(author's note: This blog is rather long but you'll have to excuse that. Perhaps once you take into account I never blog you can feel as though I have been saving up blogs and if that is the case it is not that long at all. Or perhaps you can just not read it and then you'll have nothing to complain about.)
"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered."
Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film version
I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I don’t mean that in the way most people do, having no idea which path to take because there are so many offered, but rather I consistently bounced back and forth between two options. The first was to entertain, at first as an actor but gradually this grew into a passion for filmmaking. The second option was to preach the gospel from a pulpit. My life may clearly reflect my choice now but the question plagued me all the way into my collegiate career and I spent a year as a Christian Studies major at a local Baptist university before transferring to the state school and majoring in film. Still to this day I have thoughts about pursuing one or the other (though having made a decision to focus primarily on filmmaking.) Until recently this seemed like a coincidence, the simple diverging interests that come from growing up attending church and going to the movies on a regular basis. However, I have come to see that it is more than that. There is a reason I am torn between these two professions and a reason why they are not so different as I used to believe. The reason is one word: story.
A story is made up of three parts that most people know: a beginning, middle, and an end. This isn’t a hard concept to grasp considering that our lives are made up of the exact same parts. We are born, we live, and we die. Stories begin and end every day around us and we celebrate one and mourn the other. The construction of a simple story isn’t hard; in fact it’s almost impossible (some would say it IS impossible) to screw it up. I remember watching the commentary to a particularly terrible student film once in which the director claimed, “The movie actually ended up having a three act structure even though we didn’t plan on it.” Besides being laughable it’s quite revealing about how inherent story is in each of us. Think about the last joke you heard or your friend telling you about her day at work. The interesting thing is that most people aren’t thinking about the power of proper story structure while doing this. They are simply thinking about the punch line or about how annoying their boss is. It’s like breathing to us.
Of course those jokes don’t usually stick with us forever and rarely do they affect the world or the way we look at it but some stories do both of those things, those are the great stories. Lately I’ve been trying to figure out just what it is that makes a story great. As someone who would enjoy spending the rest of my life telling stories this seems to be a proper priority. What I am discovering is not new but it is rather eye opening for myself. For my last movie I decided to approach the stories of my grandfather and how they have affected my life (also pulling some stories from my own life.) As that project gets closer to completion I know that it will easily be the best thing I have made so far because in it I gave more respect to the story than I ever have. For the story I am a part of now (and which you may be hearing more of in the coming months) I left the comforts of familiarity and chose something rather different. Still, my eyes had been opened up to the power of stories and I sought (and continue to seek), with great humility, the construction of something more than just an idea or plot: a good story.
I won’t go into great detail about how my eyes were opened but suffice it to say I have a list of books located at the bottom of this and you should read any of them if you’re interested in the grandness of stories and how to better tell them. While the books I was reading inspired me to tell great stories, I had forgotten just how much one could affect me. It was in my research for my latest screenplay that I put a film in my Netflix queue by the name of Lonesome Dove. Having never seen the film or heard the story I went into it not expecting much. The movie (actually it’s a TV mini-series but who really cares?) is a really spectacular production with a pretty outstanding cast but that’s not what drew me in. What drew me in was the story and at a six hour running time it was a long one. But when I reached the end, I got a familiar feeling. It was the feeling of completion, which is wonderful, but it was also a feeling of sadness. I knew that the story had been told and as the pig says “That’s all folks.” But while I was glad that I had just been told a really great story I wasn’t satisfied. Was there something lacking in the story? No, leastways not that I could see. It had the three necessary components (beginning, middle, end) and they were each expertly executed. It had character arcs, sub-plots, foreshadowing, climaxes, plot points, and all the other more complex pieces that go into the making of a great story, yet I felt emptiness. What was missing?
The feeling is one I’ve had only a few times before most memorably with what remains one of my favorite stories: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I remember reading the last lines of the book and being rather depressed that the journey was over. To make matters worse, I had to experience the same feeling all over again when they made the book into movies that instantly became favorites. I’m one of the people you won’t ever find complaining about how many times the film Return of the King seems like it’s ending because each time it doesn’t, I am secretly relieved that I don’t have to leave this world yet, that I may stay a little longer.
I know I’m not the only one who experiences this. A friend who recently finished making his way through Stephen King’s Dark Tower series conveyed the same exact feeling to me upon finishing it. I was able to share in the feeling with others (to a lesser extent for myself) when the Harry Potter books came to an end. I felt it when, despite the lack of perfection in the recent additions, the credits rolled on Star Wars saga. So what is this thing? Why is there always sadness mixed in with the joy of completion?
Well perhaps because life is made up of just that because while our lives are the middle part of the story they are also full of beginnings and ends. It is a great feeling to graduate college yet the thought of leaving those friends and memories does tear one so. It is a wonderful feeling to see a friend get engaged or married but you know things will be different and you can’t help but be a little sad as well. It is a wonderful thing to grow up but sometimes you miss being a kid. I have no experience in this so I proceed with trepidation; it is a beautiful thing to watch a child be born but it also signals the end of the life you’ve known so far. Ends are sad and yet happy, joyous and yet mournful. We want to complete the journey but we don’t want the story to end. Even though the book reads “happily ever after” we wish to see it and experience it, knowing full well that every story eventually ends and that no end is satisfying. But perhaps we just want to delay it for a while. We want the experience of the journey without the bitterness of the end.
That’s when I figured it out. Right there is when I realized something I never understood before. Growing up in church, reading the same Sunday School lessons every year, one becomes rather accustomed to the whole thing. If I’m completely honest these stories easily become boring. As time wears on it becomes hard to grasp why someone would say that thing you hear every Sunday is “the greatest story ever told.” Ten year old me would have rather read a comic book or watched Star Wars for the hundredth time. But that’s missing the point, which is something I’m awfully guilty of. Not only is the story of Christ perfectly constructed (the entire Old Testament itself is foreshadowing) but there is something else going on there. The hero (Jesus) completes the journey but then he does something incredible: he lets us be the hero. The story isn’t over because we get to live it out for the rest of our lives because now Christ lives in us. The characters we know aren’t gone, the journey is far from over, and the reward still waits for us in the end. And what is this reward? Why it is nothing short of the journey’s completion without the sadness of the end. It’s over but the story keeps going forever and ever. How flipping amazing is that? I gain the completion of literally participating in the greatest story ever and it never has to end? That’s why Jesus is called the author AND the perfecter, because no one else’s story even comes close. I think that is why other stories leave us sad because ultimately they can’t fulfill us. God wants us to know that the real satisfaction lies in him alone. Stories don’t satisfy but they can point us to greater truths and, hopefully, the greatest truth of all. It is with this understanding that I finally realized being a preacher and being a filmmaker aren’t such different choices. They are both storytellers by craft and, if done right, both will point to truth. While I may never stand at a pulpit, and I don’t want my scripts to seem preachy, I do want to tell stories that matter. Perhaps one day the stories I tell will help people see truth, perhaps one day I will tell a “great” story, or perhaps I need only be concerned in participating in the story in front of me and the rest will work itself out. Whatever my part I am invigorated by the stories that surround me and by the truth and beauty of the gospel.
I could try and think of a brilliant way to sum up my thoughts in my own words but I came across something the other day in a book called Happily Ever After, which takes the last page from many literary classics, and nothing I could write would even come close.
“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that happened after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
the books I read that helped open my eyes to story (and continue to do so) are as follows:
Story by Robert McKee
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler
I have not read the latest Donald Miller book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years but I have a feeling based on what I've heard about the book that there is a possibility of some similarity in thought. If that is the case then you'll have to forgive me and believe that I didn't rip off Donald Miller and can't wait to read his book. If you have to make a choice I say read the Miller book because he's sure to say it better than I.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Thursday, July 31, 2008
interMISSION
As I sit here on the front porch of my house, smoking my pipe and looking out at the end of another day in Greer, South Carolina I try and ponder the barrage of thoughts running through my head and feelings swelling in my heart. Tomorrow is the beginning of August, a month which I will primarily spend on a different continent. It is two days since I have been back from Mississippi and almost a week since the last campers left my staff and I to clean up and clear out. So here I sit collecting all of these thoughts so that I may properly organize them and begin to figure them out. I find that writing is one of the best ways for me to do this.
Some of the thoughts are about camp and what it means to finally be done with it. Reading that sentence over in my head makes it sound like I couldn’t wait for it to finish, which is far from the truth. I have already admitted that at the beginning of the summer I didn’t look at FUGE as anything more than a fun way to spend a summer and a smart way to save money but of course GOD had different plans. Those plans included meeting a group of people which, for the second time in my life, helped me understand what unity in the faith meant. The people of which I speak are, of course, the staff of Mississippi College FUGE ’08. If it didn’t take forever, and anyone would take the time to read it, I could write a paragraph about every member of my team and some things I love about them. For some I could write more. Some times I think that corporations and conventions of Christianity miss the point but GOD can work anywhere and he’s not too shy to demonstrate that. I wish I could explain here, in eloquent words, what camp is like and what it meant to me but I feel like that task is beyond my skill so I will only say that it was a GOD experience and leave it to someone else (or challenge the reader to try it for a summer.)
As school was ending and May approached I was really thinking only thing of one thing (I wish I could say it was exams but it wasn’t…it wasn’t Indiana Jones either) and I think that everyone could tell. What I’m talking about is, of course, Africa. For those of you who don’t know, I will be spending the last three weeks of August in Africa with my best friend, Nathan Willis, making short films with locals and missionaries about HIV/AIDS in Malawi. For those of you who know me, know that this is the beginning work of something that I feel GOD is calling both Nathan and I to. When I reached camp I realized the danger I was in of simply getting through the next two months so that I could take this journey so I prayed that HE would direct my focus not on the future solely, but primarily on the present. Well, HE did just that in me. Not that my excitement faded in any way but that I was able to learn all that HE wanted me to learn from camp and do the ministry there that needed to be done and I was blessed by this. So blessed that I almost didn’t want to leave and am thankful that I had many things awaiting me (including Africa) after I finished. GOD is so good at what he does that HE even put a few things in my life which made part of me almost want to stay (don’t worry I haven’t lost any of my fervor and I know that it is where I haven been called which makes it even more exciting.) I have found lately the test of my patience to be one of the greatest lessons I am learning.
Most people my age don’t know what they will do with their life and find this rather testing. What GOD wants of them and their lives is something they have to search for and in this way he tests them and asks that they purse him in this way. My (and Nathan’s) lot is a different one but no less trying. In this case we both know where we want to be and what we want to do but we know that it is a long road that leads there. I have spent time praying and searching the Bible for something to teach me in this. After a few months of doing so I realized that which I was searching for in God’s word was terribly obvious but I probably just didn’t spend enough time looking for it. You see there’s this story of these people who are told by GOD of a place where the land is full of milk and honey and it is promised to them. Of course being human they screw it up and are forced to spend 40 years in the desert wandering around and unable to reach their destination. The funny thing is (read: not funny) their leader (Charlton Heston…I mean, Moses) has to wander around with them and take care of them (well, GOD worked through him in this way.) The thing is the 40 years in the desert isn’t pointless because GOD takes this time to teach lessons, reveal his presence, and bring the Israelites to the place they need to be in order to enter this place (of course the original group of people are all dead…good lesssons to learn in that as well.) There are also miracles in the desert (um…bread on the ground every day? Crazy.) and Moses doesn’t spend his time thinking about how great the promised land is but instead about what has to be done while in the desert.
So lately I’ve been tasting humility because before I’ve been struggling with pride. GOD has been showing me how he doesn’t need me but chooses to use me anyways. It’s a lesson I wrote down in Sunday School long ago but one I need to learn daily. My father told me today, when I began to worry about a lot of stuff that I had to do for Africa that GOD had it under control and that I should know that. I do know this but it’s too easy for me to forget. My friend Kathryn Justice pointed out that GOD was probably still teaching me patience and it was exactly what I needed to hear and instead of trying to figure out the problem immediately, which I wanted to do, I decided that I needed to spend some time with GOD. I spent time praying that HE would break me and take this away, that I would rely solely on him and then I spent time singing songs to him and finding some peace.
I believe that we are all designed for adventure and a lot of things that I’ve been seeing and hearing lately only reinforce that. Well this summer has been full of adventure and it’s about start again. I am thankful, however, for this time to sit and read and smoke a pipe, and talk with friends and worship, and pray. There is beauty in the desert also. I ask that you all pray for me as this journey begins that I seek GOD fully in all of it and that he reveal himself to me. I hope the same for all of you.
Some of the thoughts are about camp and what it means to finally be done with it. Reading that sentence over in my head makes it sound like I couldn’t wait for it to finish, which is far from the truth. I have already admitted that at the beginning of the summer I didn’t look at FUGE as anything more than a fun way to spend a summer and a smart way to save money but of course GOD had different plans. Those plans included meeting a group of people which, for the second time in my life, helped me understand what unity in the faith meant. The people of which I speak are, of course, the staff of Mississippi College FUGE ’08. If it didn’t take forever, and anyone would take the time to read it, I could write a paragraph about every member of my team and some things I love about them. For some I could write more. Some times I think that corporations and conventions of Christianity miss the point but GOD can work anywhere and he’s not too shy to demonstrate that. I wish I could explain here, in eloquent words, what camp is like and what it meant to me but I feel like that task is beyond my skill so I will only say that it was a GOD experience and leave it to someone else (or challenge the reader to try it for a summer.)
As school was ending and May approached I was really thinking only thing of one thing (I wish I could say it was exams but it wasn’t…it wasn’t Indiana Jones either) and I think that everyone could tell. What I’m talking about is, of course, Africa. For those of you who don’t know, I will be spending the last three weeks of August in Africa with my best friend, Nathan Willis, making short films with locals and missionaries about HIV/AIDS in Malawi. For those of you who know me, know that this is the beginning work of something that I feel GOD is calling both Nathan and I to. When I reached camp I realized the danger I was in of simply getting through the next two months so that I could take this journey so I prayed that HE would direct my focus not on the future solely, but primarily on the present. Well, HE did just that in me. Not that my excitement faded in any way but that I was able to learn all that HE wanted me to learn from camp and do the ministry there that needed to be done and I was blessed by this. So blessed that I almost didn’t want to leave and am thankful that I had many things awaiting me (including Africa) after I finished. GOD is so good at what he does that HE even put a few things in my life which made part of me almost want to stay (don’t worry I haven’t lost any of my fervor and I know that it is where I haven been called which makes it even more exciting.) I have found lately the test of my patience to be one of the greatest lessons I am learning.
Most people my age don’t know what they will do with their life and find this rather testing. What GOD wants of them and their lives is something they have to search for and in this way he tests them and asks that they purse him in this way. My (and Nathan’s) lot is a different one but no less trying. In this case we both know where we want to be and what we want to do but we know that it is a long road that leads there. I have spent time praying and searching the Bible for something to teach me in this. After a few months of doing so I realized that which I was searching for in God’s word was terribly obvious but I probably just didn’t spend enough time looking for it. You see there’s this story of these people who are told by GOD of a place where the land is full of milk and honey and it is promised to them. Of course being human they screw it up and are forced to spend 40 years in the desert wandering around and unable to reach their destination. The funny thing is (read: not funny) their leader (Charlton Heston…I mean, Moses) has to wander around with them and take care of them (well, GOD worked through him in this way.) The thing is the 40 years in the desert isn’t pointless because GOD takes this time to teach lessons, reveal his presence, and bring the Israelites to the place they need to be in order to enter this place (of course the original group of people are all dead…good lesssons to learn in that as well.) There are also miracles in the desert (um…bread on the ground every day? Crazy.) and Moses doesn’t spend his time thinking about how great the promised land is but instead about what has to be done while in the desert.
So lately I’ve been tasting humility because before I’ve been struggling with pride. GOD has been showing me how he doesn’t need me but chooses to use me anyways. It’s a lesson I wrote down in Sunday School long ago but one I need to learn daily. My father told me today, when I began to worry about a lot of stuff that I had to do for Africa that GOD had it under control and that I should know that. I do know this but it’s too easy for me to forget. My friend Kathryn Justice pointed out that GOD was probably still teaching me patience and it was exactly what I needed to hear and instead of trying to figure out the problem immediately, which I wanted to do, I decided that I needed to spend some time with GOD. I spent time praying that HE would break me and take this away, that I would rely solely on him and then I spent time singing songs to him and finding some peace.
I believe that we are all designed for adventure and a lot of things that I’ve been seeing and hearing lately only reinforce that. Well this summer has been full of adventure and it’s about start again. I am thankful, however, for this time to sit and read and smoke a pipe, and talk with friends and worship, and pray. There is beauty in the desert also. I ask that you all pray for me as this journey begins that I seek GOD fully in all of it and that he reveal himself to me. I hope the same for all of you.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Films with my Father
In honor of Father’s Day I thought I’d set aside some time to reflect on my relationship with my Dad. Here is what came out when I decided to attempt this.
It’s hard growing up. Everyone knows it. Even us kids who grow up in a home Norman Rockwell would have been happy to paint have a hard time of it. If you’re a boy then this probably has something to do with your dad. Whether or not your father was hateful, loving, absent, present but distant, or just a normal dad there is some chip on our shoulders with our dads. This isn’t some retrospective on manhood and the need a boy has for his father’s affirmation or anything (there are plenty of good books on stuff like that) or rather a poetic take on an absent father because I don’t know anything about that. Rather this is simply my attempt to understand my relationship with my father and the way that I do that.
My father is not me. I am not my father. He’s a former football player, an electrician, a sports fan, a stern man, and can fix anything in the world. I, on the other hand, am none of these things. When it comes to similarities, I am much more like my mother in every respect. Perhaps this is why, in my growing up process, we clashed so often. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that I was a teenager. Regardless of why, my father and I certainly had our fair share of disagreements. This isn’t to say that I never fought with my mother (in fact most of the time he was simply playing the strong arm of the pair, not enacting his own punishment) but I think that when my dad and I fought it was harder because we’re so very different. For example, my father has a temper. A BIG temper. It never took too much troublemaking to set it off (and there was always a fair share of troublemaking to go around). I, on the other hand, don’t really react to situations in the same way. In fact when I become irritated I turn into something everyone loves: a smart aleck. I know it’s one of my worst faults and something that’s probably going to keep me on the couch a few nights (if and) when I get married. It’s even worse that this is the way I react to my father’s anger because it only serves to make him angrier. I think sometimes it’d be better if I were one of my brothers and could simply have a yelling contest and be done with it.
I was also a rebellious kid. When I say rebellious I don’t mean that I was doing drugs, drinking underage, smoking (anything), partying, or anything like that. In fact I was in church every time I got the chance (some days I went even when my family slept in) and constantly on youth trips and hanging out with my youth minister. This isn’t to say that my rebellion was excusable but rather just to more accurately define it. I got into punk rock in high school thanks to two older influences (both of whom I still count as close friends). When I say punk rock I mean pop punk and when I say pop punk I mean Blink-182, Green Day, and all others to a lesser extent. My parents didn’t understand my taste in music and didn’t agree with what it stood for. The problem is that they tried to stop it and when you’re listening to punk, you’re already mad enough at authority that when your parents try and make you stop listening to it….it just gets bad fast. So there were many long nights of hard fights, broken CDs, snide comments, loud yelling, and that aching feeling that all teenagers get: “they just don’t understand.”
Still even through this time there are many good memories I have withy my pops and a lot of them take place in a movie theater. First of all you should know that my Dad is not a movie guy. At least not a movie guy like I am. When it comes to movies he’s just an average person. He watches them, he enjoys them, and there are some he enjoys more than others but that’s pretty much where it ends. Of course with me it’s always been more than that. For me, the cinema has been an escape, a place of solace, a place of belonging, the great educator, the good friend, and how I understand the world around me. So I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the movies are also how I understand my dad. That the trips to the theater and the nights around the family TV were so important to me, that the films I saw with my father were more than just entertainment: they were how I connected with my dad on a personal level. The movie theater is the great equalizer because in the darkened theater we all come and participate in similar experiences and though we leave as strangers, for a brief time we are all related. I believe this is why, though my father and may have struggled to connect at all times, we found the theater as a place where we could connect (though we didn’t probably realize it at the time or at least I didn’t) and though my older brother may have had the sports field I had the movies. Briefly (because this is already probably too long winded) I would like to talk about several films and why they are important to me in my relationship with my father and why, whenever I see them, I will think of him. This is not an exhaustive list but rather three films which are most prominent in my mind right now and though at some point I would love to sit down and think more on the subject and rewrite this whole thing, at this point I just don’t have the time.
RETURN OF THE JEDI
Something great happened during my childhood: me, the biggest Star Wars nerd I know (not the biggest one period for sure…God that would be awful) , got to see the original trilogy in theaters. Of course George Lucas had went through and added sometimes pointless special effects to them but the important thing is that they were on the big screen and I was there. For the first one it was a family event as I recall: during January we all traveled to the theater and watched A NEW HOPE. Then a beautiful thing happened: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was released the weekend of my birthday and all of my friends went to see it with me (I think that’s when it became my favorite). But by the time RETURN OF THE JEDI rolled around everyone was spent (except, of course, me) so only my father and I journeyed to the theater to watch the final installment in the STAR WARS saga.
I remember sitting there in awe of a movie I’d seen at least 30 times (yes, even at that point) and I remember my father sitting through it with me. I don’t know if he enjoyed it, I don’t know if he stayed awake, and I don’t know if he had even really wanted to go but for me, it was important that my father was there. And, though we hadn’t yet reached my rebellious stage, it was a rather fitting film. After all the entire original trilogy is about a father and a son. And while my dad isn’t Darth Vader (though sometimes I felt like it) and I’m not Luke Skywalker (I was always a Han Solo kid myself), I believe there is a deep struggle within each of us to prove ourselves to our fathers and when Luke refuses to make the same mistake his dad did (in my favorite part of any of the movies) he does that and saves both his father and himself (in a roundabout way). And though RETURN OF THE JEDI is now my least favorite of the original trilogy, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I was somewhat of a history buff growing up. Now I’m not saying that I was fanatical but there were many an afternoon spent watching the History channel in my house instead of doing my homework. So when Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic came out (WWII being my favorite subject…mainly because that’s what they play on the History Channel) I was anxious to see it. The only problem is that I was young. Too young to see it on my own (I couldn’t even drive to the theater let alone buy a ticket), so after much discussion my parents decided to let me go see it and my father was to take me (I don’t know if my Mom could stomach it).
It was rough. Real, gritty, and violent. It was, I think, as close as we’ll ever get to recreating those events. Still within the grand scale of the European Theater of War there is a human story (I mean, it’s Spielberg). The story is not unlike other Steven Spielberg films thematically. In reality Tom Hanks is an army Captain sent to find a young Private who has lost all four of his brothers to the War of the Century but it doesn’t take to much imagination to see that Hanks is a surrogate father to Matt Damon’s Ryan and that his sacrifice in the end is that of a father for his son. Whenever I see this film I can only think of the first time I saw it in theaters and in the end I can only think of my father and know that he would do the same thing for me that Captain Miller does for Private Ryan.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
The last film is not one that I journeyed to the theater to see with my dad but rather one that we watch every year when Christmas rolls around. If my father loves any film, I believe it is this one. It is definitely his favorite holiday film (for though it transcends this genre it also fits perfectly into it) and, as a result, mine as well. Not only is the film a stirring tale of what one man can do against the evils of corporate greed and apathy, and how every person’s life matters but it is also the story of George Bailey trying to be a good husband, a good father, and a good man. It is the struggle that most of us guys are either dealing with or know we are going to have to deal with one day.
My father is George Bailey to me. Growing up and staying in the same town most of his life, he has done what my restless heart couldn’t do. He has made a life that is simple but full and he has shown me what a good man looks like. I don’t know the things my father struggles with (for a boy his father usually stays invincible) but I know that, like George Bailey, he could overcome it (of course not alone because we all need a guardian angel). My father loves my mother as fiercely as James Stewart loves Donna Reed and has always been an example to me of what love looks like. But mostly my father is a good dad. Though we are worlds apart I hope that I can be as good of a father as he has been to me. Through our arguments, struggles to understand one another, and sometimes-insurmountable frustration we have gained the relationship we have today and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Though he’s still not perfect, I wouldn’t want to call anyone else “Pops”. I look forward to continuing to growing up and learning more about my father, I look forward to one day asking his advice about a woman I love, or children that I am trying to raise, and I also look forward to a few more trips to the movie theater…
It’s hard growing up. Everyone knows it. Even us kids who grow up in a home Norman Rockwell would have been happy to paint have a hard time of it. If you’re a boy then this probably has something to do with your dad. Whether or not your father was hateful, loving, absent, present but distant, or just a normal dad there is some chip on our shoulders with our dads. This isn’t some retrospective on manhood and the need a boy has for his father’s affirmation or anything (there are plenty of good books on stuff like that) or rather a poetic take on an absent father because I don’t know anything about that. Rather this is simply my attempt to understand my relationship with my father and the way that I do that.
My father is not me. I am not my father. He’s a former football player, an electrician, a sports fan, a stern man, and can fix anything in the world. I, on the other hand, am none of these things. When it comes to similarities, I am much more like my mother in every respect. Perhaps this is why, in my growing up process, we clashed so often. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that I was a teenager. Regardless of why, my father and I certainly had our fair share of disagreements. This isn’t to say that I never fought with my mother (in fact most of the time he was simply playing the strong arm of the pair, not enacting his own punishment) but I think that when my dad and I fought it was harder because we’re so very different. For example, my father has a temper. A BIG temper. It never took too much troublemaking to set it off (and there was always a fair share of troublemaking to go around). I, on the other hand, don’t really react to situations in the same way. In fact when I become irritated I turn into something everyone loves: a smart aleck. I know it’s one of my worst faults and something that’s probably going to keep me on the couch a few nights (if and) when I get married. It’s even worse that this is the way I react to my father’s anger because it only serves to make him angrier. I think sometimes it’d be better if I were one of my brothers and could simply have a yelling contest and be done with it.
I was also a rebellious kid. When I say rebellious I don’t mean that I was doing drugs, drinking underage, smoking (anything), partying, or anything like that. In fact I was in church every time I got the chance (some days I went even when my family slept in) and constantly on youth trips and hanging out with my youth minister. This isn’t to say that my rebellion was excusable but rather just to more accurately define it. I got into punk rock in high school thanks to two older influences (both of whom I still count as close friends). When I say punk rock I mean pop punk and when I say pop punk I mean Blink-182, Green Day, and all others to a lesser extent. My parents didn’t understand my taste in music and didn’t agree with what it stood for. The problem is that they tried to stop it and when you’re listening to punk, you’re already mad enough at authority that when your parents try and make you stop listening to it….it just gets bad fast. So there were many long nights of hard fights, broken CDs, snide comments, loud yelling, and that aching feeling that all teenagers get: “they just don’t understand.”
Still even through this time there are many good memories I have withy my pops and a lot of them take place in a movie theater. First of all you should know that my Dad is not a movie guy. At least not a movie guy like I am. When it comes to movies he’s just an average person. He watches them, he enjoys them, and there are some he enjoys more than others but that’s pretty much where it ends. Of course with me it’s always been more than that. For me, the cinema has been an escape, a place of solace, a place of belonging, the great educator, the good friend, and how I understand the world around me. So I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the movies are also how I understand my dad. That the trips to the theater and the nights around the family TV were so important to me, that the films I saw with my father were more than just entertainment: they were how I connected with my dad on a personal level. The movie theater is the great equalizer because in the darkened theater we all come and participate in similar experiences and though we leave as strangers, for a brief time we are all related. I believe this is why, though my father and may have struggled to connect at all times, we found the theater as a place where we could connect (though we didn’t probably realize it at the time or at least I didn’t) and though my older brother may have had the sports field I had the movies. Briefly (because this is already probably too long winded) I would like to talk about several films and why they are important to me in my relationship with my father and why, whenever I see them, I will think of him. This is not an exhaustive list but rather three films which are most prominent in my mind right now and though at some point I would love to sit down and think more on the subject and rewrite this whole thing, at this point I just don’t have the time.
RETURN OF THE JEDI
Something great happened during my childhood: me, the biggest Star Wars nerd I know (not the biggest one period for sure…God that would be awful) , got to see the original trilogy in theaters. Of course George Lucas had went through and added sometimes pointless special effects to them but the important thing is that they were on the big screen and I was there. For the first one it was a family event as I recall: during January we all traveled to the theater and watched A NEW HOPE. Then a beautiful thing happened: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was released the weekend of my birthday and all of my friends went to see it with me (I think that’s when it became my favorite). But by the time RETURN OF THE JEDI rolled around everyone was spent (except, of course, me) so only my father and I journeyed to the theater to watch the final installment in the STAR WARS saga.
I remember sitting there in awe of a movie I’d seen at least 30 times (yes, even at that point) and I remember my father sitting through it with me. I don’t know if he enjoyed it, I don’t know if he stayed awake, and I don’t know if he had even really wanted to go but for me, it was important that my father was there. And, though we hadn’t yet reached my rebellious stage, it was a rather fitting film. After all the entire original trilogy is about a father and a son. And while my dad isn’t Darth Vader (though sometimes I felt like it) and I’m not Luke Skywalker (I was always a Han Solo kid myself), I believe there is a deep struggle within each of us to prove ourselves to our fathers and when Luke refuses to make the same mistake his dad did (in my favorite part of any of the movies) he does that and saves both his father and himself (in a roundabout way). And though RETURN OF THE JEDI is now my least favorite of the original trilogy, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I was somewhat of a history buff growing up. Now I’m not saying that I was fanatical but there were many an afternoon spent watching the History channel in my house instead of doing my homework. So when Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic came out (WWII being my favorite subject…mainly because that’s what they play on the History Channel) I was anxious to see it. The only problem is that I was young. Too young to see it on my own (I couldn’t even drive to the theater let alone buy a ticket), so after much discussion my parents decided to let me go see it and my father was to take me (I don’t know if my Mom could stomach it).
It was rough. Real, gritty, and violent. It was, I think, as close as we’ll ever get to recreating those events. Still within the grand scale of the European Theater of War there is a human story (I mean, it’s Spielberg). The story is not unlike other Steven Spielberg films thematically. In reality Tom Hanks is an army Captain sent to find a young Private who has lost all four of his brothers to the War of the Century but it doesn’t take to much imagination to see that Hanks is a surrogate father to Matt Damon’s Ryan and that his sacrifice in the end is that of a father for his son. Whenever I see this film I can only think of the first time I saw it in theaters and in the end I can only think of my father and know that he would do the same thing for me that Captain Miller does for Private Ryan.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
The last film is not one that I journeyed to the theater to see with my dad but rather one that we watch every year when Christmas rolls around. If my father loves any film, I believe it is this one. It is definitely his favorite holiday film (for though it transcends this genre it also fits perfectly into it) and, as a result, mine as well. Not only is the film a stirring tale of what one man can do against the evils of corporate greed and apathy, and how every person’s life matters but it is also the story of George Bailey trying to be a good husband, a good father, and a good man. It is the struggle that most of us guys are either dealing with or know we are going to have to deal with one day.
My father is George Bailey to me. Growing up and staying in the same town most of his life, he has done what my restless heart couldn’t do. He has made a life that is simple but full and he has shown me what a good man looks like. I don’t know the things my father struggles with (for a boy his father usually stays invincible) but I know that, like George Bailey, he could overcome it (of course not alone because we all need a guardian angel). My father loves my mother as fiercely as James Stewart loves Donna Reed and has always been an example to me of what love looks like. But mostly my father is a good dad. Though we are worlds apart I hope that I can be as good of a father as he has been to me. Through our arguments, struggles to understand one another, and sometimes-insurmountable frustration we have gained the relationship we have today and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Though he’s still not perfect, I wouldn’t want to call anyone else “Pops”. I look forward to continuing to growing up and learning more about my father, I look forward to one day asking his advice about a woman I love, or children that I am trying to raise, and I also look forward to a few more trips to the movie theater…
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