Finally, there's someone who not only cares about mental health, but how it's portrayed

Filmmakers often consider their craft a personal statement, but rarely is it to personal to the point of being real life.

Sure, “A Beautiful Mind,” was personal. But it was a Ron Howard project, and he grew up in the comforts of Hollywood and an atmosphere that was virtually free of the kind of personal hell that the movie represented so well.

Joseph Greco, however, grew up in Florida with a schizophrenic mother who suffered many of the same issues afflicting Marcia Gay Harden’s character in his movie, “CANVAS.”

Indeed, “CANVAS,” was so personal that Greco often calls it “a labor of love.” He believes others will feel the same way – particularly those who went through the same kind of personal hell.

“We want people to know that this a family like any family,” he told me in a recent interview.

“CANVAS” has been in the movie theaters for more than a month, and it’s received a number of decent reviews from The New York Times, Roger Ebert and others. But many critics were among the first to point out that it’s one of the few movies about mental illness that refrains from over-the-top depictions and stereotypes.

(For an example of an over-the-top depiction, watch “Me, Myself and Irene,” the 2000 movie starring Jim Carrey that mocks schizophrenia.)

That was because Greco, 35, wanted people to know what it was like to deal with someone they love who had wild mood swings. He wanted people to know what it’s like to be connected to somebody who couldn’t keep track of their emotions.

You can laugh, he says, but he wants you to understand, too.

“It was extremely cathartic and therapeutic [the movie] – I had to express something that was very harrowing,” he said. “I would hyperventilate in college whenever I would talk about my mother.”

This is an honest and serious depiction that, at times, charms and even humors people, too. But it can be dark, and even The New York Times noted that it’s ending is a bit too dark, giving the moviegoer a bit of an empty feeling at the end since – unlike “A Beautiful Mind” – there appears to be a lack of resolution.

Greco doesn’t apologize for that – in fact, he tried hard to resist the tendency to “romanticize mental illness and deal with the clichés.” He even had to stop movie producers from insisting that he either kill off or “cure” the Marcia Gay Harden character.

“I wanted to tell it as straight as I possibly could,” he said. It’s not a pretty picture.”

Greco hopes the movie, which also stars Joe Pantoliano of “Sopranos” fame, will take mental health one step closer to respectability and one step farther away from “the easy joke” that schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other illnesses have become in movies.

“Mental illness affects all of us, and as in the case of ‘Me, Myself and Irene,’ it was always about the easy joke,” he said. “You would never do that about somebody with breast cancer.”