I know that documentary by heart. 😃
Vivian shot nearly 40 hours of behind the scenes footage for that, but any scenes of Stanley and Shelley having polite conversation on set probably wasn’t as compelling. People have exaggerated the conflict we do see into something on the level of Christian Bale blowing up at that guy on the Terminator Salvation set.
From what I heard Stanley approved of everything shot and everything that ended up in the documentary. There is one wild fan theory that the documentary was really an extension of the film. I saw one guy show parallels between the documentary and the film.
He suggested that some of the subtext of the film was about the Native American genocide and both Shelley and Scatman were Stanley’s representations of that, hence why he was playing the big bad American on set and being mean to only the two of them.
At any rate I would say any mental health issues Shelley has now would not be as a direct result of her experience on that film. The people in the town she lives in have known for at least 10 - 15 years Shelley has been unwell (I spoke online to one of her neighbours), many have tried their best to look out for her and just make sure she is okay.