Meet Douglas Green: Author and Psychotherapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Douglas Green and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Douglas, the decisions we make often shape our story in profound ways. What was one of the most difficult decisions you’ve had to make?
In regards to my work (there have been other decisions far more difficult and painful, in social and other realms), the most difficult was changing careers 100%. I had devoted twenty years of my life to working in the film and theater worlds, including a masters degree in film and TV production (USC) and an intensive two-year acting study (The Sanford Meisner Institute – even though I’d never intended to act, just to learn how actors worked, so I could direct them better). Throwing in the towel on that entire world felt like the ultimate admittance of failure and incompetence.

Fundamentally, this came from two painful experiences. First, after years of working my way up to it, I committed to the all-eggs-in-one-basket of producing and directing a feature film, based on a small play that had moved me deeply. I also felt it contained an instant marketing campaign, as it was about a middle-aged man dealing with his mother losing her mind, an experience I’d seen my parents go through, an issue which no one was dealing with then (1997) as the baby boomers reached their 50s. I managed to secure a superb cast (Kim Greist of “Brazil” and the “Homeward Bound” films, Timothy Bottoms of “The Last Picture Show” and “The Paper Chase,” and Oscar-winner Kim Hunter, of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Planet of the Apes”), and an excellent crew, and shot it in three weeks, after which I was sure my career was set. The shock took years to fully register – that, in the sympathetic words of legendary historian Leonard Maltin, “The film is beautiful, but no one wants to see movies about anything these days, and your story is about something no one wants to face now, even those of us who need to.” After years of acclaim but minimal success, my film “The Hiding Place” was followed up by “groundbreaking” works about senility, from “Iris” to “Away From Her” to “Amour” to “Still Alice” to this year’s “The Father.” Some of these were better films than mine, I have no problem admitting, but our complete failure was clearly due to coming out five-to-ten years too early.

Secondly, I was working with a theater company, whose head had promised me a slot, to direct whatever I wanted. I wrote a night of short one-act plays, knowing from painful experience that most amateur theater suffers most from overlength. I spent over a year writing them in a workshop in that theater, to constant acclaim and delight, but when I presented it, the head changed his mind, and the members, consumed with other issues as the company was heading toward dissolution, ignored it as well. In hindsight, the rejection had nothing to do with me or the plays. But at the time, it, combined with the failure of the movie, seemed to make a clear statement: All my work had made me a very good writer and director of works that no one wanted to see.

I wish I could say that this resulted in me making an overnight decision to become a psychotherapist. Instead, it began a two-year depression in which I struggled to find a direction to my life, while eking out just enough doing odd “industry” jobs. But eventually, circumstances pointed out to me that I could make a good living as a child therapist, and continue to pursue my previous work. Then the irony was that I loved my school of psychology so much that I found myself gladly leaving the entertainment biz behind. I have joyously dabbled in it since (including one play starring and one written by your beloved Gregory Blair!), but overall have moved on with no regrets – particularly as the scene has only shown itself worse since (for example, I always argued that the one meeting that could have saved my film and my career would have been if I could have had fifteen minutes with the one man who’d know just how to market “The Hiding Place” and give it the audience it deserved: Harvey Weinstein!).

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m a psychotherapist, a job I love. But I’m more eager to talk here about my writing, particularly three things.

First of all, my first book, “The Teachings of Shirelle: Life Lessons from a Divine Knucklehead” was a serious look at the wisdom I learned from a ridiculous dog. It stemmed from a moment when I realized how so many bestsellers of the 2000s have been either animal books (“Marley and Me,” “I Could Pee on This”), pop philosophy books distilling timeless wisdom (“The Secret,” “The Power of Now”), and books about what one knows at the end of life (“Tuesdays with Morrie,” “The Last Lecture”). And that the greatest wisdom I ever learned was from an animal, particularly in her last years. And that writing the book would serve both as a way of naming and collecting that wisdom, and of keeping her present in my life at a time when I was missing her something awful!

In order to help publicize the book, I came up with the idea of doing an advice website, offering similar assistance to what I do in my job, but from the dog’s point of view. For better or worse, though, AskShirelle.com took off on a life of its own, far beyond the book, and has been viewed by millions of people from all parts of the globe, It’s frankly amazed me – I thought it would appeal to children and parents – but instead the international audience that’s most approached the friendly pooch online has been teenagers and young adults looking for help in relationships. Shirelle, or my memory of her, has stopped teens from self-harm, prodded people to marry or break up, and has even prevented some suicides.

My second book is coming out this July. It’s again dog-related, but in a different way. The dog I adopted after Shirelle was a rescue who’d been abandoned and beaten. Over the first year I had her, I worked to figure out what specifically had happened to her, what gave her the fears and quirks she kept revealing. Eventually I realized that all that struggle had created a scenario in my head that felt like some mixture of Jack London and John Steinbeck, a sort of modern odyssey of an animal through adventures, horrors, and beauties. And so created this work, “A Dog of Many Names.”

Ironically, though the through-line of these works is so obvious, I don’t see my brand as canine. I doubt my next books will involve dogs at all. Rather, these writings also share my interest in the universal searches we all live – for meaning, for security, for joy, for love. One way or another, regardless of format, that will always be what inspires me and gets me going.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

Okay, so let’s get this out of the way: it just can’t be during this damned pandemic lockdown, okay? It has to be in that future we’ve been imagining for the past year where all this awfulness is a memory!

Okay?   Okay!

I have a different relationship to Los Angeles than many do. For years I’ve heard you come here for the weather, and have to put up with the people. I feel the opposite. I don’t love the consistency of the climate, and really hate living in the San Fernando Valley summers – overdry, overbright, and these days often combustible. But I love the people. I love the cultures. I love the fact that there’s a different story around every corner, something fully unexpected.

So while I would take any visitor to whatever part of our local beauty they normally don’t experience (for example, I’d take a Midwesterner to the ocean, a New Yorker to the mountains, etc.), I’d be more interested in showing them the joys of living here.

Certainly I’d take them to a play. L.A. is known for movies, but of course you can see those anywhere. There’s so much theater here – great, good, and awful – and I have particular favorites I’d press on anyone (the L.A. Opera and the Troubador Theatre Company for starters). Then there are other offshoots of theater I’d push. Live music, whether huge (Hollywood Bowl, etc.) or a bar, comedy clubs, even poetry readings and storytelling sessions. One of my favorite local groups is Write Club, a monthly event where writers are given opposing concepts (say one is assigned “Good” and the other “Evil,” or “Red” vs. “Blue” and so on), each gets seven minutes to speak on it, and audience reaction determines the winner. This would be interesting anyway, but the way it’s done – in a bar, with a screaming assaultive host – makes it just delightful to me.

Then there’s food. Good Heavenly Lord! Where do I start?! Whatever my visitor normally doesn’t get to eat, we’ll find. I have a few favorite places I take nearly everyone (Paco’s Cantina in Mar Vista, the Mel’s Diner near my home), but we’ll definitely hit places more exotic and more splendid. Again, whatever we’re looking for, it’s here.

And then… there’s Hollywood. If they want handprints and the Chinese Theater, we’ll do it. The Sign? Sure. Driving around to find the Batcave, the Brady Bunch House, or the lake where Andy and Opie fished? My pleasure.

But truly, beyond all those, what I’ll want is to get together with friends. Again, the best thing about being here is the people I’ve met. So the more of that I can share, the better a host I am.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Well I’ll start with Gregory Blair, who referred me to you. Greg starred in a play I directed that ended up being the single greatest experience of my life (and yes I’m happy to discuss it!), as well as giving me the job of directing a wonderful play he wrote. Of course my parents, friends, teachers, and coworkers all deserve shoutouts. But I’ll give my biggest to the one who changed my life the most – my late dog Shirelle. The greatest spirit I’ve ever known, Shirelle taught me all I needed to learn (a lot) about how to live, what to care about, and how to love. The play I directed Gregory in was all wrapped up in Shirelle in many complex ways. My first book was about her. But really, it’s hard to think of anything I’ve done in the past 20 years that she didn’t influence in some way.

Website: AskShirelle.com, https://www.authordouglasgreen.com,
DouglasGreenMFT.com,

Instagram: @douggreenauthor

Twitter: @douggreenauthor

Image Credits
The photos of me are by Karman Kruschke
The cover of “A Dog of Many Names” was painted by Kaiden Krepela.
I promise I don’t only use artists whose names begin with KK, but these two do give those initials a good name!