We were down by the river, the family and I, walking around in our river shoes like the summer people that we are. A shy looking boy with a fishing pole approached just as the wife and older girl were heading off to find a bathroom. The little girl and i stuck around to watch the fishing.

The shy boy turned out to be not all that shy, and he started to talk and I started to listen. Mostly he prattled on about eels and fishes, and how people around there were crazy, and they liked to break things. Things turned maudlin pretty quickly. First it was the eels. They were really lampreys and the have a lot of teeth in a rows around a circle and they’ll suck your blood.

Next we touched on the flood of a few years earlier. It had taken out a good chunk of the bank that we were standing on. It has also taken out a house and a 13 year old girl with it. The boy was only 11, he didn’t really know her, and no it didn’t really make him that sad. He got to the sad part later.

He showed me the scar on his knee. That was when he hit a car when some kids were chasing him because they wanted something he had but he didn’t want to give it to him. 15 stitches.

I heard about the ankle he broke skiing when he went for the first time. He did all right on the bunny slope…. but it closed for the day and his teacher wanted a picture of him skiing. So he went on the bigger slope and his luck held out only the teacher’s camera didn’t work so he had to go again. Damn she was slow so he had to go one more time- and it was icy and he flipped a bunch and shredded his ankle. He doesn’t like to let people know he’s in pain so he toughed it out- but when the bus got home his mom took him to the hospital. Turns out his friend broke his wrist the same day, well not really his friend, this kid that makes fun of him.

It was clear that he was probably kind of an outcast in an outcast kind of town. He was lonely so i swam with him. The river is clear and cold and it’s amazing to swim with goggles and look at the baby fish and the river rocks. i asked if he ever used goggles. He didn’t like em and preferred opening his eyes. When i finally got him to try mine he was amazed. I should have left them for him. Sitting here now I feel like a selfish idiot for not passing on my 3 dollar goggles to a kid that didn’t have any. He asked about the city. He thought maybe he’d been but couldn’t really remember.

It was getting late and we started to leave when he said a curious thing, “and i don’t have a dad”. It wasn’t so odd that he didn’t have a father. In fact i pretty much assumed that he didn’t. It was just weird how it came out starting with an “and” as if we had been talking about family matters. It was clear that part of him was desperate to discuss it with someone who was willing to listen. So we listened. Actually I checked my email a little at the same time- a fact that my wife chastised me for later. However, I did it somewhat intentionally… it seemed that what he was saying was so powerful that full attention might have gummed up the works. It felt almost like a confessional and there’s a reason those guys sit behind a screen, to give some distance to such powerful truths.

He talked a lot about much older siblings, and it was kind of fast and uneven in sort of a blur. There were a conflicting number of brothers and sisters and that stemmed from the fact that they probably had something to do with his father. I had a ton of empathy for this kid and really liked him a lot- and apologize for any sense of condescension that might be coming across.

“i have three brothers.. well two actually cause one is dead. He was 18 ,,, two years ago he hit a house… car accident. I have a sister that’s 30 and a brother that’s 23 and a brother but i don’t know… my dad beat up my mom when she was 6 months pregnant …. cause he wanted to get together and she didn’t … it took 15 cops to stop it…. when i was two months old i was supposed to have visits with him in jail but he didn’t want to pay anything so he said no and signed away… signed papers that he didn’t want anything to do with me. but he has other kids too. I never met him.”

We had to go at that point, it was getting late, and a little too heavy for my 8 year old, and for me.

Yesterday would have been my father’s 76th birthday. 4 and half years ago he tried to cross a highway at night wearing all black. He didn’t make it. I’m so much like him that it’s hard for me not to be aware of him in some ways almost all the time.

At dinner last night I was reminiscing about him and I brought up a story about our first film, Half-Cocked. That film was born out of love and respect for some incredibly talented people. If it wasn’t for my father it would have been a total mess.

At the time that we made the film I was in a band and had met a group of artists and musicians who lived together in what was once a mansion in downtown Louisville. It was owned and presided over by an explosively talented guy named Jon Cook. The rooms were filled by other equally talented people who played music and made art together in a variety of configurations.

When my band was on our first tour we had no show set up in Louisville but someone had told me to call Jon to see if he could help us out. He actually made it possible for us to play in a bar (there were no patrons) and he put us up in “The Rocket House” (it got it’s name from the energy in the house, as well as it’s brick turret). We had met up with a couple of other bands the night before in Chattanooga so we brought them along. There were already a couple of bands staying there, so I think the total number of bands in the house including those who actually lived there was…7. Coming from the compressed confines of the East Village- it seemed like this house had an endless capacity for people- and creative energy.

When we got back to NY we all stayed in touch and that year we probably toured through there 5 or 6 times- and we got them some shows in NY. My girlfriend Suki (and future wife) went on tour with a friend’s band and she too was blown away by the creative energy of the place. I talked her into dropping out of film school to make a film about it all with me.

In addition to playing bass in a a rock band I was also a photographer and took it upon myself to document the bands we played with. Suki and I decided to make a movie that would look like my photos and create a document that would capture the full energy of the community. As my background was in documentary, and hers was in classic hollywood film- we decided to combine our different skill sets.

Over an intense few week period we banged out a script. I would pace around her apartment shouting out ideas and she would type them up on her word processing typewriter. Then we would bounce our ideas off of our friends and roommates. Not everyone had computers then and it was a frustrating process trying to get it down on paper/disc .

We were so enamored of our characters that we wrote scenes that were long love poems about their creative energy. The basic story was there but we knew it needed work. When we had that first draft done I excitedly sent it off to my father. A few people had email addresses in 1993 but I was not one of them Within a week we received the script back in the mail. There were a few punctuation notes but the only real message was scrawled across the cover page.

“Where the fuck’s the conflict” it read in a loping script.

I was kind of devastated but he was right. We had written in a basic conflict that drove the story, but we loved all of our characters too much. We hadn’t been able to bring ourselves to picture them doing anything … wrong… or mean… or … selfish. They were namby pamby goody two shoes that were …. boring.

So we set to work writing in conflict and fighting among ourselves. We made a film called, “Half-Cocked”.

For the past year I have been working with Alana on a script based on her story. The first draft that she showed me had some magical moments, but it was long and all over the place. Most importantly, she wasn’t ready to shine too harsh a light on her doppelganger in the script… or the other characters. My father’s words echoed through my head as I read it. I saw myself in her and her script and I wanted to be like my father and save it.

Over the past month I have put my nose to the grindstone and attacked it. I’ve worked hard to get rid of anything that doesn’t move the story forward. There were a few places that I hadn’t fixed. This morning as I swam at the local pool I was thinking about my Dad when it hit me that the one scene I was troubled by in this newest version of the script wasn’t working because …. it lacked conflict. Immediately I saw how it would play out. The one character that needed development would get angry, which made him more real. His anger forced the main character to take a hard look at herself, and the fullness of the scene made it possible for him to come back in the end.

I felt the presence of my father in that pool as I jumped out after only half my normal time. I was too excited to get back to writing, to continue swimming.

Last night, we were lucky enough to get a babysitter so that we could go see Richard Brody discuss his book, “Everything is Cinema” about Jean-luc Godard. We actually missed the majority of the discussion while grabbing dinner, but the dessert was getting to see “A Married Woman“. It was inspiring in its simple complexity.

In working on our current project, “Battle of Brooklyn” about a fight between a community and a developer, we have struggled mightily with documentary push and pull between information and story. Audiences have come to have an expectation about what a documentary is - they often feel that they need clear information so that they can understand the story - and if our film doesn’t in some way meet those expectations…we have to wonder who will ever see it.

As filmmakers and artists, we have always existed in a grey zone. We started making narrative films that were documents of real people playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Some people were confused and thought that they were documentaries. When DV cameras became somewhat affordable, we decided to make a documentary. When it was done, many people were confused and thought it was a scripted film.

We’ve never been able to secure funds before filming with any of our documentaries, so it has been increasingly important for us to think about how we might be able to sell them as we put them together. In a perfect world, we would be able to focus on the film that we want to make regardless of the gatekeepers who will determine how much we get paid for it (and who gets to see it). Happily, we were able to find TV homes for our documentaries “Horns and Halos” and “Code 33″ - which allowed us to continue to move forward with other projects (actually, we had to dismantle “Code 33″ and add a lot of new footage to turn it into a TV show called “Miami Manhunt.” While I was pleased to be paid well for that TV show, it pained me a great deal to dismantle a film I was proud of. You can’t eat pride, though, and it certainly doesn’t pay for health insurance). In one sense, we feel compelled to think of the audience in the broadest terms, and to try to consider what will make the film work for them. On the other hand, we need to make the film that we feel compelled to make.

We usually go through a process of rough cut screenings that help us focus our film. We’ve only done a couple of these so far with “Battle of Brooklyn,” and the feedback has sent us in several different directions. After our first screening, we got the sense that the audience wanted a lot more details about the larger community fighting the battle. We added in a lot more footage of the different people who made up the fight. At the next screening it was a sprawling boring mess. We realized that instead of more of that community, we needed even less. By introducing them, we raised the expectation that they would be followed. Now the film focuses even more directly on our main character. In the earlier stages of putting together a documentary (or any film for that matter) small changes don’t have a huge effect on how the film plays. When it starts to get close to being finished even small changes have a major impact. We are at the point in the cut where even small changes make a big difference.

A couple of weeks ago, we showed the film to a programmer who gave us a lot of great feedback. We were rushing to get the film done for him and while it was closer than it had been to done, it just wasn’t ready. After shooting for 7 years, we are somewhat desperate to get it finished, but we also don’t want to waste the 7 years of work by making a film that isn’t as good as it can be. The programmer felt that he needed more information about the developer, about the issue, and many other things. We understood where he was coming from, and worked to find ways to deal with those issues. However, after watching “A Married Woman,” I have the sense that what we need to do is once again go in the opposite direction. He was looking at the film as a documentary, and we intended to make a film. He was right, though - the film wasn’t sure if it was fish or fowl; we were trying to hard to make it both and in the end it did neither as successfully as we might have liked. After last night I know that i want it to be a film and not a “documentary”.

We don’t need to know how the developer got powerful. Developers are powerful. Business and government are too cozy. These are truths. We all know this. The more we get into the details of these issues the less room we leave for the audience to be with the issues themselves. The real issue though is being immersed in the story. If some talking head expert tells us about the developer’s connections it makes no sense in the framework of what we have put together. If a character mentions it, it can work.

“A Married Woman” begins with a series of very tight shots of hands and body parts. We hear the voice of two lovers but it is some time before we see their faces, and we see the woman’s face well before the man. From these simple cinematic facts we understand that this story is about the woman more so than the man. This couple is an old Paris apartment. She talks of the husband she will leave for this new man. She tells him that her husband won’t be home for a while. Then she goes to pick him up at the airport where he is a pilot. We know that she is not an honest woman. They go their modern apartment. She is torn between worlds and desires.

In “Battle” we begin near the end and then flash back to begin our tale. In this opening we find out that our main character is besieged and challenged, but reasonable and steadfast in his opposition to a project that seems inevitable- a project that will seize his home and bulldoze his neighborhood. When we flash back we see the announcement of the project. Using the language of cinema, we can’t help but see all kinds of problems with the announcement. Having seen what we have seen we know that these powerful people aren’t speaking the full truth.

In a “documentary” an expert would say Mr. Jones did x y and z. In a film it is more effective to hint at what Mr. Jones may or may not have done. It is even better to hint at it, to see in action that Mr. Jones has lied, and then to have Mr. Jones lie again.

As such I think that rather than get more specific about the details in our film- as egregious as they may be- and instead work to make the film more universal by getting less specific and focusing on characters under increasing levels of stress.

On the DSR list serve a person recently referred to “donors” lurking on the edges of the discussion. Several donors wrote in response that they didn’t appreciate the reference. Several other posters, including the list’s admin, were quick to defend the use of the term. While I understood that the OP meant no harm it pointed to a bit of a disconnect in the way in which the community deals with donors. I wrote in the following post to try to broaden the discussion:

Sometimes when we disagree it sounds to the people that we disagree with that we are angry. I’m not writing to express anger, (as I’m sure that those who defended their use of the term “lurking” weren’t angry), but do want to try to clarify things from a donor’s perspective.

While I understand that the DSR is welcoming to donors I think it’s important for those on this list to understand that donors are clearly “the other” in this community. My sense, as a former donor, is that there is an unstated view that there are “good” donors and “bad” donors. The good ones are open and giving and subservient. They understand the needs of the parents and the donor conceived people, and work to make them comfortable with their decisions and themselves. The “bad” ones are the ones that don’t come forward. They are “selfish” and uncaring of the needs of the people they have created. Great praise is aimed at the generous donors who come forward. There is also a lot of anger expressed towards those who don’t.

This is not to say that everyone feels this way, or that people use these terms- I’m simply trying to illuminate how the conversation feels to those who are being talked about. I know that people are very careful with their language and express all kinds of gratitude towards the donors, but if one were to step back and really look at the conversation from the perspective of a donor I think that the biases would be pretty clear. In that context, those who “lurk” fit into the latter category.

All of the issues facing every sub group of this community are emotionally complex, and are only just beginning to be explored in a robust way. While the DSR is clearly committed to openness and the well being of all people involved, I don’t think it’s fair to say that donors have an equal place at the table. Instead they are more akin to servers and in large part are expected to act like ones.

While those who aren’t donors may not have meant any harm or negativity by using the term “lurking”, it has now been clearly expressed by more than one donor that this term has been taken in a negative way. Instead of defending the use of the term I think it would be more proactive of the community to explore why, in this particular instance, the use of the term “lurking” has been taken in such a negative way. I will add my voice to the chorus that it feels like a negative description.

In many online situations there is not so much riding on the fact that some people remain on the fringes. This is clearly not the “average” online situation- and the needs and the feelings of the different parties in the conversation are extremely divergent. This list and concept of the DSR are primarily aimed at the needs of the donor conceived and their parents, and that context drives the conversation and defines the community. As such donors are the outsiders, and its important to recognize that status if there is any interest in working to change it.

Again, this isn’t said in anger, and is certainly not an attack on the DSR or this community. The DSR is a powerfully proactive force in our society, and I have immense respect and admiration for the vast amount of energy, as well as emotional effort, that has gone into creating, maintaining, and evolving it. I also want to emphasize that I feel that a great deal of effort has been forth to make sure that donors don’t feel ostrasized. However, even with that effort, it should still be clear both from the response to this “issue”, as well as the dearth of donor voices in the conversation, that donors are still very much outsiders.

As a donor this reality is very clear to me, but I can see how those who have taken such pains to be welcoming to donors might have a hard time seeing it. This is an ever evolving conversation, and the “furor” over the term “lurking” seems to be a great jumping off point for moving that evolution forward in a way that recognizes donors in a more full bodied way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/13mind.html?8dpc

This ny times article touches on something I was discussing with my intern today as he set to work organizing materials for donor 67. Nature is a lot more powerful than people wanted to believe in the last couple of decades. The ascendant idea was that with good nurturing/parenting almost all obstacles could be overcome.

Father’s Day. Last year at this point, I started working on my film, donor 67, again. I had been doing a little research, and a little writing, but still mostly just thinking. A couple of weeks earlier I had posted an op-ed about the problems with anonymous donation. I had been corresponding with Alana Sveta Stewart, and planned on meeting her that afternoon. My wife shot a little video as I was woken up by my kids upstate with cards and pancakes. On the way back to Brooklyn we stopped at a parking lot amusement park, and when we got back to Brooklyn we found chaos as a building across the street had collapsed. Alana came by and ended up staying for a month. She was the first adult donor conceived person I had met. Our discussions helped me to better understand some of the issues that our culture needs to better understand.

This year, with a deadline looming on our Brooklyn film- my wife stayed in Brooklyn to work on the cut. I took the kids upstate. It was tough, but it went well in general. They let me lay in bed this morning while they played, and I read this article in the Times. It’s incredibly powerful, and hits upon a lot of things that I have been thinking about. Part of the reason I took the kids upstate by myself was that my wife was also going to stay home with our sick cat. However, on Friday morning I took her to a vet and had her put to sleep. It was a deeply stressful week dealing with that decision. In this linked post I tried to deal with a lot of different themes (a bit more than i could chew)- because I’m in the kind of head where I’m making a lot of connections (about life/death- fatherhood- identity- donor issues- parenting- ethics and culture and how they shift- etc). I’m trying to hold onto them- and make enough sense of them to put them down on paper, but it’s starting to make me feel even more stressed out.

This article has a lot to do with the ethics of medical care- especially elder care- and these issues- and the reality of how technology often races ahead of culture/ethics has everything do with how we view our relationships to our pets, our parents, and our kids (donor conceived or made the old fashioned way).

Doctors who care for patients, be they animal or human, naturally want to use all of their skill to “save” their patients. However, if we perform open heart surgery on an 80 year old person, with the attendant risks, are we taking into consideration what the realities are for the person we save, and their caregivers. Just because we can prolong life, should we? When I was talking to a neighbor in Brooklyn about the difficulty I faced in dealing with the vet he hit upon this concern immediately, “I was visiting my wife’s grandma in the nursing home. She was fine for the most part, but the person in the next room screamed all day, and was clearly a wreck. It was torture that she was being kept alive.” Our 16 year old cat was not on her last legs before she was hit with some kind of stomach obstruction a week ago. She was weaker though and sometimes had trouble jumping on the bed. A very expensive surgery might have kept her alive for a couple of years. However, they would have probably been a tough few years on her - and on us. The point is, with unlimited resources we might have been able to keep her alive for a long time, but should we have? It’s also true that technology has enabled women as old as 70 to have children- but should they? I don’t know the answer. Really I don’t.

On Father’s Day I can’t help but think of my father. His death was the impetus for my film about family. He died 4.5 years ago, hit by a car while trying to cross a highway to get to a basketball game. He was having a lot of problems with pain and movement at the time, and he hated to feel weak nearly as much as he hated going to the doctor. So in some ways his very sudden death was a blessing. He died in full control of his faculties, but not way before his time. Our daughter Harper was born a few months after he passed, and she reminds me of him in a lot of ways. My older daughter is like my mom (and me) - and she is like her mother (and my father).

I am not overly superstitious but there are a number of times it has felt like he has reached out from beyond the grave. The first time was about a month after he passed away. Harper was due in a month and I was doing some construction to prepare for her arrival. I was getting ready to sand some floors and I took up the linoleum in a closet. Underneath the linoleum was a newspaper from the week of my father’s birth. He was born July 27 1934- the paper was from the 30th. 6 months later we went to the beach to scatter his ashes. The morning after spreading them in the ocean my wife was followed around the parking lot of the hotel by a white piece of paper as we packed the car. Finally she picked it up- it was his cremation certificate that had been lost on the beach the evening before. A couple months later my daughter knocked an urn of his ashes to the floor- spreading them around the room. It felt like an impish joke. Last week after the NY Times’ Ross Douhat wrote about the recent survey concerning donor issues, they published a letter from a psychology professor about how technology has gotten ahead of the ethics in some ways. That professor taught with my father and this year won an award in his name. I hadn’t met him, but plan to shoot with him next month when I go to visit my family in NC.

They cycle of life- and film - continues- with my father pulling the strings from above.