Lights, cameras…therapy!

Therapist and columnist Barton Goldsmith talks about his work behind the cameras on movie and TV sets

By CALEB BEEGHLY NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT

Therapists play an important behind-thescenes role on movie and TV sets.

Just ask Dr. Barton Goldsmith.

The therapist and News-Press columnist is there during filming to hold a space for calm and help actors, who must transition between emotional highs.

Dr. Goldsmith told the NewsPress his main role is to alleviate crisis.

Producing a movie means lots of long days with the same people who are all under lots of stress, which makes it nearly impossible to not have some conflict during production. When this happens, Dr. Goldsmith steps in and handles the conflict by treating it like family therapy, pulling from his over 30 years of experience in marriage and family therapy.

However, Dr. Goldsmith does not just help deal with conflicts on set. He also provides emotional guidance for actors as they prepare for, then recover from an emotional role. Even though actors are pretending when they perform emotional scenes, their bodies still produce the very real chemicals connectedwith those emotions. In order to move on, those chemicals (often cortisol) must be released.

Dr. Goldsmith’s work has led him to meet stars such as Dakota Fanning, Tracy Morgan and Patricia Arquette, as well as Freddie Highmore, who stars as a surgeon with autism on ABC’s “The Good Doctor.”

When people ask Dr. Goldsmith how they can become an on-set movie therapist, he responds with the question, ‘Have you ever made a movie?’ To Dr. Goldsmith, having shared experiences with his clients is essential to being a good therapist.

“If I haven’t walked a mile in their moccasins, I don’t take them” (as a client), he said.

He even went as far as to joke that he chose psychotherapy over psychiatry because psychotherapy is for neurotics, who he called his people.

Dr. Goldsmith got his start as an onset film therapist a couple of years after getting his doctorate in psychology Someone he knew was making a movie and asked

Please see GOLDSMITH on B2

Calendar

The calendar appears Mondays through Saturdays in the “Life & the Arts” section. Items are welcome. Please email them a full week before the event to Managing Editor Dave Mason at dmason@ newspress.com.

TODAY 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The 75th annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show will take place March 10-12 at the Earl Warren Showgrounds, 3400 Calle Real. Tickets cost $20 for one-day admission and $30 for a three-day pass. To purchase, go to sborchidshow.com.

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Storytelling:

Native People Through the Lens of Edward S. Curtis” is on display through April 30 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 2559 Puesta del Sol, Santa Barbara. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays. For more information, visit sbnature.org.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. “Entangled: Responding to Environmental Crisis,” runs through March 25 at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. The museum is open from 10 a.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. It’s closed on Sundays and college holidays. For more information, call 805-565-6162 or visit westmont.edu/museum.

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Interlopings: Colors in the Warp and Weft of Ecological Entanglements” is an exhibit that runs through March 12 at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, 1212 Mission Canyon Road, Santa Barbara. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. The exhibit features weavings dyed with pigments from non-native plants on Santa Cruz Island. The weavings were created by artists Helen Svensson and Lisa Jevbratt. For more information, see sbbotanicgarden.org.

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Coast artist and London native Annie Hoffman’s exhibit “Seeing Ourselves in Colour” will be displayed through Feb. 28 at Gallery Los Olivos, 2920 Grand Ave., Los Olivos. For more information, visit anniehoffmann.com.

10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m “SURREAL

WOMEN: Surrealist Art by American Women” is on display through April 24 at Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery, 11 E. Anapamu St. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. For more information, www.sullivangoss.com.

Noon to 5 p.m. “Clarence Mattei: Portrait of a Community” is on view now through May at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, which is located in downtown Santa Barbara at 136 E. De la Guerra St. Admission is free.

Hours are currently from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays and from noon to 7 p.m. Thursdays. For more information, visit www.sbhistorical.org

MARCH 11 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The 75th annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show will take place March 10-12 at the Earl Warren Showgrounds, 3400 Calle Real. Tickets cost $20 for one-day admission and $30 for a three-day pass. To purchase, go to sborchidshow.com.

10 a.m. St. Patrick’s Day parade on Main Street in downtown Ventura.

2 to 4 p.m. The Goleta Valley Library will host its 50th anniversary celebration. The library is at 500 N. Fairview Ave., Goleta.

MARCH 12 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The 75th annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show will take place March 10-12 at the Earl Warren Showgrounds, 3400 Calle Real. Tickets cost $20 for a oneday admission. To purchase, go to sborchidshow.com.

4:30 p.m. A free viewing of the Oscars will take place at the Arlington Theatre, 1317 State St., Santa Barbara. The live ABC broadcast will be on the Arlington screen at 5 p.m. A red carpet pre-show party with music by DJ Darla Bea will precede it at 3 p.m. in the Arlington courtyard and will cost $15, which includes priority seating during the broadcast, free popcorn, a free cocktail and a free raffle ticket to win prizes. Tickets for the pre-show party will be available at the Arlington box office.

MARCH 14

Lifeline screening for cholesterol, diabetes risks, kidney and thyroid function, plaque buildup in arteries and more at the Santa Barbara Seventhday Adventist Church, 425 Arroyo Road, Santa Barbara. Registration is required at www.lifelinescreening.com.

Continued from Page B1 but lacks the honesty to go with it. Hank Azaria is fun to watch as Eddie, a sales associate with a gambling addiction. Haneefah Wood does a great job playing Shirley, Jack’s no-nonsense righthand woman in the business and Eddie’s wife. She isn’t afraid to tell Jack or Eddie what she thinks.

There’s some great comedy with Herb Porter, the sales associate played with a fun sense of rhythm by Dewshane Williams. It’s a joy just to listen to how Mr. Williams delivers his lines with a staccato-like delivery.

The best performance, though, is by Allison Pill, who plays Myrtle Mayburn. Myrtle sees the moon as an escape from her horrible life, and she puts all her money into a timeshare. Question is: Will she get to the moon?

This writer’s favorite scenes of “Hello, Tomorrow” happen when Ms. Pill stands before the camera and pours emotions into her character. She’s funny, dramatic, and you can’t help but root for Myrtle. This writer is hoping Ms. Pill gets more scenes and plays a more integral role in the story. The only downfall of “Hello,

Tomorrow” is that it doesn’t use her in enough scenes. Before this series, Ms. Pill showed her talent in shows such as “Star Trek: Picard” and “The Newsroom.”

“Hello, Tomorrow,” by the way, was created by Amit Bhalia and Lucas Jansen, who have produced a retro-future universe that’s fun to visit. email: dmason@newspress.com

Giannantonio II Award — and was inducted into the CAADAC Hall of Fame. email: cbeeghly@newspress.com him to act as a therapist on set.

From there, word got around to other movie productions, and it snowballed from there.

On top of being an on-set film therapist, Dr. Goldsmith has been a nationally syndicated columnist for over 20 years. His columns are published Saturdays and Mondays in the News-Press. After 9/11, Dr. Goldsmith decided it was not about money anymore and started the column “Emotional Fitness,” which won the Clark Vincent Award for Writing from the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. For the first decade, he didn’t get paid a dime for his column, so he left and was picked up by numerous newspapers.

Eventually, the column turned into a book, then six more books.

And Dr. Barton is still writing. He said, “Writing is my therapy,” so he integrated it into his life, reducing his work, and keeping

U.S. Premiere his work something he loves. This allows him to keep the same promise to every patient. Once he takes a patient on, a sacred trust is built, so he journeys with his patients until they find some form of peace of mind.

Alisa Weilerstein, cello FRAGMENTS

Fri, Mar 10 / 7 PM / UCSB Campbell Hall

Tickets start at $20

“A multimedia Bach show.”

The New York Times

Enjoy Bach as you never have before in this wholly original and immersive audience experience from Alisa Weilerstein. FRAGMENTS weaves music old and new in a dramatic journey that elevates the senses to provide an opportunity to go deeper into the music.

An Arts & Lectures Co-commission

Ballet Hispánico

Doña Perón

Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Choreographer

Sat, Mar 11 / 8 PM / Granada Theatre

“In Lopez Ochoa’s high-varnish, athletic style of contemporary ballet, gorgeously danced… you see not just a riveting story but a company having reached a new horizon.” The New York Times

Lead Sponsor: Jody & John Arnhold

Dance Series Sponsors: Margo Cohen-Feinberg & Bob Feinberg, Ellen & Peter O. Johnson, Barbara Stupay, and Sheila Wald

Wynton Marsalis Septet

Tue, Apr 4 / 7 PM (note special time) / Granada Theatre

“Jazz is a metaphor for democracy.” – Wynton Marsalis

The Wynton Marsalis Septet performs seminal compositions from Marsalis’ wide-ranging career, original works by his frequent collaborators and standards spanning the vast historical landscape of jazz.

Major Sponsor: Sara Miller McCune

Event Sponsor: Jody & John Arnhold

Jazz Series Lead Sponsor: Manitou Fund

The Masters of Hawaiian Music Tour will bring award-winning musicians Saturday to SOhO in Santa Barbara.