A pile of DVDs in the corner of a cramped bathroom in a modest aluminum-sided house in Las Vegas sets the tone for Zeberiah Newman’s Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, executive produced by Jamie Lee Curtis. Susan Powter, once an inescapable figure of ’90s culture, built a health and fitness persona around a platinum crop, a fierce public voice, and the trademarked command “Stop the Insanity,” a phrase that ran through bestselling books and infomercials until it became shorthand for a specific weight-loss moment.
She slipped out of public view without public scandal, leaving only the echo of that ubiquity. Newman’s raw, vérité documentary locates her present life on the economic margins of Las Vegas, keeping nostalgic celebrity shows offscreen, and watches her struggle to stay afloat. Her story emerges as a portrait of precarity and of what remains after fame.
The $100 Million Drop
The film threads Powter’s past prosperity through her present. The period when her business carried an estimated value of $100 million feels distant beside the precarious routine on screen. Lawsuits and ill-fated business choices ended in bankruptcy that stripped away that wealth, leaving a woman who lives on the razor’s edge of collapse.
The camera follows her as she picks up UberEats orders, carefully choosing trips that pay at least three dollars. Home is a worn apartment that sits in sharp memory beside the crime-ridden motel where she previously stayed. Her remaining savings, roughly $6,000 in an old envelope, form a fragile barrier against disaster.
Newman lingers on the bitter ironies of this life. The fitness figure who urged audiences toward vigorous health now logs her miles walking deliveries through the punishing Vegas heat. The advocate of careful nutrition now stretches a grocery budget at the 99 Cent Store.
Her circumstances feel uncomfortably familiar, echoing an economy in which a single dental bill or car repair can erase stability. The film frames Powter as an unexpected everywoman, a former infomercial force who reflects the insecurity facing many Americans, far from the commanding persona associated with her ’90s television presence.
A Fly on the Wall, Occasionally Interrupted
Newman builds the film around a refusal of glossy celebrity packaging and leans into an observational style. The documentary focuses on Powter’s present: her rooms, her routines, her shifting moods, while questions about the ’90s wellness craze and the exact mechanics of her retreat from fame remain peripheral. Its strongest passages play like a fly-on-the-wall study of her emotional weather.
The camera watches her sift through boxes of rescued possessions, each object prompting a reckoning with the life that generated this archive. Her financial worry tightens into near-panic when her aging Prius threatens a breakdown, a moment that turns abstract poverty into a concrete crisis. The film tracks abrupt shifts from elation over a possible comeback to disappointment after an unsatisfying haircut, mapping mood swings that strip away the idea of her as a media brand and reveal a fragile person.
The structure wavers when Newman interrupts this strict vérité flow. Brief talking-head appearances from distant acquaintances such as Ross Matthews land with a jolt and feel unnecessary beside the immediacy of Powter’s day-to-day existence, thinning the focus on her present reality. Jamie Lee Curtis enters as what the film openly presents as a contrivance, yet her conversations with Powter carry a directness that benefits the portrait and adds emotional clarity.
Intensity, Ambiguity, and Unresolved Living
Powter’s trademark intensity and rapid-fire speech fill the frame. Her assertive, confrontational energy still defines her presence, an unwavering core that persists through the disorder around her. The film studies a striking tension: she offers full candor about her poverty, counting her small savings on camera, while a faint current of denial or self-protective grandiosity flickers beneath that honesty.
The documentary adopts a clear ethical stance and refuses to sensationalize her decline or mine her past fame for spectacle. It resists the easy move of turning Powter into a cautionary example. The film withholds the comfort of tidy reassurance or a guaranteed comeback and leaves open questions about her resilience and the shape of the years ahead. Stop the Insanity renders a frank picture of life on the economic edge, framed against the gaudy, aspirational surfaces of Las Vegas, and locates Susan Powter in that present-tense reality as an emblem of contemporary American precariousness.
The documentary Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter premiered at the Bentonville Film Festival on June 18, 2025, and saw its limited theatrical release in the United States starting November 19, 2025. This film chronicles the life of ’90s fitness and infomercial icon Susan Powter, detailing her meteoric rise to fame and her subsequent disappearance from the public eye due to financial hardship. The film finds her in the present day living a quiet, financially precarious life in Las Vegas. While currently in limited theatrical release, the documentary is expected to become available for streaming beginning in December 2025.
Full Credits
- Title: Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter
- Distributor: Obscured Releasing
- Release date: June 18, 2025 (Bentonville Film Festival Premiere); November 19, 2025 (US Theatrical)
- Running time: 87 minutes
- Director: Zeberiah Newman
- Writers: Zeberiah Newman
- Producers and Executive Producers: Jamie Lee Curtis, John Redmann, Celia Aniskovich, Chad Hines, Michiel Thomas
- Cast: Susan Powter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ross Matthews, John Redmann, Michiel Thomas
- Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Michiel Thomas
- Editors: Will Znidaric
- Composer: Edward Bilous, Michelle DiBucci, Greg Kalember
The Review
Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter
Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter is a compelling and unexpected cultural artifact. By avoiding the typical rise-and-fall narrative, the documentary achieves an intimate realism. The film's true subject is not celebrity nostalgia but the harsh reality of American economic life, filtered through the lens of a former icon. It presents Susan Powter's current struggle with dignity, refusing to exploit or sensationalize her circumstances. The result is a sharp, often uncomfortable, and deeply moving portrait of resilience on the edge.
PROS
- The intimate, vérité style provides unfiltered access to Powter's daily life.
- Successfully avoids sensationalism and exploiting the subject's downfall.
- Highlights the universal theme of financial precarity through a unique celebrity lens.
- Powter's enduring candor and intensity make her a fascinating, relatable figure.
- Captures genuine emotional moments, such as panic attacks and candid self-reflection.
CONS
- The use of superfluous talking heads occasionally breaks the documentary's focus.
- The overall lack of conventional narrative resolution may frustrate some viewers.
- The filmmaking crew's presence and intervention sometimes raise uncomfortable questions about observation versus participation.
