I’ll never be able to introduce Truman to my father, nor to his best friends John and Marvin, but as we reflect on those whom we have lost (and we have all had additional occasions to do so over this last week’s September 11th remembrances), we can delight in the opportunity to reanimate such vibrant, funny, and generous people with the stories that they have left behind. While films make characters come alive, stories do the same for the people behind the camera, or, in the case of my godfather, the people behind the characters. I even did my Himmelfarb impersonation, filling our little Davis home with his voice the way he used to do for my even smaller DC home in the mid-1970s. In response to Truman’s questions, soon I was regaling my son with stories of Marvin and my dad getting louder and louder over the course of an evening as they would talk about writing, theatre, sports, and, rarely, politics. But my brother Oliver’s godfather, Marvin Himmelfarb, came to the house all the time. John never had to step in to perform any godfatherly duties, so I didn’t have many stories about him to share with Truman.
#The laughter of my father full story tv
Truman looked up Hillerman and then remarked with surprise that he also had fifth billing in the film Chinatown, and that he had early 1970s roles in films with Clint Eastwood, Sidney Poitier, Jeff Bridges, and Barbra Streisand.īecause John’s film and TV career took off soon after I was born, I saw him rarely. Truman reminded me that we still have yet to watch the Brooks classic Blazing Saddles, which we own on DVD, so I reminded him that my late godfather, John Hillerman, appears in that film. I smiled at his reference, and told him that, speaking of Mel Brooks and world civilizations, my friends and I thought Brooks’ History of the World, Part I was hilarious when it was released in 1981 (when I was Truman’s age), even though it earned only a 47% Metacritic score.
#The laughter of my father full story code
When I asked him about his day at school, he told me that reading (and reading about) The Code of Hammurabi in his World Civilization class reminded him of a Mel Brooks interpretation of a system of laws. Yesterday evening, after I returned home from my daily walk with Jukie, I sat down with my son Truman to talk about movies and to tell stories.
As a friend told me at a conference this past Friday, the “P” in PhD stands for “Persistence.”
She herself has powerful stories to tell about orphanhood, homelessness, faith, and persistence, the last being a requisite for any sort of sustained accomplishment. In a recent Smartless podcast interview, the actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish said that she uses mind-mapping techniques to figure out how she will attach her amusing thoughts and outrageous punchlines to stories, for everyone loves to hear a story. It’s the luckier storyteller who can use stories to make his beloved departed come back to life, thus relishing their presence one more time, and sharing their lives with others who never had the pleasure their company. Suffering awaits the traveler down that path.
Sometimes we tell ourselves stories that cycle through our own disappointments or even that explore imagined worse-case scenarios.
0 kommentar(er)
