvall, a vicious and sadistic pedophile who hid his perversions behind Reich’s teachings on the sexual liberation of children.
Malcolm’s painful and disruptive experience left him with what his brother describes as “a generalized hatred of orgonomy.” Ironically, Hugh, who had very little therapy with Duvall, came to incorporate many Reichian techniques into his private practice as a psychiatric family nurse practitioner in the Philadelphia area. For many years, the brothers shared an uneasy truce on their conflicting opinions of Reich and his work.
When Malcolm was ready to self-publish “Orgone Box,” he asked Hugh to write a forward for the book, only to find his brother had been planning to ask him for the same privilege.
“It only seemed fair,” Malcolm said. “I love my brother and he’s helped me a lot in life. His own research independently substantiated the horrible reality of what happened to me and many other people in New Jersey and Los Angeles who were Duvall’s patients.” Duvall died in 1975.
Hugh’s five-page forward to the 327-page memoir is a brief summary of Reich’s life, work, and the conflict with the FDA that led to his 1957 death in federal prison. Prior to that, the agency had burned some six tons of Reich’s equipment, notes and books relating to “orgone accumulators,” his experimental devices that somehow got shipped across state lines in defiance of federal law.
Hugh is quick to emphasize that the way he treats his patients bears no resemblance to Duvall’s harsh and invasive methods. He describes them in his forward as “a hideous betrayal of the patient-physician relationship” and “cruel distortions of psychiatric orgone therapy.” As president of the Institute for Orgonomic Science, an international non-profit group that carries on Reich’s work and research, Hugh reported on Duvall’s misconduct at an international meeting of Reich’s followers in Italy last year.
So far, Malcolm said, his controversial book and Hugh’s report have elicited little response from the small band of Reich’s remaining supporters.
“Many of Reich’s followers worship him with a frightening, almost-god-like intensity, as if the man could do no wrong, when in reality he had serious feet of clay,” Malcolm said. “Not only was Reich wrong about the existence of ‘orgone energy,’ he was a lousy judge of character.
“These ‘Reich worshippers’ stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the sordid reality behind Reich’s benevolent façade. Adults who impose their sexuality on immature children, regardless of their good intentions, create a terrible situation for their patients and subjects.”
Malcolm J. Brenner is available for interviews, contact him through malcolmb2@centurylink.net. Joint interviews including his brother Hugh R. Brenner can be arranged. “Wet Goddess,” a novel based on Malcolm’s 1971 love affair with a dolphin, is available on Amazon and as an e-book on Smashwords; “Orgone Box” is currently available on Amazon, with an e-book version to follow.
Malcolm J. Brenner 