The Film Club: A Memoir | 
| Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Twelve
List Price: $21.99
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Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 49424
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 044619929X
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780446199292
ASIN: 044619929X
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
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Product Description
"I loved David Gilmour's sleek, potent little memoir, The Film Club. It's so, so wise in the ways of fathers and sons, of movies and movie-goers, of love and loss."
--- Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls
"If all sons had dads like David Gilmour, then Oedipus would be a forgotten legend and Father's Day would be a worldwide film festival."
--Sean Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All
"David Gilmour is a very unlikely moral guidance counselor: he's broke, more or less unemployed and has two children by two different women. Yet when it looks as though his teenage son is about to go off the rails, he reaches out to him through the only subject he knows anything about: the movies. The result is an object lesson in how fathers should talk to their sons." --Toby Young, author of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
At the start of this brilliantly unconventional family memoir, David Gilmour is an unemployed movie critic trying to convince his fifteen-year-old son Jesse to do his homework. When he realizes Jesse is beginning to view learning as a loathsome chore, he offers his son an unconventional deal: Jesse could drop out of school, not work, not pay rent - but he must watch three movies a week of his father's choosing.
Week by week, side by side, father and son watched everything from True Romance to Rosemary's Baby to Showgirls, and films by Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Billy Wilder, among others. The movies got them talking about Jesse's life and his own romantic dramas, with mercurial girlfriends, heart-wrenching breakups, and the kind of obsessive yearning usually seen only in movies.
Through their film club, father and son discussed girls, music, work, drugs, money, love, and friendship - and their own lives changed in surprising ways.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 A father and son watch movies together. But that's just the plot, not the point. May 1, 2008
Jesse Kornbluth (New York)
38 out of 44 found this review helpful
His grades started dropping in the ninth grade. In the tenth, they toppled. He switched to a private school. No difference. Jesse Gilmour just didn't give a damn.
His father --- David Gilmour, a well-known Canadian novelist --- was unhinged. At this rate, Jesse wouldn't be going to college. At this rate, Jesse would be flipping burgers at minimum wage --- if he didn't completely fall apart.
Dad had to intervene. And he did. He had been a movie critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His son liked movies. On that frail connection, he proposed that Jesse drop out of school and watch three movies a week. Dad's choice. Just the two of them.
The film club began with Truffaut's "400 Blows". European. Arty. Certain to bore the kid. But important because Truffaut was "a high school dropout, a draft dodger, a small-time thief." They watch. They talk. You're interested.
Then Rebecca Ng enters the story. She's mature, mysterious, unspeakably hot. Jesse's smitten. David's worried. Seeing Rebecca and Jesse together was "like watching him get into a very expensive car. I could smell the new leather from here."
Girls and movies make for a more complicated story. Now add another element: David's writing career. Suddenly it's going about as well as Jesse's schooling. It looks as if there are two dropouts in the Gilmour residence.
But David perseveres with the film club. In the course of the screenings, he serves up terrific tidbits. Did you know Alfred Hitchcock built a second set of stairs so Ingrid Bergman's long walk at the end of "Notorious" is doubly tense? That Stephen King didn't like the film of "The Shining" and had no affection at all for its director, Stanley Kubrick? That director William Friedkin got a great performance by a priest in "The Exorcist" by asking the guy if he trusted him --- and then slapping him in the face?
Yes, you learn lots of cool trivia from "The Film Club", but that's not the big takeaway. This easily digested memoir is about something much bigger than film --- it's about people, and how we see them, and how we treat them.
There are, if you think that way, "good kids" and "bad kids". And there are "responsible parents" and "permissive parents". You can put those grids over relationships and make some easy, smug judgments. And I'll bet, if you're that sort of reader, even this brief description of "The Film Club" is enough to lead you to conclude that Jesse's a bit of a loser and Dad's a bit of a flake.
If you're that kind of reader --- what am I saying? I'm that kind of reader! I judge like mad! And of course I feel superior to this father-and-son team. Why not: I loved school. And as a stepfather and now a father, the kids who have lived with me have also loved to learn --- even in school.
So if you're that kind of reader --- if, like me, you think of yourself as a rebel, but you don't color too far outside the lines --- this is a very subversive memoir. Three years in two lives. Father and son really getting to know one another. Boundaries broken. Generalizations shattered --- David and Jesse's first, but yours most of all.
Don't think this is a small book just because it's short (217 pages) and intimate. David Gilmour took a chance. A big chance --- few parents would tell their teenaged kid he/she doesn't have to go to school. To ask "Did Jesse's life work out?" is to reduce this complex story to a Hollywood movie plot. It did and it didn't. It's real life, not a movie.
On the other hand, "The Film Club" does have a pretty great ending.
RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "A FATHER & SON MULTI-LEVEL COMING OF AGE STORY." May 9, 2008
Rick Goldstein (Danville, Ca, USA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Because my Father was the greatest Father in the world I always wanted to be a Father, and then I was blessed with the greatest son. Since the two roles in my life; son, when my Dad was alive, and Father now, are so special to me, I'm always enthusiastically interested in any literature regarding the magical union of Father and Son. The author of this book David Gilmour has been among other things the national film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and has written six novels. David was confronted with a personal and family crisis when his fifteen-year-old son Jesse was failing every subject in school. Jesse had no real desire to continue going to school so David had to make a gut wrenching decision... a decision that wasn't discussed in the "Being A Father" manual that you weren't given when your first child was born. David gave Jesse the freedom to quit school with one proviso: he had to watch three movies a week with his Dad, and his Dad chose the movies. Jesse gleefully accepted the deal. What the author wound up receiving was three years of indescribable time together that involved way more than just watching movies. The Father cleverly became a skillful teacher without standing up in the front of a classroom and announcing I am "THE TEACHER!" The teacher he became did not have a set curriculum that you would find in any institution of higher learning. The subject wasn't math, English or history... it was much more important! It was "LIFE". Though the author shared his lifetime love of movies with his son, the movie subjects were picked, and schedules changed, based on the curve balls being thrown at Father and son by a combination of destiny and fate.
This book is lovingly written and the reader shares the travails of a sixteen-year-old dropout with no job, girl problems, and a Father trying to feel his way blindfolded, through a darkened twisting tunnel, in an attempt to come out on the other end with a boy who becomes a man, and a loving Father/son relationship still intact. The tools the Father uses are of course great movies renowned and obscure, ranging from "The Bicycle Thief" to "The Exorcist" to "Scarface" and beyond. He reaches into his past experiences as a movie critic to share inside info with his son, such as when he interviewed Dennis Hopper and asked him who his favorite actor was. "I thought he was going to say Marlon Brando. Everyone says Marlon Brando. But he didn't. he said James Dean. You know what else he said? He said the best piece of acting he'd ever seen in his life was that scene with James Dean (in "Giant") when he takes his leave, he stops by the door, fiddling with a long piece of rope, like he's practicing a rodeo trick... he makes a movement with his hand, like he's sweeping snow off a desk. It's like he's saying "F" you to the business guys."
As important as the education by film, are the situations that force the Father to open up his own past, involving hurt and disappointments with women. As a parent, the reader feels the pain of indecision in a place that only one's child can penetrate to, as the Father decides what to share from his inner vault. The author makes it clear that at this stage of his son's life it's more important to be a Father than a friend. When Jesse starts drinking too much the author turns to literature and tells his son about Malcolm Lowry, a rich boy who leaves England and drinks his way around the world, settling in Mexico and writes a great novel about drinking, "Under The Volcano", and almost drives himself insane in the process. "I told Jesse, to imagine how many young men your age have gotten drunk and looked in the mirror and thought they saw Malcolm Lowry looking back at them. How many young men thought they were doing something more important, more poetic than just getting really smashed. I read Jesse a passage from the novel to show him why. "AND THIS IS HOW I SOMETIMES THINK OF MYSELF, LOWRY WROTE, AS A GREAT EXPLORER WHO HAS DISCOVERED SOME EXTRAORDINARY LAND FROM WHICH HE CAN NEVER RETURN TO GIVE HIS KNOWLEDGE TO THE WORLD: BUT THE NAME OF THIS LAND IS HELL." "Jesus, Jesse said, slumping back into the couch. Do you think he meant it, that he really saw himself that way?" "I do."
From there the senior Gilmour segues to a documentary on "Under The Volcano": "Canadian filmmaker Donald Brittain's description of Lowry's incarceration in a New York insane asylum: "This was no longer the rich bourgeois world where one fell about on soft lawns. Here were things that kept on living despite the fact they were beyond repair." Wow! What a powerful literary lesson from Father to son about not over indulging, without coming across like the Father is the only person seeing these possible horrendous pitfalls. On a family trip to Cuba Jesse gets himself into a bad situation at a bar, and Dad saves the day. And it's time for another lesson from Dad on the streets of life, to add to the lessons from cinema and literature: "There are a couple of inviolate principles in the universe," I said, suddenly chatty (I was delighted to be where we were), One is that you never get anything worth getting from an "A" hole. Two is when a stranger comes toward you with his hand extended, he doesn't want to be your friend."
This terrific memoir may have movies as its home base, but the education and bonding of love between Father and son has no boundaries in this book and in life.
 Great literature, poor parenting. May 29, 2008
P. Vrooman (New York, USA)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book is a great and fast read and for those who love classic films like myself, it is a great guide to cinema. Though I loved the book and its prose, I was saddened by Gilmour's parenting. He is so self congratulatory of his openminded approach that he fails to take any responsibility for why is son is at this terrible crossroads in the first place. His boy is arrogant, unmotivated, a smoker, and a drinker. He allows his 16 year old to have sex in his room after knowing a girl for less than a week. Somewhere along the line, not having expectations or standards for your child have become the qualifications of a good parent. This is not an original idea, it is the philosophy behind most bad parenting, and with that, most unhappy and misguided adolescents. As a teacher I see the product of this "parenting" every day and it is sad to see the results of parents being more interested in having their child's friendship, rather than their respect. All in all worth a read, but certainly not a productive guide to child rearing.
 Entertaining book, for sure, but what about the underlying currents? June 20, 2008
Paul Allaer (Cincinnati)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
When I saw the inner flap of this book, with its general premise "dad allows teenage son to drop out of high school, with the only condition that son watches 3 movies a week with dad", I was immediately intrigued, being a movie buff myself, and having teenage kids as well.
In "The Film Club" (225 pages), author David Gilmour (not to be confused with the Pink Floyd guitarist of the same name) brings the real life story of how he saw his 16 yr. old son flounder in high school, and decided that it didn't make any further sense to have his son stay in school. Instead, he made a deal with his son: drop out of high school, but watch at least three movies with me (of my choosing) each week. Wow. What a premise. The book plays at several levels: the obvious one is the discussions about the movies dad and son watch together and what lessons, if any, could be learned from it. The other one is the the more troubling one, namely dad's observations of his teenage son's personal life. This is where I cannot connect. The son drinks freely, and has troubling sexual episodes, and it all is tolerated by dad. Maybe I live in a cocoon, but how many of our kids are out of high school, and party it up, with booze and drugs all around, all tolerated by the parent(s)?
"The Film Club" is an enjoyable book to read, in the sense that the pages fly by in no time, but I can't help but wonder about the underlying social context of it all. Sure, in the end, the son decides to wizen up after 3 years of this, and gets his HS diploma, but at what price? Puzzling to me....
A deeply affecting parenting manual May 22, 2008
Bookreporter.com (New York, New York)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I couldn't wait to read David Gilmour's THE FILM CLUB. I expected a funny, witty diatribe on the strangely educational aspects of movies on modern life and, especially, on teenagers, those wild and woolly consumers for whom most films are focus-grouped. However, the book turned out to be a deeply affecting parenting manual --- one that speaks directly to my own dementedly-in-love-with-movies soul.
When Gilmour allows his 15-year-old son Jesse to drop out of high school, given his steadily lowering grades and obvious disconnect to all things academic, he does so under one condition: Jesse must watch three movies a week with him and talk about them. Now, that might seem entertaining to most kids. But Jesse knows that his father, a former film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, values the cinema too highly to treat it as a passing fancy. And so begins the film club --- a disarmingly fun way for a grown man to connect with his young son, to bridge the parent-child gap between them by letting movies do the hard work, coming up with what they need to talk about, coinciding beautifully at times with incidents from Jesse's own tumultuous life (especially his love life).
Gilmour breaks down the films into groups --- movies that are overrated in his opinion, movies with "buried treasures" that most filmgoers may have missed the first time around, timeless classics and classic timewasters --- and they all have something to say. Or at least Gilmour has something to say about each of them. As his son slouches from one lousy love affair to another, Gilmour finds, more often than not, a bon mot in a single frame of celluloid that can help them talk about what is really happening in modern-day Canada. It's a brilliant idea (one I adopt with my seven-year-old when the going gets rough), but the fact that he can actually lead his son into the decision he makes at the end of the book makes it a particularly special and remarkable one.
I thought I would be weeping my way through this memoir, as Gilmour passionately throws his son onto the ropes of the greats, expressing what makes the moving picture so special, while dealing with the difficulties of helping a child leave the nest as well-prepared as possible to deal with real life. And the fact that Gilmour can find the spots in the fantasy life of the movies that reflect most wisely on the real world makes him all the more enchanting a guide. But he never lapses into the sentimental (except for one passage in which he takes on fully the pain of his son's romantic agony).
Gilmour's view seems to be that the most important thing we as parents can do is to show...and listen. Show them by example (or John Ford's example or even Quentin Tarantino's) how to handle situations and then listen as the child uses this help as a jumping-off point for his own philosophizing about his personal situation. Every time Jesse calls his dad in the midst of a crisis, I think about how lucky Gilmour is and hope that I, too, am so fortunate --- that in the course of a child's life, their answer to the Ghostbusters' famous question, "Who ya gonna call?" is mom or dad, even when they're well beyond a 7:30 bedtime.
You might learn a few things about movies here, but mostly you'll learn about risky parenting and how one man's decision to save his son without shielding him from the realities of daily life by using moving art to have it all make sense became his greatest achievement. THE FILM CLUB is a great memoir and will certainly find its way to a lot of dads around Father's Day. But just about anyone can benefit from its wisdom and soft-hearted belief that love really does conquer all, in movies as much as in life.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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