This one is Paul Strand’s “The Wave.”
You can read about it over at “The Case for Global Film.”
That is my dad Don Brown. And my mom, and me.
This is one of those mornings when as a writer you try and make sense of your family and how you got from point A to point B and sometimes it just doesn’t make very much sense at all.
What I wish is that I grew up with Don. But I didn’t.
He and I would make very different types of films in this lifetime.
Because he made his, I want to make mine.
Why did my father have to do what he did?
I wanted him to be a coach, or something.
There is a scene in the film “Running With Scissors” where the boy says “Will you just make me some hamburger helper?” It’s great because in that one line he summed it all up. All he wanted was a normal family.
Not that I would ever eat that, myself.
As a child I wanted to live like all my friends lived.
It wasn’t possible.
When my father started out he made surfing films. And bullfight films down in Mexico.
I can remember being down in Hermosa Beach with him and we always went to these delis for submarine sandwiches and chocolate milk. I buy it sometimes because of that, maybe. It’s like this good memory of him that I can hold onto. When I think of the years I missed that I could have had a father I get sad.
My mother banished him when I was about nine. Not fair.
On the other hand, I know why she had to. It was because of the sorts of films he made next as Bob Vosse.
Hopefully this memoir I am writing will help fatherless girls understand their lives.
This year I bought a ton of things with leopard print.
Dunno.
It seems like after a certain age Leopard becomes you or something.
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 