BUD CLAYMAN'S litany of mental health challenges is spelled out in the full title of OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie. "OC87" is Clayman's catchall term for this state of being, named for the year in which he had his first, worst breakdown and parted ways with other people for a while. The specificity of this is telling: While OC87 certainly contains insights applicable to the legion of vastly under resourced people who are either improperly or completely untreated, the film's also highly specific to the relatively resourced Clayman.

After a healthy childhood, Clayman began suffering from depression as a teen, and by the time he had moved to Los Angeles to pursue a lifelong dream of filmmaking, '87 hit, derailing his plans. Decades later, OC87 is his way of achieving that goal despite those challenges, but he can't do it alone. Aside from the financing put up by his father, help comes in the form of co-directors Glenn Holsten and Scott Johnston, who don't often rescue the film's production values, but do enable some of the more fanciful techniques OC87 utilizes to describe Clayman's internal dialogues and coping mechanisms.

Despite these advantages, OC87 is most likely to be the only film of this scope that Clayman will ever finish. The challenge that looms largest is his "harm OCD"—which as he explains at the film's outset, isn't "about washing hands," but is a cyclical torment of recurring violent thoughts that in turn cause a fear that he might act on them. Coupled with everything else, Clayman's condition makes fundamental aspects of the creative process—decision-making, the ability to handle differing opinions—excruciating. It stands to reason, then, that the film he would make—could only make—is this one. That's interesting but insular; and it makes OC87 a somtimes too intimate, too specific diary of one person's art therapy