“I hate you, Dad.”
I’ve heard this line more than a few times over the last few years, typically directed at me by my teenage son and most often followed by a dramatic exiting of the room and a house-rocking door slam.
But this time, just before the departure/door amplification crescendo, my son turned around to add an impromptu verbal coda:
“Oh, and by the way, when I apologize tomorrow and tell you that I love you, I want you to know that I’m lying.”
In a way, I kind of admired him for that line. In the inevitable power-grab of parent/child relationships, that statement effectively put our status into a Matrix-like vortex, with its “what is real and what is an illusion?” framework keeping things in doubt at all times. Clever boy, that one.
(Side note: I know that even the possibility of discussing the complications of one’s parenting journey is hair-raising, and that some of you may be shocked that I’d express any concerns at all. Rest assured that I love my son, I’d do anything for him, etc etc. But if any of you think of fatherhood as a non-stop blissfest that provides nothing but constant joy and happiness while love bunnies float magically in the air sprinkling candy dust on your eternally happy children…well, good for you. Call me the first time your teenager tells you to fuck off.)
I’d like to say that every one of our disagreements/arguments/apocalyptic meltdowns are my son’s fault.
I’d like to say that, so I will. They’re all his fault. Glad that’s settled.
But really, I know there are more complicated factors at play. I may not always show the most self-control in those moments (I can actually visualize my wife spitting up her protein shake as she reads this). My choices to elevate a conflict to “make a point” are well known in my domicile. My wife has read every parenting book ever published in the US (and Canada), and has heeded advice from every single one of them. But the chapters on “Choose Your Battles” and “Be The Adult In The Relationship” seemed to slip through my limited cognitive abilities.
So yeah, some of this may be on me too.
If I’m being truthful, I can cop to the fact that there has been a growing distance between me and my son for some time now. Some of that is natural, as he grows into an independent human being that is capable of making his own decisions, like insisting on wearing shorts in the snow or eating half a pound of Cracker Barrel cheese without pausing to breathe.
But some of that distance came from a different place entirely, something that has been difficult to transcend.
We just don’t like the same stuff.
Despite my best efforts, I could not pass my love for the New York Yankees, football on Sundays, the Beatles or lasagna on to my son. And despite his best efforts, I can’t appreciate the video games that dominate his free time.
(And look, I absolutely LOVED video games as a kid. But have you tried to play an XBox game these days? Exactly when did playing a video game require an innate knowledge of 28 buttons and switches to simply walk forward? The last time I tried to play Fortnite, I turned in circles for a half hour and somehow shot myself in the face. Atari had one joystick and a big red button. That I can handle.)
The distance between us is exacerbated by the fact that (like many families) we haven’t spoken the same cultural language. There’s a great passage from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (a novel of pop-culture obsessiveness that I’ve read more than any other novel, meaning I’ve actually finished it twice). It neatly sums up that issue:
“It’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
If that’s true, than most parents are screwed.
Which brings me to my breakthrough. Despite the morbid intro you’ve just waded through, this story has a happy ending after all.
Over the last few years, my son developed an intense fascination with the Academy Awards. After filling out a random Oscar poll one year (and watching the telecast with us to keep the tally), he began to obsessively research the history of the films that won and lost. We bought him a book on the history of the nominations and winners, and he was hooked. He became an Oscars expert within weeks. This is not an exaggeration. Ask him and he’ll tell you the nominees for Best Supporting Actress in 1993 (if you’re reading, I’m a big fan, Marisa Tomei) and why it doesn’t make sense that Ordinary People beat Raging Bull for Best Picture in 1980.
But it dawned on me that, as much as my son knew about these acclaimed films, he’d pretty much never actually seen most of them. This didn’t make sense to me. Imagine a food critic that never ate, or a music nut that read Rolling Stone instead of listening to his collection. He was missing the best part of the experience!
So one day, on a long car ride, while my son was watching his 300th consecutive hour of disposable YouTube videos on his phone, I made my move.
“I have an idea”, I said. This usually provokes an immediate groan, but I must have caught him at a good moment. “You know so much about these Oscar movies, but you haven’t actually watched many of them. Wouldn’t it be interesting if, instead of clicking through random videos on your phone, you used that time try to see the movies you’ve been reading about?”
I gripped the steering wheel in anticipation of the fight to come. It never came. He lifted his head from his phone, looked at me and said something never uttered before in the history of our relationship.
“That’s a good idea.”
For the rest of the ride, we devised and organized a plan. We would select 50 movies, all of which had to be respected award nominees that he hadn’t seen already (and had to be made after 1970, since anything before then must have been produced by another species). He would choose 35 of them, and I would supplement them with my additional list of 15. We’d each have veto power over two choices, and could replace those with the films we thought would be better representatives. And we’d work over the year to watch the films on the list together.
And so we did.
Over the last year, my son and I have sat down together for hours, not just watching the films on the list but also talking about them, comparing them, putting them in context with films they preceded and that followed. He surprised me with his love of “Annie Hall”, discovered a passion for Quentin Tarantino and Charlie Kaufman, kicked me out of the room to watch “Boogie Nights” (understandably) and asked how other war films in history compared to Saving Private Ryan. And for the first time since he was a toddler, he let me share my knowledge with him to help build the foundation for his own perspective.
Compared to the halting and occasionally explosive dialogue of our past, this felt like we had discovered a common language. Finally, after all these years, we found an interest that we shared and that we could share with each other. He even took things a step further, using our project as a base for a school thesis (writing an incredibly honest and frank report about the dynamic of our relationship through the lens of the films that we watched together.
To be clear, things still aren’t perfect between the two of us. Relationships are complicated by nature, and we can’t fire up Netflix every time our conversation devolves into an argument. We’ve had some blowups, and the occasional fall back into old habits and fighting corners.
But I can feel a difference. I know it. Popcorn must have some magical qualities, and I’m not about to let that pass.
In case you’re wondering, my son’s favorite film from the project (and possibly of all time) was Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, a film about love and memory. It’s also about a broken relationship, but one that finds itself repeatedly pulled back together by an undeniable force. Their bond won’t let the relationship break, despite their differences, obstacles and challenges. It’s weird and uncomfortable at times, yet hopeful about the future.
That feels familiar to me. And kind of perfect. He’s my son, and I’m his father, no matter what. Our bond is still strong.
And watching movies is our thing.
If you’re curious, here are the movies from our project list (remember the rules: my son couldn’t have seen it before, it had to be Oscar nominated (if even for an actor or actress) or universally acclaimed, produced after 1970, and some were added or removed by veto):
- Adaptation
- Almost Famous
- Amadeus
- Annie Hall
- Being John Malkovich
- Boogie Nights
- Breaking Away
- Brokeback Mountain
- Dallas Buyers Club
- Dances With Wolves
- Do The Right Thing
- Dreamgirls
- Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
- Fargo
- Gangs of New York
- Goodfellas
- Hurt Locker
- It Follows
- Juno
- Kill Bill
- LA Confidential
- Lost In Translation
- Milk
- Million Dollar Baby
- Misery
- Moulin Rouge
- Mystic River
- No Country For Old Men
- One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
- Raging Bull
- Rain Man
- Raising Arizona
- Requiem For A Dream
- Reservoir Dogs
- Saving Private Ryan
- Schindler’s List
- Sideways
- Spirited Away
- Terms Of Endearment
- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
- The Big Short
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- The Departed
- The Fighter
- The Godfather
- There WIll Be Blood
- The Sting
- The Theory Of Everything
- Training Day
- When Harry Met Sally
There’s plenty missing here…wish I had slipped an Animal House or Airplane in there somewhere, it’s a heavy list. But we set the rules, I had only 15 to choose from. Don’t yell at me, that’s his job.
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