Susan Powter rocketed to fame in the 1990s, propounding the idea that it was possible to lose weight, feel better, and regain vitality by eating ne
Susan Powter rocketed to fame in the 1990s, propounding the idea that it was possible to lose weight, feel better, and regain vitality by eating neat and exercising – a message that resonated with millions of American women. She summed it all up with a decibel-peaking catchphrase emitted almost like a primal scream: “Stop the insanity!”
Almost overnight Powter became a sensation, with her spiky bleached-blond hair, perfect bone structure, leotard-clad physique and energy enough to power a mid-sized city. In collaboration with business partners, she built an empire around infomercials, a talk show, books, QVC home shopping, and regular media appearances on Leno, Letterman and other shows.
Then, as quickly as she had risen, Powter seemingly disappeared. The question why is explored in the documentary Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, which just held its world premiere at the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas. The film, directed by Zeberiah Newman and executive produced by Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, tells an extraordinary rags-to riches-to rags story.
Susan Powter and director Zeberiah Newman take part in a Q&A after the world premiere of ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter’
Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentonville Film Festival
At a Q&A following the world premiere, Newman said it wasn’t effortless tracking down Powter.
“I started looking for Susan about a year before I actually met her,” he said. “I had a meeting with someone, and they were talking about fitness in the ‘80s. And then immediately I remembered Susan from the ‘90s and I just was like, ‘What happened to her? Where did she go? We haven’t heard anything. We don’t see anything.’ And so I started calling yoga studios and health farms and women’s groups in maybe Seattle, Portland. I had no idea she was in Las Vegas.”
Susan Powter in ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter’
Courtesy of Zables & Associates
Powter was living in Vegas and not in the style one would expect of someone whose company had raked in tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars. Quite the contrary. For a time, home was the Harbor Island Apartments, the kind of place that leases on a weekly and monthly basis. “Crime at the old Harbor Island Apartments on E. Harmon Avenue used to mean [police] officers would spend entire shifts dealing with issues on the property,” noted a 2023 report on Vegas TV station KSNV, “from shootings to stabbings, robberies to stolen vehicles.”
Appearing at the Q&A, Powter didn’t contradict that description.
“Harbor Island — the children and the anger and the pain, and when you would see people getting thrown out and all their stuff was just thrown out in bags and they were sobbing with three kids,” she told the packed theater. “Some of the most decent human beings were the ones who had nothing. And the other ones were scum. I’m not kidding. [The decent human beings] were like, “Listen, I got $4. You want two?’ It was heartbreaking… It is inhumane and there’s no justice to it.”
Susan Powter appears with Will Smith on an episode of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ in the 1990s.
(c) Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
Some would say there is no justice to Powter’s reversal of fortune which she attributes to naively trusting business associates who, she says, turned out to be unscrupulous. Years of litigation left her almost penniless. Things got so dire financially at one point that she sought public assistance.
“I had to go to the welfare office, which I’m fortunate enough never to have had to go [to before] — and it’s not in any way a judgment or criticism,” she assured the audience. “That in and of itself was a horrifying day.”
Susan Powter in ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter’
Courtesy of Zables & Associates
Today, as the film shows, she ekes out a living as an Uber Eats driver. Ironically, she often delivers the kind of quick food she excoriated in books and informercials.
“I’ve literally died a thousand deaths delivering Sonic burgers. I’m not kidding,” she said – instantly connecting with the audience at the festival venue as if she had never stopped doing her TV show. “I’ve wept, but I’m allowed to feel it. I’m allowed to be afraid. I’m allowed to feel like I’m going to die. I’m allowed to feel like the biggest loser on the planet Earth. And then you know what? You get up the next day and you go out there and that’s it. So it’s rage. You are allowed to be enraged. I didn’t heal. I’m not full of love and joy. I’m enraged and full of love and joy.”
Moderating the Q&A on behalf of Deadline, I told Powter I thought it took bravery to speak so openly in the documentary about her struggles. She waved away that assessment.
“People say, ‘It’s courageous.’ I’m not courageous,” she insisted. “The only reason I’m not dead is because I wasn’t going to go down like that. As a woman, as a single mother, I wasn’t going down as a victim.”
Powter, 67, freely concedes her past troubles were the result of putting faith in the wrong people. Yet, ultimately, she went with her gut when Newman proposed doing a film about her.
“It could have been a big mistake, but I trusted that he would tell a story,” she noted. “It’s dimensional and it’s real.”
One of the dimensions to the documentary is its subtle emphasis on the American diet, which has hardly improved and may have worsened over the decades despite Powter’s evangelism. One part of the problem, for poorer people, is that they live in “food deserts,” far away from grocery stores that sell the kind of whole foods Powter advocates. As seen in the film, Powter herself has had to walk miles in the brutal Vegas heat to reach an outlet purveying well food.
“The film is also a look at food droughts in this country and elderly people living below the poverty line and a lot of intersectional issues that a lot of people are facing,” Newman observed. “I think Susan eloquently sort of puts a floodlight on it — that it’s not real food and how people don’t have access to real food. And when she says, ‘The same blood that feeds your brain, feeds your body,’ that is still very true. I don’t think people think like that.”
Jamie Lee Curtis and Susan Powter
Courtesy of Zables & Associates
Newman says distribution plans for the film are pending. The involvement of Jamie Lee Curtis – an early supporter of the project – should facilitate the documentary reach a wider audience. Curtis and Powter look like they could be twins with their chiseled looks and matching energy levels. There’s a poignant scene in the film when both women get together for a heart-to-heart.
“I said to Jamie Lee… ‘It’s not that I lost all my money. It’s not that everything fell apart. That’s not what it is. It’s not that my family dynamic changed forever. That’s not what it’s,’” Powter shared. “I said I felt lost my tribe. I had no connection. I was alone in the world.”
Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter gives the dynamo the chance to reconnect with her tribe, ensuring that her story and message aren’t consigned to obscurity.
Her voice breaking with emotion, Powter told the festival audience, “Zeb said to me, ‘Susie, you will never fall through the cracks again. Ever.’”
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