By Nicholas Roznovsky
(L to R) Sofia Vergara, Whitney Cummings, Toby Kebbell, Louanne Brizendine, and Erika Olde at the film's premiere [Photo courtesy Louann Brizendine]
The Female Brain, a relationship comedy motion picture loosely based on the 2006 book of the same name by UC San Francisco neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, MD, had its world premiere on June 17 at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Brizendine, who served as executive producer, joined the film's stars on the red carpet to celebrate the film's screening at the Culver City ArcLight Cinemas.
The movie marks the directorial debut of comedian Whitney Cummings, who also portrays a fictionalized version of Brizendine as the film's main character.
"'The Female Brain' is a book that profoundly changed my life, " Cummings told Variety last year, "and I'm really proud of how [co-writer] Neal Brennan and I wrote the script in a way that addresses how both men and women are often challenged and undermined by their reptilian brains and primordial fears."
The Female Brain also features performances by Sofia Vergara, James Marsden, Lucy Punch, Toby Kebbell, Cecily Strong, Beanie Feldstein, Blake Griffin, and Deon Cole.
Brizendine, author of "The Female Brain" and its 2010 follow-up "The Male Brain," is a professor emeritus and the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Psychiatry. Following a three-year appointment at Harvard University, she joined the faculty at UCSF in 1988. Six years later, she founded the UCSF Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic, where she conducted research on the neurobiology of hormones, mood disorders, anxiety, and changes in sexual interest due to hormones.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay and Laurel Heights, UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System and UCSF Fresno.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises top-ranked hospitals – UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland – and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
