Personal Problems

The film was originally intended to be broadcast on television, but the public television network PBS and others did not pick up the soap opera. It was shown across the United States at smaller screenings throughout the 1980s until it found renewed popularity after a screening in the late 2000s at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The film was restored in 2018 by Kino Lorber and re-released at the Metrograph theater in New York City.

Personal Problems
2018 re-release poster
Directed by	Bill Gunn
Written by	Ishmael Reed
Produced by	Walter Cotton
Starring	Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor Sam Waymon Walter Cotton Jim Wright
Cinematography	Robert Polidori
Edited by	Bill Gunn
Music by	Carman Moore
Release date	1980 (1980)
Running time	165 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40,000

• Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor as Johnnie Mae Brown
• Walter Cotton as Charles Brown
• Sam Waymon as Raymon
• Jim Wright as Father Brown

Some of the characters in Personal Problems were initially developed to be featured in a radio soap opera, but this later evolved into a 30 minute video soap opera directed by Gunn and written by Ishmael. The only scene from this original 30 minute version to appear in the 1980 version was a monologue by the character played by Sam Waymon.

The scenes in Personal Problems were shot using a videocassette recorder which was a new technology at the time (previously most films were shot using film stock).

Gunn was known for his improvisational style of directing and was known to let actors improvise during filming, with director of photography and cameraman Robert Polidori stating: "Bill was interested in improvisation, which made it a little harder to shoot" and "Bill would set up scenes as an experiment. He'd set up tensions and see how the tensions turned out".

Glenn Kenny of the New York Times said of the film: "For all its rough edges, Personal Problems retains a vitality and an integrity that practically bounds off the screen." He also praised the film for its intimate depiction of African American life in New York, stating, "it's intimate to the point of awkwardness." K. Austin Collins, writing for Vanity Fair, praised the movie as a "textually incomplete but spiritually overflowing accomplishment" and described it as "more than a clean narrative" which provided windows into a woman's life; "windows broad and intelligent enough to encompass a wide swathe of Black life generally, but free of neat narrative conclusions." Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine gave the film four stars and applauded Gunn and Reed's intimate portrayal of the characters, stating: "Gunn and Reed collapse conventional notions of reality, providing simultaneous glimpses into the minds of dozens of characters, lingering on scenes and informing them with confessional intensity."