Lifestyle
Sam Keen, Philosopher of the Men’s Movement, Is Dead at 93
Sam Keen, a pop psychologist and philosopher whose best-selling book “Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man” urged men to get in touch with their primal masculinity and became a touchstone of the so-called men’s movement of the 1990s, died on March 19 in Oahu, Hawaii. He was 93.
His death, while on vacation, was confirmed by his wife, Patricia de Jong. The couple lived on a 60-acre ranch in Sonoma, Calif.
Mr. Keen, who described himself as having been “overeducated at Harvard and Princeton,” fled academia in the 1960s for California, where he led self-help workshops and wrote more than a dozen books. He became a well-known figure in the human potential movement of that era.
In the 1970s, he delivered lectures around the country with the mythology scholar Joseph Campbell. He also gave workshops at two of the wellsprings of the New Age: Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., and Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. Mr. Keen’s specialty was helping middle-class seekers slough off the expectations of family and society, and discover what he called their “personal mythology.”
A long conversation that the ruggedly handsome Mr. Keen had with the journalist Bill Moyers, broadcast on PBS in 1991, brought him national exposure the month that “Fire in the Belly” was published. The book spent 29 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.
Mr. Keen told Mr. Moyers that he had spent much of his early life trying to meet expectations about masculinity, especially those placed on him by women.
“They were the audience before whom I dramatized my life,” he said, “and their applause and their approval was crucial for my sense of manhood.”
In “Fire in the Belly,” which was partly inspired by a men’s discussion group he belonged to, Mr. Keen argued that men must discover a new kind of manhood apart from the company of women.
“Only men understand the secret fears that go with the territory of masculinity,” he wrote.
“Fire in the Belly” and an earlier, bigger best seller, “Iron John” (1990) by the poet Robert Bly, became the twin handbooks of the men’s movement, a psychological response to the gains made by feminism.
The movement’s principal authors and workshop leaders claimed that modern men had become “feminized” by demands that they get in touch with their feelings, seek consensus rather than lead, and become domesticated rather than follow their warrior spirit.
At woodsy retreats, men beat on drums, screamed primally and broke down in tears, grieving injuries that had been done to them by society, and especially by absent fathers.
The movement was an easy target for parody, which came from many cultural quarters. But books like Mr. Bly’s and Mr. Keen’s attracted large readerships, both male and female. In 1992, the year after the wrenching Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, which alerted many Americans to the issue of workplace sexual harassment, Mr. Keen was invited to lead a private seminar on gender dynamics for senators in Washington.
The men’s movement of the 1990s might have sowed some early seeds of what became the current “manosphere,” the world of misogynistic influencers who celebrate harassment and violence toward women. But Mr. Keen himself was not a misogynist, and he embraced feminism. He applauded its analysis of a patriarchal society that wounded both women and men, and he wrote that women’s liberation was “a model for the changes men are beginning to experience.”
From the men’s movement, Mr. Keen went on to become a guru of the flying trapeze, encouraging men and women to overcome their psychological fears by learning to swing from a circus bar 25 feet off the ground.
He set up a trapeze on his property in the foothills of Sonoma County and wrote “Learning to Fly: Trapeze — Reflections on Fear, Trust, and the Joy of Letting Go” (1999).
Alex Witchel, a Times reporter who visited him and took him up on the challenge, noted that Mr. Keen, then 67, wore tights and slippers and “looked like a bony old bird, his frame lean and spare from years of flying.”
Samuel McMurray Keen was born on Nov. 23, 1931, in Scranton, Pa., the second-oldest of five children of J. Alvin Keen, the director of a Methodist church choir, and Ruth (McMurray) Keen, a teacher. His early years were spent in Maryville, in East Tennessee.
When Sam was 11, his family moved to Wilmington, Del., where his parents ran a mail-order business selling uniforms to military nurses.
He graduated from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., outside Philadelphia, and then earned a Doctor of Theology degree from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Princeton University.
In 1968, on a sabbatical from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky, he visited the West Coast and became, as he once told an interviewer, “engulfed in the California madness.” He never returned to academia.
He became a freelance journalist, writing for Psychology Today and other magazines and interviewing some of the leading lights of New Age spirituality, including Carlos Castaneda, Chogyam Trungpa and Mr. Campbell, whose “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” inspired both the Grateful Dead and “Star Wars.”
His early book “To a Dancing God” (1970) described his rejection of the conservative Christianity in which he was raised and his embrace of direct spiritual experience.
A later book, “Faces of the Enemy” (1986), a study of the use of propaganda to prepare citizens for war, was made into a PBS documentary.
Mr. Keen’s marriage to Heather Barnes ended in divorce after 17 years. A second marriage, to Janine Lovett, also ended in divorce. Besides Ms. de Jong, whom he married in 2004, he is survived by a son, Gifford Keen, and a daughter, Lael Keen, from his first marriage; a daughter, Jessamyn Griffin, from his second marriage; six grandchildren; and three siblings, Lawrence Keen, Ruth Ann Keen and Edith Livesay.
Mr. Keen’s emergence as a spokesman for the men’s movement was somewhat accidental. He had been leading various types of workshops when his publisher, sniffing something in the air, asked him to write about modern manhood.
As “Fire in the Belly” caught fire with readers, Mr. Keen was disdainful of some of the more easily lampooned aspects of the movement.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead with a drum,” he said.
Lifestyle
‘Wait Wait’ for May 30, 2026: Our Endless Summer with Tiffany Haddish, Lucy Dacus, and more!
Lucy Dacus of Boygenius performs at the Outdoor Theatre during the 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 15, 2023 in Indio, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Coachella)
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This week, we celebrate an early start to summer by revisiting our interviews with Tiffany Haddish, Taimane, Becca Mann, and Lucy Dacus!
Fresh Air critic Justin Chang says All of a Sudden (starring Tao Okamoto and Virginie Efira) was his favorite movie at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
Courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival.
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Courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival.
The first Cannes Film Festival I ever attended, in May 2006, was a deliriously star-studded affair. Penélope Cruz, Ethan Hawke and Kirsten Dunst walked up the red-carpeted steps. Future Oscar hopefuls like Volver, Babel and Marie Antoinette competed for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. There were world premieres of blockbusters like The Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand — terrible movies, but great photo ops. And near the end of the festival, I walked into a film I knew nothing about called Pan’s Labyrinth and emerged knowing I’d seen a classic.
This year’s Cannes kicked off with a 20th-anniversary screening of Pan’s Labyrinth, but otherwise, there wasn’t much of that 2006-era razzle-dazzle. The major Hollywood studios tightened their belts and stayed home, perhaps with still-fresh memories of the stinging Cannes reception for the last Indiana Jones movie back in 2023.
But there were stars here and there. Demi Moore and Stellan Skarsgård were on this year’s jury. Adam Driver and Miles Teller showed up for the world premiere of James Gray’s terrific 1986-set crime drama, Paper Tiger, in which they play brothers who unwisely go into business with the Russian mob. Driver and Teller are outstanding, and Scarlett Johansson is heartbreakingly good as a family member forced to deal with the fallout.
Paper Tiger deserved a prize, but it left the festival empty-handed. Instead, the jury awarded the Palme d’Or to the gripping and sometimes infuriating small-town drama Fjord. It’s the second Palme win for the Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu; he won his first in 2007 for the movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
In Fjord, Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve are almost unrecognizable as an evangelical Christian couple who have recently moved from Romania to a small Norwegian town with their five children. When the couple are accused of child abuse, Fjord becomes a fierce battle between the forces of religious conservatism and secular liberalism. It may be set in Norway, but it’s likely to resonate with American audiences when it opens later this year.
I hope there will also be robust turnout for Minotaur, a perfectly chilled tale of adultery and murder that won the Grand Prix, or second place. It’s a remake of the 1969 Claude Chabrol drama La Femme Infidèle, this time set in Russia, not long after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The director of Minotaur, Andrey Zvyagintsev, nearly died of COVID during the pandemic, and it was moving to see him back in Cannes with a film this powerful and uncompromising in its critique of the Putin regime.
One of the buzziest out-of-competition titles was Club Kid, a hugely enjoyable comedy directed by the actor, writer, comedian and social-media star Jordan Firstman. He plays a gay New York City club promoter who’s sent reeling when he learns that he has a 10-year-old son. The result is basically a ketamine-laced version of every adult-bonds-with-cute-kid movie you’ve ever seen, but Firstman is a real talent.
Firstman’s also one of several queer filmmakers who made a bold impression at the festival this year. Jane Schoenbrun, the director of the inventive transgender allegory I Saw the TV Glow, came to Cannes with their third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Starring a very game Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, the movie is a clever homage to, and deconstruction of, ’80s and ’90s slasher thrillers, digging deep into the often-unspoken connections between our love of pop culture and our hang-ups about sex and desire.
Along with Paper Tiger, Club Kid and Camp Miasma were welcome reminders that American cinema isn’t close to dead, at Cannes or anywhere else. Even so, I can’t say that I minded the general absence of Hollywood at the festival this year. One of the reasons I keep returning to Cannes is that it shows interesting movies from all over the world — movies like the gorgeous and moving Rwanda-set drama, Ben’Imana, about efforts to bring about truth and reconciliation years after the 1994 genocide. The film earned its director, Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, the Caméra d’Or prize for best debut feature.
My favorite film at Cannes this year was All of a Sudden, from the Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. Set in and around a Parisian elder-care home, it uses the close bond between two women — one French and one Japanese — to raise haunting questions about how we live, how we die, and most of all, how we talk to each other. Like Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning Drive My Car, All of a Sudden is a reminder that something as simple as a conversation between friends can make for sublimely moving cinema. I can’t wait to see it again, and I can’t wait for you to see it, too.
Cary Elwes may not have been born in Los Angeles, but it’s probably fair to consider the native Brit an honorary Angeleno. The “Princess Bride” star was born in and spent his formative years kicking around London; he moved to L.A. in 1990, on his brother’s recommendation. He met his wife, photographer Lisa Marie Kurbikoff, at a cookoff in Malibu about a year later and the two married in 2000. A daughter, Dominique, arrived in 2007.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Elwes has spent his years in California not just establishing his family life, but also further enmeshing himself in Hollywood. He’s appeared in everything from “Saw” to “Ella Enchanted,” and played a corrupt government agent in a couple of “Mission Impossible” movies. His latest role is as a former cop turned private detective in Peacock’s new crime thriller, “M.I.A.,” streaming now.
“I’ve been out here for quite a bit now and while [2025’s] fires were pretty devastating — changing a lot of the landscape and people’s lives in ways that none of us could have imagined — I’m hopeful,” Elwes says. “I feel like we’re going to build back stronger and better. Things can seem dark sometimes, but I still have a spark of hope in my heart.”
Here’s how Elwes would spend his perfect, hopeful Sunday in Los Angeles.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Coffee and a chat
We wake up around 10 a.m., which is kind of late for me. Then we’ll have our coffee. I tend to lean toward Gelson’s beans, which I find have a particular flavor I tend to like. I do like my coffee. It’s probably the only addiction I really have.
Anyway, after I finish up my coffee, I’ll typically ask my wife and daughter what they’d like to do for the day. My daughter is 19, and she’s terrific. I always tell my wife she’s the best production we’ll ever do together.
Noon: Leisurely lunch
My wife is very fond of this Italian restaurant in Woodland Hills called Casaléna. It’s right off Ventura Boulevard and it’s terrific. Even their salads are extraordinary. It’s fairly new, too, but it’s always booked out solid so you really have to make a reservation in advance. Luckily, my wife and daughter are organized, so if they want to go there, they’ll have planned ahead.
2 p.m.: Head to the movies
We like to go see movies at the Imax at Universal CityWalk. The quality of that theater is very, very good and seeing films on the biggest screen possible is important to us.
My wife and I went on a date to see “Michael” in Imax, which was sold out and it was phenomenal. Antoine Fuqua did a great job and our friend Colman [Domingo] was honestly transformative as Joe Jackson. And Jaafar Jackson, who’s Michael’s nephew, is remarkable. It’s an extraordinary film, but sold out with people cheering and dancing? That made it a phenomenon. People were interacting with the movie as it played and it was remarkable.
If we’re not interested in whatever’s playing at the time, we might go for a hike in Tapia Park. I grew up watching “MASH” as a kid and when I realized they filmed there, I thought “How blessed am I to be living just a few miles from where such an iconic series was made?”
It’s a really beautiful park too. If you take a long hike, you’ll see waterfalls and lots of wildlife. On a nice afternoon, taking the dog out there for a walk? You can’t beat it.
There’s so much rich history here. I remember going on the Universal Studio Tour for the first time when I visited L.A. as a kid. They had a thing where they’d pick a couple of tour guests and the guide would put you on camera in front of a blue screen and you’d reenact a scene from a movie. The tour also took you by the “Jaws” shark coming out of the water and through an old western town, and I found out years later that a director friend of mine had been making westerns there when I was a kid and I didn’t even know it.
That tour was fantastic. With parting the sea for “The Ten Commandments” and then the boulders coming down the hill during the rockslide? Absolutely magnificent.
5 p.m.: Pick a Getty, any Getty
Depending on what time our movie ends or if we just end up going for a walk instead, we might go over to the Getty Center. We love it there. Usually we’ll go in the afternoon — maybe we’ll have a late lunch up there — and sometimes we’ll go to the Getty Villa instead, which luckily survived the Palisades fire.
We just love being around art. We’ll walk through the entire collection, plus whatever exhibit they have on at the time. We’ll go to LACMA sometimes, too, or even the Academy Museum to see whatever new exhibits they have.
Culturally, we really try to keep busy. Sometimes we’ll want to sit at home and play Spite and Malice or watch a show on TV, but mostly I try to go out and encourage my family to do the same, especially because we live in such a wonderfully diverse, cultural city.
7 p.m.: Taco time
I always leave meal decisions up to the girls, and sometimes they like to go out and get tacos. We like the fish tacos at Escuela. It’s pretty close to Quentin Tarantino’s movie theater, the New Beverly Cinema, which we like to go to as well. I took my daughter to see “Jaws” there, in fact, which she loved.
9 p.m.: More movies
I’m trying to educate my daughter in the films and TV shows that I watched growing up. She’s taking a film history class in school. She wants to be an actor as well, so I want her to have an understanding of the history of film and history of performance, so I show her the great performances that inspired me as a kid and encourage her in that way.
When I grew up in England, we literally had two channels, both in black and white. Young people can’t quite wrap their heads around that now, but it really did make you pay attention because you had to be sitting in front of the television to catch a show or movie you wanted to watch.
I remember that the BBC, particularly on weekends, would have matinee screenings of movies. We actually had pretty good quality TV in England growing up, but they’d also heavily focus on British films from the ‘40s all the way through to the ‘60s so I got my education from that particular style of films, like the postwar films, ‘50s films, and the Ealing comedies. David Lean and Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson … a lot of the films they were in or directed really helped shape who I am today.
Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers had a very strong influence on me as a kid, too, so I really want to try to share with my daughter why these films meant so much to me.
10:30 p.m.: Books in bed
I’m not really a late-night person anymore. I used to be when I was a kid, but now, unless we’re out on a date, my wife and I are homebodies.
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