The Film Club: A Memoir (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: David Gilmour, James Dean, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this poignant and witty memoir, Canadian novelist Gilmour (A Perfect Night to Go to China) grapples with his decision to allow his teenage son, Jesse, to leave school in the 10th grade provided he promises to watch three movies a week with his father. Determined not to force a formal education on his son, former film critic and television host Gilmour begins the film club with Truffaut's The 400 Blows—with Basic Instinct for dessert. There are no lectures preceding the films, no quizzes on content or form: just a father and son watching movies together. Expertly tracing the trials and tribulations of teenage crushes and heartbreak, Gilmour explores not only his choice of films but also Jesse's struggles with his girlfriends and burgeoning music career. There are units on everything from undiscovered talent (Audrey Hepburn's Oscar-winning debut in Roman Holiday) to stillness, exemplified by Gary Cooper's ability in High Noon to steal a scene without moving a muscle. Gilmour expertly tackles the nostalgia not only of film but also that of parents, watching as their children grow and develop separate lives. With his unique blend of film history and personal memoir, Gilmour's latest offering will deservedly win him new American fans. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

In this sensitive memoir, Canadian film critic and novelist Gilmour tells of the bargain he struck with his son, 15-year-old Jesse, who was unhappy at school. Gilmour would allow Jesse to drop out if he would agree to watch three movies a week with his dad. Over the next three years, the two would wrangle over movies that the elder Gilmour thought his son would love but didn’t (A Hard Day’s Night) and experience the irrational thrills of “guilty pleasures” (Showgirls). More important, they edged slantwise, in typical male fashion, into more personal discussions of  big topics, such as sexual jealousy (Last Tango in Paris) and alcoholism (Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry). At the same time, Jesse dealt with serious heartbreak, while his father struggled to find steady work and worried incessantly over whether he had made the right decision in allowing his son to drop out of school. Both for its smart, engaging movie talk and for its touching depiction of a father-son relationship, The Film Club gets two thumbs way up. --Joanne Wilkinson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Twelve; Reprint edition (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446199303
• ISBN-13: 978-0446199308
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #52,471 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A father and son watch movies together. But that's just the plot, not the point. , May 1, 2008

By	Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Film Club: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "A FATHER & SON MULTI-LEVEL COMING OF AGE STORY.", May 9, 2008

By	Rick Shaq Goldstein "Rick Shaq Goldstein" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Film Club: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shocking parenting makes for interesting reading, June 21, 2008

By	M. A. Galloway "BookWorm" (Largo FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Film Club: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I had seen this book reviewed in several different national magazines and the premise intrigued me. I thought it might be particularly interesting for my husband who can quote chapter and verse (director/producer/etc.) from just about every movie ever made. I wasn't prepared to be unable to put it down.

Part of the books appeal is the length and ease of reading. I read the entire book in about 3 hours. Yes I read quickly but the book is very light reading.

I think the other reason I coudln't put it down was simply because I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was convinced that due to Gilmour's shocking parenting decisions that some awful calamity would befall his child. You need to read it to find out if I was right!

I enjoyed this book so much that it just might go on my "Christmas book list" (books I buy to give away to fellow readers for Christmas) but it would have to be a certain kind of reader as there are a lot of drug and sex references and some language in it. Parents may want to vet the book before giving it to kids to read (especially younger teens).