I had a really crazy second round dream this morning about my father. By second round i mean the kids had woken up at 6:30 and we had all gotten back to sleep for a little bit, so it was a thin sleep that didn’t feel like sleep.
In the dream I got a few letters from American Express that had to deal with fraud. There was some note in each one that detailed a complaint i had made. The dream didn’t start out having anything to do with my father. At some point though the letters began to reference my father and it turned out that two of the letters had to do with situations involving him.
one apparently took place when he was in graduate school in Ann Arbor michicgain- and somehow the letters included voice transcripts of recordings of the interviews. in this interview the officer of some sort was trying to explain that from the upper pennisula one could see russia- which isn’t true- but also had nothing to do with my father’s frustrating situatin so he got short with the guy. My father didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he usually enjoyed taking official discussions off course. This is a past time that I too enjoy when I’m in the right mood. However, when either of us aren’t in the right frame of mind we can get short with telemarketers, cashiers, sales people, and jehovah’s witnessess that knock at in opportune times.
I think that in the dream he was feeling inconvienced by the fraud so the further annoyance of the cop taking the subject off course set him off. The dream then morphed into a situation where my beareded 80’s father was in the back seat of my car asking me about the third letter which had to do with an accident he was involved with. There was something slightly infirm about him in this dream memory- which is odd because i don’t have any memories where he wasn’t in control of the situation. Even as his physical health deteriorated he was very much a leader.
i think that this part of the dream references a situation a few years before he passed away in which he got into a fender bender- where someone accelerated and then stopped at a highway entrance. there was no damage to either car but she tried to soak him for whiplash- which made him incensed. partly because he had hit her and partly because it was clearly ambulance chasing. but in the dream it was almost like he was a calm child or an althiemerzs patient.
what’s most interesting about all this is that he felt so present in the dream- and i have not been able to achieve that sense of presence in quite a long time. i think it’s because being at the beach in a motel reminds me of going to the beach with my parents when we were growing up.
as i write this i’m sitting in a motel chair fighting with my 7 year old daughter who is being a total jerk. we have a few hours left at the beach and she is just being contrary all the time. i’m at my witts end about it really. I wonder now how difficult i was. I know I wasn’t particularly easy, and i know that my dad exploded at me from time to time. But was i this annoying? So often now i feel torn between two place in time. As i observe my daughter and imagine myself i can also imagine myself as my father. i almost feel as if i am my father looking at me when i am my looking at my daughter, and through this process i get a better sense of myself then and now- and a sense of what my father must have been thinking and feeling. Because in truth we don’t reveal our full true selves to our children. We have to project maturity and adultness even when we feel like kids ourselves. Why? why can’t we just let them know that we are still children - because then the lines get too blurred- which is clearly already a problem in our family where our oldest thinks she’s in charge
The same is not true of our younger daughter and i do feel more comfortable acting childlike with her. go figure
When my father died 3 and a half years ago I was in a bit of emotional shock for quite some time. Despite taking on his role as the family leader during the turmoil that followed his death I managed to shoot a couple of short videos on my brother’s little photo camera.
A couple of weeks later as I started to get my self back together I thought of making a short film about his passing to help me process and focus on the information. I messed around with it a little bit- and when I went back to my hometown for a public service a month after he died I shot a few more videos with that same camera. I liked that the grainy videos felt almost like super 8, and that they had a home movie quality that made them feel intimate.
I got myself one of those same point and shoot cameras and began to use it liberally, documenting my new daughter’s birth, and my older daughter’s new songs.
Periodically i would sit down and try to work with some of the footage, trying to find some way to honor my father’s memory and connect with my sense of loss (which was something i was having a lot of trouble doing). A few months after my daughter’s birth I ran into my friend Lois who told me I had to go for a boy to round out my family. That’s when the little film morphed into a much bigger film about much larger and more complex issues. Still, i knew that it would begin with my father’s passing and explore the nature of family.
Since then i have thought about this film a great deal, and shot a little bit more. LIke this exercise in blogging, the trailer pretty much tumbled out fully formed since it had been gestating for years. But it’s only the jumping off point. This 4 minute trailer will probably spread out to about 15 minutes in the film.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the rest of the film but it will be some time before i pull it together. In the meantime i’ll continue to write about the process.
Alana and I have been working on her script together for the past couple of weeks. It’s a very strong script and my method of working on something like this is to try and keep as much as possible intact while adding and deleting as needed. Mostly at this point my goal is to trim out things that don’t move the story forward as forcefully as they might.
We’ve applied for a small grant that would enable us to make a very lo-fi version of the film. In some ways this would be a good way to make the film. It would be intimate and would reflect the feeling of the script in a positive way. At the same time a lo-fi no stars version would make it difficult to really get it out there- and it is a strong film. So we’re trying to make the script as strong as possible and plan to explore other options as well.
At the same time i’ve been working some on putting together a trailer for the documentary that i’m working on. the trailer will be a little bit like the beginning of the film but condensed. I should have that finished in a couple of days.
This morning as i sat down to work on a different post I noticed that a blog about marriage issues linked to the donor 67 blog without comment. I took a quick look and noticed that the driving sentiment behind the site was the idea of protecting the sanctity of marriage.
While i have become increasing “conservative” as i have aged and sired… and I clearly have issues with the way in which the IVF industry operates, i also would love to see my gay neighbors protected by the same laws that i am protected by. Two of the best parents that I can think of are a lesbian couple that live around the corner from us. They have a child with some developmental issues. In order to best meet his needs, one of them went back to school to get a degree in dealing with special needs children. She advocates on his behalf tirelessly and works with him in a loving way. It’s kind of incredible to see how far he’s come with her love and care. The idea that her marriage and her parenting skills and devotion are somehow lesser because she is in a loving relationship with a woman rather than a man is hard to fathom. In addition, my discussion about anonymity isn’t about aimed at shutting down the Ivf industry but instead, increasing reasonable discussion about complex issues. What’s most frustrating to me is the idea that by discussing these issues I might be somehow perceived as attacking the rights of others.
In addition to working on this film about donor conception issues I am working on a film about a development project in Brooklyn (that involves and arena for a pro sports team, housing, and office towers) and the people who are trying to stop this project. One of the issues being fought over is the use of eminent domain. Eminent domain is a hot button issue with conservatives and libertarians. In this case the right to use it is clearly being abused. Many politicians and citizens are loathe to fight it on these grounds because they believe that the benefits of the project outweigh the consequences of allowing this abuse. Others feel that as a society we need to be able to wield the power of eminent domain with few strings attached in order to further the greater good. In the name of the larger population they feel that we should be able to sacrifice the rights of the few. One of the common refrains at a recent hearing on the project was that the “few’ were standing in the way of the needs of the many.
As a filmmaker deeply involved with the story I have to say that I think that the abuse of this power is extremely troubling. One of the issues involved is the trojan horses of affordable housing and jobs. The project was sold to the public (and by sold i mean a multi million dollar pr campaign) with the slogan, “jobs, housing, hoops”. In reality, the public dollars being used to create the affordable housing could be put to much more effective use in other projects, and the job creation would be very limited.
During the 50’s and 60’s great swaths of urban America were bulldozed in the name of urban renewal. “Substandard, blighted areas” were knocked down to make way for new housing complexes in a great “liberal” experiment. Unfortunately, that experiment failed miserably. Vast communities were decimated, and according to the research of noted psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove, the urban epidemics of drug abuse, obesity, and diabetes were born. If anyone doubts her ideas, a quick read (that was a joke- it’s a 1000 plus page book) of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” should shed lay a good foundation for understanding where she’s coming from.
I use the word liberal, liberally above. The people who supported this work were clearly well meaning but the methodology and results have left ravaged neighborhoods that are only just beginning to recover 50-60 years later. Given what we know now about all of these issues it’s really almost unfathomable that this type of planning would be still used with such abandon.
The irony here is that in general, the liberal/progressive establishment still stands behind many of these polices in the zero sum cold war game of liberal/conservative politics. This zero sum game makes it nearly impossible for people to take a hard look at awful situations.
In the fight that we are chronicling, the issue has created several odd alliances. The “progressive” denizens of the neighborhood, fighting to save their homes and what they like about their community are painted as obstructionists fighting jobs and progress and in general they fall on the side of the libertarians on this issue. These locals are then attacked by “progressives” not directly affected for being in league with their zero sum enemies. In addition all of the politicians who directly represent the districts affected on a local level are against it. However, those who are more intertwined with the levers of power, like the governor and the mayor, support the project. The “progressive” housing rights group ACORN is a major supporter (and majorly hated by conservatives). The “progressive” senator Charles Schumer is a supporter because he is excited about the jobs and the pride that a professional basketball team will bring. As such, the “liberal” reader of the news who skims the stories on the subject might be inclined to think that they too should support it. However, the truth is always much more complex than the headlines. This deeper truth behind the headlines is one thing that compels me to make documentaries.
As i have become older, with more responsibilities and ever more complex choices to make, I’m increasingly troubled at the realities that exist behind the various debates we engage in. As a human being that cares about my family and my community I often feel shackled by outdated ideas concerning the most advantageous way for us to move forward. Until we can truly access the best possible information and have the freedom to debate issues in an open way we will find it nearly impossible to move forward as a society that truly protects the rights of everyone.
