“Fathers and Sons 10 True Stories” – a short film

The story behind this simple and wonderful 7 and 1/2 minutes of father/son truth telling is that when we made The Story of Fathers and Sons for ABC, we interviewed over 600 men and boys to choose the 40 whose stories and lives we would use in the television program.

So of course we had way, way more material than we could use in a television hour and some of that material was absolutely fantastically great.

To show sponsors what we were doing on production, but before any editing began, we pulled some selects.  In that process, one of us (Gary) made a collection of the perfect, short, single take, on-camera father-son truth telling monologues.  It worked great as a “best of”  selects reel,  but it also suggested  a mood and a style and a film of it’s own.  Sort of an anti-editing documentary, a series of monologues where the power is in the sustained close-up and the truthfulness of the person speaking.  Words.  Memories.  The evocative landscape of the human face.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

And for years Gary kept it on his things-to-do list to review that selects reel and edit it into own short film.  So now, 11 years in the making … we present this most straight forward of films to you.

Simple
true
heart breaking
funny
honest
real
clever
profound

cradle to grave … 10 truths … a cubist portrait of the father-son bond … 600 men and boys and 11 years in the making.

Note to self:   Persistance – include on the list of skills needed to be a good documentarian .