Did you ever think that you were wasting your time in high school? That it wasn’t the best place for you to spend seven hours a day, five days a week? If you had determined this and you had failing grades to prove that you and high school were not a good fit, would your parents have let you stay home and watch movies all day?
David Gilmour’s book, The Film Club: A Memoir, came out last summer, but when I heard him read some of the final chapter on NPR yesterday, he had me near tears. And no, it wasn’t preggy hormones. Even Douglas McGrath, in his New York Times Book Review, said that the book moved him to tears… more than once.
With Father’s Day around the corner, ties on sale, and Hallmark sending out extra shipments, it’s refreshing to hear a dad talk so earnestly about his confidence in his son at a time when most parents would find themselves wholeheartedly disappointed and even ready give up. Gilmour’s decision to provide private tutelage to his teenage son through the likes of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Basic Instinct” is not without pitfalls, but it (and his son) turns out to be a success.
Traditional education was not only the norm, but a must in my family. I grew up hearing stories of how my grandfather walked to the one-room schoolhouse to light the fire before the teacher arrived and how proud he was that he could later help my mom out with law school. They taught me to love school, to never take it for granted. The idea of abandoning the classroom, and particularly in exchange for movies and not books, would have been unthinkable for any of us. As I teach, however, I can see where traditional education fails students. Some are bored with their text books. Others can’t deal with the structure. But they all watch movies.
“Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I’ve stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate– the ritual often exhausts them.”
–Robert McKee, Story
Tags: david gilmour, father, film club, high school dropout, son